Status Updates From Toxic Parents: Overcoming T...

> Becoming a true adult is not a linear process. It will take you
upward, downward, forward, backward, and inside out. Expect to
falter; expect to make mistakes. You will never be totally free of
anxiety, fear, guilt, and confusion. No one is. But these demons will
no longer control you. That is the key.

> Your response: “Just because you don’t remember doesn’t mean it
didn’t happen.”
> “You can keep trying to make this my fault, but I’m
not going to accept the responsibility for what you did to me when I
was a child.”
> “I appreciate your apology, but that’s just a
beginning. If you’re truly sorry, you’ll be available to me when I
need you and you’ll work through this with me to make a better
relationship.”

oh lord its the shitty confrontation part...confronting your parents is not gonna fix anything help it can just make things worse and it wont fix anything. also they'll probably deny it and itll go nowhere this is like. worse than useless advice

good few pages here to return to later

> You probably deal with your anger in one of several ways: you
may bury your anger and become sick or depressed; you may divert
your anger into suering and martyrdom; you may deaden it with
alcohol, drugs, food, or sex; or you may blow up at every
opportunity, letting your anger turn you into a tense, frustrated,
suspicious, belligerent person.

> When you repress your anger, you may become depressed or
abrasive and other people may reject you as surely as they would if
you were openly angry at them. Repressed anger is unpredictable—
it can explode at any time. When it does, it is often uncontrollable.
Anger is always destructive unless it is managed, especially if it has
been allowed to fester beneath your conscious awareness.

> The things we’re afraid will happen if we get angry are the
very things that have a good chance of happening if we don’t!

> Anger is an upsetting emotion. You may associate anger with abuse
from your childhood. You may associate anger with people you saw
out of control with rage. You may worry that you’ll seem ugly if you
get angry and that other people will reject you. You may believe
that good, loving people don’t get angry, or that you have no right
to get angry at the parents who gave you life.

When you repress your anger, you may become depressed or
abrasive and other people may reject you as surely as they would if
you were openly angry at them. Repressed anger is unpredictable—
it can explode at any time. When it does, it is often uncontrollable.
Anger is always destructive unless it is managed, especially if it has
been allowed to fester beneath your conscious awareness.

> The things we’re afraid will happen if we get angry are the
very things that have a good chance of happening if we don’t!

> In the beginning you may understand, on an intellectual level,
that it wasn’t your fault, but the little child inside you may still feel
responsible. It takes time for your feelings to catch up to your new
awareness. You may need to repeat this exercise several times.

more checklost better

> And as long as you’re blaming
yourself, you’ll suffer shame and self-hatred, and you’ll find ways to
punish yourself. [2/2]

> I wish you had a happy childhood, but I can’t change the past.
What I can do is help you make a major shift in your beliefs about
who is responsible for the pain of your childhood. This shift is
essential, because until you honestly assess who owns this
responsibility, you will almost certainly go through your life
shouldering the blame yourself. [1/2]

190 good page to return to about nondefensive responses/good responses to give

> When you
allow your emotional reactions to become automatic, you’re giving
up control, handing your feelings to someone else on a silver platter.
This gives other people enormous power over you. [2/2]

> When you’re reactive, you typically say things such as, “Every
time my mother tells me how to live my life, I go crazy”; “They
really know how to push my buttons, I always lose it with them”;
or, “I just have to hear my father’s voice and I see red.” [1/2]

180 also good i hate how many boxes i check off

177 page good one

> Toxic parents, especially the more abusive
ones, need to acknowledge what happened, take responsibility, and
show a willingness to make amends. If you unilaterally absolve
parents who continue to treat you badly, who deny much of your
reality and feelings, and who continue to project blame onto you,
you may seriously impede the emotional work you need to do

> The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this
absolution was really another form of denial: “If I forgive you, we
can pretend that what happened wasn’t so terrible.” I came to
realize that this aspect of forgiveness was actually preventing a lot
of people from getting on with their lives.

> In fact, it is not necessary to forgive your parents in order to
feel better about yourself and to change your life!
Yup

skimmed useless bits a bit, good stuff on this page (162) on how toxic parents react/cope

wip come back later

<-- or they do realize theyre in the wrong but dont bother to truly change and keep regressing because its "too hard" also in my case

> Toxic parents resist any external reality that challenges their
beliefs. Rather than change, they develop a distorted view of reality
to support the beliefs they already have. Unfortunately, children
lack the sophistication to discriminate between true reality and
distorted reality. As children of toxic parents grow up, they carry
their parents’ distorted beliefs unchallenged into their own adult
lives.

> A toxic parent’s beliefs about children, on the other hand, are
almost always self-centered and self-serving. They believe things
like, “children should respect their parents no matter what”; “there
are only two ways to do things, my way and the wrong way”; or,
“children should be seen but not heard.” These types of beliefs form
the soil from which toxic parental behavior grows.

> This system is not something that
your parents invented; it is the result of the accumulated feelings,
rules, interactions, and beliefs that have been handed down from
your ancestors.

> You can
change many of these early decisions, and with them your life
scenario, but you must first understand how much of what you feel,
how you live, and what you believe has been shaped by your family
system.

> If you had toxic parents, you
probably made decisions such as: “I can’t trust anybody”; “I’m not
worth caring about”; or, “I’ll never amount to anything.” Those
decisions were self-defeating and need to be changed. [2/2]