Your parents may have inadvertently implanted harmful thoughts in you that have caused many problems. It is important to recognize these attitudes and get rid of them.
Parents are not perfect. Their own childhood traumas and insecurities cause them to send you the wrong messages. Transactional analysis, a branch of psychotherapy, identifies 12 such attitudes.
I find this theory useful. There are 12 prohibitions that you can quickly review and see if they apply to you. You can also check if you are sending these messages to your children.
12 Toxic Parenting Instructions
1. Don’t be (don’t exist)
One of the most dangerous messages. Maybe your parents didn’t want to have a child (you). Maybe they felt your needs were too great.
There is a Facebook group called “I regret having children”* that is growing in number. These parents should be very careful when interacting with their children.
Comments like, “If it weren’t for you, I would have a career” or “I would have divorced your father” create a negative “don’t be” mentality. Many suicidal and depressed people follow this mentality.
2. Don’t be yourself
Maybe your parents wanted you to be more like them and less like them. Maybe they had different expectations about your appearance and your personality. Maybe they just wanted a child of the opposite gender.
3. Don’t be a child
This is the message that the first child usually receives. You were probably asked to take care of your siblings and be responsible for them, not to make other people’s mistakes and not to be stupid. If you follow this instruction, you probably feel the weight of the world on your shoulders.
4. Don’t grow
This prescription, on the contrary, is given to the youngest child in the family. It is created in the event that the relationship between the parents is not very strong : then they try to find meaning in constant care for the “child”. You remain immature, unbalanced or simply do not want to leave the parental nest.
5. Don’t think
When you, like all children, asked questions of your parents, they got irritated. And they also did not encourage you when you expressed an opinion different from theirs.
6. Don’t feel
When you were upset or cried, your parents felt uneasy. They got angry, withdrew, or tried to distract you. They said, “Big boys don’t cry,” or “Good girls don’t get angry.”
Do you get angry without crying? Do you get angry when you’re actually sad? You’ve probably learned to substitute one emotion for another to be accepted by your family.
7. Don’t do
“Don’t run,” “don’t climb high,” “don’t get dirty.” Your parents probably did everything for you. And they were too afraid for your safety. What’s the result? You always start, but you never finish. And you constantly fight for the right to make decisions, believing the world to be cruel and merciless.
8. Don’t be healthy/normal
Your parents remembered you only when you were sick. They rewarded you for your strange behavior. And you learned to attract attention from others while remaining unhealthy and unbalanced.
9. Don’t be important
You grew up absorbing statements like, “Children should be invisible and inaudible” and “Don’t chatter at the table.”
10. Don’t reach
Did your parents get angry when you beat them? Did they set unattainable standards so you couldn’t succeed? If so, they may have been unconsciously jealous and didn’t want you to surpass them.
11. Don’t be close
Your parents were awkward during intimate moments and did not show affection. So they taught you not to trust others and not to share your life with them.
12. Do not belong
Your parents were judgmental of your friends and any group you became part of. You may also have traveled a lot as a child.
So what now?
First, answer honestly, are you familiar with any of these prescriptions, but most importantly, do you follow them, do you rebel against them? As a child, you tried to cope with the situation by any means, made some decisions to survive. Now these strategies may not work.
The next step is to use this list to identify the beliefs that are currently limiting your life. Then try to replace these beliefs with more constructive ones. You can do this with the help of a therapist.