💔 What it means to have grown up with a parent who engaged in self-harm or suicidal behaviors
Growing up with a parent who engaged in self-harm or suicidal behaviors meant living with the constant terror that the person you needed most might disappear, and that you somehow held the power to save or destroy them.
You may have become a tiny crisis manager, learning to read their emotional weather patterns and intervene before storms became life-threatening. Every mood shift felt like a potential emergency, every closed door could hide a devastating discovery. You learned to suppress your own emotions to stay available for theirs, becoming hypervigilant to signs of deterioration while carrying the impossible weight of feeling responsible for another person's will to live.
You may have developed an intense fear of abandonment alongside a paradoxical guilt about your own needs and emotions - believing that your sadness, anger, or problems might be the final straw that pushes them over the edge. Love became inseparable from crisis management, teaching you that relationships require constant vigilance and that expressing your authentic self could literally be life or death for someone else.