What to Do When You Have Toxic Parents
Domestic violence is perpetuated by children born of toxic parents. It’s important to break the cycle so that you don’t pass on the damage done to you by your parents, to your own children. Here’s What to Do When You Have Toxic Parents:
A Parent’s Most Appropriate Role
Most people can survive the poisonous attitude of people whom they happen to get involved with in their daily lives. There’s an easy solution to that – you just cut that man or woman out of your life and walk away. But when the criticism and degradation comes from one or both parents, that’s a whole other thing. A normal, emotionally healthy parent would seek to love you, comfort you, encourage you to do your best in a world that’s full of hatred, and then tell you that he or she is proud of you whilst not expecting you to parent them.
It’s his or her (or their) job to teach you how to be a loving and kind young adult, all the while doing it warmly and wisely. Usually, this is done by example and by the Grace of God, there are some awesome parents out there. By having children, parents are obliged to provide them with the love, warmth and nurturing that they deserve. It is their obligation to provide approval, kindness, security and support. However, toxic parents are incapable of doing this, plus they resent having to do it. They see their child as someone who should provide whatever is missing in their own lives. How very wrong that twisted idea is!!
Lack of Support
When all that you experience in your relationship with a toxic parent (or parents) is criticism, condemnation and an expectation that you’re supposed to fulfill some vague, unmet need in them, where does that leave you? It leaves you feeling very isolated and unsupported. Then if you’re not the kind of guy or girl who has the will to overcome that, it can break you. It has broken many. The kind of damage that a toxic parent can do to you breaks you apart from inside out.
The children of parents who act in this manner grow up not knowing who they really are. They have no safe place to go. Home is not safe, and because of that they go out into the world wearing an invisible sign on their foreheads that says “I’m vulnerable”. It leads to abuse outside of the home, because these bruised and damaged young men and women become prey for the predators who seek to feed off the pain of others. Children of toxic parents become ghoul food for Narcissists (See my article here).
Where A Teen Will Go
There is not enough acknowledgement given to the damage that a toxic parent does to a child. Toxic parents get away with it because what can a young child do? They can’t really protest too much because it’s a life threatening situation. The child fears that if they tell, they’re going to be ousted from the home and then have nowhere to go. So as a solution many young girls who’ve grown up in such an environment will turn to prostitution. Ultimately it’s not the best choice, but they see it as their only choice. It’s a way for them to leave home and support themselves when they are very young. They just want to get out of the unloving environment, and sex work provides a way of doing that.
When a young teen does leave home after growing up in that kind of environment, he or she is damaged goods. Some are severely damaged. He or she goes out into the world and experiences more of the same, and unless someone very kind and protective enters their life, they often end up in a hole six foot under.
Abuse and Disrespect
Sadly, within the mind of the young girl or guy, a voice that mimics their own parents takes over, repeating the same insults and criticism that they’ve had to listen to for the last 16 – 20 years of their life. A voice kicks in, criticising, judging, and abusing them. It fills the young man or woman with a huge amount of self-loathing.
Like Joan Crawford in Mommy Dearest, these types of parents are like Jekyll and Hydes. There’s one face that they show to the world, and another that they save for behind closed doors or on the telephone. To people outside of the home, they can do no wrong – butter wouldn’t melt in their mouth. But behind closed doors they’re violent and abusive, and they rip apart the child’s sense of self.
Nothing is Ever Good Enough
When you’re still living at home as a young teen, let’s say you’re getting A’s on your report. Well that won’t be good enough – you should have got an A+. If you make it to the area team for softball, you should have made it to the state. If you go to kick the ball in a soccer game and miss, well you’re just a total fucking idiot, aren’t you? Oh, and if your mother tries to be supportive, your father will say to her, “Why on earth are you doing that? They’ll just leave when they’re old enough and forget you after they’re gone!” Yep, with parenting like that, it’s probably best that you do.
When you leave home and go out into the world, if you do manage to overcome and heal the damage done to you by them, if you tell your parent or parents about your achievements, even those won’t be good enough when parents are toxic.
Your Achievements Mean Nothing to Them
Let’s say you went out and made yourself a fortune, and you haven’t spoken to your father for years. When you do finally speak to him because he’s dying of cancer, he tells you that he doesn’t believe that you’ve achieved what you have. This is an example of someone who is toxic beyond belief. Don’t let his lack of support get you down. Know that you did well despite the lack of love that he’s given you, and pat yourself on the back for having done so well without him. It’s so much more of an achievement because you never had any support. Recognise how well you’ve done.
