Toxic Family Dynamics Quotes

Narcissistic abuse is a form of psycho-emotional abuse that takes place when a pathological narcissist targets another individual and exposes them to trauma. It can also manifest as physical, financial, spiritual and sexual abuse.

I was in denial of the glaring reality that my existence depended on my willingness to comply with the family policy of me earning the splinter of space they granted to me.

At some point in the life of every scapegoat, the clock will strike the midnight hour, the masks will come off, and the aggression of family will reveal itself.

When my generation of women walked away from the kitchen we were escorted down that path by a profiteering industry that knew a tired, vulnerable marketing target when they saw it. "Hey, ladies," it said to us, "go ahead, get liberated. We'll take care of dinner." They threw open the door and we walked into a nutritional crisis and genuinely toxic food supply. If you think toxic is an exaggeration, read the package directions for handling raw chicken from a CAFO. We came a long way, baby, into bad eating habits and collaterally impaired family dynamics. No matter what else we do or believe, food remains at the center of every culture. Ours now runs on empty calories.

Life was simple and stable. That was my mantra of self-deception. It was how I stayed in denial of the complexity and dysfunction that had engulfed me.

I carried the image of 'The Scapegoat' with me and that ethereal moment when it seemed as if I had entered the bleak scenery stayed etched in the back of my mind for reasons I could not yet comprehend.

Fear People When we grow up under volatile, immature, chaotic, and selfish family members, we are nurtured to believe that people are scary and cruel. And when we are raised to question our lovability and worth, how can we trust that others will see us as worthy? Because conflict was so high growing up in our toxic family, many of us learned to agree with the poisonous dynamics as a way to find or keep the peace. We may have also lived our lives trying to please and prove our value to our parents.

The scapegoat is the family punching bag. On a daily basis, you are singled out for all of the collective ridicule, made into the butt of every joke, and excluded from family events, holidays, and important legal matters. It doesn't take long for outsiders or other relatives to take note of your role and to be drawn into the destructive dynamics. Family scapegoats are belittled, humiliated, battered, rejected, betrayed, and treated poorly. It's a clear case of psychological abuse, manipulation, and harassment.

Healthy people don’t stay in unhealthy family dynamics. Healthy people don’t allow their parents to control their life, they live for themselves. Healthy people don’t follow the career path their parents want them to take, they choose the right path for themselves. Healthy people don’t marry someone to meet the expectations of their family, they commit to someone who they love and makes them happy. Healthy people don’t let their abusive family members define them, they seek help and build a better future for themselves

I want to love him but I often find myself wishing he could just be an asshole all the time. This way I wouldn't have all these inner battles with myself. I learn to navigate my way through shattered expectations and constant disappointments by putting an impenetrable wall up between us. Every time I let my guard down, I'm quickly reminded why my defenses were up in the first place. It's nearly impossible for me to flourish in an inconsistent hostile environment, especially when my own growth is so intertwined with his. I'm forced to face the unsettling reality that the people who are supposed to protect us are sometimes the same people we need protection from.

The narcissistic mother will manipulate other family members to gang up against you by focusing on everything that’s wrong with you. This conveniently takes the focus away from the real perpetrator, which is of course her. It’s interesting to think about the manipulation that’s actually going on. So if you have been labelled as the black sheep and that has been your permanent role in the family, it actually allows all the other family members to start feeling better about themselves. They actually start to believe that they are healthier and more obedient to the narcissistic mother than you, and again this creates a division within the family. Another important point is that if a child is scapegoated from an early age, he or she may fully internalize all of their narcissistic mother’s criticism and shame. This means that the scapegoats develop this harsh inner critic that will continue that inner dialogue that constantly reminds them of how bad and flawed they are. I guess you could call that “inner scapegoating,” and it is extremely toxic to a young impressionable child whose identity is still being formed. So, the scapegoat may struggle with low self-esteem and often continues to feel deeply inadequate and unlovable. Adult scapegoat children also tend to suppress a huge amount of abandonment anxiety because they were emotionally or even physically abandoned by the narcissistic mother over and over again. Adult scapegoat children therefore become super sensitive to observing any potential signs of approval or disapproval. These are all important aspects of the profound impact that a toxic family dynamic may continue to have on adult relationships. Perhaps you may still have issues with authority. Maybe you’re still used to justifying yourself or somehow proving your worth. This is an unconscious pattern that you may still not be aware of and that you are perpetuating because you don’t realize how powerful these dysfunctional family dynamics still are. And once you wake up and understand you can let go of that label, you can break that pattern by choosing to think and behave completely different. You can learn to choose your battles and do not always have to be defensive. You do not always have to feel victimized. You need to become more self-aware and notice if you are still trying to get your parents’ approval or validation. Maturing into adulthood means that you may need to understand that you may never have a healthy relationship with an intentional perpetrator of abuse. You need to process your feelings of frustration, loneliness, rage, and grief.

Even what passes as heterosexual intimacy is often resented by straight women who find themselves doing the emotional heavy lifting for men who have no close friends and won’t go to therapy. Men are less likely than women to discuss mental health with friends and family, to seek out psychotherapy, or to recognize they are depressed—a pattern so common as to be termed “normative male alexithymia” by psychologists.51 For straight men in relationships, all of these needs get aimed at women partners. In 2016, the writer Erin Rodgers coined the term “emotional gold digger” to describe straight men’s reliance on women partners to “play best friend, lover, career advisor, stylist, social secretary, emotional cheerleader, mom.”52 Elaborating on this dynamic and the emotional burnout it produces in straight women, Melanie Hamlett further explains that the concept of the emotional gold digger “has gained more traction recently as women, feeling increasingly burdened by unpaid emotional labor, have wised up to the toll of toxic masculinity, which keeps men isolated and incapable of leaning on each other. . . . While [women] read countless self-help books, listen to podcasts, seek out career advisors, turn to female friends for advice and support, or spend a small fortune on therapists to deal with old wounds and current problems, the men in their lives simply rely on them.

Sibling abuse, triangulation, and alienation will influence your ability to trust others. The core problem isn't your lack of trust. Rather, you've experienced unhealthy dynamics with dishonest folks. You may have spent years or decades dealing with backstabbing siblings, friendships, or family members who lied to you, hurt you, and deceived you.

Sometimes both parents were toxic and would act as a tag team and defend each other (“Why do you criticize your mother?”). This would be particularly damaging and painful, because the child would not have a “reality check” of any kind within the family system. This is a dynamic that continued into adulthood for several respondents.

The way to change your reality to a more positive one is to reach down inside yourself to that smallest, youngest part of you who lives with one foot in your conscious mind and one in your subconscious, and help that “inner child” understand that the way he or she views the world is based on the family dynamics that were in place early in life, but is not necessarily “reality.