Is this considered abusive?

My dad used to hit me with a wooden spoon on my butt when I was little, if I did something wrong or made him mad in some way that was his way of punishment. He stopped doing that before I turned 8, because then by that point he would just have to give me a look and say “do you want to do things the easy way, or the hard way?”

Hard way meant getting hit with the wooden spoon but he always preached about “doing what is right instead of what is easy” so when he asked that question for the first time giving me a choice, I said “the hard way” thinking it was the answer that would please him. Nope, that answer got me hit. The ‘easy way’ was me having to stop crying and look him in the eye and apologize for whatever I did and say how I will do better next time.

From then on I became so hyper aware of his moods and trying to do and say and be how he wanted me to be. I always kept straight A’s and burst into tears in fifth grade when I accidentally forgot to bring my homework to school. I became super quiet and usually dissociated in school because I was so scared of messing up and saying the wrong thing and not being perfect. I always spent time in my room when I was at home and didn’t like being around my family, they just would call me ‘shy.’ But I hated how unpredictable and arbitrary my dad’s moods and rules and expectations were.

The other day he was training our dog to be off leash, and when my dog strayed from his side, he grabbed a stick and whipped it at my dog’s butt and said something like “this is the only way he will learn. And since I’m not using my hand, he won’t associate the pain with coming from me.”

In that moment I got really angry and couldn’t figure out why and put it into words until later when I thought about it more, the reason it made me angry because I realized that’s exactly how he raised me. Calculated and cruel. But I’ve felt like I’ve gotten along with him for the past few years and that he is a loving dad, but I’ve realized that’s only because I have had to mold myself into this version of exactly who he wants me to be and what he expects from me. I’ve been trying to understand where my trauma comes from lately, but I almost feel like what my dad did isn’t bad enough to cause the trauma responses I have now