I really like how you put this.
OP I didn’t ever have to navigate your exact situation but here’s what I had to navigate between about ages 20 and 22.
My childhood barn was…not great in a lot of ways. Small town, backyard barn, not at all a show environment and I outgrew it but realizing it was a really gradual process.
I didn’t leave to go to college, instead doing community college and ultimately online courses, so rode at this place from age 10 through my early 20s. Instructor could very much be a bully and verbally abusive. Horsemanship generally sucked, but when it’s all you know, it’s all you know and you don’t know different (keep in mind - I did not show, so did not have much exposure to the broader horse world). Horses were not treated well, instructor had a tendency to lose her temper with them, place was family-owned and operated, instructor’s credentials were “I’ve been riding since I was 2.”
The horse I had ridden since age 16 and owned since age 18 died a couple months after my 20th birthday and later that year I broke my arm falling off a different horse. That was sort of the catalyst where I started seeing this place for what it was. I stuck around for about a year, longer than I should have, putting up with a lot of stupidity I shouldn’t have tolerated as I came back from the broken arm - about a year after I initially broke my arm, I tagged along to a local horse show that my then-instructor was competing at. This was a schooling show that featured low-level dressage classes and a combined test/event. Instructor was entered in dressage.
I watched as she: 1. copped an attitude about not getting a ribbon b/c they weren’t awarding those to the dressage competitors (which I’d bet money was clearly noted somewhere) b/c “her test would’ve been good enough for a ribbon” in another schooling show, 2. take her temper out on the horse when horse (who had barely left the property, ever) balked at loading onto the trailer, and 3. refuse help from a well-intended fellow competitor to get the horse on the trailer. That whole shebang was the last straw that made me realize I needed to find another instructor, pronto. I’d spent the time my instructor went to get her scoresheet sitting watching a very well-known local eventer coaching students in the warm-up (like, this trainer who I was watching w/his students has since passed away but if I said his name probably anyone on here that’s in my region would know who I was talking about. He wasn’t a famous name in the sport broadly, but a very well-known figure locally/regionally and had a very good reputation.) and I don’t know the contrast just struck me then as I also felt, watching my then-instructor complain to those of us from the barn who’d tagged along about no ribbon, then seeing her lose it on the horse (the usual crank-n-yank the lead rope, shout, and her husband got behind-off-to-the-side with a lunge whip trying to get the horse on the trailer while she yanked around on the lead rope), I felt embarrassed to be w/these idiots to the point that I probably would’ve denied ever seeing them in my life had someone at that moment come up and said, “do you know these people?”
EDIT: There was more to it, days when, following my recovery from the broken arm and getting back to riding regularly again, where I’d purposely go to the barn when I knew people wouldn’t be around b/c the younger riders were usually annoying (not bullies themselves, mind) and the instructor herself was always on my butt about everything to the point I couldn’t enjoy riding and she absolutely didn’t know half as much as she thought she did and there were times where I’d end up in tears from the instructor getting on me about whatever that day because she didn’t quite understand the broken arm shook my confidence probably more than I let on. She’d always bring up stuff from the past about how I hadn’t treated the horse I’d owned perfectly and blah-blah-blah and always criticizing me when she was worse than I’d ever been.
I started looking for a new barn, found a great barn, then the lesson horse I was riding (didn’t own my own at that point) retired and the instructor moved out of state and, I’ve been horseless and barnless since as I just can’t afford it at this point.
