Toxic parent: 5 consequences for your adult life

In a family, the place given to parents is very important. Through the education they provide to their children, they pass on everything they can to enable them to grow and become fulfilled adults. However, in some families the relationship between parents and children may be toxic or become toxic as a result of actions by a toxic father or mother. This relationship will impact the construction of the child who, as he becomes an adult, will feel constrained in his personal development. Growing up in a toxic family has 5 consequences for your adult life.

Toxic parents what is it?

The family is the sum total of the individualities of members of a close group, the first one that each person has known since birth. A relationship is toxic when it causes suffering for the person within it. It can be a physical or mental suffering, taking an invasive character and that will hinder the daily life of the person from this family.

All parents are human beings and therefore imperfect, with their own difficulties. As a result, they make mistakes but also apologize and reflect on their behavior (read the article about Perfect parent: a myth to abandon for an authentic and serene parenting).

On the other hand, other parents, unintentionally or unconsciously, can cause trauma in their children and instill so-called limiting beliefs and repetitive dysfunctional patterns. The latter will undermine their adult relationships and their relationship to themselves. For example, a narcissistic perverse mother or a narcissistic perverse father is a toxic parent.

As a result, when the child who grew up with toxic parents becomes an adult, he will wonder about the origin of his daily difficulties. He will have to question his family sphere, the first environment in which he grew up, in order to understand how his parents, brothers and sisters or even generations before him could have affected the present time and how these people may still influence it.

What are the signs to recognize toxic parents?

Recognizing a toxic parent can be difficult depending on your family connection. To help you identify a toxic family, look for some unmisleading signs:

1. A toxic parent tends to criticize his child and even mock in certain situations. Just like the toxic friendship where the friend belittles the other person, the parent belittles the child by mocking him.

2. A toxic parent makes his or her daughter feel guilty.

3. A toxic father or mother does not know how to accept the emotions of his child.

4. A toxic family imposes its point of view on its child.

5. A toxic parent never apologizes.

6. A toxic mother or father is possessive of her child.

7. The child is not listened to by his parents (questioned his words, do not believe him, give more importance to his brother or sister).

8. The toxic parent is overcontrolling his or her child.

9. A toxic family results in physical and psychological violence.

10. The parent/child relationship is confused.

How can parents become toxic?

Without realizing it, you are strongly influenced by your family environment, and if it is toxic, you can become the "emotional sponges" of your loved ones.

“You are just like your father”, “anyway, you will end up like your mother”, “you’re a loser”, “you’re worthless”, “you could have done this”, “but you should have done that” etc., are as many devalued words as a toxic parent can say to his child, to his teenager, and the adult in front of him.

Toxic parents will tend to highlight the flaws in adults, titillate what is particularly sensitive and push where it hurts.

The toxicity of a parent-child relationship is in the violence of verbal and non-verbal behaviors. And, if physical violence is more addressed, especially through horrific situations of sexual assault on a loved one, psychological abuse, sexual abuse, aggression, sequestration, etc., then non-verbal or so-called “psychological” violence is just as much.

Moreover, even if it is not as noticeable, it comes through unconscious ways, modulating the life you wish to have.

This is the case of parents who devalue, belittle, reject, harass, and make people feel guilty. In this context, parents are then recognized as toxic to their children.

What are the consequences of a toxic parent?

Some parents are aware of their toxicity, behavior and negative influence on their loved ones and among them, some can improve.

But this remains rare because most often, the toxicity of families or parents comes from their individual mental dysfunctions. Indeed, since a family is a collection of individualities, each individuality can be failing and thus become toxic for itself and others.

Parents can exert their toxicity in different ways and this has several consequences on children and their adult life:

1. The occurrence of avoidance and fallback lines

2. The development of personality disorders

3. The creation of addictions and dependencies

4. Creating an emotional imbalance

5. The implementation of a dysfunctional communication

   
   
   
   

   Consequence #1: The occurrence of bypass and fallback lines

   The first consequence of living with a toxic family is to resort to avoidance and withdrawal lines.

   In the case of, for example, a childhood with physically violent, angry, irritable and impulsive parents, the adult in his daily life may then be brought into permanent avoidance behaviors. In order not to replicate what he experienced in his toxic family, the person may resort to avoidance situations or extreme withdrawal attitudes and exacerbated defensive behaviors.

   If faced with a violent situation, the person who has experienced traumatic childhood may choose to be defensive.

   
   

   The withdrawal will direct a person to live apart from society and refuse to be helped to get out of it and face his painful past with his toxic family. The person will tend to develop a fear of crowds and want to be alone.

