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March 7 - October 9, 2023
The dream common to all children is to have two parents who love them, who will be there to witness their most amazing accomplishments, to celebrate with them, and support them when they are down or when they have failed in one way or another.
Our toxic family members are experts at concealing their abusive behaviors just slightly under public radar so that when we complain about the hurt they have made us feel, our complaints fall on deaf ears.
Toxic, in fact, is an internal state—the condition of a person’s true character, mind-set, and will. And it can only be witnessed through the consistency and persistency of manipulative behavior.
People with pathological personalities, on the other hand, respond more like regressed, stubborn, vengeful bullies. They are never wrong. They are above apologies. They never question if they could have or should have done anything differently. And everything in their lives is an embellished drama of how they have been victimized by others.
Toxic people cannot fathom that other people have needs of their own.
Their behavior and expectations are absolutely mind-boggling. Before we know it, we are left exasperated, exhausted, defeated, and frustrated beyond belief, with no hope that anything about who we are or will ever be will ever be enough.
if we are not the problem and the real problem actually is our toxic family members, then we have no shot at changing the dynamic.
Our toxic family members don’t love. They don’t hate either. These emotions are too deep and too genuine and require too much authenticity, time, depth, energy, and commitment for toxic people.
a symptom of toxic parenting. Danu Morrigan clarifies that being the scapegoat can actually be a sort of gift. The role actually helps the child much more in the long term than does the role of the golden child. The scapegoat is far more likely to question the family dynamics, to see how poisonous they are, to seek answers and help, and to eventually escape from the toxic family web. The golden child, however, hardly ever escapes. The golden child lives life completely enmeshed with his toxic parents doing all he can to secure their attention and keeping his role in making the family look
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Here is what I have learned and what I teach daily in my office. Being genetically related to our toxic family members doesn’t make us family. The real definition of family refers to constructs much deeper than bloodline or DNA. Family is about love, sacrifice, honesty, protection, support, unconditional love, reciprocity, acceptance, security, respect, protection, loyalty, and safety. It is not about cruelty, gang-up warfare, triangulation, manipulation, abandonment, lying, criticism, selfishness, betrayal, or gossip. When a family is full of these negative qualities, it is a family in name
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Like all toxic people, a toxic mother’s greatest flaw lies in her belief that everything revolves around her.
A toxic mother talks but never listens, and she gives advice but never takes any. And we have to deal with all of this because she’s our mother.
anytime we tell her we’ve done something great, she counters it with something our sibling did or what a friend’s child did or something she did that was better.
She delivers her barbs in an indirect way. For example, she’ll complain about how “no one” loves her, does anything for her, or cares about her, or she’ll complain that “everyone” is so selfish when we’re the only person in the room.
Because toxic mothers are so selfish, one of their nearly universal characteristics is that they are incredibly bad gift-givers. They don’t know us or anyone else well enough to give us what we want or need, and they don’t want to give us anything as nice or nicer than anything they have.
The fear of her tantrum just isn’t worth challenging her in any way.
If a toxic mother is angry or upset, she expects the world to stop and for everyone to come to her rescue. The older we get, the more our toxic mother directly places responsibility for her welfare and her emotions on us, weeping on our shoulder and unloading on us anytime something goes awry for her.
An absence of empathy is the defining trait of having a personality disorder.
The end result of being raised underneath a toxic mother is that almost all communication involves a third person. She is in the middle of the web, and she acutely and sensitively monitors all the children over whom she can maintain her self-centered role in the family. She then passes her patterns of abuse onto the others, creating the resentments that prevent them from communicating directly and freely with each other. The result is that the only communication between the children is through the toxic mother, exactly the way she wants it, even though she complains that she’s so sad her
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To get close to our father, we often turn his interests into ours as a way to perform our way into his heart.
We often had fun watching our father bask in the spotlight, but each time we tried to engage with him while he was “on stage,” he’d push us to the side. He just didn’t have the time for us that we so wished he did. He put over his family anyone he could charm.
Toxic fathers are unable to experience empathy. They completely disregard how we and others feel. Of course, our toxic father was completely in touch and sensitive to what he felt, but the feelings of his children were of no interest to him.
Toxic fathers view their children’s love for them as automatic—something they deserve for just being fathers. They never consider that they might need to work for or nurture their children’s love.
