Tag: Toxic Relationships

9 Ways Your Parents Caused Your Low Self-Esteem

It’s not uncommon for childhood trauma to manifest itself well into adulthood. When we start to connect-the-dots, it’s clear to see a direct correlation between certain childhood events and our self-worth. Low self-esteem can be a result of a negative or dysfunctional family environment, but where exactly does it originate? There’s no one answer to this question but here’s a short list of ways your parents may be the root-cause of your low self-esteem.

1. Disapproving Authority Figures

If you grew up hearing that whatever you did wasn’t good enough, how are you supposed to grow into an adult with a positive self-image? If you were criticized no matter what you did or how hard you tried, it becomes difficult to feel confident and comfortable in your own skin later. The fear forced on you for perpetually “failing” can feel blindingly painful.

2. Uninvolved/Preoccupied Caregivers

It’s difficult to motivate yourself to want more, strive for more, and imagine that you deserve more when your parents or other primary caregivers didn’t pay attention – as if your greatest achievements weren’t worth noticing. This scenario often results in feeling forgotten, unacknowledged, and unimportant later. It can also leave you feeling that you are not accountable to anyone, or you may believe that no one in the here and now is concerned about your whereabouts, when that’s actually a carry-over feeling from the past. Feeling unrecognized can result in the belief that you are supposed to apologize for your existence.

3. Authority Figures in Conflict

If parents or other caregivers fight or make each other feel badly, children absorb the negative emotions and distrustful situations that have been modeled for them. It’s scary, overwhelming, and disorganizing. This experience can also occur when one parent is deeply distraught or acts unpredictably around the child. When you were subjected to excessive conflicts between authority figures, it can feel as if you contributed to the fights or to a parent’s painful circumstance. Intense conflicts are experienced as extremely threatening, fear driving, and you may believe you caused it. This feeling of being “tainted” can be carried into adulthood.

4. Bullying (with Unsupportive Parents)

If you had the support of a relatively safe, responsive, aware family you may have had a better chance of recovering and salvaging your self esteem after having been taunted and bullied as a child. If you already felt unsafe at home and the torture continued outside home, the overwhelming sense of being lost, abandoned, hopeless, and filled with self-loathing pervaded your everyday life. It can also feel like anyone who befriends you is doing you a favor, because you see yourself as so damaged. Or you may think that anyone involved in your life must be predatory and not to be trusted. Without a supportive home life, the effects of bullying can be magnified and miserably erode quality of life.

5. Bullying (with Over-Supportive Parents)

Conversely, if your parents were overly and indiscriminately supportive, it can leave you feeling unprepared for the cruel world. Without initial cause to develop a thick outer layer, it can feel challenging and even shameful to view yourself as unable to withstand the challenges of life outside the home. From this perspective, you may feel ill prepared and deeply ashamed to admit this dirty ugly secret about you, even to your parents, because you need to protect them from the pain they would endure if they knew. Instead, you hid the painful secret of what’s happened to you. Shame can cloud your perspective.

Eventually it can seem as if your parents’ opinion of you is in conflict with the world’s opinion of you. It can compel you to cling to what is familiar in your life, because it’s hard to trust what’s real and what isn’t. You may question the validity of your parents’ positive view of you, and default to the idea that you are not good enough or are victim-like and should be the subject of ridicule.

6. Bullying (with Uninvolved Parents)

If your primary caregivers were otherwise occupied while you were being bullied and downplayed your experience, or they let you down when you needed their advocacy, you might have struggled with feeling undeserving of notice, unworthy of attention, and angry at being shortchanged. When the world feels unsafe, the shame and pain are brutal. These feelings could also be evoked if parents were in transitional or chaotic states – so that what happened to you wasn’t on anyone’s radar. If there’s chaos at home, it can be hard to ask for attention or to feel like there is room for you take up space with your struggles. Instead, you may retreat and become more isolated and stuck in shame.

