Did any of you grow up in a toxic or unstable home as a kid? How did you actually deal with it, or move past it?
Looking back, home wasn’t calm growing up. Constant fighting between my parents, things a kid shouldn’t really be exposed to. I don’t even fully know whose fault it is, honestly, and part of me hesitates to blame either of them completely, because I’ve also watched both of them work hard for me despite everything falling apart between them. That contradiction is confusing on its own, seeing people cause you pain and also genuinely try for you at the same time. I’ve started noticing it in myself now, more impatience than I think I should have, reacting harder to small things than the situation probably calls for. It’s like some of that environment got wired into me without me even realizing it until recently.
I’m not asking for sympathy, I’m asking because I know I’m not the only one who’s grown up like this, and I’d genuinely like to know how people actually worked through it, not just survived it, but actually became calmer, steadier versions of themselves afterward.
A few things I’m curious about:
Did you notice the effects on yourself right away, or did it take years to even recognize the pattern?
Was there a specific turning point, therapy, a relationship, distance from the situation, or was it more gradual than that?
Does it ever fully go away, or does it just become something you manage better over time?
Genuinely trying to understand this instead of just carrying it forward without realizing it. Appreciate any real experiences you’re willing to share.
[[[[Sometimes I catch myself wondering what it would’ve actually felt like to grow up in a genuinely happy, peaceful family. Hard to even imagine it sometimes, since it’s not something I ever really got to experience firsthand._]]]]
I don’t know.
Both of my parents were alcoholic at the time, and were young (23 and 24 when I was born). The worst problem was neglect. Both of them had to work, and I was a stereotypical gen-X latchkey kid. I’ve seen millennial kids and zoomer kids suffering from the same circumstances in which their parents are exhausted all the time and just don’t have the energy to parent.
There was also domestic violence. I’ve also been sexually abused as a kid by more than one relative. Those are factors.
But then I was a weird sad kid at seven and was seeing school psychologists even in early grade school. I wouldn’t be diagnosed with major depression until I was an adult.
And I wouldn’t be diagnosed ASD until I was around 50. An assessment in April of this year returned that I am spectrum AF. But the symptoms were there even as a child. It’s just no one recognized it for what it was.
Also, I’ve just been diagnosed with low testosterone, and considering symptoms I’ve experienced all my life, I’ve probably been low-T for my entire adulthood. One of the potential symptoms is: severe depression. But again, I was sad as a kid.
So yeah, I might have grown up more functional had I gotten the support I needed. I’m pretty bright, and might have been able to get a degree with the right accommodations. Curiously, I’m not the kind of bright that my Dad is (a literal rocket scientist who worked for NASA and did sophisticated space math), so I felt like a dunce as a child. There’s definitely potential there that might have been unlocked if I had an awesome home. But I was definitely a fixer-upper from the day I was born.