I treat two brothers who cannot stand seeing their father. Both boys forego spending any of their custodial time with him. For this, their father falsely blames their mother. This man would yell at the boys and degrade and embarrass them while they were actively playing in their sports. If my patients didn’t follow his rules perfectly, perform perfectly, or respond to him perfectly, he created an all-out war against them. Both boys describe him as out of control, controlling, emotionally abusive, clingy, immature, and embarrassing.
Toxic fathers care deeply about how others perceive them. They need us to look great to their friends, family members, and colleagues. We are only important to them if they can brag about us and take credit for being the father who raised such great kids.
Toxic fathers give in order to get. They need to feel superior. They need to feel as if everyone is inferior to them and that they have the power, with their money, to control and dictate to everyone around them. This is called financial abuse.
Parents represent the justice system to their children.
However, with my daughter I see myself as playing two roles. One role is “mom.” When I am in the mom role, it is the more relaxed, playful, and joking part of our relationship where we can be friendly, lighthearted, and goofy. This role has many of the loving elements of friendship. The other role I play is “mother.” In the mother role, I am her leader, healer, mentor, disciplinarian, listener, nurturer, and solution-finder. The mother role is always present, even when I am in the mom role. My daughter, no matter how playful and goofy we are together, knows I am the governor of our dynamic
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My therapist helped me recognize that I was repeating in this relationship the toxic dynamic I grew up in with my family. This man’s daughter was the golden child, my ex represented my toxic parents, and once again I was the scapegoat, the whistle-blower.
of this is not about me feeling like a victim. It’s about coming to understand the patterns I’ve repeated, resulting from being raised in a toxic family. I have used each painful relationship experience as a master teacher specifically designed for my healing. The only person I can save is myself. I am committed to diving deeply into examining why I do the things I do so I can stop repeating the same mistakes over and over again.
I am thankful to be a person who is unafraid to do whatever it takes to live and create a life of peace, healing, and happiness.
When we are raised in toxic families, we often go through a time period, and for some of us, a lifetime, of repeating the toxic patterns we were raised in with other people in our lives. We do this until we decide we’ve had enough pain and choose to genuinely examine our patterns and stop the craziness for good.
Healthy parents do not view their children as things, slaves, or psychological mirrors. Healthy parents view their children as growing and developing precious human beings.
Either way we look at it, the golden child has to make sure the scapegoat stays in the scapegoated position.
When our parents genuinely love us, their words are well-meaning, they tell the truth, and they strive to protect us.
disagreement, closure is the one thing our toxic family members will never give us, at least not intentionally. To toxic people, giving us closure is the same as admitting wrong, and this is not something they will ever do.
I have come to believe that toxic parents never wanted adult children. Instead they wanted dependent infants.
Situational anxiety that comes from our toxic family members goes to the core of our self-esteem and our sense of personal value, which morphs into a lack of self-trust and a deep fear of people. With organic anxiety, it doesn’t always have such a specific focus; rather, the anxiety seems to come on out of nowhere and that is what a person becomes the most afraid of—of not being able to control their anxiety.
In a child’s logic, our parents are flawless, so if they don’t love us, there must be a defect in us, not in them.
I know the truth about my family and have accepted it.
They create rules for us that they do not follow or subscribe to.
You belong among the wildflowers You belong in a boat out at sea You belong with your love on your arm You belong somewhere you feel free —“Wildflowers,” by Tom Petty20
When our toxic family members feel the gray area between us, what they usually do is cut ties with us.
we go no contact because we absolutely feel that we have to, but after some time of being in that no-contact condition, we find that we remain in it because we want to.
I am sad that they are who they are toward me as they all seem to fit just fine with each other.
I have come to see that my toxic family members are just people. They are not powers. If I were not related to them by blood, I would never choose any of them for friends, and they would not choose me. In fact, they have never chosen me. They are just people, and they are not my people.
They don’t want to see us doing well or being good people. It is the good that we naturally hold within us they seek to kill.
I look at the smear campaign as the greatest way for us to weed out the true loves from the false or weak loves in our lives. And that turns out to be one of the best gifts we can ever give ourselves.
According to Sister Renee Pittelli, author of The Christian’s Guide to No Contact, the Bible never tells us we must always forgive unrepentant people.
The Bible clearly tells us that evil people—those who have hardened themselves to that which is good—do not change, not because they can’t but because they won’t.32
