How to Deal with Toxic Parents

Toxicity is always hard to accept. It’s easier to cut off any toxic person from your life. But what if it’s your parents? No matter how rough the bonding is, it’s difficult to just cut off the bond immediately. We understand your pain and that’s why we are here with ten best techniques on how to deal with toxic parents.

We have discussed how you can survive in a dreadful environment. You must take care of yourself even if your parents let you down several times. Ensure your financial freedom and find a supporting friend with whom you can share your feelings. Avoid holding guilt inside because you know it’s not your fault. Most importantly, don’t normalize toxic behaviors towards you. Instead, you must turn around and work for your future. 

How to Deal with Toxic Parents: Ensure Self-dependency

The first step you would necessarily need while dealing with toxic parents is to become a self-sufficient person. Usually, toxic parents use money as their weapon for controlling children. It increases the vulnerability of the child and as such the child gradually loses its self-esteem. That’s why, it’s necessary to plan financial freedom to loosen the parent’s control. 

It might take you much time to become fully independent. However, you can start planning to achieve your goals. The earlier, the better. Try taking a local part time job according to your expertise. Save some money every month. Work harder until you can finally take preparations of moving out. We know it’s difficult but trust us, it’s a lot better than living in a hell for the rest of your life. 

How to Deal with Toxic Parents: Stop Pleasing Your Parents Every Time

Along with preparing yourself for becoming an independent person, you must also focus on your behavior towards your parents. We definitely love when someone praises us. Selfless love is so pure that we can’t deny it. However, it’s different in case of toxic parents. These parents don’t actually care how hard their children are trying to be a good person. They are never pleased with any action. So, what’s the solution?

Simply, stop trying pleasing them! You shouldn’t lose your self-worth to people who don’t value you as a person. After all, it’s your life and you have the full right to make your decisions. Pleasing toxic parents can lead you to be unhappy. Don’t let them determine your personality. Instead, you should work on yourself to be a better person even though you don’t get your toxic parent’s approval.  

How to Deal with Toxic Parents Find Ways to Express Emotions

Whether you are in a toxic household or not, it’s important for everyone to let things out of your mind. We tend to suppress our emotions a lot fearing of getting judged. However, it is necessary to create some space for letting out all those emotions. Moreover, when you are in a family that is constantly hurting you physically or mentally, you must open up yourself to have peace in mind. Locking your emotions will be the worst idea. It may even explode inside and invite various mood disorders.

That’s why, we recommend searching for platforms where you can have some personal time and blurt out freely. Perhaps, you can start writing a journal or blog about yourself. You record your good days and check them later. It will definitely brighten up your mood. 

How to Deal with Toxic Parents: Never Change Toxic Parents

When we were researching about how to deal with toxic parents, we noticed that it’s really not helpful trying changing parents’ behavior. No matter how severe traits they have, they are not aware of it. On contrast, you will find them denying their negativity all together. It is only logical to change a person when he or she understands the reasons. Toxic parents are beyond understanding their behavior towards children. So, we advise you not to change them at any cost.

Another big reason why we are suggesting this tactic is because it will just drain your energy. At one point, you will feel extremely frustrated yet you will fail. Instead, you can change your behavior towards them. No, we are not suggesting to bad-mouth them. You can simply learn how to control your responds while communicating with your toxic parents. 

Make a Supportive Friend

It’s really frustrating when you need support in life but your parents aren’t there for you. Don’t worry, this is not the end. You can choose plenty of people to trust in this world other than your parents. Perhaps, it’s your favorite teacher, your best friend, a counselor, co-worker, or whoever you can rely on. Make sure that person provides you the most comfort mentally. You have to eventually lift yourself up with your well-wishers.

For finding support, you can make a list of people who can provide you with help both financially and mentally. Try to have some people as backups in case your supporting friend is unavailable. It’s not mandatory though! So, don’t get upset if you can’t find help from your parents in hardships. There will always be a few people to whom you can easily approach.

Never Expect Too Much in a Conversation

We often tend to expect a fun conversation with our parents. Perhaps, you are speaking with logic and want your parents to be on the same page as you are. On the flip side, if your parents have toxic traits, you won’t probably get a response you were wishing for. No matter how hard you try, it’s hard to expect good words out of them. 

As a result, we think you should lower down your expectations. Sure, your opinions matter the most. You can be the bigger person in the room. But don’t expect unnecessary affection from your parents. It’s just who they are!

Share Only if You can Trust

Like we said earlier, if you can’t trust your parents, you always have other people to share your feelings with. Similarly, don’t share any personal information with your parents if they constantly criticize and mock at you. Keep in mind that no matter how old you are, you have the right to privacy. You are not entitled to share every aspect of your life with your parents. In fact, you are not bound to share your personal matters with anyone. 

You might find a trustworthy person in your life at some point. Always evaluate if that person is worthy enough to know about your secrets. It can be a friend, teacher, colleague, etc. Only share your thoughts to people with you are comfortable around. Also, your must think about your safety in this case. 

Improve Conditions by Knowing Their Limitations (You Don’t Necessarily Have to!)

Toxic and abusive parents are often prone to a certain type of behavior. Suppose, your father is an alcoholic. He becomes aggressive and dreadful when he is drunk, usually it’s in the evening. Yet, next morning he is completely fine and forgets all of his deeds from the previous day. So, you can notice a pattern over here. You can plan parties or get-togethers in daylight when he is sober. That’s just a strategy to save yourself from embarrassing situations.

However, it is not necessary that you have to invite your toxic parents. If you don’t want them to ruin your party, simply cut off them from the list. You have the authority to make your life decisions. You don’t need to seek approval from anyone. So, a great tactic on how to deal with toxic parents is to work on their limitations or simply cut off their names from your choice list. The decision is all yours!

Stop Accepting Abusive Behavior

Sometimes we tend to normalize things that we aren’t supposed to. Getting ill treatment from toxic parents can lead you to accepting these behaviors at one point. And this is not okay! You might get through a lot of pain. Every tear drop might tell you, you are being mistreated. Don’t take these ill behaviors towards you for granted. 

Instead, we urge you to speak for yourself. Have the guts to look ahead. Your self-esteem should never lower down just because you are receiving wrong upbringing. Focus on your way out from these traumas. You will definitely find peace. 

Rely on an Exit Strategy if Needed

We already spoke about the importance of becoming financially independent on our very first strategy. The reason we walked you through all of these tactics is to guide you to the path of exiting your home. We don’t mean that you have to leave your parents necessarily. It’s in fact good if you can work on those previous strategies and improve the situation.

However, if you fail to live with the trauma, then it’s better to leave your parents. Don’t push yourself into being nice to them even after being mistreated.