Spitting Hatred
Any verbal interaction that contaminates or poisons how a young girl or boy sees themselves is toxic. Any attempt to do the same by a parent when that young child grows into an adult is also toxic. Parents who continue to treat their kids as if they hate and despise them are so damaged that they will die of cancer one day if they don’t address their issues. Mother Nature has a very precise way of dealing with people like this, and cancer is one of her better ways of culling the herd.
Your Only Mistake Was to Believe Them
If you’re reading this and you experience a parent just like this, know that you’re NOT useless. You’re a valuable man or woman, and you have every right to be here. All that has occurred is that you believed what you were constantly told, but what you were told was all lies. Toxic parents lie, manipulate, ignore, judge, abuse, shame, humiliate and criticise. Nothing is ever good enough.
It is possible to heal from by toxic parenting. It begins with the decision that you’re going to break the cycle of toxicity that has been handed down to you from your parents, who probably ended up that way due to their own parents. But just because you decide to heal yourself does not mean that you should place yourself in the company of someone who is continuing to mistreat you. It’s quite okay to walk away so don’t feel obliged to stay. See my article about Narcissists here.
How to Heal from the Damage that You Inherited
Here are some ways to move forward.
Let Go
It might break your heart to let go of your parent or parents, but if you don’t it might break your life, so this is a very important process to go through. It’s natural to want to have a relationship with your parents, even when they don’t deserve to have one with you. When there is disease in the body, the only way to stop the disease from spreading is to amputate, and the same is true for relationships.
If someone is so damaged and broken that they simply cannot be kind to you, you must protect yourself from being harmed by them. You are not responsible to fix them, no matter what they say to the contrary. It is up to them to fix themselves. As a spirit/soul, he, she or they chose their own parents, and so their karma was to go through what they went through with them. If they resent what happened to them, that’s not your responsibility. You are not obliged to fill whatever void might be in them. Your only obligation in this world is to love your neighbour and do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That’s it.
Don’t keep rocking up to get abused, belittled, shamed or humiliated. Protect yourself so that you can grow beyond your parent or parents. That’s how we make the world a better place.
Leave When You’re Ready
If you can’t tear yourself away just yet, that’s okay. A toxic parent will often guilt you into not leaving, so make a decision that eventually you are going to leave, and then gradually extract yourself slowly. Loyalty is a wonderful trait to have, however, loyalty to abusers is not expected of anyone. You are not doing anything wrong to walk away from an abuser. Forgive yourself, and let go.
Face the Reality
If you can’t leave and you have to stay for now, you can always set boundaries with your toxic parent. But you’ll have to face the reality that he or she (or they) will never be able to love you in the way that you deserve to be loved. They are completely incapable of it. They are damaged goods who got that way due to the experiences of their own childhood, as well as because of the spiritual attachments that are with them now. Seek the love that you need from within yourself. Go within to find God. Jesus said that the Kingdom of Heaven is within, and that’s where you’ll find the source of Light that you need to heal yourself from their abuse.
Don’t be Attracted to Other Abusers
Become very aware of your choices in friendship and love. There is a part of you that wants to resolve the lack of love you felt from your parent or parents. You’ll be searching to complete that in people who remind you of them. Step outside of yourself and realise that you will never get a resolution if you go looking for it in someone who is just like them. You’ll only experience more abuse.
Learn to watch yourself. Become aware of how you react and who you’re drawn to. Become the Observer in your own life. Then when you see yourself getting tangled up in a situation that reminds you of your parents, withdraw from it immediately. Gradually you’ll learn not to make the same mistakes over and over, and eventually you’ll choose healthy partners and friends instead of damaged ones.
You Have a Right to be Respected
Treating yourself with healthy respect means setting boundaries and conditions as to how you expect to be treated by those whom you allow to get close to you. Others will do the same – that’s pretty normal amongst healthy people. The three Graces are Tenderness, Generosity and Respect, and if you’re not getting that from others, you’ll allowed to close the door to your friendship with them.
Don’t Impose Any Bad Habits of Your Own on Others
Because you grew up with bad examples of what it means to be a good human, you’re highly likely to slip up and occassionally treat other people badly. That’s okay, as long as it is not a habitual thing. Remember, don’t do to others what was done to you. Don’t cause the same pain to those in your life as what your parents caused you. Break the cycle. When you do, you’ll be a true hero. It is a very powerful thing to break the cycle of abuse that you inherited from you parents. Kudos to you when you do.