   
   

   Having lived with a toxic family, the person has developed a lack of confidence that will be present in his adult life. If she was never listened to as a child and always put on the back burner, then she has developed a bad image of herself.

   
   

   Injured by a past, the victim of a toxic relative then uses avoidance routes to avoid reproducing the family pattern in which he or she grew up. For this, she may refuse all forms of affection and not want to create a family life because she thinks she is not capable.

   
   
   
   

   Consequence #2: The development of personality disorders

   Personality disorders can also be a consequence of a toxic parent.

   
   

   With parents with personality disorders, the adult will potentially inherit certain disorders or symptoms. For example, if the child has been used to seeing his father toxic in an antisocial attitude, criticizing the world, society, people, never agreeing, lacking empathy, ability to question oneself; then as an adult, They will tend to have difficulties in relating and adapting to others and the world around them.

   
   

   The toxic parent may have different attitudes and frequent mood swings. For example, the toxic parent tends to have negative reactivity. He will have strong emotions that are not going to be controllable and, sometimes, the toxic parent dramatizes the problems. In this case, he becomes uncontrollable with anger and destructive words towards the child.

   The adult of today can inherit these personality disorders since, having known only this family pattern, it seems normal. Adults may experience this disorder in their lifetime and lack empathy for those around them.

   
   

   In addition, the toxic parent favors criticism and reproaches rather than making a compliment. An adult who has experienced this toxic behaviour repeatedly may lack confidence and esteem.

   
   

   To get out of this toxicity, the adult who has had to face a toxic parent can be accompanied by a psychologist. Thus, he will learn to free himself from this grip and become the person he wants to be and no longer be shaped and manipulated by the toxic person of his entourage.

   
   
   
   

   Consequence #3: The creation of addictions and dependencies

   The third consequence of living in a toxic family on your adult life is the development of addictions and addictions.

   
   

   Addiction can come from several reasons. First, a child who has seen scenes of massive alcoholism and his parent in an extreme state of dependence may have a favored terrain of addiction. Seeing a toxic parent in a state of intoxication every day will seem normal to the child in the toxic family. Therefore, this addiction to alcohol can be repeated as an adult since he will have known only this family pattern.

   
   

   It is also important to know that a child of alcoholic parents has a higher risk of becoming an alcoholic in their adult life.

   
   

   Then a child can take refuge in drugs and create an addiction to get out of their harmful daily life within their toxic family. He may then develop a dependence on cannabis, for example.

   It is common to see addictions in people who have known a toxic family during their childhood. Indeed, whether it is an addiction to alcohol, tobacco or cannabis, the person who consumes will feel liberated and will see a way out of his suffering

   
   

   Contrary to popular belief, alcohol or drugs will not make you feel better. They will cause more discomfort in you and solve no problem.

   
   

   Suffering in a toxic family sometimes refers to altered eating habits such as bulimia or anorexia, for example. People affected by these addictions (foods, substances...) transfer their malaise into addictions that they will have difficulty detaching themselves from.

   
   
   
   

   Consequence #4: Creating an emotional imbalance

   The fourth consequence that an adult may experience in their adult life because of a toxic parent is emotional imbalance.

   
   

   The child is very intelligent, and he understands very quickly if his parent can be available psychologically, that is to say able and capable of taking care of him, meeting his needs, listening to his desires and bringing emotional warmth.

   
   

   A child who feels the unease of his parent, will tend to step back and/or take the place of the parent for his own parent, then failing. Later, the adult may encounter difficulties in emotional adjustment: between a need to think about yourself, space, and a need to parent or father your spouse for example.

   
   

   Emotional imbalance is explained by the repetition of negative emotions in certain situations. For example, if a toxic parent makes you feel guilty about something, you will tend to develop a sense of guilt and see that guilt settle in, like a normal emotion.

   
   

   Typically, conflicts, pressures that generate anger, terror, sadness, but also devaluation, create an emotional imbalance in a child who will carry it during his adult life. The toxic parent who makes you feel his strong and unjustified emotions promotes the appearance of disorders such as chronic fatigue that sucks all your energy, concentration difficulties and sometimes a development of a borderline personality that is characterized by instability in your life and a high level of hypersensitivity.

   
   

   The emotional imbalance caused by a toxic family is a real brake in the adult life of the person. This person will have difficulty feeling things and having healthy relationships because he or she has had toxic relationships during her childhood.

   
   
   
   

   Consequence #5: The implementation of a dysfunctional communication

   The fifth consequence of living in a toxic family is your type of communication. This one tends to be dysfunctional with your entourage. This is because you are replicating the behaviors you saw as a child. Your adult life is impacted by the toxic parent you have been with.

