Dysfunctional families create long-term issues in children. These effects rarely get corrected and manifest in one form or the other later. The children, even as adults, suffer from issues that have their root cause in their upbringing and their childhood experiences. Some of them manage to come out of their issues, but for most, it is a life-long struggle.
I have had friends and colleagues who have come from dysfunctional families.
How would I define dysfunctional?
- Parents who are abusive in nature
- Couples who fight all day in front of their children
- Parents who do not like their own children and see sadistic pleasure
- Being denied of company, made to be alone in formative years
- Constantly compared, critiqued and ridiculed
- Parents not spending the ‘we’ time at all with children
- A girl child neglected for not being born a boy and vice-versa
- Parents using children as their shield for all wrong-doings
- Parents jealous of even their own children and unable to see success and fame achieved by children
- Adopted children who are subjected to second-rate treatment
- Alcoholism and Drug abuse in the family
- Siblings who bully
- Usage of profanity and expletives in the household
- Instability – constantly moving around and the inability to settle into a routine, be it education or making friends
- Denial to quality education
- Made to work from a young age in order to support the family
- Parents who aren’t pulling their weight and doing what is right for the family
- Separated parents who have have not been able to move on and establish a better life
What do the kids and adults suffer from:
- Very low self esteem of having been abused all through
- Low confidence from always being told ‘they aren’t good enough!’
- Withdrawing into a shell whenever faced with challenges
- Feeling overwhelmed when they see that others can do things very easily and it takes them substantial mental and physical reserves for even mundane things
- Feeling neglected because there was never anyone for them
- Trusting the wrong people because they seem to ‘fill-in the right gaps’
- Feeling afraid because they are too meek to fight their fears
- Feeling compulsive about pleasing people because that was guaranteed them a peaceful time during childhood
- Hating the world because of what happened with them has totally biased their outlook
- Not committing to a better life because now they have lost it in them to trust people and to love unconditionally
- Severe Trust issues and the inability to trust deeply and completely
- A negative outlook towards life, in general
- Inability to love and to reciprocate love
Dysfunctional families create long-term issues in children. Some of these effects rarely get corrected. There are however, ways to cope up and live a better life – that’s for another post!
I published a stub of this at: