So true. When I was a teen, my mother told me that when she rages at me, what she needs is a gentle touch to calm her down. I was supposed to soothe her. She's angry and telling me she wants to hit me, and I'm terrified that she will, but I'm supposed to calm her down by touching her? Absolutely not.
1 week ago | 189
it's scary when human say "i want to have baby so i can be loved" total red flag and most likely they'll be terrible parent
1 week ago | 137
They want us to be a big happy family without the work.
1 week ago | 113
And then they like to shift the blame for their own shortcomings onto the child...
1 week ago (edited) | 92
And regress. My parents would throw literal tantrums, screeching and bawling, acting like toddlers or mocking like bullies from kindergarten.
1 week ago | 68
I remember when my sisters and I were ages 6-9, we had baby chickens at school, and our teacher let us take them home for the weekend. My mother gave us ZERO supervision, so being little kids who didn't know what we were doing, we put the pen on the living room coffee table. Later, our mother noticed that water had spilled out of the bowl in the chicken pen, and spilled and left marks and a big outline of the bottom of the cage on the table. My mother proceeded to scream, cry, yell, blame us, swear, throw things. On Monday I told my teacher, and she said, "How horrible. If I'd known, I would never have let you take them home. Does your mother not know that she's an adult and was supposed to supervise you and perhaps put a large towel on the table?". Her words scared me, because it hit me that our mother was dangerously inadequate.
1 week ago | 54
Both parents. Toxic abuser and toxic enabler in a perfectionistic home. Beautiful couches you couldn't sit on, friends you didn't wanna bring over because your mother would pout all day from the mess. Dad could rage or tease as much as he wanted. These are effing children we're talking about being raised kids with more than enough time to look inward. I read something this morning substack and wrote down a line that hit me. Endless patience is not owed.
1 week ago | 56
I was that parent. Difficult to come to terms with and face my grown children, seeing the pain I caused.
1 week ago | 22
I'm in the middle of recovering and I am uncomfortable reading the immature parent side and the survivor recovering side and seeing myself going through both. I'm only recently seeing that I'm the responsible adult and also how immature my parents were. I don't like that this is where I'm at now, but grateful to be able to move out of it, unlike my parents who I don't know that they will ever get it unless I try to continue "parenting them" which I refuse to do anymore.
1 week ago | 4
Yep, I have the matched set; One parent is an emotional see saw with bonus random wind changes, the other one whose whole life is regulating their spouse, and making sure others do the same. Ie Training myself and my siblings to be fawning and codependent. Neither parent was emotionally present during our childhood, and often physically absent as well. They are elderly and unwell now, and expect love and support from the same children they neglected.
1 week ago | 7
My mother would often beat me in rage, with sticks or sometimes with slippers and tell me “you made me do this because you’re rotten.” I was terrified of her and i used to believe her
1 week ago | 2
Yes my dad is like this. We recently had an incident where he berated me and tried to control my self expression and guilt me which caused me to break off contact for a while. He has reverted to battering me with religious material instead of engaging with what i told him and making himself, as always, out to be the victim.
1 week ago
| 17
There is no more prime example of the inverted matrix than when a child takes care of a parent.
1 week ago | 4
Well the thing with my mom is it’s not necessarily always just the kids fault, she’ll place blame on anybody else except for herself. Which was almost always other members of the family. She loved starting fights and maintaining the feuds she created. She’s got a teenage girl that just wants attention mentality. #3 is my dad who would always joke about how “crazy” my mother was but again would never do anything about it even after she divorced him. She still had and continues to have control of him and his youngest children despite us all being adults now.
1 week ago
| 17
I also have siblings that want love with out making much of an effort. They need you to be there for them no matter how you yourself are struggling with their lack of accountability. Ugh!
1 week ago | 9
My parents were unable to love and care for me and my brother. My mom was a malignant narcissist. My parents should not have had children. Although I am thankful to be alive, I do not want any contact with my parents. But they got children almost immediately after they met and I do believe my mom wanted to have leverage so she could keep my father tied to her. I have thought about how many inappropriate parents there are and how much propaganda there is to have children. It is the norm. "It is natural". It is "unconditional love". In my experience, I can say for sure that these things are just words and I think that there are many types of love and people should be careful about glorifying parenthood - there are so many kids who have been abandonded by their "unconditionally loving parents". I really love that there are childfree movements that normalize not having children when people do not want to. People should think about their responsibility BEFORE pregnancy and understand the lifelong responsibility that comes with parenthood.
1 week ago | 1
Both my parents. My mom has told me many times that I used to be such an angry child. Yes, I was because she suppressed and forbid any healthy anger so that I ended up becoming a people-pleaser now healing myself. My dad is still playing the victim manipulating my sister and I into guilt. At least my mom has reflected a little more on herself and her behaviour and admitted that it must have been difficult for me as a child. There's still a lot of loss and grief and suppressed anger in me that I'm getting in touch with now and integrating so that my anxiety goes down. It might sound crazy, but my parents paved the way for my entering the relationship with a highly abusive man. I learned from it and am the mother and father to myself I never had as a child.
1 week ago (edited) | 5
Patrick Teahan
Immature parents want love, not work.
Many childhood trauma survivors were raised by highly immature parents with unresolved childhood trauma. An immature parent is confusing because they are an adult in charge of our lives with the emotional maturity of an eight-year-old. Unfortunately, survivors do not catch this problem in their parents, usually until adulthood.
The immature parent can often look like
1) Having a high deficit in parental responsibility.
(They don't know they are the adult in charge throughout their children's development and beyond.)
2) Poor handling of emotions. (They can be limited, basic, and avoidant of difficult conversations and issues, making them shut down, become victimized, or have low frustration tolerance).
3) Exhibit crazy-making behaviors. (They might be able to partially understand a boundary but revert to the old issue anyway.) For example, they can agree their partner is off or abusive but quickly give up any attempts or strategies to progress.
4) They believe it's all happening to them or around them, but never see themselves as having a part in things. "You know how hard things are for me!"
An emotionally mature parent understands their task of raising a child in emotional safety as best they can and engages the child in growing emotionally. With an immature parent, the role is reversed, with the child raising the adult through issues from job changes, romantic partnerships, and emotional soothing.
For the survivor working on themselves with an immature parent like this, there is a slow process of gradually seeing that the parent establishes a one-way street with their children. They demand love, care, and acceptance but will not work on themselves or the relationship in any way.
They will not take in your words, go to therapy, get sober, respect the boundary, or be consistent.
The survivor processing their trauma may need space and time to process being parentified and losing out on a safe home base outside the ongoing dynamic.
Do you have a parent who wants the love without the work?
1 week ago | [YT] | 2,798