What makes one's family toxic is usually aggressive denial or minimization of problems, abuse, and dysfunction.
The hills they will die on are actually choices they make between their relationship with their children and how they look to the outside when it comes to their part.
"I never said that."
"That never happened."
"We remember it differently, I guess."
"You were fine; we were a normal family,
what is your problem?"
"You've always been the problem, and mom
was right about you from the get-go."
"I'm happy to lose a sister who just wants
to trash-talk her family and tell everyone
the family business."
"So what if I hit you?...you were rotten."
And the damage comes from how easily and quickly they take their high ground.
In our healing journeys, we have to ask what is at stake for them and what are they choosing.
While it would be hard for anyone to hear and process abuse they are responsible for, no one is going to die if they acknowledge, ask about, or admit failings.
What would it mean to the survivor if they heard:
"I've been hiding from that, and I'm proud of you for bringing it up."
"I wasn't in my right mind, and I know you suffered because of my choices."
"I want to hear more and not be defensive and make this about me."
Those would be coming from someone valuing a relationship with their children over the shame and reality of their parenting.
It's a choice, and while the healthy examples seem idealistic, they do happen in families that recognize they could lose us.
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When we are going no contact or ending a relationship, the feelings are huge. It may be the hardest thing you'll ever do.
But there is a tendency for us as survivors to need the person that we are leaving to understand and sign off on it - so we are in the clear and that maybe…they should feel bad.
I think that's our inner child not wanting to be the baddie, but also we have magical thinking that the family or the abusive
person is going to say,
"Ok... I know my behavior is tough, and maybe this is a teaching moment for me."
I've never had a client hear that.
But our inner child will believe they are capable of that...that they are choosing to be abusive as opposed to it being about their personhood. Our inner child needs them to be capable to excuse us of our guilt and shame for being mean.
That there is a sane, rational person in there who can get it if we say it right. Our expectations of them are off and too generous.
Saying it right doesn't exist with people who are 100% dedicated to never being wrong -especially with you.
You don't need them to get it to leave, and leaving is your truth, not theirs.
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This is true for everyone - our families, that difficult partner or friend, and ourselves. As adults in our present lives, we are often highly reactive and can engage in any of the following examples of triggered trauma patterns:
-Impulsively clean from a place of anxiety and get upset with those around us -feeling unsupported and possibly martyred.
-Pick fights with partners when something else is going on or bothering us -feeling justified in the mess that unfolds for not wanting to lose validity.
-Have big reactions at work where we have a reputation of being high energy or difficult and feel singled out and self-righteous.
-Not bring things up from a place of fear and codependency, and then it bursts confusing you and those around you.
-Make big expressions socially and over share & go to shame after.
What is the charge of energy behind being overly vocal at work (even if you're right)? What is the charge of energy feeling an impulse to clean and then feeling taken advantage of? What is the energy or charge behind needing to point out a fault in your partner because you have to say it, and it comes out of nowhere? If you feel overly called out, I've done all these. You're in good company.
So why?
Childhood trauma survivors often grow up in a vacuum, where we don't have any impact on affecting our family of origin. As much as you try to be good, freak out, or tell the truth nothing happens, nothing changes. Many trauma survivors feel they need to go big in order to be heard, which creates tension and mess for them - especially in intimacy. You may actually be surprised that people respond/react to you being triggered.
So, what to do?
Explore your upset. Write about it. What does the situation take you back to? How do you want to be in this moment. It takes work to know that your rage cleaning because your inner child is back there feeling disconnected and unsafe, and it was a good coping strategy to engage in, but it takes you away from being present and makes you hard to deal with.
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NEW VIDEO AVAILABLE
Hello! The second video in a series about Toxic Parents and their impact on sons and daughters is now available.
In this video I give a case study via exploring the types of toxic mothers and their impact on sons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btgRM...
In today's new video, I explore in-depth how emotionally immature or abusive mothers impact their sons long into adulthood.
Key Highlights:
Meet Joe – a case study of a man raised by a narcissistic, emotionally volatile mother and distant father. Learn how this shaped his adult relationships, self-worth, and masculinity.
The Masculine Gray Area – why some boys abandon traditional masculinity without feeling safe to embrace anything else.