7. Academic Challenges Without Caregiver Support

There’s nothing like feeling stupid to create low self-esteem. If you felt like you didn’t understand what was happening in school – as if you were getting further and further behind without anyone noticing or stepping in to help you figure out what accommodations you needed – you might have internalized the belief that you are somehow defective. You may feel preoccupied with and excessively doubt your own smartness, and feel terribly self-conscious about sharing your opinions. The shame of feeling as if you aren’t good enough can be difficult to shake, even after you learn your own ways to accomodate for your academic difficulties.

8. Trauma

Physical, sexual, or emotional abuse may be the most striking and overt causes of low self-esteem. Being forced into a physical and emotional position against your will can make it very hard to like the world, trust yourself or trust others, which profoundly impacts self-esteem. It may even feel like your fault when it couldn’t be less your fault. Obviously, in these scenarios, there is so much going on at one time that you might need to check out, dissociate, go away. It can make you feel like nothingness. In an effort to gain control of your circumstances, in your head you may have convinced yourself that you were complicit or even to blame. You may have found ways to cope with the abuse, to manage the chaos in ways that you understand are unhealthy, so you may ultimately view yourself as repulsive and seeringly shameful, among a zillion other feelings. 

9. Belief Systems

When your religious (or other) belief system puts you in a position of feeling as if you are perpetually sinning, it can be similar to the experience of living with a disapproving authority figure. Whether judgment is emanating from authority figures or from an established belief system in your life, it can evoke shame, guilt, conflict and self-loathing. Many structured belief systems offer two paths: one that’s all good and one that’s all bad. When you inevitably fall in the abyss between the two, you end up feeling confused, wrong, disoriented, shameful, fake, and disappointed with yourself over and over again. 

It is important to understand that experiencing any of these early circumstances doesn’t mean you must be bound by them as an adult. They will be woven into your fabric and absorbed into your sense of yourself in different ways over time, but there are many paths to feeling that you are better prepared, less fragmented, and more confident moving forward.

As an adult, when you examine your history, you can begin to see that in some cases the derision or intense negative messages you encountered weren’t necessarily meant for you. Rather, they flowed from the circumstances of the people who delivered them. That perspective can help you to dilute the power of the negative messages about yourself you received and formed.

There are some circumstances you may have suffered that may be impossible to understand. You can’t and aren’t expected to understand, empathize or forgive in these circumstances. What matters most is continuing to find ways to feel as okay and as safe as you can in your own life right now.

The more you understand the sources of your low self-esteem and can put them into context, the more you can use your self-understanding to begin the process of repairing self-esteem and living the life you’ve always wanted.

Source: Original article, psychologytoday.com- 2013, by Suzanne Lachmann Psy.D.

How Someone Else’s Depression Can Affect You

As is often said, depression is depressing to be around.

The word depression can mean very different things to different people. When someone says “I feel depressed” to describe everyday blues that come and go, these transient blues are not what mental health professionals mean by the depression.

Generally, clinical depression refers to symptoms that significantly affect a person’s functioning and last for a substantial amount of time.  Most of us go through periods of dysphoric moods with temporary symptoms of depression, but we continue to function normally and recover without professional treatment. 

What causes depression?

Most mental health professionals agree that usually a number of factors, both biochemical and psychological, work together to trigger a depression. Some people, because of their biochemical and genetic makeup, are inherently more vulnerable to depression when they experience life stress than other people who face the same stressors. For example; siblings can grow up in the same household but respond to family dysfunction in completely different ways.

Depression is often missed by either patient or family members because it’s hard to identify. Diagnosing depression often goes hand-in-hand with other mental and physical illnesses. If someone has a physical problem, it could be easy for the depression to be overlooked.

How does your loved one’s depression affect you?

You may be so intent on helping the other person, that you become blind to ways in which you’re being affected.

As time goes by, your own mind and body can also become filled with negative feelings. As is often said, depression is depressing to be around.

Effect on Spouse

As the person closest to the depressed individual, the spouse is often affected first and most. He/she may notice the signs before anyone else; indeed, some people are so good at hiding the signs of their depression that their spouses are the only ones to ever know anything is wrong.

