When Parents Fight – (Your Father Ruined My Life)
Toxic Parents – Child Behavior, Social Anxiety, and Low Self-Esteem
بندش (تمہارے والد نے میری زندگی برباد کر دی)
Remember these Key point for counselling:
People, events, or words have no inherent value within; rather, the meaning and value you assign to them determines their significance in your eyes. It is the meaning you attribute that shapes your perception, and that perception, in turn, influences your path in life.
For centuries, across both Eastern and Western cultures, many children have unknowingly absorbed the emotional wounds of their parents. For example, If your mother frequently complains, saying:
“Your father has ruined my life”
تمہارے والد نے میری زندگی برباد کر دی ہے
तुम्हारे पिता ने मेरी जिंदगी बर्बाद कर दी है।
Or your father insists:
“Your mother has destroyed everything,”
You unconsciously form limiting beliefs about your parents and, more importantly, about yourself.
As a child, you begin to see your father as a source of pain and your mother as a victim. This emotional burden makes you vulnerable, causing you to avoid facing your father. Over time, your sense of touch weakens, your body loses sensation, and you may even feel emotionally or physically numb. Your mirror neurons multiply, reinforcing the same beliefs. You assign meaning to these experiences and develop a perception that ultimately shapes your personality throughout life.
The neural connection between your right hemisphere (which governs sight and emotions) and your left hemisphere (which governs actions and expressions) begins to weaken, affecting your body language, eye contact, and communication skills.
You might find it difficult to maintain eye contact with people, and your auditory processing may weaken, making you a poor listener who struggles to engage in meaningful conversations. This leads to abrupt reactions, impulsive behavior, overthinking, excessive comparisons with others, and deep-rooted self-doubt. You may find yourself unable to enjoy moments of happiness, and at times, you might react negatively—even in anticipation of joyful events. This condition, known as bandish (بندش) in Urdu, creates an invisible emotional blockage that prevents you from fully experiencing joy. It can also lead to difficulty in accepting job opportunities or maintaining continuity in the workplace.
Gradually, low self-esteem, a lack of confidence, social anxiety, and even embarrassment creep into your personality. You feel ashamed of expressing yourself and may blurt out words without thoughtful consideration.
As the cycle of blame continues, your sense of self remains underdeveloped. You keep blaming your father while idealizing your mother as a martyr who has sacrificed her happiness for you. This emotional conflict distorts your reality, making you feel like a failure, an outcast, or someone undeserving of love. Sometimes, this emotional suppression leads to anger and frustration, which might push you to harm yourself or others—emotionally, mentally, or physically.
However, some children take a different route—they channel their pain into perfectionism, becoming high-achieving students or exceptional professionals as a means of escaping their emotional wounds. But deep inside, they still struggle with self-worth, always seeking validation from others. You might find yourself constantly trying to appear perfect in the eyes of those around you, forgetting your own value and fearing that you are unworthy of love.
At the same time, despite witnessing your parents’ mismatched personalities and constant conflicts, you refuse to let them separate. Out of sheer love, you unknowingly become emotionally dependent, forcing two incompatible people to stay together—not for their happiness, but to protect your own emotional security. This makes you codependent, carrying the burden of fixing a broken relationship that was never your responsibility to fix.
But Here’s the Truth:
- The solution is not found in opinions or circumstances—it lies in reality.
- The reality is that your self-worth is not tied to your parents’ conflicts.
- From the moment of your creation, God engraved your value within you—a truth that existed before your birth.
- You were never responsible for their misunderstandings, their choices, or their emotional wounds. Yet, the over-responsibility you carried turned into guilt, suppressing your brain’s energy flow and leading to self-criticism, self-hatred, and self-loathing.
Now, it’s time to acknowledge, accept, and embrace this truth:
You are not responsible for fixing your parents’ broken relationship. The moment you release this unnecessary burden, your prefrontal cortex will experience relief, and you will begin to feel lighter, more confident, and more valuable than you ever imagined. You were never meant to carry the blame—You were meant to live, love, develop, grow, and thrive, not merely survive.
