How to Tell if You Grew Up in a Toxic Household
Most of us have a pretty solid handle on what child abuse looks like. If your parents hit you, starved you, or were sexually inappropriate toward you, it’s relatively easy to figure out that you grew up in a toxic environment. But not all toxic environments are obvious. It’s possible to grow up in a violence-free, middle-class environment, and still have experienced toxic parenting that haunts you into adulthood.
For instance:
- Your parents treated you like their therapist, and burdened you with adult problems. Children are not emotionally equipped to handle situations like a parent’s suspected infidelity, family financial problems or a parent’s own experience of abuse; they haven’t developed the emotional tools to cope with these situations, and they aren’t in a position to do much more than panic. In healthy families, parents shield their children from information that they aren’t ready to handle, and they find ways to deal with their own emotional problems that don’t involve burdening their children. If one or more parent turned you into their emotional sounding board from a young age, giving you details about their sex life, emotional life, financial situation, addiction, or any other information that you weren’t prepared to handle, that was inappropriate and probably toxic.
- You were forced to lie to cover up problems at home. Your parents expressly forbid you from talking about family problems with outsiders, or coached you on what you should say. An incarcerated family member was “travelling”, an addicted parent “just works too much”, a mentally ill parent is “totally fine”. Everything was about appearances, and any distress you might have been experiencing about your home life was pushed aside in the interest of presenting as a happy, stable family. This robs children of the opportunity to get help, or even learn how to express their pain. Even as an adult, you are probably secretive for no reason, and feel panicked at the thought of someone finding out your life isn’t perfect.
- You were given zero privacy. Children need privacy, and that need for privacy increases every year as they get older. Toxic parents do not respect this. These parents enter without knocking, demand access to all devices, read diaries, rifle through possessions when you’re not home, and scrutinize all monetary spending. They go far above and beyond reasonable monitoring for safety reasons - they question and force you to justify everything you do. They demand to know what you meant when you texted your friend the other day, they want to know why you wasted $5 on junk food last week, they insist that you should have no problem keeping your door open at all times if you have nothing to hide. This behaviour often continues into your adult life - they demand unrestricted access to your apartment after you move out, and will accuse you of having something to hide if you refuse.
- All gifts and favours came with strings attached. Your parents would often offer you some gift or favour - often something that you didn’t even want - and insisted that you accept it. And once you’d accepted it, they would hold it over your head forever. Your dad offers you his old car that you have nowhere to park, and is in need of costly repairs. If you try to refuse, he sulks, calls you ungrateful, and insists that you never let him do anything nice for you. But for months or years after you do take the car, anytime you displease him or refuse one of his ridiculous demands, he hits you with “I was kind enough to give you a car, and this is the thanks I get??”. Your parents do not view gifts as kind gestures or ways to show their live - they view them as tools to keep you trapped and indebted to them.
- Everything was about them. If you get sick, it’s inconvenient for them, because now they have to rearrange their schedule to take you to the doctor, and it’s stressful for them to have a sick child. If you get bullied at school, it’s embarrassing for them to have to deal with the situation. If you get into your dream college, it’s stressful for them to have to think about paying for it, even if you’re paying for it yourself. Every event in your life is framed around your parent and the impact that it will have on their life - your emotions are never considered or given centre stage. You are frequently in a position of having to comfort your parents, even when the thing they are upset about is actually happening to you. You are constantly made to feel selfish for wanting your own life to actually be about you.
- You were called childish and immature, but actively prevented from growing up. Your parents implied that there was something wrong with you because you were single, but expressly forbid you from dating, even in your late teens and early 20s. They constantly threatened to kick you out for not following their rules, but did everything they could to prevent you from actually moving out. They called you lazy, but did not allow you to get a part-time job. They wanted you to be “mommy and daddy’s little kid” forever, even if it meant actively sabotaging you or forbidding you from reaching important milestones. They want you at home with them, but they will constantly complain about the “burden” of providing for you, and remind you that everything in the house is theirs. It’s an elaborate mind-game to keep you dependent and obedient, and it’s unbelievably toxic.
