If you grew up with an abusive parent, you probably learned to behave in certain ways to protect yourself. If you want healthier relationships, you’ll need to recognize these. Here are 20 behaviors that you should unlearn that come from dealing with an abusive parent.
People Pleasing
Healthline has found that people-pleasing can be directly linked to childhood trauma. This behavior is also called ‘fawning’ and essentially means that you will act how you think other people want you to behave in order to avoid conflict.
Suppressing Your Emotions
You may have been made to feel that showing your emotions was a sign of weakness or that your parents would get angry if you showed how you felt. It’s pretty likely that you still suppress your emotions, and you may struggle to identify and articulate them in healthy ways.
Hyper-Vigilance
People who grew up in abusive households were always living in a state of high alert, fearing that an explosive situation could be just around the corner. If this sounds familiar, you probably still over-analyze and struggle to feel safe if you’re not in control.
Self-Blame
It’s no surprise that those who grew up with abusive parents are very critical of themselves. Unfortunately, this is probably because parents would have blamed them a lot, and now those feelings are internalized. Don’t forget to practice self-compassion and speak kindly to yourself!
Avoiding Confrontation
Households with abusive parents are generally full of confrontation, so children learn to deal with this by avoiding any form of conflict. In your adult life, you might go to ridiculous lengths to keep the peace, even if this means giving up too much or allowing others to treat you badly.
Low Self-Esteem
Abusive parenting often causes low self-esteem in children. PsychCentral explains why: “As children, we start internalizing how others see us, and it becomes our self-perception.” This means that if your parents made you feel undeserving of love, you may have (wrongly!) learned to see yourself that way.
Fear of Abandonment
The Newport Institute says that “Childhood trauma is a common cause of fear of abandonment.” Many people who suffered abuse as children have an insecure attachment style, which leads to fear of abandonment. However, it’s not all bad news, as this can be worked through in therapy.
Isolating Yourself
Sadly, adults who suffered abuse as children often find it hard to be around people. You might find that you withdraw from social situations so that no one can hurt you and find it hard to form close, trusting relationships.
Over-Apologizing
Are you a serial apologizer? If so, this might be something that you learned during your childhood. Saying ‘sorry’ a lot, even when you’re not to blame, could be a defense mechanism that you developed in order to prevent conflict and protect yourself.
Perfectionism
In an abusive family, even small mistakes can be punished seriously. It’s, therefore, no surprise that adults who had an abusive childhood try to avoid making mistakes at all costs. This can mean setting impossibly high standards for yourself or not feeling good enough despite your achievements.
Difficulty Trusting Others
Manipulation is common when you have an abusive parent, meaning that they’ll use lies, blackmail, guilt-tripping, and blame as a form of control. Unsurprisingly, this makes it difficult for their children to trust others – they often feel suspicious of other people – and this transfers into adult life.
Over-Control
Abusive childhoods are chaotic, and they feel unsafe, which can lead to children trying to control anything that they can in order to feel secure. If you grew up with an abusive parent, you probably have quite a lot of anxiety around controlling every aspect of your life and struggle to rely on others.
Emotional Numbing
Do you sometimes find yourself disconnecting from your feelings as a way to avoid pain? This might mean using distractions like work or even substance abuse to avoid thinking about your emotions. Psychology Today refers to this as “splitting” – a coping mechanism developed in childhood to make it possible to function through trauma.
Seeking Approval
Gaining approval is so important for those who grew up with an abusive parent. This comes from feeling a need to do things right in childhood in the hope that this would prevent abuse. As an adult, you might always be looking for external validation (which includes things like Facebook likes!).
Self-Sacrifice
It’s pretty common for adults who suffered abuse as children to approach life with a self-sacrificing attitude. Pay attention to whether you always put the needs of others before your own, particularly if this gives you an increased feeling of self-worth. You may have learned this as a child.
Negative Self-Talk
We all have an inner voice that pops up occasionally, but for some people who were abused as children – it can be particularly negative because the voice becomes mixed with the voice of the parent. According to British GQ, negative self-talk can affect our mood and performance, so it’s time to start being kinder to yourself!
Over-Functioning
As a child, your abusive parents might have made you feel like you were worthless. If this is what happened, you probably learned to over-compensate and try to prove yourself. In adulthood, you might find that you take on too much responsibility and go above and beyond to fix other people’s problems.
Passive-Aggressive Behavior
The likelihood is that you weren’t able to express your anger towards your abusive parent, which may have led to you developing passive-aggressive behaviors instead. In your adult life, you might have an unhealthy communication style where you avoid directly talking about your feelings and make barbed comments instead.
Denying Your Needs
If you had an abusive parent, they wouldn’t have been meeting your needs, so you would have learned to believe that your needs weren’t important. Of course, this isn’t the case at all! If you ever feel guilty for asking for something you need, this likely stems from your childhood trauma.
Wanting Predictability
As a child, you probably loved routine – routine means predictability, and predictability means safety. The thing is, sometimes things do change unexpectedly in life, so as an adult, you may find it useful to find healthy ways to cope with change and spontaneity.
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