Growing up, I always imagined that your parents are the ones who will be there for you no matter what. You could fight with them, or make some choices that they don't necessarily agree with, but in the grand scheme of things they will still love you and support you no matter what. Sayings such as "blood is thicker than water" and the phrase "unconditional love" once meant something to me, but now as my 20th birthday approaches rapidly, I can confirm that I will never feel the same way again towards my parents now that I am old enough to see their actions for what they are: toxic. In this article we discuss: how toxic parents affect you
Parents
The debate of whether the choices you make as an adult are directly linked to the kind of environment you grew up in is one of the most profound in our lives as humans. To me, this is no debate. Whether you like it or not, your parents choices will dictate the earliest years of your life, and researchers suggest that these first years of your life will lay the foundations for the type of decisions you make, as well as the kind of person you become.
Often toxic parents are the ones who grew up in strict or emotionally unavailable families, where their parents either didn't give two shits about them or tried to control every aspect of their lives. They may have made bad choices all the way through their adulthood, and likely you were made by mistake.
If you're wondering if your parents are toxic, here is a long list of things they may have done to you growing up:
Self-centred: they put themselves and their emotional needs first
Overly critical: they kick you while you're down and are judgemental
Projecting: they take out their emotions on you
Strict & controlling: they try to control the way you look, feel or who you hang around with
Lack responsibility: they expect you to take care of yourself and never take responsibility of their actions
Oversharing: they seek advice from you about their personal life
Toxic parents are usually a result of their own toxic parents or life experiences. The question however is, does this justify their actions against their own children?
My Experience
I grew up in a "blended family", with parents who divorced after 3 or 4 years of marriage and essentially hated each other. Shortly after, my Dad met a woman (my step-mum) who completely controlled his life. He allowed her to change his entire personality and values as I grew older. On the other hand my Mum joined a controlling religious cult which I was forced to adhere to for the following years of my life until I ran away at 16. It's safe to say I didn't have a stable family environment as I came to terms with how the world works.
Although my parents have never got along since divorcing, it's only retrospectively as a young adult that I can now see how similar they are. Their relationship was a whirlwind romance that happened when my Dad travelled to Africa for work and met my Mum. Both of them already had their own sons from previous relationships, so when my Mum also got pregnant with me, they decided that it would be a good idea to get married and live together back in England. After a couple of years of being together in a relationship of arguing and disagreeing, I assume that they realised that they were very different people with different values and this essentially is what drove their divorce. What I truly believe is that my Mum didn't know what she wanted, and essentially she broke my Dad's heart and left him back at square one, taking me and my half-brother along the ride with her as she figured out who she was.
Once joining a cult, my Mum was no longer the woman that I once respected and loved. She used to be a care-free spirit, who wore what she wanted, said what she wanted and did what she wanted. However, she had a deep and unsettling sadness within her and this caused her to constantly seek male validation and a reason to live. Religion changed her and I watched the woman that I admired gradually morph into someone that I hated. She became unrecognisable to me, and soon I felt suffocated by her and her twisted religious values. Through a mixture of gaslighting and manipulation tactics (that she learned through studying the bible with this cult) she tried to control every aspect of my life. I wasn't allowed to leave the house, even to go for a short walk alone, up until I was 15/16.
She forbid that my brother and I see friends from school, and the only friends that we were allowed to see were from the cult itself. Even so, she still controlled who I could and couldn't be friends with based on how they acted and how strong their faith in her religion was. Small decisions such as the music I listened to, what I watched on TV, the books I read or what I wore were controlled by her. Anything I did I had to hide from her, but through snooping through my belongings she mostly would find things such as hidden books or clothes and take them away, never for me to see again. By the time I was 12, I was already severely depressed and anxious, to the point of thoughts of suicide and self-harm. Any rational parent may have seen this as a reflection of their own actions, as well as the controlling religion that she had subjected me to throughout my developing stages. However my struggle with mental health had the opposite effect and gaslighting through use of the bible and the cult's indoctrinating literature only became a more prominent aspect of my childhood.
Meanwhile while all of this was going on at my main home with my Mum (I usually went to my dad's house with both of my half-brothers every other weekend), I wouldn't say that spending time at my Dad's was much easier. Him and his girlfriend were very critical, and often judgemental of the choices we made, even at a young age. The cult created a huge rift in our relationship as I got older, but instead of trying to talk openly about everything that was going on in my life, he would rather brush past the subject and focus on his life instead. Any comments that he would make about the religion would be confrontational & argumentative - not insightful or helpful for me.
The thing is with my Dad is that he is extremely co-dependent, and I believe that his main source of happiness comes from being loved and wanted by someone. I would say in his life that he used to want to build a family, but after two failed marriages and two kids from them, he lost faith in the whole idea. His girlfriend's family is very different, but coming from a failed marriage herself they both shared some very bitter views towards marriage and refused to ever officiate their relationship.
You can tell that all he wants is to belong somewhere, so when she gave him access to her more stable reality, he wanted to cling on for dear life. He had made such a mess of his own life at that point that any source of stability and comfort was welcomed with open arms. I don't want to get into his relationship with his girlfriend too much here, but let's just say that she has always worn the trousers, without fail. He would essentially do anything to make her happy, often putting their relationship above his children. I secretly disliked her growing up, as she is controlling of my Dad's decisions and progressively edged us out of their lives. She taught my naïve Dad that he should put her and their relationship first, not the children of his previous marriages.
