Toxic Parents

How many of us believe ourselves to be a child of a toxic parent or two? If you’re a millennial, there is a decent chance you can identify with that proposition. Far too many millennials have experienced issues in their parental relationships, which may include feelings of toxicity.

“My dad is so toxic.”

“My mother is so toxic.”

An entire subculture has developed around identifying toxicity in individuals, relationships, and institutions. No longer do we look at nasty people as simply assholes, jerks, or bitches. They are now “toxic.”

So what’s the big deal? Are millennials just being spoiled? What do these toxic parents look like, and why does it matter?

One hallmark of the toxic parent, the Houdini parent, affects children significantly in early development. Issues with neglect and abandonment can leave children with severe behavioral and psychological maladaptations. Lifelong traumas are often created in the first few years of a child’s life. Imagine, if you will, being an infant or a toddler. You have no capacity to feed yourself, get yourself water, use the bathroom, or travel. This would put you at the complete mercy of your caregivers. When a child is faced with neglect, the psychophysiology of the child responds in a life-or-death manner. As far as the child is concerned, he/she would quite literally die if left alone. Our conscious mind does not recall the feelings of anxiety, dread, and hopelessness associated with facing such dramatic circumstances in youth. Our bodies do, however. When faced with the aforementioned scenario, many children grow up to develop abandonment traumas and unhealthy attachment styles. When these individuals face loneliness or abandonment, real or perceived, in their adult lives, all those emotions that were stored in their DNA from childhood come rushing back.

Fear. Toxic parents are often very intimidating to their children, and they may prefer it that way. After all, fear precedes obedience.

Invalidation. Find something that you enjoy? Find something that you believe yourself to be good at? Not around the toxic parent, you don’t. Your feelings? They don’t make sense, and if they did, they still wouldn’t matter. Good luck developing and maintaining a healthy amount of self-worth in that environment.

Some toxic parents are envious of their children. They compete with them, sabotage them, talk behind their backs, and subtly funnel their children’s aspirations into their own. They may want you to be a failure so they can keep you under their thumb. The only success that is allowed is success that does not outshine theirs or success that can be attributed to their contributions.

Toxic parents can be masters at mixed messages and shifting expectations. Whether conscious or not in their intentions, toxic parents may leave their children walking on eggshells with these antics.

Guilt trips. What better way to control the people you love than by guilting them into doing what you want?

And that leads me to my next point. The stem of this behavior is control. Toxic parents often feel they must, at all costs, exert control over their children.

Some people identify their parents as toxic too early and some too late. Because an argument could be made about one being better off not knowing. Truth of the matter, however, is that many of them knew, and they always knew. Deep down, something never sat right with these people in regard to their parents’ ways of being.

So you’re sitting on the bed at 16, at 25, at 43, stuck under your parent’s roof, by design, and being blamed for it. Or maybe you somehow escaped and got married, and now they’ve spun a web of drama around you and your new family. Maybe you really escaped, moved out, told them straight up that you want nothing to do with them, stopped returning their calls, etc. Many of them will be back.

Whether you’re trying to escape or you’ve successfully escaped, the lifelong mixed feelings individuals will have in regard to this topic are immense. People are always going to have a part of themselves that wants to love their parents. As they watch their toxic parents age and become more caricaturized over time, those feelings can become even more complicated.

The controlling parent becomes more controlling. The guilt-tripping parent becomes more theatrical. The bitter parent becomes more bitter. The victim becomes more committed to victimhood. The child, now an adult, is often left holding two conflicting truths at the same time: “This person hurt me,” and “This person is still my parent.”

That is the part people outside of these situations do not always understand. Escaping a toxic parent does not always feel like victory. Sometimes it feels like freedom. Sometimes it feels like grief. Sometimes it feels like betrayal, even when you know you are the one who was betrayed first.

And maybe that is why this topic matters. Not because millennials are spoiled. Not because people want an excuse to complain about their childhoods. It matters because a parent is not just another person. A parent is supposed to be shelter, foundation, guidance, and love. When that person becomes fear, confusion, guilt, and control, the child does not simply grow out of it. The child grows around it.

Some people spend the rest of their lives trying to become free from a house they no longer live in.