17 Adults Are Sharing The Family Habits They Didn't Realize Were Toxic Until They Grew Up
Unfortunately, when it comes to families, there's often a whole lot of emotional trauma you have to weed through to get to a healthy place.
Recently, we asked the BuzzFeed Community a question: What are some "normal" things your family did growing up that are actually toxic? Here are some of their responses:
1."My parents are wonderful and fully meant well, but they would compare me to their friends' kids. 'Billy' would always seem to hit these arbitrary milestones of childhood success, and I would always hear about it in a tone that practically screamed, 'He's doing it, why aren't you?' If anything, it just made me resent Billy and his successes."
2."We worshipped competition. They insisted we 'play through' the pain of any injury or we weren’t a real athlete, didn’t really care, or were embarrassing."
—Anonymous, 39, Tennessee
3."My mom would always make comments about how much I was eating, especially after sports even though I had burned a lot of calories during conditioning. She told me if I gained too much weight I wouldn’t be able to fit into my uniforms anymore and we didn’t have the money to buy new ones."
—Anonymous, 22, Minnesota
4."Transactional and conditional love. My mom would scream at us at the top of her lungs for an entire 30-minute drive for having to drive us to places like practice or camp. We regularly were told we were selfish and ungrateful because we didn’t dedicate all of our free time to helping her."
—Anonymous, 35, Pennsylvania
5."Forced to greet family members with hugs, even when I didn't want to. I was laughed at or pressured to when I tried to resist."
—AJ, 29, Massachusettes
6."My husband thought it was normal to be treated like a dog when he did something wrong. For example, if he held the fork the wrong way, he would be hissed at by his grandparents as if he were a dog. He only noticed it wasn't normal when they did it to me 18 years later!"
—Anonymous, Texas
7."The biggest issue is the amount of shit-talking my mother does. She cannot have a conversation without trash-talking someone. She still does it to this day, probably even worse now. It blew my mind that other parents didn’t shit talk EVERYONE and EVERYTHING."
—Anonymous, 35, Pennsylvania
8."Not talking things out. We didn’t talk about problems. I knew at a very young age to keep things to myself and that I couldn’t talk to anyone at home about it. I learned to not talk about important personal things and to keep to myself."
—Anonymous, United States
9."Share prescription medication. Lots of women trading pills at get-togethers..."
—Anonymous, 47
10."My sister and I got a lot of 'suck it up,' 'don’t be dramatic,' 'it’s not that bad,' and 'don’t make a big deal.' I understand why my mom did this — she was trying to raise emotionally resilient women. Unfortunately, I've realized what it actually did was cause me to be completely indifferent to my own feelings. After years of therapy, I’ve finally gotten far enough where I can recognize that my feelings matter. I feel bad for thinking about it still, though, because my mom had it ROUGH, and she did her best."
11."We got internet on the family computer when I was in junior high, and my mother proceeded to insist on monitoring everything I did, including reading every email and looking at every website I went to. I got yelled at for talking to a friend about HER going on birth control to help regulate her periods. We both were still virgins, with neither of us wanting to have sex any time soon — she was just worried about side effects and I was talking to her about those worries. I still got in trouble."
12."Humiliating us in front of our friends for laughs, telling us we were inconveniences, and more than once calling us names that a child should never be called. I confided this to friends when wine was flowing and we were all sharing traumas. They were horrified by the things I told them. I didn’t know any other childhood, and I’m so angry at my parents now. But don’t worry because according to my parents, 'that never happened.'"
—Anonymous, 30, US
13."Using money and objects to show 'love.' We had absolutely no physical contact or comfort."
14."Talk shit about each other. Jealousy was rampant and no one was ever really happy when others were doing well."
—Anonymous, 47
15."Screaming at each other until someone would finally cry. Then we’d act like nothing ever happened."
—Anonymous, 37, Virginia
16."If we went out for lunch it meant that we didn’t eat dinner. Or, basically, we could only have one BIG meal a day. My sister and I both realized this was toxic when we would say things like, 'Oh, are you sure if we have lunch, it won’t ruin dinner?' or I’d be asked, 'What are we eating for dinner?' by friends and partners and then say, “Oh well, we had a big lunch so I didn’t think we’d eat dinner.' It took a while to realize that was disordered eating by my parents (mostly my mom, who was sadly a victim of the toxic diet culture of the '90s and '00s)."
17."My parents divorced and my mom always bad-mouthed my father in front of me. She never called him 'dad.' It was always 'idiot' or 'asshole.' Granted, when I got older, I eventually went no-contact with him because he was toxic and we had a falling out. So while he did turn out to be a bad person that neither me nor my sister have any contact with now, I wish my mom hadn't said those things. While my dad wound up being an asshole, I did always appreciate that he never bad-mouthed my mom in front of me."
Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
