☠️ What it means to have grown up with a toxic parent
Growing up with a toxic parent meant experiencing patterns of emotional abuse, manipulation, and psychological control that taught you that love and humiliation were inseparable, and that the people who were supposed to protect you were also the ones who hurt you most deeply.
You may have learned to watch your parent's moods constantly and adapt yourself to them before you got into trouble, developing hypervigilant threat detection that made you incredibly skilled at reading micro-changes in tone, expression, or body language. Your parent constantly questioned and redefined your reality, making you doubt your own account of events, memories, and feelings.
You may have learned that expressing your authentic thoughts and feelings was dangerous, leading to constant self-censorship and filtering of your own emotions to avoid triggering negative reactions. You might find yourself either building walls to guard against getting hurt or having no boundaries at all—giving up everything for love, with no middle ground between the two extremes.