college essay about toxic parents

Surviving the Toxic Parent

Healing the loss of self that the toxic parent demands.

Posted May 2, 2018 | Reviewed by Matt Huston

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The toxic parent may or may not have been diagnosed with a mental illness or a personality disorder . They may or may not have ever sought treatment for such a disorder. But the poison they spread to others is an infection that can be cured. There are no statistics to reference on this, but anecdotally it might be said that therapists treat more of those impacted by toxic parents than they treat toxic parents.

The problem with the toxicity of the toxic parent is that the child has been eating this poison since infancy and has, at least for many prior years, believed that eating this poison is normal. Indeed, many children of toxic parents believe that it is the child, not the parent, who is responsible for improving the situation.

The definition of a healthy parent is one who is emotionally mature enough to own his own psychological material, so that it doesn’t get projected onto the child. Emotional maturity means that the parent can own his own emotions and use emotions as his own internal messaging system—which facilitates self-awareness. Self-awareness means that there is a great deal of Self in conscious awareness. There is an affective or emotional relationship with Self—which includes a great deal of self-empathy, self-love and the creation of behaviors that care for and honor the Self. All of this means that the parent is Self-contained. Therefore, his relationship to others is clear of projection , inappropriate boundaries and toxicity. The healthy parent knows how to love unconditionally, and to mirror the child’s authenticity . The healthy parent can create appropriate boundaries, and appropriately discipline (i.e., teach) a child, while simultaneously honoring the child’s authenticity.

The toxic parent, on the other hand, is not emotionally mature. Therefore, she will commonly project all of her unmanaged emotions and unconscious material onto her children. She will commonly do things like: rage at her children frequently and even with maliciousness and/or abuse; demand that her children take care of her emotional and/or physical needs; demonstrate an inability to offer guidance or appropriate discipline to her children; play mind games with her children; attempt to split children off from affection from the other parent; attempt to compete with the child for attention , image and approbation; punish the child by withholding affection or presence; abuse the child emotionally, mentally, physically and/or sexually. The child most commonly attempts to stay connected to this parent by wrapping an identity , like bandage for a wound, around the parent’s behavior. In other words, the child will often attempt to please the parent by being whatever it is that the parent needs him to be, in order to feel a sense of safety in his otherwise confusing and confounding world. The child may later become aware of anxiety and depression that are a result of such loss of Self, for the child has had to give up any awareness of Self in order to survive. Sometimes, but more rarely, the child will be very much aware that the parent is wrong and will stew in the juices of rage for years, acting out that rage out in some ways that end up harming himself. Even more rare is the child who truly understands that the parent is wrong and waits patiently for an opportunity to get out of that home.

Children often attempt to make all things better by literally becoming what the parent needs for the child to become. Perhaps the child will think that if she just is very pleasing, very polite, very quiet, very invisible, the parent will not rage at her. Or, perhaps she takes over the role of parenting , so that not only is she caring for younger siblings, but she is parenting the parent.

All of these are bargains, in which there is an IF and a THEN: IF I parent my mother, THEN she will do less harm to me—just one example. Ultimately, when the bargaining has run its course, the child of the toxic parent may begin to feel the sorrow of not having the loving parent he wanted. Often, if anger has not already appeared, it will come now. But that anger is an I AM within the child. That I AM says, “I AM here, I AM real, and I matter.” And that’s often how the child will begin to move to acceptance. The child—often now an adult—begins to make decisions to take care of Self. Those decisions begin to solve the problem. Those decisions mean that there is actually someone in the world who cares, cares deeply and can provide for them all of their emotional and physical needs in ways that the parent did not. That someone is Self.

The ultimate result of good parenting is that the child learns how to care for Self in loving, nurturing and self-disciplining ways. The ultimate result of the healing from having been raised by a toxic parent is the same.

Andrea Mathews, LPC, NCC , is a cognitive and transpersonal therapist, internet radio show host, and the author of Letting Go of Good: Dispel the Myth of Goodness to Find Your Genuine Self.

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Is writing about how dysfunctional my family is a good topic for the CA essay...?

Yeah, I haven’t written it yet… And my apps are due January 1st. I’m a professional procrastinator, though, and I have my UC essay to adapt if worst comes to worst (anyway, that’s what I’m telling myself so as not to have a panic attack).

So, I’ve been thinking about the prompts, and a ‘story’ that really is central to my identity in a lot of ways is the story of my dysfunctional family - well, my parents. It’s not a very happy story. My father chose to take a sort of ‘entrepreneurial’ path and started a non-profit ‘organization’ that received donations… with which he sustained the family, basically.

