Kids Raised By Mentally & Emotionally Dysregulated Parents Usually Carry 7 Habits Into Adulthood
Mehmet Turgut Kirkgoz | Pexels Some dysregulated parents overreact to situations and rely too much on parentified kids for support. Others are nonemotional, appearing cold and dismissive.
They were never a healthy example of emotional intelligence for their kids, and modeled all the worst kinds of emotional regulation skills. Unfortunately, kids raised by mentally and emotionally dysregulated parents usually also carry these habits into adulthood.
Habits kids raised by mentally and emotionally dysregulated parents carry into adulthood
1. They dismiss their own needs
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When you have to walk on eggshells at home to avoid provoking angry parents, you grow into a sense of chronic anxiety. These kids lived their entire childhood in fight-or-flight mode, trying to keep the peace at home to avoid setting their parents off.
They people-please and dismiss their own feelings in favor of protecting their parents. Now, as adults, they don't know how to express emotions or set boundaries. In lieu of practicing as kids, they were running from their concerns and feelings.
2. They're constantly reading energy
Hypervigilant adults often grew up with parents who made their household chaotic. They never knew how their parents were feeling or how they were going to react. So, they had to learn how to read nonverbal cues and social energy as a survival mechanism.
In adulthood, that nervous system coping doesn't dissolve just because there's space between them and their parents. In fact, it often just transfers to new relationships and social situations, manifesting as over-apologizing and constantly absorbing other people's emotions.
Not only is this exhausting and incredibly taxing on someone's emotional well-being, but it also makes them more anxious over time.
3. They seek out similarly neglectful partners
Our childhood experiences and parental relationships directly influence our romantic relationships later in life. Not only do childhood traumas influence how our attachment style develops, but the self-doubt that kids with dysregulated parents develop also changes the kind of partner they commit to.
In a misguided kind of way, these adult kids may seek out partners that are just as unpredictable and chaotic as their own parents, because it feels familiar. They know how to behave in these environments and relationships, and that feels more secure than trying to stay in a healthy relationship they feel uncertain in.
4. They hide how they're really feeling
When you grow up being punished or criticized for showing emotion, it's easy to enter adulthood believing that your feelings are inherently bad. Not only does this make communication and vulnerability seemingly impossible, but it urges you to run from complicated emotions.
Adult children with unpredictable parents were forced to deal with their emotions on their own. And that usually led to all kinds of suppression and avoidance.
They're more anxious and depressed today because they've been suppressing emotions since childhood, letting them bubble up in chaotic ways. They're always living in some kind of fear, as they've sabotaged trust with themselves in favor of dismissive emotional coping practices.
5. They rely on unhealthy coping mechanisms
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Kids tend to learn emotional regulation skills from their parents, but if they grow up in a household with guardians who don't know how to deal with their own feelings, they're missing out completely. In fact, they may even absorb unhealthy coping mechanisms to process their emotions, watching how their parents create chaos with their own.
Instead of feeling secure in themselves and knowing how to speak about their feelings, they develop avoidance and a reliance on unhealthy vices.
6. They get angry quickly
Children who grow up in emotionally volatile, unpredictable environments often end up struggling with emotional intelligence and regulation down the road. They get angry quickly.
When they're forced to confront vulnerability or express complicated emotions, it feels like a personal attack. When they feel uncomfortable, they defensive, usually at the expense of the healthy conflict-resolution skills that would otherwise protect their well-being and mental health.
7. They push away connection
Some adult children with emotionally immature, dysregulated parents become anxiously attached to their loved ones and partners to cope with neglect they experienced at an early age.
When someone shows them care and consideration, they grow clingy. They're trying to cope with their own fear of abandonment and rejection from an unpredictable childhood.
But some adult children grow more avoidant. They need to feel a sense of control they didn't have as kids, even if that manifests as hyper-independence or dodging commitment in any form.
They struggle to trust, and it's not surprising, considering the people they were supposed to be able to rely on became a center of chaos in their formidable years.
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a senior editorial strategist with a bachelor's degree in social relations & policy and gender studies who focuses on psychology, relationships, self-help, and human interest stories.