   
   

   There are many taboos in every family, and communication may be lacking. A child who is placed in confidence of this family secret, will be burdened with a weight that he can not release, for lack of reprisals.

   
   

   The adult he will become, must live by learning to be silent, not being authentic, repeating a dysfunctional communication, without forgetting the psychological impact of the secret itself to bear. For example, a mother who has confided her husband’s deceptions to her child by demanding that he not repeat them will put him in a situation where he would be likely to feel an exacerbated guilt during parental separation. The child, as he becomes an adult, will remember this guilt which can then be reactivated at each emotional break he experiences.

   A toxic parent can easily pass on an important emotional load to their child by discharging it on them. The child will then absorb the negative emotions of the toxic person in his or her family.

   
   

   Thus, the construction of each adult life is based on the influence that the family may have had on you during your childhood, or even now. In the same way that a parent teaches their child to walk, they can also leave dysfunctional communication.

   
   

   Living with secrets, the child no longer knows what to say or not to say, when to speak or be silent. During his adult life, he will be confronted with these same questions not knowing when to intervene and how to communicate properly whether within his couple or even with his family.

   
   
   
   
   
   

   Is it possible to become a toxic parent?

   
   

   It is now known that mental illness can be genetic. Heredity is recognized in the development of pathologies in adulthood such as, for example, bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.

   
   

   Also, a toxic family may include members whose toxicity is at the level of a personality disorder or a proven psychiatric disorder. For example, a woman whose father and mother have been diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia or recurrent major depressions will be brought unconsciously by these genetic factors, or so-called transgenerational, to develop more or less similar forms. As a result, she may become a toxic parent. It is obviously possible that the adult does not develop any form of family pathologies, even if this remains rare in the majority of serious pathologies.

   
   

   It is a question of considering that invisible but real transmissions, from family to family, from member to member, from generation to generation, are taking place. This is how adults with symptoms are part of a transgenerational dynamic.

   
   
   
   

   Can we free ourselves from a toxic mother or father?

   
   

   A person who grew up in a family with mental dysfunctions can fully realize the difficulties they have to overcome on a daily basis.

   
   

   She may become aware of it by feeling, for example, that she is being held back in her life but not by the toxic grip of her father or mother that she may be subjected to. Indeed, to take this aspect into consideration is to begin to question all his beliefs.

   
   

   In order for the person to be able to completely free himself from the grip of his toxic parents, a therapeutic approach can be initiated. This can be done in a traditional consultation in the office or remotely, with digital therapy. In both cases, the challenge will be to trace the family history, to become aware of the dysfunctions of parents, of the influence they exert, from childhood until today. In addition, during this exercise, it is possible to go back from generation to generation, in the same way as one individual to another within the same generation. Indeed, the toxicity can also come from grandparents.

   
   

   Once you are aware of the different difficulties that family members have, you will be able to understand, put words into your pain and get rid of problems that in reality belonged or still belong to other people in the family.

   
   

   It is a matter of leaving one pot after the other, untangling the threads one after the other, until there is a feeling of relief, appeasement and emptiness, a little like a "psychic virginity".

   Of course, it is not easy to achieve this emotional marriage. Also, very often, it is a matter of accepting the dysfunctions of each and thus, to mourn. This includes the many possible disappointments. For example, an adult who idealized his toxic father and ultimately realizes that his love choices are conditioned by how his own father was able to behave with his mother, feelings of injustice, anger, frustration, impotence, discouragement, of sadness or even annoyance.

   
   

   Nevertheless, the therapeutic work will allow to address these different emotions in time and to direct the person towards a healthy and authentic construction of himself. Thanks to digital therapy, the person will be able to start to emancipate himself from the grip of his toxic parents, at his own pace and learning to take into account his own desires and needs.

   
   
   
   

   Conclusion

   
   

   It takes a lot of strength to make that first therapy appointment to heal from childhood trauma.

   Finding the right therapist in Hong Kong requires some effort, but the benefits to your mental health can be profound.

   
   

   For a family therapy, I would recommend you a Systemic Therapy that considers the entire family system. It focuses on how relationships and roles within the family system influence individuals’ emotional and behavioral issues and how to change the pattern.

   
   

   If you still believe that this system can not be changed and/or would like to understand why some of your patterns are repeating, and most importantly would like to find the inner peace, I would recommend you one-on-one Therapy sessions in using Cognitive and Behavioral Therapy or Trauma Therapy.

   
   

   By understanding your needs, researching options, and evaluating potential therapists, you can take meaningful steps towards finding support that resonates with you. Remember, prioritizing your mental health is a courageous and essential journey.

   Let's have a try together here !

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