Identifying and Confronting Emotional Abuse in Parents

As an adult, the connection you have with your parents can be one of the most complex, exhausting, and, at times, damaging relationships you will have. You might never have realized how harmful and toxic some of the dynamics were in your home. With maturity, life experience, and the perspective that comes with physical and emotional distance from your parents, you might start to realize the levels of emotional abuse that were at play in your family.

Many people are reluctant to admit that one or both of their parents is emotionally abusive. You might have spent decades defending them in your head, even though deep down you knew something wasn’t right. It’s not easy to confront emotional abuse in any relationship, but when it is with parents, it is all the more complex.

Unfortunately, emotional abuse, especially from a parent, targets your self-esteem. If left unchecked for a long time, you will find your confidence so eroded that every relationship and opportunity in your life will be affected.

The Effects of Emotional Abuse

People often feel the effects of emotional abuse before they know it’s happening. Emotional abuse masquerades as care and concern, when in reality it is manipulation, gaslighting, avoiding accountability, blame-shifting, and boundary violations. In some cases, the only thing that people can say after spending prolonged time with their parents is that they are drained, anxious, and feel terrible about themselves.

When parents engage in emotional abuse, they are repeating patterns of behavior that they have done for decades. They might have become more manipulative and controlling in recent years. However, it can be hard to identify toxic behavior because, usually, they are doing what they have always done.

Perhaps they were always critical of your appearance, or they always diminished your achievements, or guilt-tripped you into communicating more. This simply means that they have always engaged in emotional abuse with you, and you can finally identify it for what it is.

Years of emotional abuse result in anxiety, depression, suppressed anger, and low self-esteem. Examples of the effects of emotional abuse:

• A critical voice in your head that sounds like your mother
• Feeling disappointment with yourself each time you fail at something important
• Shame, dread, and frustration that seem to come out of nowhere

If you experience feelings like this, there is a strong possibility that you have been on the receiving end of humiliation, control, manipulation, and even jealousy over the years.

Examples of Emotional Abuse

Emotional abuse is always subtle. It happens in the form of microaggressions, gaslighting, constant needling, and plausible deniability. It comes across in questions about your love life, insinuations about your spouse, backhanded compliments about your friends, or concerns over your weight.

At some point, you realize that you are constantly apologizing, explaining, or defending yourself, and that you always feel as if you have wronged or disappointed those around you.

Pay attention to the language your parents use. You hear emotional abuse in name-calling, belittling or undermining statements, and sarcasm. Emotional abuse is not overtly harsh. It is most often subtle, but personalized digs aimed directly at your self-esteem.

It has become a cultural trope for mothers to berate and guilt-trip their adult children into visiting more or communicating more frequently. Although it is often played off as a joke, the constant guilt-tripping and manipulation are unhealthy and unacceptable.

Behavior like this does not directly address any issues. Instead, it places the weight of guilt and shame on you as the child to bridge any gaps and mend the relationship each time it’s damaged. Emotionally abusive people do not take any accountability for their actions and always place the blame and responsibility on someone else.

Over time, the dynamics between parents and adult children change. They might still jokingly refer to you as their child or baby, which can be endearing, but sometimes there is toxic behavior lurking behind such statements. Not only is it infantilizing language, but it often suggests that they believe that they can still control you.

Placing strict rules and demands on you as an adult, or insisting on knowing intimate details of your life, is not acceptable and amounts to emotional abuse. As an adult, you are entitled to as much privacy and autonomy as you want, and you don’t owe your parents anything you are not willing to give.

The one area where emotional abuse will be most apparent is in the way they communicate with you. Statements like “This is all your fault” or “You’re overreacting” in response to calling them out demonstrate manipulative, blame-shifting behavior.

The other way they might communicate in an emotionally abusive way is by using silent treatment. They shut down communication and withhold attention until they get what they want from you, or as a form of punishment when you have too much autonomy. They might disguise it as them being wounded or overwhelmed, but it is a toxic tactic used so that they can get their own way.

Confronting Emotional Abuse

Confrontation is difficult for many people, but it is all the more complex when it is with parents. Unless the relationship is extremely toxic and damaging, and distance is the only solution, you will likely want to maintain a relationship with your parents.

Parental relationships are often worth saving, regardless of how complicated they can be. However, toxic dynamics must be confronted, bad behavior must not be tolerated, and emotional abuse must be called out if there is to be a future together.

Before you confront emotionally abusive parents, you will need support from a partner, close friend, or counselor. You need someone on your side to help you gain perspective and provide comfort in case you feel any guilt or experience backlash.

Confronting emotionally abusive parents is not a once-off thing either, and it will help to have someone who can follow up on the progress of the relationship with you and provide encouragement as you continue.

Start by clarifying your definition of emotional abuse. It might be a unique experience, or something others have mentioned. Try to think of two or three behaviors that your parent has done that have made you feel belittled, controlled, guilty, or some other emotion that has affected you deeply. Simply naming these behaviors as toxic and abusive is a good start, seeing as most emotionally abusive behavior is subtle. Naming the behavior is helpful.

Next, determine what personal boundaries you will set with your parents. For example, you could say that as soon as they start insulting or belittling you, you will walk away from the conversation. Or the boundary might be that you will end the call with them if they begin guilt-tripping you. You don’t have to communicate these boundaries with your parents if you would rather not. These are protective measures for your mental health.

An important aspect of boundaries with emotionally abusive parents is to determine the level of contact you will have with them. You could limit yourself to seeing them only once a month, or only on special holidays. What counts is that you determine the amount of contact and you practice not feeling shame or guilt about the limited contact.

There are other things you can practice over time, such as standing up for yourself, calling out toxic behavior, and intentionally delaying replies to texts. Confronting emotional abuse does not have to be a big, dramatic thing you do. It is more effective when it is small, consistent actions and statements that uphold your boundaries.

You might not be able to heal some hurts, and it is not your responsibility to try to change your parents. The best you can do is to prioritize your mental health and protect your partner or children from facing similar emotional abuse.

If you would like to meet with a counselor as part of your healing, a Christian counselor can help. You could find someone in the online catalog, or the reception team can help connect you with someone suitable. You’re doing the right thing by prioritizing your mental health needs.