The spouse is also most invested in the depressed person’s happiness. This is a source of strength, insomuch as it gives the spouse reason to help the depressed individual. Unfortunately, it can also be hard on a spouse if treatment is refused or unsuccessful. Prior to a diagnosis, the spouse might feel that they’re a failure for not making their spouse feel happier.

Effect on Children

Children are very malleable. This can be a good thing because it allows them to more easily recover from traumatic experiences, but it also means they are more susceptible to negative emotional environments in the first place. Because they need more positive encouragement and attention as they grow, children are less likely to thrive when one or both parents are depressed.

Like the spouse, children may feel compelled to help take up the family activities that their depressed parent is neglecting, forcing them to “grow up early”. Also like the spouse, children of depressed parents are more likely to develop depression or other mental illnesses in childhood or later In life.

Effect on Extended Family

Away from the nuclear family, depression can still have effects. Family that lives far away may experience anxiety about not knowing how the depressed person is doing or fear of not being kept in the loop. Meanwhile, family that lives nearby may stop visiting due to the negative atmosphere. Concern over the children growing up in such an environment, while justified, can lead to confrontations and acrimony between family members.

Conclusion

Ultimately, if you are depressed, the best thing you can do for yourself and your family is to seek or accept treatment. Don’t be afraid that you will not be able to take care of them while you take care of yourself. By focusing on your own healing, you are helping them.

It helps to think of the family as one entity. If one part (you) is sick, the whole suffers, and the emphasis should be on healing the sick part.

Source: http://www.medicaidmentalhealth.org/_assets/file/Guidelines 2017-2018%20Treatment%20of%20Adult%20Major%20Depressive%20Disorder.pdf

A Legacy of Abuse

Reporting my brother to Child Protective Services was the first step in ending a decades-long cycle. *9 minute read

By Emily Miller, Human Parts

Content Warning: Graphic depictions of sexual and physical abuse.

1. A Deathbed Confession, 1997

Mom unburdens herself only weeks before she dies. She tells me about Mike’s* abuse against his children. Her revelations confirm what I’ve known since childhood: My brother Mike is dangerous. Mom tells me about the inexplicable holes in walls throughout Mike’s house, how he and his wife ignore the cries of their baby, and how roughly they handle their toddler. What frightens her the most, she confesses, is that when she dies there will be no one left to look after her grandbabies. She doesn’t ask me to replace her, but I can take a hint.

2. Home for the Holidays, 1999

“You fat pig!” Mike yells as he tries to lift his sweaty, four-year-old son from the shopping-cart-like metal basket at the front of the pedicab.

My nephew cries and grabs hold of the sides of the basket, refusing to budge. Mike yanks him once more, only this time a spoke catches my nephew’s bare thigh and punctures it.

Blood bubbles to the surface of my nephew’s stocky leg, then runs down it before soaking into his little white sock. I use my hoodie to try to stanch the bleeding. It won’t stop. “Call 911!” I shout. I try to calm my nephew by singing the Alphabet song. It holds his attention only so far as L-M-N-O-P, so I switch to the Barney song, “Clean up, clean up, everybody everywhere… ” Mike pushes me aside. The boys and I look on, saucer-eyed.

Edges blur, leaving but one pulsating truth at the center: Mike has gouged a hole in his son’s leg.

We drive home to Los Angeles. I don’t speak of the incident with my boys, pretending that they’re okay, and so am I. Until I’m not. A few days later, at work, I kick the snack machine in the breakroom because “It won’t release my goddamned Doritos.” My coworkers look up from their sandwiches and stare. I slink back to my desk.

I see a therapist. I tell her about the snack machine, about my nephew, and all the stories I can think of from my childhood — beginning with the original sin.

