Reply to Is this emotionally abusive/mean ?

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[quote=Anonymous]Two things are true:

1. Emotionally abusive parents exist.

2. Everything we experience — particularly relationships, and most intensely close relationships that have been influenced by power dynamics, such as the parent-child relationship — is filtered through our own perception, which is inherently subjective and distorted by our own insecurities and assumptions.

There are times I say something with fully loving/helpful intention to my young adult kid, and somewhere between it leaving my mouth and entering her brain, the meaning gets inverted, and it is experienced solely as criticism, which was the furthest thing from what I intended. In my experience, this tends to happen when we are touching on something about which she’s already insecure. It’s as if there’s some part of her that’s searching for confirmation that the cruel voice in her head is accurate.

To be fair, I do this too. We all do. As an example: Recently my partner said something that touched upon ann issue about which I was insecure, related to a work thing, and I wound up crying and angry. Talking it through, it became obvious that the issue was really about my insecurity more than the thing that was said.

It is the work of a lifetime to create a bit of distance between our perception of reality and “reality.” I’ve been on this planet half a century, and I’m still learning. But I’ve found the effort itself is worthwhile — that the mere attempt helps soften my edges and diminishes the power of the voice in my head (and also of genuinely cruel comments when they do come).

Op, I have no idea if your parent is emotionally abusive. I can’t possibly know. I do know that there is no getting parenting 100% right. Even the best, most intuitive parents are ordinary flawed mortals working with imperfect information, trying to communicate across complex emotional spaces beneath which lurk an array of invisible fault lines. In the best of cases, we try to minimize damage and repair what damage we do as best as we can.

Please know I am not defending your parent. I don’t know your parent. As I say, emotionally abusive parents absolutely exist, and it’s clear that something in your relationship isn’t working. I’m just trying to articulate something about the problem of being a human in relationship with others. No matter what, I hope you find grace and space. Wishing you the very best. [/quote]

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