If Your Parents Were Way Too Hard On You As A Kid, You're Likely Dealing With 12 Tough Issues Now
VH-studio | ShutterstockOur experiences growing up in childhood can impact our adult lives, for better or worse. Receiving unconditional love and support from your parents sets you up to be a confident and emotionally aware adult, while overprotective parents often shape their kids to become anxious and self-doubting. And sometimes, when that desire to protect a child turns into unnecessary criticism, strict rules, and judgment, it truly negatively affects these kids when they become adults.
If your parents were way too hard on you as a kid, you're likely dealing with certain tough issues now. You likely still feel like you're under their control and that you'll never release yourself from their grip. But it's never too late to focus on healing that childhood trauma, and it's a necessary part of the process to living a fully authentic life.
If your parents were way too hard on you as a kid, you're likely dealing with 12 tough issues now
1. You have a harsh inner voice
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Most people have an internal dialogue, and while some have an inner voice that's loving and warm, others tend to be more self-critical. Being self-critical means evaluating yourself in a negative way, which does inherent damage to your self-esteem and sense of worth. For kids who had parents who were way too hard on them, it's likely they developed this negative inner voice that still haunts them today.
According to a study published in Frontiers in Psychology, self-criticism and the psychological distress it brings decreased significantly when self-compassion and mindfulness were introduced. By speaking kindly to themselves and using mindfulness techniques to recognize their pattern of self-criticism, participants experienced an increase in self-reassurance and better mental health.
If your parents were too hard on you growing up, being non-judgmental about yourself might come as a challenge, but it's essential to breaking the pattern of seeing yourself in such a negative light.
2. You're too scared of failure to take risks
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While acting impulsively can have poor outcomes, taking healthy risks is valuable for various reasons. The only way to grow as a person is to leave your comfort zone and challenge yourself, but if you grew up in a home where failure was discouraged, you've probably conditioned yourself to play it safe as an adult.
Growing up, you were scared to do anything wrong. Your parents had strict consequences for not meeting their standards, and you learned to protect yourself by avoiding things you didn't think you could succeed in. As an adult, you don't push yourself to try new things, because your fear of failure is so deeply ingrained.
Not taking risks can seriously shut you off from opportunities in your career and personal life. But taking small risks, like talking to someone at a party who you don't know or offering input during a work meeting, are manageable ways to dip your toes into the pool of possibility.
3. You put other people's needs first
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Your people-pleasing tendencies arose out of a need to gain your parents' approval, and you did whatever you could to win validation from them. But now, as an adult, you may have an independent life but you still struggle with setting boundaries and saying no to things you don't want to do.
As clinical psychologist Daniel S. Lobel pointed out, "Most people-pleasers are motivated by fear. Many of them grew up in families where if they didn't please others, they were either punished, rejected, or ignored.. They generally approach others feeling they need to please them to be safe or accepted. When others are not pleased, they become fearful that they will be punished or abandoned."
4. You have a hard time making decisions
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Having a hard time making decisions can be an indicator that your parents were very hard on you as a kid, and you're dealing with tough issues like indecision as an adult. As a child, you were taught that your choices were wrong. Maybe your parents told you to play the trombone instead of the flute, or have chocolate cake for your birthday instead of vanilla.
As a result, you second-guess yourself, which means you often make decisions that aren't true to yourself. Self-doubt is a difficult thing to overcome, so treat yourself with kindness and care. Remember that making a choice that doesn't work out in the long run isn't the end of the world, and it isn't a reflection on who you are as a person.
5. You're hypervigilant
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Because you're so accustomed to being put down and disregarded, you spend your life anticipating criticism from everyone around you. Even if you know deep down that your social circles would never do this, you always feel on edge, like you're waiting for the next bad thing to happen.
You struggle to accept praise and wonder what negative beliefs people really have about you. Your hypervigilance affects you at work and in your relationships, and you have a difficult time letting your guard down.
Being raised by judgmental parents made you constantly concerned that you were doing something wrong. This feeling carried over into your adult life, and now you feel like you have to prove your worth to people or they'll cut you down.