3. A Story I Was Told About the Child I Replaced, 1962

After adopting two boys, Mom wants a girl. Dad grants Mom her wish, just as he might purchase a diamond bauble she admires in a jewelry store window. They name the baby Sarah*. All seems in order except Sarah’s skin is “ruddy,” this being the word Mom used the one and only time she told me the story, when I was 10. It means “having a healthy reddish color.” I know this because I looked it up in the student edition of Merriam-Webster that I keep atop my molded acrylic desk.

“Not to worry,” a nurse says to my parents. “The pressure in the birth canal can sometimes cause discoloration. Her skin will even out over the next few days.” Dad expresses some concern that the baby appears to be Black. “But the birth certificate says ‘Caucasian,’” counters Mom.

Over the course of the next few months, Sarah’s skin doesn’t lighten. It darkens. Mom and Dad ask questions of the pediatrician, who confirms Dad’s suspicion that the baby is Black. Mom is as shocked as Dad by the news, but she has bonded with her first daughter, and so tries to downplay the plot twist. Dad insists that raising a Black child in an all-white community recently rattled by racial violence would be too much of a hardship for the family and Sarah to bear. Dad arm-twists Mom into giving Sarah up for re-adoption. My brothers, Mike and Andy*, watch as their baby sister is peeled from Mom’s arms by social workers. Their five- and eight-year-old selves fear they, too, will be repossessed.

After I’m adopted — replacing Sarah — my brothers hide me under blankets from anyone who enters our home. I am an adult before it dawns on me that I was adopted into a grieving, frightened home that harbored a humiliating secret.

4. A Belt by Any Other Name, 1966

I wake up to a snap followed by a scream. Is it Andy or Mike this time? Snapgoes the belt again.

“AAAAH!”

It’s Mike.

5. A Memory, 1968

I’m coloring at my child-sized pink and white desk that Grandpa made when Dad appears in the doorway with a suitcase in one hand and the black and red machine he polishes his shoes with in the other.

“Where are you going, Daddy?”

“I’m leaving, sweetheart.”

“When will you be back?”

“I won’t be back. Come give Daddy a hug.”

6. My First Blow Job, 1969

Mom goes out to dinner with her new boyfriend, and leaves Mike in charge. He invites me into his bedroom. I’m excited because he’s never let me in his room before tonight. “Have you ever seen a penis?” he asks. The way my heart thumps tells me something’s not right about this question. Still, I don’t want to be banished from my big brother’s inner sanctum so I say, “No. I’ve never seen one.” He unzips his pants. My first impression is that penises are ugly, especially when long and hard with big veins everywhere, like Mike’s is now. I resist what happens next but Mike is 16, and a wrestler. I am seven, and a ballerina. He pushes my face closer and closer to the throbbing organ I know is there but can’t see because my eyes are closed.

“Swallow,” he says, when finished. I gulp. “Don’t tell anyone or I’ll kill you.” I nod, my whole body trembling as I back out of his room.

7. Shock Therapy, 1970

I stand with my back against the wall as Mike, wielding a butcher knife, chases Andy up the stairs. I run after them down the hallway and enter the guest room as Andy jumps from the second story window into our snowy backyard. When the police arrive, I’m being looked after in the basement by my “Aunt” Grace*, but can hear the voices in the kitchen. Mike tells the police that Andy is on LSD. Mom is crying. Andy is shouting curse words as the police force him to come with them.

The next time I see Andy, he’s much calmer. When I ask Mom what’s happened to Andy, she mumbles, “It must be the shock therapy.” I nod, even though I don’t know what shock therapy is.

8. California Schemin’, 1971

Mom sits at the kitchen table with a wooden ruler and a foldout map of the United States. “What are you doing?” I ask.

“I’m trying to figure out which city is furthest from your dad: Los Angeles, California or Portland, Maine.”

The answer is Los Angeles.

After we move, Mom doesn’t help me get ready for school or make me breakfast anymore. She sleeps instead. Mike still wants blowjobs, and Andy gets thrown out of school a few months after we arrive.

9. Our Little Secret, 1976

“What’s the matter, honey?” Mom asks. “Please tell me, why are you are crying like this?”