I could tell from an early age that my parents were doing everything all wrong… They were renting a large house and a nice car and wasting so much money, while they could have bought a house and car when they moved here, and they should have down-sized, etc…

I was like 10 years old when I first told my mom to tell my dad to get a “real job”, and I was about 13 when I told my mom that she always sat on top of her problems without ever dealing with them: The house was always insanely messy, and she would say, “If only I had the time…” (even though she stayed at home) My father was alcoholic for a few years, and she was an enabler. etc. I always felt out of place in the picture-perfect suburb where I grew up. Reminds me of the hideous beetles crawling beneath the well-manicured, green lawn in David Lynch’s film Blue Velvet… I rented a flute to be in the band and advised my parents to simply buy a flute, since renting would quickly add up to be more than the cost of the flute… over the course of my years in band, my parents spent roughly 9k on a flute that cost about $400…

At the end of my freshman year, my family was evicted from our house and lived with my grandma a few towns over for 7 months. It was quite uncomfortable, with familial tensions through the roof (gma hates my father), parents sleeping on the floor, one car thanks to a generous aunt…

Finally my parents sold the expensive grand piano, a family heirloom, and my father got a commission job, and we moved into a small house (my brother went to college, so now I was alone with them)… Things were ok for a while, but then more hell: My father ‘borrowed’ $100 from me and didn’t give it back. Trust shattered all over again. Then my father went off the deep end, left his job, and started running for Secretary of State. lol. He said he ‘refused to get a job’. Then he left my mom for another woman, saying they were immediately going to have kids and stuff. He kind of blamed me for his leaving. I said good riddance. Not a happy time. This was early junior year. My mom said their relationship had been like Stockholm Syndrome. A few months later she says he’s coming back and, “He’s changed.” lol. Same old same old. Started another organization, took more ‘donations’ from people and more money from his relatives.

And, so, anyway… Through all this time, I never felt settled: Everything was always up in the air. Lots of anxiety. What have I learned? Uhh, I learned that I want to make an honest living, I want to be honest with myself and others… I don’t want to be stuck in misery because of my inability to be an honest and hard-working person… I want to face problems head-on. Uhh, I’m learning now to be happy… Grounding myself with meditation. Also, the things I experienced made me much more attuned to problems in the world just by making me a more serious person.

Uhh… I realize this might not be an appropriate topic at all and might make me seem more messed up than anything. It just jumped out on me when I read the ‘story essential to who you are’ (or something like that) prompt. What do you think?

Depends, if it shows your resilience. However I heard the failure prompt on commonapp was easier.

bumppppppppppppppp

I definitely think it’s an unorthodox essay, and it may be hard to squeeze in 650 words, but if you include what you learned from the whole experience then the essay will have much more meaning. It seems that you have learned from the experience so I’d say go for it!

Hmm…

Not my words, but:

-Pick one anecdote and elaborate on it. -If you do pick that topic, make sure that your aim is to have the admission officers respect you, not pity you.

Thanks for the replies! Anyone else have an opinion?

The most important thing to realize about these prompts is that they are an application and not an autobiography. Your goal is to make yourself seem as appealing of a candidate as possible. You can get brownie or sympathy points for doing good stuff or overcoming obstacles BUT the core content needs to show positive traits about yourself.

basically if you start with this as a brainstorm and elaborate further it can be a good essay.

Personally it all sounds very bitter and mehhh. I sympathize and I’m sure admissions will too - IF the essay doesn’t end up the way you’ve summed it up here…

Two things to keep in mind:

1) The dysfunctional family story is not unique. I’m not sure you realize that. In fact struggle stories in general are very common in admission essays. It can be really overdone and come across as pretentious sometimes. So make sure your telling of it and what you take from it is authentic yet presents something they wouldn’t read in every other essay.

2) College/education is a building block for your FUTURE. Think ‘forward’ even when you reflect on past experiences… if you want to use the family story, focus on what it has given you (aka the positive), not what you have been deprived of (aka the negative). At all costs do not express any disrespect or indignation when writing about your parents. That includes subtle hints of spite. Even if you hated their ways or didn’t trust them for whatever reasons, they were your parents, they raised you and you owe them respect… how you talk about them foretells your attitude towards authority in your future college/career. If you find it difficult not to (for lack of a better term) whine… avoid it altogether. Better safe than sorry.

These essays above anything else tell admissions a lot about the core of your character. Write about your troubles with some extent of objectivity (as if writing history) - show that you have risen above them, that although they have shaped your worldview, they do not hinder your pursuit of excellence. Don’t state that outright… but if you’re writing about negative experiences, you need to give them a pretty great answer to “okay… so what now?”

Most importantly, write words that come from you and you alone. Trying to write in a way that is not true to you will show, I promise you that.

I think you have got to the crux of the matter toward the end. Your life circumstances have had the effect on you to deeply reflect and develop your personal values on your own. You have a better idea of what matters to you than most people your age. I’d come at it from that angle. I think you sound honest and reflective and that is just right for an admissions essay. It is too bad you have left it so long but you can do it. Just start writing it and spend time on rewrite.

I think you have a nice story, but don’t elaborate too much on it; instead, think of how you’ve put your life at home behind you. In your conclusion, I would suggest writing about how in spite of the whirlwind that’s taken place at home, you’ve never seen yourself hindered academically and express gratitude for the opportunities you did have. Coming from an economically disadvantaged household myself, I’d feel tempted to use my Common App essay just to vent and complain about everything that’s been going wrong at home, and who’s anyone to stop me? But just how mature would that be? What kind of person does that make me? The same would apply to you. That being said, I think your topic is adequate based on the angle you’re willing to approach it from: seeing gains from a disadvantaged and troubled household. Just remember: you want your readers (adcoms) to feel respect, not sorrow.