4 Things I Wish My Parents Had Told Me
#1 You have the right to say no.
Growing up in an enmeshed, emotionally immature family has affected my life and my personality in many ways.
People-pleasing. Unhealthy relationships. Unstable friendships. Constant repression of emotions. It all stems from a childhood where I never felt unconditionally loved, accepted, or supported.
Unfortunately, I know I’m not alone. I know many people relate to my experience and know what it’s like to grow up with parents who are not able to give us the love we crave and deserve.
Here are the 4 things I wish my parents had told me.
1. You have the right to say no.
I wish my parents had taught me that I deserve to set boundaries and stand up for myself.
Instead, my father’s emotional instability made me feel responsible for his well-being. As a child, I believed it was my job to make him feel comfortable and fulfill his needs.
When we grow up in environments that punish our self-expression or dismiss our authenticity, we learn that it’s not safe for us to be assertive and genuine. As a consequence, we say yes to everything, hoping we’ll temporarily feel loved and accepted.
2. Your emotional needs matter.
The reason why it’s so difficult for us to set boundaries is simple: we don’t believe we have the right to set them. We don’t believe our needs deserve to be met — or, at the very least, we believe the needs of others matter more than our own.
These beliefs may stem from:
- having distant, rejecting parents;
- having parents who don’t show love on a consistent basis (sometimes they’re loving and affectionate, then suddenly they get dismissive and rejecting);
Besides, we live in a society that doesn’t know how to deal with the emotional realm. We deny it, we suppress it, we pretend it doesn’t exist.
As children, hearing things like “don’t be so sensitive”, “toughen up” or “there’s no need for you to feel that way” has many consequences because we’re left to cope with our emotions without guidance in how to process them.
3. Your feelings are always valid and you deserve to express them.
I wish my parents had told me that our inner world is the best guidance system. I wish they had taught me to listen to my intuition and validate my own feelings.
When our parents invalidate our feelings, we absorb the message that we need to rely on external approval. Later in life, when we’re faced with challenges or complicated decisions, we don’t know how to turn inward — instead, we rely on others to tell us what to do.
In 6 Signs of Unresolved Trauma That Are Often Ignored, I wrote:
“I know this is a hard pill to swallow, but people-pleasers usually start as parent-pleasers.
If, as a child, your parents only showed love when you were conforming to their needs, desires, and expectations, you eventually learned that you needed to please them in order to be truly loved and accepted — and now, you unconsciously apply that belief to every human interaction.”
In my case, I can clearly see my people-pleasing behavior was my attempt to establish an emotional connection with a self-involved father who was unable to love me unconditionally or to be emotionally present.
4. I love you.
My parents have never told me they loved me. Even when I said it first, they were unable to show reciprocity.
Their incapacity to love me led me to believe I was unlovable. As a child, I believed there was something wrong with me and that they were punishing me for something I had done.
Such parents teach us that love is something we have to earn, and they deeply impact our relationship expectations. It can be very difficult for us to find healthy, secure relationships because we’ve never been unconditionally loved and accepted — so we don’t even how it feels like.
Although I wish my parents had told me these things, as a mature adult, I’m now able to give myself what I didn’t receive as a child. I’m able to validate my inner child and show her the love I’ve always deserved.
This is what I want you to takeaway from this article: it’s never too late to reparent ourselves and break the cycle of generational trauma.
It’s never too late to heal. It’s never too late to free ourselves.
