The more I've been thinking about things, the more I've been able to trace almost every major mental health issue I have back to my emotionally abusive parents.
To be fair, as far as emotional abuse goes they're on the lower end of the spectrum for the most part, but it was both of them and it was continuously for my entire life. So I'm still pretty messed up.
My social anxiety wrecked my social and romantic life, a lot of that comes from my lack of self-esteem and lack of feelings of competence and autonomy, mostly caused by my parents constant criticism, undermining and controlling of me.
My failure anxiety, which wrecked my academic and job life, a lot of that comes from the impossibly high standards they forced me to hold up, the emotional abuse after any time I didn't perform better than others in school (which was the first time ever I thought about CTB), also destroying my self-esteem and telling me I can't do anything, etc. Only showing me love when I lived up to their expectations, completely conditionally.
My depression comes from a combination of the effects of the above two things and my constant negative self talk. I constantly insult myself and criticize myself in my mind. I always minimize my own achievements and tear myself apart and guilt myself for any mistakes I make. Constantly tell myself I'm worthless and nobody will ever love me. Etc. And where does that come from? Well, because this is mostly how my parents have talked to me all of my life. My mother with constant little criticisms about everything (with yelling matches full of hurtful things or silent treatment sometimes) and my father with normal behaviour randomly exchanged with extreme explosions of anger and of putting me down and basically calling me worthless and shaming me in front of everyone as such.
I fail to set proper boundaries in romantic relationships a lot and put up with emotional abuse there too. Mostly because I never knew what a healthy relationship was or how to establish healthy boundaries because, again, I never had that with my parents as an example. So all kinds of emotional abuse and ignoring of boundaries have historically felt normal to me. My intense desire to be loved (because I never got unconditional love from my parents) probably also played a role in me staying with this person.
And then in general my extreme insecurity and anxiety about everything seemed to have partially helped ruin my previous relationship with someone I actually loved a lot and who treated me well. Also courtesy of my parents constantly telling me I'm no good if I made a single mistake therefore making me very hesitant to do things in case I may make a mistake and constantly causing me to guess what other people want. Oh, and being afraid of the extreme guilt of making any mistakes because of it too.
I can't know for sure, of course. But I feel like I can honestly say that I probably wouldn't be contemplating CTB today if I had had different parents. And my life probably wouldn't be the mess it is.
I've only come to these conclusions relatively recently because, honestly, until like 2022 I thought the way my parents always treated me was normal. And I was just some weird disappointment.
To be fair, as far as emotional abuse goes they're on the lower end of the spectrum for the most part, but it was both of them and it was continuously for my entire life. So I'm still pretty messed up.
My social anxiety wrecked my social and romantic life, a lot of that comes from my lack of self-esteem and lack of feelings of competence and autonomy, mostly caused by my parents constant criticism, undermining and controlling of me.
My failure anxiety, which wrecked my academic and job life, a lot of that comes from the impossibly high standards they forced me to hold up, the emotional abuse after any time I didn't perform better than others in school (which was the first time ever I thought about CTB), also destroying my self-esteem and telling me I can't do anything, etc. Only showing me love when I lived up to their expectations, completely conditionally.
My depression comes from a combination of the effects of the above two things and my constant negative self talk. I constantly insult myself and criticize myself in my mind. I always minimize my own achievements and tear myself apart and guilt myself for any mistakes I make. Constantly tell myself I'm worthless and nobody will ever love me. Etc. And where does that come from? Well, because this is mostly how my parents have talked to me all of my life. My mother with constant little criticisms about everything (with yelling matches full of hurtful things or silent treatment sometimes) and my father with normal behaviour randomly exchanged with extreme explosions of anger and of putting me down and basically calling me worthless and shaming me in front of everyone as such.
I fail to set proper boundaries in romantic relationships a lot and put up with emotional abuse there too. Mostly because I never knew what a healthy relationship was or how to establish healthy boundaries because, again, I never had that with my parents as an example. So all kinds of emotional abuse and ignoring of boundaries have historically felt normal to me. My intense desire to be loved (because I never got unconditional love from my parents) probably also played a role in me staying with this person.
And then in general my extreme insecurity and anxiety about everything seemed to have partially helped ruin my previous relationship with someone I actually loved a lot and who treated me well. Also courtesy of my parents constantly telling me I'm no good if I made a single mistake therefore making me very hesitant to do things in case I may make a mistake and constantly causing me to guess what other people want. Oh, and being afraid of the extreme guilt of making any mistakes because of it too.
I can't know for sure, of course. But I feel like I can honestly say that I probably wouldn't be contemplating CTB today if I had had different parents. And my life probably wouldn't be the mess it is.
I've only come to these conclusions relatively recently because, honestly, until like 2022 I thought the way my parents always treated me was normal. And I was just some weird disappointment.
