Do you not feel good when you are with your parents? Do you think they don’t understand you or you don’t understand them? Do you feel like you hate your parents and don’t know what to do? The way we relate to our parents or people who have raised us is fundamental for our psychological health. When this is complicated or negative, it can lead us to create an emotional imbalance, which affects the rest of our environment and our relationships.
If you feel that you hate your parents and you don’t know what to doIn this Psychology-Online article we tell you how you can handle this situation to acquire greater knowledge about primary bonds and promote your emotional growth.
Why can’t I stand my parents?
Feeling rejection towards our parents is a more common feeling than we think. Feeling that our parents are not how they “should” be or that they are not how we would like them to be, can provoke feelings of hatred, rejection or anger to them.
This feeling is independent of the age we are at, that is, when we are teenagers or young people, it is common to feel hatred towards your parents, since at this stage of development we are beginning to form our identity. To do this, we reject or question the previous identity, the childhood identity, which normally idealizes the adults who raise it, believing that they are like gods, that they know everything and that they love us unconditionally.
- By example, a child who receives abuse from one of the parents does not question why, he clings to the idea of guilt and takes responsibility for the fact that he deserves it for having done something “wrong.” This belief begins to change around the age of ten, when critical thinking develops.
What is critical thinking?
We understand critical thinking as everything that consists of analyzing a situation through observation, experience or reasoningthis leads to creating a Own criterion of knowledge, independent of socially accepted statements.
As we said, around the age of ten the child begins to get rid of the childish mentality, moving from innocence of thought to one’s own reasoning, thus beginning the construction of a mentality that will give way to the adult mind.
At this moment the questioning stage is common, normally children begin to ask questions of all kinds and about everything around them, in search of answers and understanding. This stage sometimes becomes complicated for some adults, since it questions themselves.
- By example, a fairly common situation is found when the father or mother are habitual smokers, but they educate their children with the statement “smoking is bad” or the imposition “you can’t smoke”, when the son or daughter asks why they smoke, the answer It is usually authoritarian or recriminating, simply because the adult feels questioned and it is difficult for them to understand the child’s moment in life. This example, although very basic, reflects the emotional relationship that can occur between parents and children, where authority is usually imposed, creating a feeling of rebellion, rejection and even hatred.
When we are children or adolescents it is difficult to handle these types of situations since we do not have the necessary tools to create an understanding of the context, but when we grow up and with our adult mind developed, we can work on these emotions that remained entrenched and cause us to relate through hatred, anger or rejection.
What to do if I hate my parents?
When we have negative feelings towards anyone, in this case towards parents, it usually comes from a fantasy constructed from our childhood mind. This means that we have an unconscious idea of what that person should be like, when reality does not correspond to that belief, it generates dissonance or cognitive incongruence that generates feelings of anger and/or hatred towards the person who does not meet our expectations.
But as we said, this mental process is generated by the child’s mind, from the adult mind we can take controlfor example by asking yourself the following questions:
Why do I hate my mother or my father?
Specifying where that feeling comes from will help you understand what you need, that is, what your childhood fantasy is about the person you hate. In addition to power take distance of the “trauma” related to this feeling.
For example, if as a child my mother abandoned me and as an adult I live with hatred towards my mother, there is a part of me that is still clinging to the childhood mentality of “needing” my mother, this makes me not allow myself to grow. and achieve independence. In this case, exercise would help me take another perspective of that need. When asking myself why do I hate my mother? The answer would be, because she abandoned me, try to go further by asking yourself the following question.
How does that make me feel?
Continuing with the example: what does abandonment make you feel? The answers can be very varied and although delving into what we feel can be complicated and sometimes painful, it is healthy to understand each other and be able to experience different perspectives of our emotions.
Abandonment can make you feel alone, rejected, inferior, whatever it is, that is some of the information you need to be able to start heal your emotional wounds.
What do I do with that emotion?
Once you understand that this hatred comes from a feeling of rejection and therefore the intrinsic belief of not being enough, you have the key to understanding what you need to work on, in this case the . This allows you go deeper into you and be able to go to a professional to accompany you in the healing of primary bonds.
Since it is good to understand that our parents are the first socializing agents, this means that we have acquired the tools, emotions and basics from them, therefore we are taking any deep emotion that harms us. constantly playing on new links What we create with our environment if we are not aware.
How to deal with toxic parents
The word toxic has become a common definition in psychology, but the reality is that this term as such is not correct. People constantly deal with their emotional limitations since emotional education is something quite precarious in today’s world. So it is very normal for you to wonder if it is normal that you do not love your parents, if they are toxic or what you can do if you hate your family.
Taking this into account allows us to separate the vision of what is “good” and “wrong”, being able to have a healthier vision of people, understanding that Everyone does what they can with the capabilities they have..
We are constantly subjected to the social belief that “the family” is a divine unit, a source of love, protection and growth. The truth is that this is a very archaic belief that has distorted the reality of the human being. When we look for information about the origin of the family we realize that it was only a social creation, the family does not exist in a “natural” way. In various civilizations, both past and current, tribes and communities studied in anthropology, the family unit is not found as a natural law, since each community has different social organizations, all equally valid and useful.
When we understand that The nuclear family (father, mother and children) is not a law, but an option, it is easier for us to act on it. Sometimes, the relationship with our parents in adulthood is not healthy for the development of the individual. As an adult responsible for yourself, it is coherent to ask yourself the following question:
If my mother or father were people outside my family, what relationship would I have with them?
Take some time to think about it and integrate it. Question your internal beliefs about the family, look for theories and expand the vision you have about the construction of the world, this will help you have tools and begin to build a life similar to who you are and how you feel.
He professional support In this type of process it is very effective in being able to sustain all the emotional tensions that may appear.
This article is merely informative, at Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
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Bibliography
- Harris, M. (2011). Cows, pigs, wars and witches: The enigmas of culture.
- Lévi-Strauss, C., Sapiro, M. and Gough, K. (1976). Controversy over the origin and universality of the family. Barcelona: Anagram.
- Plato. (2013). The Republic. Madrid: Editorial Alliance.