The purpose of abuse is to reduce the amount of options a person has, in order to force it to do things that are questionable or in favor of the abuser. Just because someone is forcing you to do something bad it doesn't mean that you are no longer choosing your actions or that you are not responsible of your actions anymore.
For example Charles Manson manipulated a group of young people to commit a series of murders, this means that both Manson and the people who actually committed the murder are responsible about it, because all of them had free will and they could've chose a different course of actions at any point. So both of them got time in jail.
Even if your bad actions are the result of someone abusing you, your self esteem is going to get a hit from witnessing yourself do the things that you are forced to do. This is why it is very common for victim of abuse to self blame for the abuse they receive. Also as a result of losing their self esteem and self blaming they also lose the capacity to defend themselves, to express righteous anger.
This not only makes people stay in abusive relationships for longer than what it is necessary, but also damages their self esteem. For as long as you are confuse, about what you did and who is responsible of it.
Not only you are in danger to continue to do those bad things, or think that you are doing immoral things when you are actually not, but because you are confuse about the responsibility, you are going to hide who you really are from the world. Your capacity to have intimacy is also going to suffer as a result of the abuse, that corrupted you.
We try to overcompensate for it, by over accomplishing in certain areas of our lives, to build our self esteem like: getting a great body, make a lot of money, own a sport car etc. it is all an attempt to make people like you without knowing you, without having to have intimacy with them.
Your self esteem can be built only from the inside, no matter how good you get at something or whatever you accumulate, it wont fix it. it is like you have this crowd in your head that is always watching you. Whenever you make a good choice they cheer you on, whenever you chose bad they boo you.
It is in recognizing your capacity to chose and the responsibility over past choices you have made, in whatever the consequences might have been. That you can restore your free will, and integrity and with that will build your self esteem.
