Toxic Parents

“Just Because You Didn’t Mean It Doesn’t Mean It Didn’t Hurt”

By now you may be thinking, “Wait a minute, Susan. Almost all the other books and experts say I can’t blame anybody else for my problems.”

Baloney. Your parents are accountable for what they did. Of course, you are responsible for your adult life, but that life was largely shaped by experiences over which you had no control.

Becoming a true adult is not a linear process. It will take you upward, downward, forward, backward, and inside out.

When you were young, like all children, you used your parents’ approval or disapproval as a gauge to determine whether you were good or bad. Because the approval of your toxic parents was so distorted, that gauge often required you to sacrifice your own version of reality in order to believe in something that didn’t seem right to you.

But when you clearly define and acknowledge your parents’ limitations, and the losses you suffered because of them, you open a door in your life for people who will love you the way you deserve to be loved—the real way.

Loving behavior doesn’t grind you down, keep you off balance, or create feelings of self-hatred. Love doesn’t hurt, it feels good. Loving behavior nourishes your emotional well-being. When someone is being loving to you, you feel accepted, cared for, valued, and respected. Genuine love creates feelings of warmth, pleasure, safety, stability, and inner peace.

came to understand love as something chaotic, dramatic, confusing, and often painful—something they had to give up their own dreams and desires for.

However, they continued to make excessive demands on her time and her life

The only way to win is to not play.

When you interrupt family patterns and break the cycle, you give a priceless gift to your children, and to their children, and to the children who will follow. You are molding the future.