Give Yourself Permission to Make Mistakes
You were probably told that you were stupid, not good enough, not pretty enough, not strong enough, whatever. Forget all of that. You are you, and you are more than enough to be able to make a positive difference in your own life and the lives of others. Your soul is eternal, immortal, universal and infinite. You are jam packed with everything that you need to make your life a success. You’re allowed to make a few mistakes along the way. Don’t judge yourself harshly for doing so.
Work with Affirmations
Louise Hay has some very powerful Affirmations that you can use to change the negative chatter that might be going on inside your head. Use her affirmations to help you overcome the negativity that holds you back now. Stuart Wilde also has some amazing audio recordings that will force a change in your mind so that you can reprogram yourself to think well of yourself and expect a bright future ahead.
There’s also an amazing audio that will help you that’s available on our video channel. It’s called Gamma Meditation Positive Suggestions. You can find it by clicking here. Listen to it morning and night with stereo headphones on for four months straight, and after that time the negative chatter in your head will be gone. If you are disciplined, this will work. I guarrantee it.
Find the Beliefs that Your Parents Passed On
Within you will be a series of beliefs that you have taken on from one or both of your parents. These beliefs will either be helping you or hindering you. Your parents grew up without the help of the self-help tools that are so freely available on the internet and in bookstores everywhere. They mostly were the product of their own childhood environments, but you don’t have those same setbacks. You can turn around what was done to you so that you don’t repeat the same mistakes when you become a parent as what they did. You can also unlock the power that their beliefs have over you by rewording them.
Find the beliefs that you now have, that have been formed by hearing what your parents told you over and over, and change them if they are holding you back. Reword them, or eliminate them altogether.
Take a pen and paper and write down the things that you remember being told as a child. Then work out what beliefs you now have due to having been told those things. Do those beliefs serve you for the good or do they hold you back? Change or eliminate them if you need to.
You’re not indebted to your parents. You don’t owe them. You will cope just fine if they are not in your life. You’re allowed to grow larger in influence than they ever did, and you’re allowed to not feel guilty for doing so. It is not to the benefit of anyone if you stay small and don’t help make this world a better place. Let go of what doesn’t serve or honour you.
Don’t Be Fooled by Their Good Side
Even toxic parents, when it suits them (because it will further their agenda) can be kind and loving to you. However, given half a chance they will turn on you. Don’t let a tiny little bit of goodness blind you to seeing all of their dark. If they are unevenly weighed on the dark side, it is in your own best interest to let them go. Don’t allow them to guilt you into hanging around when they only want you to do so in order to feed off your Light. Walk away.
If you do decide to hang around, do so in a way where you’re in control. Take no shit from them. Set boundaries, and when they cross those boundaries, leave the conversation. It may mean leaving their house, or hanging up the phone, or telling them to leave your home. But do so in a way where you’re in control and not feeling manipulated by them.
Work on Your Health
Stress causes a great strain on the brain. When a child grows up in a toxic environment, the brain shuts down in order to protect itself. Abuse causes damage to the brain. When it does shut down, it no longer produces new neurons (neurogenesis). Lack of neurogenesis causes the brain to slow down, which produces anxiety and depression. Also memory loss, reduced immunity, loss of vitality, reduced resilience to stress, and illness.
It is totally possible to turn this damage around. Diet, exercise, and meditation will all help to rebuild the brain and heal the damage done by a toxic environment. Increasing neurogenesis will help to build resilience, cognitive function, vitality and protect against stress, anxiety and depression.
Healing from the damage that a toxic parent or parents have caused in your life will take time. But the good news is that it can be done. You will need to find a way to open your heart again, because it will have shut down after so much abuse. You will need to learn to accept being loved, accept being approved, and accept when someone gives you validation.
People sometimes break. Sometimes they can’t ever be fixed or made whole again. So this is going to mean that you might just have to let go of this hurtful relationship. That is, if you are ever going to heal yourself and start a life that’s free from their influence on you. It will be difficult, but not impossible. There’s a multitude of help out there once you make the decision to more forward. Help that will lead you to a happier and more loving life and environment. It’s your birthright to have those things. Be open to receiving it, because it’s yours. You deserve it. You always did.
~.* ♥ *.~
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