You don’t even realize how much toxic parents can ruin your life.
In fact, it’s only when you leave the family nest and meet people who can open your eyes to your childhood experiences that you realize the damage that’s been done to you.
Some parents are toxic because they lack education and knowledge.
In fact, they repeat the toxic patterns to which they themselves have been exposed, so they don’t know how to be good parents.
I’m not excusing them!
It’s certainly no reason not to take responsibility or to abuse your children.
After all, many people have had chaotic or traumatic childhoods and don’t become toxic.
On the contrary, they fight this instinct and do their best to provide a secure childhood for their children.
Other parents are toxic by choice!
In fact, they see their children as inferior beings and take out their low self-esteem on them.
They belittle and abuse them because they’ve “earned” this treatment.
I don’t know how a child can deserve to be abused, but it’s an excuse toxic parents often use.
Finally, there are parents who are unconsciously toxic.
They don’t understand how their behavior is destroying their children.
Typically, it’s inappropriate remarks, regular criticism and comparison designed to belittle the child.
This is emotional abuse!
By the way, here are the beliefs that your toxic parents have imprinted on your brain and that are preventing you from having a healthy, happy life.
1. Girls should be beautiful and keep their mouths shut.
Be beautiful and shut up!
That’s the watchword for raising girls.
Toxic parents raise their daughters to be brainless beauties.
For them, education is pointless, because they can achieve anything by using their bodies and their looks.
They can even find themselves a rich husband who will take care of them.
So why waste time being smart?
Girls aren’t supposed to have an opinion, and more importantly, they’re not supposed to share it.
Which might work if we raised boys to the same standard.
That is, if we instilled in them the idea that they should work hard and provide for their families.
But they don’t!
Boys are meant to be strong and intelligent.
Yet once they grow up, boys become arrogant beings who believe that women owe them everything.
So girls become women who have to do everything on their own, but aren’t allowed to share their opinions.
Otherwise, they’re called c*tins, instead of strong women.
2. Stop crying like a girl, be a strong boy.
Don’t think of boys as needy.
In many families, boys are treated like kings!
They have privileges and are forgiven everything.
Except for one thing…
They’re not allowed to be sensitive.
Emotions are intolerable for boys (in a toxic family).
It’s a sign of vulnerability and weakness.
So leave the crying to the girls, who are sensitive and whiny anyway.
3. It’s best to do everything alone.
If others give you a helping hand, it means you’re weak and vulnerable.
You can’t trust people and, above all, you can’t rely on others.
Why can’t you?
A toxic family uses gaslighting and isolation to convince you that your parents are the only good people around.
The aim is to prevent you from making a comparison and finally realizing all the abuse you’ve experienced.
If they succeed in convincing you that they are good people and that it’s other people’s behavior that’s not normal, your whole concept of right and wrong is disrupted.
You become more isolated, and never get out of the vicious circle of abuse.
4. Love always hurts!
In families with a strong history of abuse, it’s often said that it’s better to be alone, because relationships never do any good.
As you may have guessed, the aim is still total isolation.
But why?
When you find someone who accepts and loves you as you are, you realize that your family was wrong.
You understand that your parents are toxic, abusive and liars.
So you distance yourself from them, which means you rob them of their source of self-esteem.
They can no longer trample you to make themselves feel better.
They can no longer abuse you to keep you under their control.
Finally, they lose their reason for being.
And that’s extremely painful for them.
5. People are always looking to take advantage of you!
In the same vein, toxic parents always try to make you believe that they’re the only ones who have good intentions for you.
Your friends only like you because they’re superior to you, so their egos are inflated when they’re in your presence.
Your sweetheart only tolerates you because of your s*x.
In short, everyone around you wants to take advantage of you in one way or another.
But do you know who has no interest in taking advantage of you?
Your parents, of course!
Which is inevitably false, because they use you as a scapegoat.
In fact, your loved ones have good intentions towards you, and they even tell you that you need to get away from your parents.
And that’s what scares your toxic family.
6. Depression and anxiety are just signs of weakness.
It’s proof that you’re a weak person and that you’re failing at life itself.
Toxic parents aren’t just people who think that if you have a mental illness, it means you’re weak.
But they’re also people who refuse to admit that mental illness exists.
They tell you that you’re not suffering from depression, but that you simply need to get out of the house more.
Besides, as soon as you have a problem, you know you can’t confide in your parents.
They’ll judge you, criticize you and put you down even more.
So you continue to suffer in silence, and usually this leads to severe forms of depression and attempted s*icide!
7. If you’re not pretty and attractive, you’re not good enough.
Generally speaking, this applies mainly to girls.
Toxic parents who have a daughter who has an engineering degree and works in a leading company in her field are not accomplished women.
No, no…
They’re not proud of her!
Why not?
Maybe it’s because she’s not beautiful enough.
Maybe it’s because she doesn’t do sports.
Or maybe it’s because she’s not yet married with five kids, like their neighbor’s daughter who never got an education after high school.
Toxic parents are extremely superficial and all they care about is the image they give to others.
They’re obsessed with what others think and say about them, to the point where they don’t realize that it’s their standards that are unhealthy.
8. Education and professional status are proof that you’re better than others.
This point is aimed more at boys.
Unlike the previous point, where girls are encouraged to be stupid but beautiful, here boys are told that they absolutely must go to university.
They must be smart and have a golden job so they can earn a living like millionaires.
Their happiness doesn’t matter, their dreams aren’t important and their beauty doesn’t even enter into the equation.
The bank account!
The more money a man can make, the more valuable he is.
It’s as simple as that, and toxic parents hope to profit from this small fortune.
9. You have to sacrifice your needs for the good of your family.
After all, other people’s needs always come before your own!
For a toxic family, the child isn’t important; he’s simply an extension of his parents.
They’re not allowed to have their own desires or passions.
Everything is done for the “good” of the family, even if this good is unhealthy.
For example, you’re obliged to spend every family holiday at your parents’, even if you’re married and your partner would also like to see his or her parents.
It’s more important to give an image of solidarity and support to others!
Well, hello there!
My name is Jennifer. Besides being an orthodontist, I am a mother to 3 playful boys. In this motherhood journey, I can say I will never know everything. That’s why I always strive to read a lot, and that’s why I started writing about all the smithereens I came across so that you can have everything in one place! Enjoy and stay positive; you’ve got this!