Abusive parents constantly undermining your accomplishments until you no longer believe in yourself is such a specific and insane experience. Youâre going thru life and youâre doing what youâre supposed to do, you work hard, you try to do your best and get acknowledged for at least something, and itâs already hard because your confidence is awful and you donât feel yourself able of much, but then you do something for what everyone else is celebrated for! You win an award, or you finish school, or you win a contest, or you gain a title, or you learn to drive a car, you get thru a difficult course, you start creating something people like and admire, you get a job, you manage to get something done despite huge obstacles and low resources, you get thru exams even tho youâre all sick and stressed, you actually manage to do all the things your parents were telling you from the day one you wouldnât be able to do, and then what happens?
Nothing. Your parents skim across it as if it was nothing. They refuse to pay attention to it at all, and act like it didnât even happen. Or even worse, they immediately create a diversion, some family drama or start celebrating some dumb accomplishment of their own to make it all about them, and completely bury anything youâve done. If you dare remind them that they acted like you could never do it, they act like you still didnât do it, you just got lucky, it must have not been hard at all if even âyouâ have managed to get it done. You see your friends, other people you know, being congratulated, being thrown parties, given presents, patted on the back, being told theyâll go far and accomplish much, them getting it done is a Big Deal! But why not you? How come when you do it, it suddenly doesnât count? How come when someone else finishes school or a difficult course theyâre being regarded as smart and capable, but youâre still proclaimed dumb and incapable of anything? What it is about you that makes even your accomplishment invisible, unworthy of attention of praise, unable to reclaim you from the supposed dumbness and incapability youâre always accused of? What are you supposed to do then, to no longer be stupid and inadequate? And you chase bigger things, bigger accomplishments, maybe if youâre the best, the best of everyone, theyâll be forced to acknowledge you, they wont be able to pretend anymore that youâre nothing. But no matter what you do, itâs just snorted upon, and youâre brutally reminded how youâre nothing, how you wouldnât even be able to live if your parents didnât feed you. As if everyone else wasnât fed by their parents.Â
This pushes you either into insane perfectionism and feeling like nothing you do is ever good enough, or into helplessness, no longer wanting to even try anything because itâs painful, and scary to do so much and still not move from one spot. You end up believing what they tell you, that itâs impossible to redeem yourself, that nothing you could do could make you not dumb, not incapable, not unworthy of praise.Â
Itâs infuriating because the reason parents do this is nowhere near âtrying to help you be betterâ or âbecause they know you the best and can tell you the truth about youâ, most often itâs precisely to put you in the state of helplesness so you would stay dependent on them! They want you in the state of belief that thereâs nothing you can do right, and that youâre only alive because of them, and cannot survive on your own, because then they can control you and blackmail you with your life on line! And thereâs two more reasons and theyâre disgusting, the first is jealousy, abusive parents are actively jealous if their child manages to succeed where they couldnât! They will readily bury and humiliate a child just to feel better about their own capabilities, to convince themselves that theyâre still better, superior, that their accomplishments count more than childrenâs ever will, they do it to reassure themselves that the child is dumb compared to them, when the reality is everything but.Â
And the last reason is, to push the child so far into achievement it destroys the child, but then they can take credit. They can brag to everyone how their childâs incredible results are of parentâs making! They get to act like theyâre amazing parents and thatâs why their child is achieving high results! If they can, they will even make money and gain fame from a talented child, and if they canât, then the talent is worthless and should be repressed and insulted for not bringing anything to them.
Your parents lied. Even they know your accomplishments arenât nothing. If they were nothing, they would never be a threat to them. They would never have to talk them down. They would never try to take credit. They would never spend time convincing you that youâre dumb or inadequate. They would never have to convince you that you cannot live independently. They would never feel the need to out-shine you or to make it all about themselves. Their actions show they knew. They consciously tried to keep you down, not because you were down, but because you were going up. And they didnât like that.
Even as I write this, I know it wont make it better, not until you get proper acknowledgment, credit, congratulations and praise from people you believe in, you wont be able to believe in yourself. We are social creatures who need social feedback to believe in ourselves. We should get it. And those who deny it to us do not want us good things.
