The four types of difficult parents:

• The emotional parent instills feelings of instability and anxiety

• The driven parent stays busy trying to perfect everything and everyone

• The passive parent avoids dealing with anything upsetting

• The rejecting parent is withdrawn, dismissive, and derogatory

Your parents lacked the ability to feel and process their emotions in a healthy way.

Your parents were often not physically around due to working constantly, going out, or being preoccupied with other things.

Your parents were selfish and put their needs before your needs.

Your parents had too rigid boundaries or no boundaries at all.

You came to your parents so they could soothe, comfort, and love you, but instead you were met with criticism, demand, and judgement.

It wasn’t uncommon to hear things like, “Why are you crying? You shouldn’t be sad.” Or “Stop your anger. Now you’re making me angry.”

Perhaps your parents left you alone. You craved connection, care, and attention, yet never received it. So you slowly learned to internalized your needs in silence. You became self-reliant and sought to control what you could control.

Perhaps you studied and became a great student. Maybe you learned to protect yourself through self-attack, self-judgement, and self-sabotage, denying your own wishes and desire because you feared rejection and abandonment.

As a child, you were often the parent and your parent was often the child due to the role reversal. Boundaries were blurred. Maybe there weren’t any boundaries.

You were burdened with your parents’ intimate emotions, fears, and worries. Perhaps you took on household duties and responsibilities.

Many people hear this when they are parentified, “You are so mature for your age”. While this is meant as a compliment, it can be harmful for children because their self worth is tied into what they can do for others.

Chaos, conflict, worry, and unpredictability sums up your childhood environment.

To survive, you learned to take care of others, managed conflict, and attempted to maintain peace. Now, you feel overly responsible for other’s needs, wants, and emotions. Perhaps you offer advice and help to others, even when it’s not asked for.

Witnessing abuse and violence

Witnessing the abuses of power (coercion, yelling, blaming, denying)

Feeling helpless to do anything

Feeling guilty

Growing up with someone with undiagnosed mental health issues

Feeling overly responsible for others’ needs/wants

Not openly communicating thoughts and feelings about the effects

Not seeking professional treatment and help

Internalizing feelings and thoughts

Feeling torn between your parents/caregivers after a divorce due to conflicting messages of a “bad” parent/caregiver

Feeling worried if one parent/caregivers will leave you and not come back (e.g. abandonment, worry, anxiety, depression)

Being held to secrets and promises by one parent/caregiver and feeling stuck unsure what to do

Losing friends and support system when you had to move to a new city and home

The death of a sibling or parent marked your upbringing with sadness, pain, confusion, and anger.

Maybe you never really got over this loss. Secretly, you are envious and angry at others who still have their parents and siblings, while you do not. The holidays, anniversaries, and birthdays are especially difficult, but you don’t let others know how you feel. You suffer alone.

In every family, there are roles. Perhaps your role was the “bad” child. No matter what you did, it was never enough and you were blamed.

Or you were the caretaker, productive child, or martyr.

Other roles include: peacemaker, mediator, golden child, lost child, truth teller, rescuer, and problem child.

You grew up with a parent who immigrated to the United States. Perhaps your parent escaped their country due to war, persecution, and/or oppression. They experienced difficulty adjusting to a new country, a new language, new customs, and lacked community.

They were wary, frustrated, confused, scared, and untrusting of others growing up and passed these feelings onto you.

They told you not to trust certain people. They told you the only way to success was to study hard, keep to yourself, and avoid conflicts.