6. You feel too nervous to be vulnerable
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If your parents were hard on you when you were growing up, as an adult you find it incredibly difficult, even impossible, to open up to others. In your childhood home, being vulnerable was equated with weakness or neediness. Your parents weren't willing or able to validate your emotions, and now you're scared that sharing how you feel will push people away.
Research published in the Journal of Child and Family Studies determined that parents who discouraged emotional expression in their children made them more likely to develop depressive symptoms and sensitivity to rejection. So, even though learning how to be vulnerable is a life-long journey, the rewards greatly outweigh the risks in the end.
7. You have trust issues
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You likely have a hard time putting your trust in others because you expect them to be as critical as your parents were. You might worry they'll let you down or hurt you, so you build walls around yourself and live a lonely life.
Having parents who were too hard on you taught you that you couldn't trust yourself to take care of your needs, or succeed or form strong connections with people you should have felt close to. Overcoming your lack of self-trust and learning to fully love who you are creates space for you to trust yourself and others.
It might seem easier to live a life of solitude, but no person is an island. Eventually, we have to let other people ashore if we want to thrive.
8. You overextend yourself at work
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Because your parents were tough on you, it's likely that you learned to equate your self-worth with how productive you are. Your parents praised you for applying yourself in school but punished you for not meeting their expectations.
As an adult, you push yourself past your limits to be a high-performer at your job, without taking care of yourself first. You volunteer for every project and check emails on the weekend. You never learned to set clear boundaries around having a work-life balance, so you work until you're on the brink of total collapse.
Overworking isn't healthy, physically or psychologically, and can lead to burnout. Living in a constant state of stress does active harm to your system. But instead of letting your wounds from the past dictate your happiness, you can say "no" to things you don't want to do.
9. You don't think you deserve what you have
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Your parents didn't foster a sense of emotional safety during childhood, so now, you feel inherently unworthy. You can't help but wonder if the love your spouse offers and the success you have at work are mistakes, and all the good things you have will get taken away once people discover who you are.
The truth is that you're entirely worthy of love and all the achievements you've earned, because you are you and that's enough. You deserve happiness and a sense of security, and just because your parents couldn't offer that to you, it doesn't mean you shouldn't claim it.
10. You focus on following the rules
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As an adult, you focus on following the rules and are scared to step out of line. Your rigid adherence to other people's expectations is directly rooted in how your parents treated you. Having authoritarian parents who demanded that you listen to everything they said and every rule they set meant you never felt safe to mess up.
But you're not a child anymore and are living your own independent life. You make the rules and are allowed to live on your own terms. As long as you're not actively hurting yourself or others, you can abide by your own principles and make a routine that fulfills you.
11. You think perfection is the only option
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Your parents set impossibly high standards and displayed severe disappointment if you didn't reach them. They had a rigid sense of success, and if you fell outside of that definition, you were a failure. Unfortunately, as an adult, you've become a perfectionist.
While perfectionism may seem like a strength in the workplace or feeling productive, it can actually lead to heightened levels of stress and anxiety, and reduced overall well-being. And as therapist Vienna Pharaon explained, "If your worthiness, your value as a human being is tied to your ability to be perfect... the moment you misstep, the moment that you're imperfect, the moment that you do something that doesn't set you up in this nice light, is the moment that you need to self-protect."
12. You don't show yourself compassion
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If your parents were hard on you when you were growing up, it's likely shaped who you are as an adult. Because now, you don't know how to treat yourself with gentle understanding and you think your mistakes mean you're unlovable. You struggle to forgive yourself, and that forces you to stay stuck in everything you've ever done wrong.
You're hard on yourself as a direct result of your parents, but you can break the cycle of harsh self-criticism. You can reframe how you perceive and talk to yourself, loving and accepting who you are and watching your world open up as you bloom.
Alexandra Blogier, MFA, is a writer based in Boston, Massachusetts who covers psychology, social issues, relationships, self-help topics, and human interest stories.
