Parents only want the best for their kids.

Does that resonate with you?

If you grew up in a home where there is narcissistic abuse and you try to share it with people, you probably hear them say that.

They can’t imagine the idea of abusive parents if they have a loving childhood. People are talking from their perspective, and it’s easy to get upset when you hear rhetoric like that.

This was something I struggled with when I was working through narcissistic abuse recovery and childhood trauma.

Codependency recovery is not always easy so let’s talk about how to deal with toxic codependency in the family.

You can’t deny what you’ve been through

There’s this idea that parents are always right and kids have to maintain a relationship with them. I say it because I would hear a lot of that and I would second guess myself like, “Oh my God, maybe I’m making a big deal out of everything I’ve been through. Maybe I had it all wrong.”

But the truth is, you can’t deny what you feel and what you’ve been through. So I wanted to bring light to that to have us move away from the shame that I’m a bad kid or I’m a bad child.

I do believe that parents are doing the best they can with what they know. So it can be tough if our parents went through significant trauma and we end up being on the receiving end of whatever it is they didn’t work through.

I think both exist at the same time in a sense that they didn’t have the tools. And then as a result, we didn’t experience the love we needed or the type of validation we needed. That experience is difficult to endure and completely valid.

Family doesn’t have to be family of origin

Here’s the thing with family. Family doesn’t have to be the family that you grew up with. It could be your friends. It could be the family that you create on your own, like with your partner. It could be the people you’ve chosen to lean on. 

So this idea that just by virtue of being born into a family, there is a type of blind loyalty that has to happen; that you have to be blindly loyal to the people around you no matter how much they violate your boundaries or anything like that. That’s harmful to yourself. 

It’s so important for us to respect ourselves, and it doesn’t have to be this thing of us being spiteful towards our parents. I’m not advocating for that. I do advocate, however, that whatever you feel with your parents, feel it. And I think that we can make a decision for ourselves that goes like “I’m going to have these types of boundaries with my parents and not feel bad about myself for it.”

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The Codependency Chronicles: How to Deal With Toxic Family Codependency – The Bottomline

Toxic family codependency makes us second guess ourselves. And so it prevents us from really making decisions that are supportive of our own needs and desires. Not all of us had that amazing childhood, and it’s important to note that no parent is perfect. And perhaps the most important thing is you’re not alone. Whatever you feel is real. So I want to let you know that you’re not in this by yourself and you deserve to love and be loved.

Thank you sooo much for reading!

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See you back here for the next one! 

xx Beatrice