Joe,

What happened to you as a child was awful, but you must understand, at 6 years old you are still in the monkey-see-monkey-do age range. Critical thinking and situational understanding are not yet developed. In fact, it is only after 7 years old that a child begins to develop a sense of self  that is independent from their parents. Your actions were nothing more than an imitation of the adults in your life. They modeled that behavior in front of an impressionable child who had no way of understanding that what they were doing was fundamentally wrong. You carry no guilt in this.

From a psychological perspective, when a child undergoes that kind of trauma their personality fractures. In other words, a portion of the personality splits away to encapsulate the event in order to protect you from the pain. Unfortunately, it seems that when this happens the portion that breaks away freezes in time, and doesn’t age or mature with the rest of your psyche. What this means (without giving a diagnoses, as that is not allowed here), is that you may have a six year old boy screaming inside of you to help them understand the trauma they experienced. It is this little boy who is begging for help.

Without overstepping the rules of this site, I would suggest you reach out to a practitioner of Neurolinguistics Programming. They are specialists in this sort of personality crisis, and can help you heal and reintegrate the little you inside who is crying for help. Until then the best thing you can do is to show that little you all the love and compassion that you can, because adult you does understand, and adult you is the best one to help little you understand.