If You Grew Up With A Toxic Parent, You Probably Still Believe These 5 Really Sad Things About Yourself
Harry Cooke | Canva If you were raised by a toxic parent, deep down, you probably know you’re not fine. You say you are, but you’re not. Maybe you can’t even put your finger on why. You may even hold false, sad beliefs about yourself. Hopefully, looking at these beliefs can help you understand yourself better, so you can work through them to replace those false beliefs and recover fully.
Not every mother or father follows useful parenting advice, and toxic parents can end up affecting you negatively later in life. You may not even take the time to examine it; it's just how you were raised. You may not even recognize the impact of all that happened while your brain was developing: What was going on in your house before you even had language? Who was there? Were they happy with you? Were they annoyed by your presence?
As a kid, you were busy experiencing life by exploring everything you could touch and trying to make your caregivers interested and happy. You smiled, laughed, and made encouraging noises, trying to attract them. That didn’t work, so you cried.
And when you cried, how did your parents respond? Lovingly? Happily? Warmly? Or did they make you feel like you were a nuisance and wasting their precious time? Research has shown that all of that makes a big difference in how you feel about yourself now.
If you’ve already recognized that you were raised by toxic parents, you can breathe a sigh of relief. Unrecognized, it can ruin relationships, keep you feeling inadequate, and undermine your success as an adult.
If you grew up with a toxic parent, you probably still believe these 5 really sad things about yourself:
1. You don’t believe anyone can really love you
Even when people say they love you and cross rings of fire for you, you're still suspicious. Researchers have explored that this suspicion often stems from a toxic parent who left you feeling unlovable and never good enough. Sure, you may have a tough exterior that makes other people think you walk on water, but inside, you know no one will ever really love you. Not feeling lovable keeps you from ever having the emotional intimacy you so want.
2. You believe everyone's hiding something
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You want to trust people, but there's always a nagging question in the back of your mind: "Am I making a mistake? Am I wrong?" Even though they seem to be telling you the truth, and their behavior seems to follow, you question it. You will also enter into a relationship and want to trust with all your heart. And you do, until the first moment there's a glimmer of a question:
- "Where are they?"
- "Did they lie to me?"
- "Have they always lied to me?"
- "Am I a fool?"
- "I always knew they couldn’t really be trusted."
These questions run through your head, right? You don’t want to be wrong. You want to be wise, so you’re always wary. Being raised by toxic parents you couldn't trust inevitably makes it harder to trust someone as an adult.
3. You believe letting your guard down is dangerous
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When we talk about feeling safe, we're talking about real intimacy, the kind that makes you feel close, relaxed, cherished, known, appreciated, loved, and accepted. It goes along with your inability and unwillingness to trust another person fully.
People raised with toxic parents often practice vigilant wariness and learn early on that they have to be vigilant, maybe even hyper-vigilant, because their world was unpredictable. Would you get a smiling parent who thought you walked on water or a harsh parent who thinks you’re a nuisance? It depended on the hour, so you became very good at people-pleasing.
Psychologist Daniel S. Lobel, Ph.D., advised, "Kids raised by toxic parents generally approach others feeling they need to please them to be safe or accepted. When others are not pleased, they become fearful that they will be punished or abandoned. They need to know that others are pleased by them, and they have a need to be recognized or celebrated when they give to others."
Over the years, you turned yourself into both a pretzel and a doormat. In fact, you may still be doing that in your current relationships. When you have a difficult parent, you are trained to do that to survive. Intimacy requires the ability to trust, which is hard for kids raised by toxic parents.
4. You believe your worth depends on other people's approval
A difficult parent competes with you. So, they will withhold approval from you. Yes, they sometimes give it. But they manage to take it away immediately: "You did a great job with that. I wish you could do that with everything, but that’s hoping for too much."
Withholding approval is a toxic tactic, and a study showed that withholding approval and love can change the way children process emotions and socially bond. A toxic parent believes that if they approve of you, you’d have an edge. It would somehow make you an equal. No toxic parent wants that.
My mother used to say she couldn’t say anything good about me, or I would get a swelled head. What a perfect toxic parent remark; she justified her unwillingness to approve of me.
5. You believe you don't really matter
Often, the other parent is silent or agrees to keep the peace. Double whammy! That makes it difficult for you to ever believe a compliment or to believe a wonderful, healthy, loving, approving person, free of toxic games, could love you. Just as the subjects in research studies, so many of my clients have confessed that they looked for toxic, nasty relationships because they believe it's what they deserve. It's not true.
A toxic parent made you believe that. It’s not your fault, and it’s not true. Learn how to replace these underlying beliefs because they are sabotaging you and your relationships. Be free to live an authentic, empowered life now.
Rhoberta Shaler, Ph.D., is a relationship consultant and educator and the author of sixteen books. She specializes in helping the partners, exes, and adult children of chronically difficult people.
