Beyond 'They Did Their Best’
How to recognize toxic parenting when everyone says it wasn't that bad
A Note Before You Read
This article is not an attack on parents. It’s about bringing visibility to patterns that create difficulties in our adult lives and relationships.
Throughout this article, I’ll use examples from my own childhood. These aren’t shared for sympathy, but to help you recognize similar patterns. What felt normal to me for decades turned out to be deeply damaging.
If you recognize yourself in these descriptions, know that recognition is not weakness. It’s the beginning of understanding.
“You were such a disappointment when you were born. I always wanted a daughter. Look at the pink blanket I bought back then because I was sure you would be a girl.”
My mother told me this with a smile when I was around six years old. Not just once. I heard it many times throughout my childhood.
Today, I’m almost 40 years old, and those sentences are still in my mind. Instead of fading, they grew into an underlying feeling of being wrong and unwelcome, regardless of whether I’m at work, in a relationship, or with friends.
When I confronted my mother in my 30s, she said she never said that. She told me I made it up and asked why I was so ungrateful anyway.
The Problem With Criticizing Parents
Parents wear a shield that society gives them. They are often idealized, and questioning them means questioning everything you believed about your childhood.
“They just did their best,” they told me.
“Don’t blame your parents for your problems!”
“Take responsibility, David!”
That protection creates a problem. The pain builds inside you, waiting for release. The anger, disappointment, loneliness, destroyed self-worth.
And when it finally comes out, you usually aim at the wrong people. Unconsciously.
You scream at your wife. Your kid. Your coworkers. You don’t realize that this anger arises because your manipulative mother always criticized you or because your drunk father terrorized your family for years.
What Are Toxic Parents?
Toxic parents are parents whose repeated behaviors harm a child’s emotional, psychological, or relational development. This harm is often unintentional and can coexist with love and good intentions. That’s exactly why it’s so hard to recognize.
Toxic parenting is not about occasional mistakes. It’s about consistent patterns that undermine a child’s sense of safety, self-worth, or autonomy.
The problem: Everything we learn at home becomes universal truth. Children always believe that when something happens in the family, it’s their fault.
The symptoms: Damaged self-esteem, suppressed anger, constant guilt, feeling worthless, unlovable, inadequate.
Important to mention: The cause of these behaviors is usually dissatisfaction with their own lives. They have unsolved problems, and the children become victims of how they deal with those problems.
Why You Can’t See It
You often don’t recognize the problem because either your parents or you live in denial.
They just did their best, right? How could they be the cause of your problems?
Most people start looking for solutions elsewhere: drinking, drugs, excessive behaviors. They believe something is wrong with them, which I did for a long time.
Children always blame themselves. They internalize the dysfunction as proof that they’re wrong, not that the situation is wrong.
Quick favor: If this resonates with you, I’d be grateful if you subscribed to Running Home. I share more stories like this about growth, awareness, and the messy journey back to yourself. It’s free, and it helps me keep writing honestly. Thank you. — David
The Patterns
There were many recurring patterns in my childhood, but I’ll focus on the three most damaging: control, manipulation, and an alcoholic parent.
The Controller
My mother tried to control everything. She read my teenage love letters behind my back. She knew who I partied with and investigated my brother’s girlfriends, criticizing his relationships until they broke up.
When my brother started working, she took all his money, saying she’d save it for him. When he bought new clothes instead, she withdrew love as punishment.
I learned that I always have to pay the price for anything. Asking for help? That’s a problem. Gaining control? I pay with guilt and frustration. Having my own opinion means losing love, so it’s better to nod at anything.
Lasting damages:
Overdeveloped sense of responsibility
Your emotions become unimportant
Difficulty making decisions
Constant guilt
Choosing controlling partners later
The Manipulator/Martyr
I remember my mother screaming that she would go to the basement to hang herself. I tried to stop her while crying.
When I moved to Hamburg and told my parents I felt great and happy, they called me. My mother wore a big scarf, coughing, and said, “Good for you. I’ll die at work here.” She always wanted to take my joy away.
When I asked for money to go out with friends, I had to listen for an hour about how she’d die at work, how miserable her life was. Then she’d throw her purse on the table and say I could take what I wanted because she might not be living tomorrow anyway.
This was a usual start to going out with friends.
I felt tremendous guilt my entire life until I turned 32 or 33. I was the emotional caretaker of my mother throughout childhood. I felt responsible for her well-being so she didn’t take her life.
I learned that experiencing joy upset her, and I didn’t want to hurt her.
In all my romantic relationships, I put myself aside. All my emotions, wishes, and needs became secondary. I also became the victim because that was the instrument I learned from my mother.
Lasting damages:
Feeling responsible for others’ emotions
Difficulty saying no
Constant guilt for living your own life
Putting others’ needs first always
Choosing needy partners
The Alcoholic Parent
I never had a birthday party because it was never possible to bring friends home. My father could come home anytime, and I had to be prepared. He was jealous, loud, physical. He burned my mother’s clothes, destroyed plates, and attacked her verbally and physically.
That’s why I don’t celebrate my birthday as an adult. I have no idea how to. Not celebrating is normal for me.
From age five to fifteen, I lived in a terror house, standing on the frontline trying to protect my mother.
I had to develop the skill of pretending. I lied at school that I had a good life at home, that my father didn’t drink, that we did vacations every year. Everything was a lie.
Once I climbed a tree in our garden and told my parents I wouldn’t come down until they got divorced. I was seven.
I learned early that alcohol is an accepted way to numb feelings, and it was part of my life until I turned 37.
Lasting damages:
High tolerance for accepting bad things
Choosing alcoholic or unstable partners (it’s familiar)
Need to control everything
Difficulty trusting people
Terrified of closeness
Developing insecurities from constant lying
The Symptoms You Carry
It took time, effort, and money to notice and work through the symptoms I carried.
What toxic parenting created in me and might have created in you:
Damaged self-esteem
Constant guilt
Feeling worthless, unlovable, inadequate
Anger transferred to others
Overdeveloped responsibility for others, underdeveloped care for yourself
Belief that your emotions don’t matter
Codependency
Becoming invisible
Fear of not being needed
Choosing partners who replicate the dysfunction
If you experience several of these, it might be worth taking a closer look, even if it’s painful.
What You Can Do Now
If you saw yourself in these patterns, you’re not broken. You were broken into by people who should have protected you.
You are not responsible for what was done to you. But you are responsible for taking steps to heal.
That might mean:
Therapy to process what happened
Setting boundaries
Learning that your needs matter
Unlearning the guilt
Breaking the patterns before you pass them on
For me, it took 35 years to get rid of almost all the negative effects, but I’ll never be completely damage-free. There are things like hypervigilance I’ve learned to live with.
For now, know this: Seeing it clearly is the hardest part. And you just did that.
Thanks for sticking with me through this one. If you’re going through something similar, or have your own experience with this, drop a comment. I read every one. — David
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