As well as this, my brothers and I were constantly used as pawns in an endless game of divorce. My Dad and his girlfriend despised both of his ex-wives (and our Mothers), and they made this very clear to us as we grew up. It was always a he-said, she-said game that we never wanted to take part in. These complex relationship politics often came down on us, the children, who felt obligated to stick up for our Mothers who they would try to make us turn against with spiteful words and manipulations.
My "religious beliefs" at the time were also a strong point of conflict, as this also impacted my parents divorce and had left my Dad bitter towards the whole thing. Although he opposed our belief's, he never once actively tried to intercept them or help me see the world in a different way to the one that my Mum and her religion had brainwashed into my young mind.
You would think that my symptoms of depression and anxiety would have been noticed by him at least. A lot of the time I would isolate myself in my room when at his house, but even the time that I did spend with him I could never open up about my struggle with depression because he embodies a "just get on with it" mindset that his own parents taught him to have.
However after I ran away from my Mums I went to live with him and his girlfriend for a few months, and I opened up about my struggle with mental health. This led to him encouraging me to stop taking my anti-depressants as he didn't "agree" with it.
Looking back on this, I'm not sure which one of them is worse. The parent who let her religion ruin my childhood, or the one who saw everything but stood back and did nothing about it?
3 years ago, I cut off my relationship with my Mum completely. A few months ago, I cut off my Dad and his girlfriend also. I have not heard from either of them since.
How they have affected me
To this day, both of my parent's will probably feel as though they are not in the wrong and have no part to play in the damage they have caused to my life. The last time that I spoke to my Dad he told me that I was "my own worst enemy." A few other times him and his girlfriend compared me to my Mother (which was always an insult) and said that the abuse I endured growing up was all my own fault, and my own choices had led me there. To me, both of them are almost relieved that I no longer seek their support or approval in my life, because now they can truly focus on what matters most to them: themselves.
What I can say about both of them, is that they don't see the bigger picture of life. Both of them have made some extremely poor and selfish decisions which have effectively corroded my life, and left me with damage that I don't think will ever repair. I think that the core to the toxicity of my parents relationship with me lies within the fact that I am a product of a relationship that they want to pretend never happened; a genuine mistake. This fact has been shown to me throughout my years living away from them.
It has taken me a long time to come to terms with the fact that my parents don't want me. When people joke about how their parents didn't plan to have them and they were a mistake, I often can't help but feel bitter. My birth was a genuine mistake. I often think how if I wasn't conceived, they may have not gotten married in the first place. Being the product of a marriage that should have never happened has genuinely been at the core of the unhealthy relationships I have with both of my parents.
Their constant disregard towards how their actions have affected my life has probably been the worst thing out of everything. Knowing that they will never take responsibility for the wrongs they have done is something that I am still learning to live with.
Their choices ultimately have created a deeply insecure and unhappy person. As someone who has always been an over-achiever, I feel as though I have missed out on countless opportunities in life due to being ridden with anxiety and thoughts of self-doubt. Not being loved by your parents, or being the burden of their existence creates a hole inside of you that probably won't ever be filled until you have a family of your own.
Even still, everything that has happened in my early years as a child has caused trauma in ways that I could never fully express - especially in the way that I communicate my emotions and build relationships with other people. Truly, I don't trust anyone anymore and this has caused issues in my friendships and romantic relationships.
Although I have vowed to never be like my parents because of the inhospitable environment that they created for me growing up, I still find myself embodying some of their toxic traits, and I hate myself for it. Coming from a household steeped in drama and problems really fucked up my head and you find yourself doing and saying things that you don't even agree with. This is because this is what you observed in your younger years.
Their choices in life have directly affected my life, even more so than it has probably affected theirs.
Break the cycle
I'm not one of those people who will sit here and allow the wrongs that have happened to me to impact my future. I am a fighter, and no matter what comes my way, I will overcome it. But despite all of the hardships and the battles I have faced when dealing with the people who gave birth to me, I am mature enough to understand where and how my parents went wrong.
I think my main take-away from dealing with toxic parents, is that you must learn from what they did wrong. If you don't learn from them, then the cycle will never end and your struggle was all for nothing. Their own undealt with issues bled through the way that they brought me up. This is why I think that it is so important that before having children, you need stability.
Getting pregnant and hoping the best is not an option for me. Instability can come from an abundance of things, from your own mental health & traumas, to the fact that you are unsure about your relationship. These issues that you have will not just disappear when you become a parent. If anything these issues will become more prominent once you have a child, and you will make your undealt with issues theirs. This is a pattern that we can see not just in my parents - but all of the toxic parents out there.
The bottom line is: don't have kids unless you have control of your own life and emotions first. The only way to protect your kids from toxicity is to create a stable and loving environment for them - not one that brushes off their needs. So when you make big decisions such as who you will have a child with, or when you will have your child, be careful and decisive.
It may not feel like it, but your decisions will impact their future in every way.
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