- They made decisions for you, and blamed you when those decisions ended poorly. They forced you to go to a local community college instead of going away to university, and now they ridicule you for having a “crappy” education. They forbid you from dating into your early 20s, and now they demand to know why you aren’t getting engaged at age 25 like all their friends’ kids. They chose your career path, extracurriculars and sports for you, and they demand to know why you aren’t excelling at those things. You are never allowed to make your own decisions, but you are held 100% responsible for the outcome of decisions that are made for you - your parents refuse to acknowledge any role that they might have played, and may insist that you had complete free will to make your own decisions, even when you didn’t.
- Your parents only cared about how your success makes them look, and anything less than perfection was an embarrassment. Your parents don’t care if you find your job, marriage or achievements personally fulfilling. They care only about taking credit for your success, looking better than their friends, family and neighbors, and benefiting financially from your status in life. You are never warmly or genuinely congratulated for doing well - perfection is expected, and you are punished for delivering anything less. Even if your parents publicly boast about your accomplishments, in private, they compare you to other people your age who they view as more successful, and demand to know why you can’t be more like them. They might demand that you support them financially, and imply that you owe them for all the money they spent raising you.
- They constantly prodded at your insecurities, and made fun of you if you got upset or tried to improve yourself. Toxic parents will latch on to one or more areas that their child is insecure about - usually their appearance or weight, but sometimes their intelligence, talent, or athleticism - and constantly poke fun at them, often in public. If the child gets upset, they are told that they “have no sense of humour”, and they are blamed for getting upset, rather than the parent taking blame for saying something shitty. You are expected to laugh along when your failures are used as family entertainment - when your parent points to you and says “look at this chubby one, going back for seconds” or “the great artist of the family, couldn’t even get into art school”, you are treated like the unreasonable one for being emotionally crushed. If you try to improve on whatever area they are criticizing - by losing weight, improving your grades, etc - they treat you like you’re overreacting, and actively try to stop you. They need you to stay insecure so they always have a sore spot to poke at.
- Your parents insisted that you trust them with your secrets, and then violated your trust. If you refused to tell your parents the details of what was going on your life, they would get upset, accusing you of hiding something or acting wounded that you didn’t trust them. If you were upset, they might even present themselves as a concerned parent and safe space, encouraging you to open up. Once you had, though, your parents would air your dirty laundry to the entire world, no matter how much you begged them not to. The details of your humiliating breakup would be shared among the entire family, your embarrassing medical issues would be openly discussed in front of others at the dinner table, and your secrets would be casually told to your friends whenever they came over. But no matter how often this happened, you weren’t allowed to stop trusting your parents - they would whip out their anger or feigned hurt, and start the process all over again.
- You were told that normal, healthy parenting was “soft” or “abnormal”, and that your parents’ toxic habits would make you stronger. Even if you noticed that your friends seemed to be treated better than you, your parents constantly drilled it into your head that their harsh parenting methods were somehow beneficial to you, and that you should be grateful for them. Your parents sneered at the idea of encouragement or unconditional love and pointed out your friends’ flaws, or insisted that those parenting methods wouldn’t work on you. If you come from an immigrant family, they might have insisted that toxic parenting was part of your culture, and that healthy parenting was an “American” thing. You might even have found yourself defending your parents when your friends expressed concern over the way they treat you.
Toxic families are different, and even one or two of these traits is enough to have a profound emotional impact on you that carries long into adulthood. Your parents aren’t automatically “good” parents just because they fed you and refrained from beating you - if you grew up in a toxic household, you have the right to be upset about that, even if other children had it “worse”. Acknowledging that your upbringing was not healthy or normal is usually the first step in breaking away from a toxic family, and deciding to get help for any long-term effects you may be experiencing.
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