Toxic Mother Types Explained – from the Monster to the Crazy Maker, this video outlines 5 toxic mother archetypes and their distinct psychological impacts.
Lasting Effects on Sons:
People-pleasing and fear of upsetting women
Shame around masculinity, sexuality, and emotional expression
Replicated dynamics in adult relationships (surrogate spouse role, rescuing behavior, emotional inauthenticity)
What You'll Learn:
Why sons of toxic mothers may feel like they’re “always in trouble” with women
How cultural messages about masculinity amplify trauma from childhood
How some sons of toxic mother learn to not take their emotions or connection seriously
Why “nice guys” aren’t truly at peace, and how to reclaim authentic masculinity
Who This Video Is For:
Men navigating complicated relationships with their mothers or partners
Partners of men who seem emotionally distant, avoidant, or overly pleasing
Anyone curious about the impact of emotionally immature parenting on boys and masculinity
*Journal Prompts available in the video description.
I hope it is helpful to you.
Patrick
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For those with childhood trauma, their past is living within them and usually, they want nothing to do with it, but there it is.
Survivors don't spend time dwelling on or living in abuse. Ironically, we put a lot of energy, if not all, into suppressing and forgetting as best we can.
It should be thought of more like the abuse won't let the survivor go, rather than the survivor making a big decision to move on from it.
That phrase or idea doesn't work. And survivors don't long for body memories, flashbacks or breakdowns at work. They're just trying to get through their week.
Until our past is witnessed, shared, processed and healed, which takes time, money and energy, it will manifest in most of our daily lives. It will pop up in everything, from our thoughts about ourselves in the morning, to how we engage with others.
The phrase "You're living in the past." implies choice to which the survivor didn't have in childhood and doesn't have in the present. It also dismisses horrifying things that children go through and then are later blamed for. It's a very shaming phrase, usually said while the survivor is trying to process.
Snapping fingers or clicking our heels and telling ourselves that we dismiss or forgive what our family systems did, and we'll be different from now on and stop being affected by the emotional, physical and sexual abuse is bullshit.
They would have done so if it worked like that.
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For childhood trauma survivors, we often can be wired for extremes in many things, including conflict. This is true, especially before we do any work on ourselves. We were set up to not know how to do conflict and intimacy.
Some of us have inner children that can't tolerate being wrong, so we argue, defend, get the last word, get nasty or superior. This is aggressive.
Some of us have inner children that take in all the responsibility of conflict and never defend ourselves because it's probably us. Even if we are right, we'll still take blame. This is sneaky.
Both are strategies from growing up in abuse that are rooted in shame.
It's interesting how shame causes various defensive behaviors, as one would only think of it as the constant "I'm bad and always wrong" response to life but shame is just about trying NOT to be seen a certain way.
I wonder if "always wrongs" are just trying to not be like the "never wrongs" that they were abused by, and the reverse can be true as well.
In conflict - always and never - isn't real. It's not human. It's a mess to be doing intimacy with either strategy, and also immature and ineffective.
Healing these conflict strategies involve being willing to be more vulnerable to not go there always or never, and working with our inner child to become more secure.
Here are healing goals for both strategies:
(Never) Realize that you're not in danger if you're wrong or having a part (you probably do just by having this thing going on), and recognizing the damage you do in your relationships (disconnection and difficulty). What's so threatening about being the problem? (Shame)
(Always) Realize that you're not in danger if you push back because owning everything is a way to sabotage intimacy because you're forcing the issues away. What's so threatening to you if you seem a little unlikable in the moment? (Shame)
Working on these will be messy and not graceful, but practice anyway.
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When we grow up in childhood trauma, we get through it via magical thinking, hope, and not thinking about a perpetrator's behavior.
This crucial survival strategy keeps a child going through the impossible, such as having a narcissistic parent.
That strategy was a dream that the abusive person would change and see us, and thinking that things getting safer was just around the corner.
As adults, we are often still stuck in similar hopeful thinking, which was a setup from childhood.
It takes a lot of re-parenting work for our inner adult to take over and make decisions on behalf of the inner child, who survived by thinking of the potential versus the reality. So it's a battle.
But it is very healing for our inner child to see the inner adult take a big risk and get out of something for their benefit.