It is five years since the last blow job — so many years it’s conceivable that I’ve dreamt it all. I don’t intend to break my oath to Mike, until he calls me “Emily Big Butt” under his breath at the dinner table. It’s anyone’s guess why I crack open this time when I hadn’t all the other times he teased me. I jump up from the table and run to my room. Mom finds me sitting on the edge of my bed. Everything spills out of me in great, heaving sobs. She holds me in her arms until I calm down, then presses her hands into my shoulders, looks me in the eyes and says, “Let’s just keep this our little secret. Okay?” Too upset to consider my options, I sniffle and say “okay.” Mom hugs me again.

10. Karma, 1980

I spread out the map on my bed and figure out which college is farthest away from my family.

11. Truth, 1985

The next time I mention Mike’s abuse to Mom, I’m in graduate school. I’m standing in the kitchen of my Manhattan railroad apartment. It’s a stiflingly hot summer day and I open windows, trying to create a cross breeze. Mom calls to check on me for the umpteenth time that week. I tell her I’m still depressed only this time I go one step further and share with her my recurring nightmare. The one where Mike is holding a revolver to the back of my head and I wake up when I hear the click.

A while after I hang up, the phone rings again. I hear a small voice on the other end. It takes a second before I realize it belongs to Mike. He explains that he’s calling to apologize for what he did. I have often fantasized about this moment and the verbal vivisection I’d unleash if it ever came to pass. Yet all I feel now is relief. Relief that it wasn’t a dream after all.

I hang up and stare out the kitchen window, watching steam float up from the vents of the Chinese restaurant three floors below. For a moment, I float too, on a cloud of truth, finally visible.

12. The Therapist’s Instructions, 1998

As the session draws to a close, the therapist offers a few healthy coping tips to last me until our next session, which we schedule for the following week. As I gather my belongings, she stops me. “There’s one more thing,” she says. “You should report your brother to Child Protective Services for harming his son.”

“If you don’t, I will,” she adds.

Now I’m the snack machine, and the therapist has just kicked me. I sit on the sofa holding her steady gaze. The seconds tick by as she waits for my conscience to drop into place.

Before it does, I propose a compromise. “How about I confront Mike,” I say. “I’ll demand he treat his children better or I’ll report him.”

The therapist is kind. She patiently explains how I am not going to change my brother’s parenting, and that he’d likely feel attacked and resentful if I try. “In order for him to change,” she says, “he’ll need counseling to understand his own pain and the reasons why he hurts his kids and why he hurt you, Andy, and who knows how many others.”

“You’re not equipped to offer him solutions,” she tells me. “Even if you were, in the time it would take, your nephews would continue to be at risk.”

I finally concede. “I’ll call,” I tell her. “It’s my duty, not yours, to protect my nephews.”

She directs me to a local agency. When I call, a social worker walks me through the process as I jot down notes on the back of an envelope that I keep to this day. But when I mention that my brother is out of state, she informs me that the agency has “no standing” to file a report. I must contact Child Protective Services in my brother’s home state. I hang up, exhausted, but call the next agency.

The social worker takes a “good faith” report over the phone and asks if I have witnessed physical abuse or a pattern of “boundary violations,” or received a disclosure of abuse from a child. I explain what I witnessed while returning the pedicab. I also share everything Mom told me before her death.

13. Legacies, 2019

After one too many glasses of white zinfandel, Mom’s youngest sister, Aunt Cindy*, lets it slip that Mom was raped by a half-brother I never knew about. Grandpa had chased his son off the farm with a rifle, and the incident was never mentioned again. Deprived at last of the oxygen I’ve fed it all these years, my burning resentment of Mom extinguishes. Sometimes all we know is what we’re taught.

If Mike is contacted by Child Protective Services, he never lets on. I don’t witness further abuse toward his children — only toward his wife who silently absorbs barbs about her weight and clothing, and threats that he’ll leave her if she ever cuts her hair short.

