đź’” What it means to have grown up with a cruel parent who used violence and threats
Growing up with a cruel parent meant living in a home where violence or the threat of it hung in the air like smoke—you never felt completely safe in the place that should have protected you.
You may have learned to read the room for danger signs with incredible precision, developing threat assessment skills that made you hypervigilant to any shift in mood or atmosphere. Your body became calibrated for chaos, making peaceful moments feel strangely uncomfortable because your nervous system was trained to expect danger everywhere.
You might find yourself either avoiding conflict at all costs or reacting strongly when you feel threatened—both strategies that once kept you safe. Physical closeness may make you jumpy, even with people you trust, because your danger radar was programmed by unpredictability rather than security, making it hard to tell the difference between true threats and false alarms.