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When a child is growing up in childhood trauma, they will quickly learn to hide things. Young children are already conditioned to know that talking about things going on in their world will make them worse. This is especially true at home, which is where we learn to hide.
When we are being bullied by another child, bringing it up with a parent usually brings indifference, criticism and a big reaction. It's better to hide it. (problems)
When we have an abusive adult at home, we don't bring it up at school for not wanting to bring on more trouble. We are often specifically told to not talk about what happens at home, or an outside perpetrator will make the same threat. It's better to hide it. (abusers)
When we don't have our homework done because of domestic violence in our home the night before, we try to hide or lie about why we don't have it completed. We're too preoccupied to know to ask for help around homework, so we do our best and present we don't need it. (needing help)
As adults, we can find ourselves still hiding.
Some examples:
*not telling a close friend about our abusive partner
*not asking for help from HR about a stalking coworker
*not wanting people to find out about our coping strategies
*not wanting to have partners meet our family, so we make excuses
*not asking for needs with roommates or work, so we pretend they
are not issues for us when they are
Our inner adult can recognize that we have some power in our adulthood that we never had growing up. Sometimes that power is just telling the truth
about what's going on for us to fight through the urge to not make waves and create more trouble for ourselves.
You're not in trouble like you used to be.
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If you know, you know.
The range in the relationship with the narcissist is minimal. It is either on or off. You give attention and praise, or you're the enemy. This was my experience with my father.
But what causes our enemy status as children is a setup. An adult couldn't handle that impossible tightrope walking with a narcissist. It's exhausting for a healthy adult. For a child, it is a nightmare and overwhelming.
But as children, who developmentally think in black and white, they have to buy into the "we're ok, we're not ok" cycle with the narcissistic parent. We don't have the abstract thought skills to recognize the patterns of never being good enough.
We needed help to see that the pattern is a game being played by someone who is mentally unwell. As adults now, reality isn't about our childlike optimistic view that the parent will be happy if we finally get it together and stop making mistakes.
As we heal, we excuse ourselves from that dumb game with narcissistic people. As we mature, we get disgusted with a narcissistic parent’s audacity and oppression. This disgust is a good thing. It means you have some power now.
The work though involves healing our tendency to live in a switch-like relationship with people in our present. We might project onto our partner that they are secretly mad and the blow-up will come soon. That's the thing to heal. Remove the game player parent from our present and not chase ok while being vigilant about when not ok is coming.
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When I left home at 18, it was a painful, rupturing mess. Due to parental alcoholism and abuse, my little remaining nuclear family imploded and fragmented.
I understand now that this terrible period in my life was a blessing. So many childhood trauma survivors spend years emotionally preparing themselves to leave the system, and it's the hardest decision they will ever make. During that messy, horrific summer, a toxic parent helped decide for me due to their behavior.
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While that was painful, and I felt like an exiled orphan, it was the beginning of my recovery, for which I'm forever grateful. ⠀
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I moved from the suburbs to the city, where there were more recovery resources. I worked in restaurants with these crazy intimate friendships in which healthy people practicing recovery put their hand out to me. I started therapy at 19 and got sober at 22.
Strangers showed up for me, not family. ⠀
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Along the way, there was sometimes extended family and nuclear family that had the dismissive mantra..."But she's your mom...you have to think about what she goes through and reach out to her and support her." Extended family judged. ⠀
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I was shamed for not helping my abusive alcoholic mother. And thankfully, I was now in a community with others struggling with similar messages. ⠀
It's incredibly difficult to heal within the system that abused you. I wish this weren't true, but this is my experience. Even just getting out will change one's life and recovery to come later. If this isn't possible for you now, keep it in your mind's eye as a goal.
You never know what's on the other side when you're living in peace and away from toxicity.
Have you left the system? If so, what happened?
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Welcome!
I provide education on childhood trauma, conduct research, and advocate for healing from childhood trauma.
**PLEASE READ** My videos are for educational purposes only. Information provided on this channel is not intended to be a substitute for in-person professional medical advice. It is not intended to replace the services of a therapist, physician, or other qualified professional, nor does it constitute a therapist-client physician or quasi-physician relationship. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, please call a local emergency telephone number or go to the nearest emergency room immediately.
Learn more about Patrick Teahan, at linktr.ee/patrickteahan