As I learn more about the patterns of abuse, my best self can make out that Mike is simply a scared person hiding inside a scary person. I think back to the belt lashings and wonder, Who abused Dad? I tell myself I’ve finally broken the cycle of abuse — unless I count the times some benign misstep by one of my children triggered a disproportionate response from me.

I ask my boys, now men, “What was it like for you as a child, when I would get crazy angry?” The intellectual one answers, “Which manifestations of your reactivity are you referring to?” We unpack that. The sensitive one replies, “I was scared at times, and didn’t want to upset you because I felt like I would get ripped apart.”

I hadn’t intended to mention this last part, about my fits of rage. But now that I have, should anything happen to me, could you, from time to time, check in on my grandbabies?

*Names have been changed.

If you or someone you know is suffering from abuse, depression or suicidal please review this list of national resources.

By: Emily Miller. Source: humanparts.medium.com/a-legacy-of-abuse-57dab89dde83

The Bully at Home; When it’s More Than Just Sibling Rivalry

When people talk about toxic family members, they usually speak about a dad they don’t get along with, or a mom who is too controlling. But toxic family members can include siblings too.

Siblings should be friends to lean on, shoulders to cry on, and occasionally scapegoats to put the blame on. However, if you’re now an adult and your relationship growing up harbored more bad than good, such as constant arguments, emotional/verbal abuse, or never-ending competition; you may want to take a step back and ask if it’s worth it to repair the sibling relationship you’ve been dealing with since childhood.

The following six signs will help you determine if it was more than meaningless sibling fights.

  1. You were constantly the butt of all jokes.

Abuse comes in many forms — from name calling, endless insults, hitting, to sexual harassment and more. If you find that your sibling grew up constantly belittling you with harsh words, that’s verbal abuse.

When a married couple argue constantly and rarely have a calm, loving moment, it often ends in divorce. But when siblings fight on a regular basis, too many times it’s dismissed as innocent sibling rivalry.

2. Majority of arguments were over insignificant topics.

If you fought daily, even over something as little as the TV remote, that is a sign of an unhealthy relationship. Not every little thing should cause a fight.

For young girls, when one of the first male relationships in her life (with a father or brother) is toxic, it can be devastating. Name-calling and making negative comments about her physical appearance can cause her to have poor body image and low self-esteem.

This type of sibling rivalry can have long-term effects on your mental and physical health.

3. You constantly felt controlled or manipulated

It’s common for an older sibling to manipulate a younger one. It gives them a sense of power.

This control could have been used for the better, like encouraging the younger sibling to try the same sport as, but more often than not it’s used for sinister reasons.

4. Lack of Trust

Could you trust your sibling with your secrets? If not, the “sibling bond” was never there.

You may have wanted to confide in your sibling as opposed to a parent. But they waited for the perfect time to spill the beans to the rest of the family or embarrass you in front of friends.

If you couldn’t count on your sibling to keep it a secret, it wasn’t a trustworthy relationship.

5. You stressed about your toxic sibling even when they weren’t around

It’s common to think about a blowout fight the day after it happens; however, if you constantly carried negative thoughts when your sister or brother weren’t around, that’s a different story.

Our family and friends should bring out the “best” side of us. But if bad thoughts of your sibling outweigh the good and negatively affected your schoolwork or job performance, it’s likely you had a toxic sibling relationship.

6. Interactions are still forced

It’s not a good sign if you’re all grown-up and you still prefer to stay away during the holidays.

If you only run into them at family gatherings and have no desire to make plans with them any other time, it’s likely your relationship never outgrew a toxic stage.

Just because they are a family member doesn’t mean that it’s a relationship built on mutual love, respect and support for one another.

You are family by blood and that may be the only connection your relationship is thread together by.

It’s completely normal to want to know “why” the relationship was so toxic. But be empowered with the knowledge that you may never understand why.

“When you are living in constant anxiety never knowing or being able to predict how any engagement is going to turn out, it is time to love yourself enough to let go.”

~Genevieve Shaw Brown, ABCnews.Go.com