Contents
We often hear about difficult children and teenagers. But difficult parents are no less, and they are able to poison the child not only childhood, but also later life. Relationship consultant Roberta Shayler shares five common attitudes of those raised with such parents.
Let’s start with the main thing: the brain grows up to more than 20 years, and everyone with whom we communicate at this time affects the attitude towards the world. Imagine: you are still so small that you do not know how to talk. You are at home — who do you see there? Are these people happy for you? Does your presence annoy them?
As a child, you actively explored the world: you dragged objects into your mouth, touched everything that you could touch, tried to make the “giants” around you be interested in you and rejoice in you.
You smiled and laughed and made noise invitingly to get their attention, but they did not react. Then you started screaming. How did they feel about it? With love? With understanding? With warmth? Or have you been given to understand that you are causing inconvenience, annoying, taking up precious time?
How your parents treated you as a child affects how you treat yourself. It’s good if you realized this, asked for help and got rid of the consequences of living with difficult parents. But if that doesn’t happen, «childhood legacy» can ruin your relationship and prevent you from achieving success.
1. You don’t believe that you can be loved.
Even if the partner says he loves and proves it, you don’t believe it. The lack of parental love in childhood convinced you that you are not good enough and you will not succeed.
2. You don’t trust anyone.
When you enter into a relationship, you want to trust your partner. And at first it seems that it works, until one day you start asking yourself questions:
- Where is she)?
- What if he/she is cheating on me?
- What if he/she lied to me all the time?
If you don’t find the answers, you may convince yourself that you can’t trust anyone.
3. You have problems with close relationships.
We are talking about real intimacy, when you are taken care of, appreciated, loved and accepted, and the problem is connected with the inability and unwillingness to fully trust another person.
Children of difficult parents grow up wary, because adults are unpredictable: now they are smiling, and in a minute they are furious. The child learns to guess the mood and please in order to survive. It’s hard to trust anyone after that.
4. You don’t feel safe.
This is due to the lack of trust not only in close people, but also in the world as a whole. For example, you were offended at home, and you were afraid of the person who was supposed to love you. You can cope with the feeling of constant danger if you learn to love yourself and ask for help.
5. You crave unconditional approval.
Such parents sometimes approve of what we do, but quickly take back the approval: “You see, you can do it whenever you want. It would always be like that. But I was dreaming about something … ”Depreciation of approval is a trademark tactic of such parents. Mother said that she did not praise me so that I would not become conceited. Often the other parent remains silent or agrees with the partner for the sake of peace in the family. How then to believe that a healthy, adequate person can fall in love with you?
Many clients admit that they have chosen unpleasant partners because they are sure that they do not deserve others. But it’s not. You are not to blame for the fact that your parents formed such an attitude towards the world in you. It’s time to get rid of harmful attitudes and live a real, full of trust life.
“The child of a difficult parent” is not a verdict
Alexander Ivanov, family psychologist and psychotherapist
All disharmonious relationships develop from a lack of trust in the world. Children are sensitive to the nuances of the behavior of others and accurately copy their parents either in a positive or negative way — whoever is lucky. If a parent is self-confident, trusts the world, accepts another person with all the shortcomings and loves him, he passes this on to his children. And the negative also conveys.
But “the child of a difficult parent” is not a verdict, not a diagnosis, and not an excuse for an unsuccessful adult life. Such children from an early age learn to cope with stress and difficulties, they live what happens to them. Adults, who were protected from stress in childhood, easily “break” in the same situations.
Adults who went through this school in childhood are often ready for any blows of fate. Moreover, they are accustomed to such conditions. The downside is that they are constantly fighting and can spend their whole lives fighting, follow the example of their parents and become the same moms and dads for their children.
But you can change the family script. For this you need:
- to realize the true motives of one’s behavior by analyzing actions;
- decide that you will live and raise children differently than parents;
- take action: understand what healthy family relationships are (read, observe happy families), determine what is wrong in your behavior, and gradually change toxic communication patterns to healthy ones.
Someone copes on his own, many come with this to psychologists.