TFD and the Intense, Highly Sensitive and Gifted (Dynamics Included)

Toxic Family Dynamics and the Intense, Highly Sensitive and Gifted

Being the parent of a sensitive and emotionally gifted child has its own rewards. However, parents need to be very mature and highly aware. Many do not have all that it takes. Most of the time, parents do not exploit or abuse their sensitive children on purpose – their limited understanding or experience simply gets the best of them.

The families of emotionally intense children typically end up addressing the situation in one of two ways; they allow themselves to love the child, however painstakingly, or they reject the child for his or her strangeness. In an experiment conducted by Andrew Solomon, involving interviews with over 400 families, it was observed that in the case of having atypical children, would-be good parents were extraordinary, going the extra mile if the need arose, and the would-be bad parents were downright abusive. He concluded that having an exceptional child exaggerates parental tendencies.

Complex trauma caused by a toxic family dynamic is detrimental because it is usually invisible. On the surface, we look

just fine. We were provided with all the material things we needed; clothing, food etc. But the way that we feel inside does not coincide with what our appearance portrays. There is sometimes pressure to keep up the illusion of a “normal happy child from a normal happy family”. Our parents and society tell us we are well, but the fact that we did not feel this way growing up makes us confused.

Toxic Family Dynamic 1: Scapegoating

When emotionally sensitive children were born into neuro-typical families, it was difficult for the family to understand them. As such, they quickly became the cast away; “the different one” or the “difficult child”.

It takes a lot of patience, maturity, and strength to bring up an intense and emotionally sensitive child. However, due to all sorts of reasons, from trauma to emotional incapacities, not all families can do this. In a healthy family, there should be enough freedom for each member to express themselves as individuals. But in families with little tolerance for differences, the child becomes the scapegoat; the black sheep of the family.

Being scapegoated may not mean that our family did not love us. Usually, people resort to making a scapegoat of an individual to avoid dealing with their own emotional turmoil. As soon as someone is scapegoated, the family will try to make it stay that way so that they do not have to deal with their own problems or vulnerabilities. When we try to change or leave, we may be emotionally blackmailed or manipulated.

The following may indicate you have been scapegoated:

You were criticized for innate attributes or characteristics such as sensitivity and intensity.

Name tags such as “weird”, “trouble” etc.

You receive unequal treatment compared to your siblings.

Your mistakes or errors were blown out of proportion and were punished more than necessary.

You were not paid enough attention when bullied.

No one cared enough to know or understand or listen to you.

Your family dismissed or downsized your achievements.

Once adopted, we find this scapegoat role difficult to shake, even as an adult. We may carry this assumed identity all of our lives.

While we may intellectually understand later in life that we were not the cause of the family problems, shifting from self-loathing to self-love requires profound emotional healing. We must know we were never the cause of chaos in the family; neither were we responsible for solving any problems. To heal, the child in us must go from being in denial to anger to finally finding freedom and release.

Toxic Family Dynamic 2: Parentification

☆☆ this one here is a huge one for me-- its what alot of my trauma stems from, , the first type ---" Emotional Parentification "

Parental guidance and protection are crucial in developing a sense of safety and foundation within our psyche. Some parents, however, cannot provide this due to insufficient emotional resources. If this is the case, the parent-child roles are reversed; the child becomes the parent, and the parent becomes the child. This parent-child role reversal is known as parentification, which can form a toxic family dynamic.

Generally, there are two types of parentification. Emotional parentification happens when the child becomes the parent’s emotional support. This could occur when a parent shares the innermost details of their anxieties and worries with the child – intimate details the child is really too young to process.

Instrumental parentification is when the child engages in physical labor and support in the household, such as doing the housework, cooking, cleaning, taking care of younger siblings, and other “adult” responsibilities.

Of the two types, emotional parentification has the direst consequences in terms of childhood development. In psychological terms, it is considered a form of abuse, exploitation, and neglect that is difficult to respond to. Some experts even call this ’emotional incest.’

Parentification can happen in several ways; the parent was behaving child-like, confiding in the child on sensitive matters, or relating with the child as a peer or close friend. If we had been put in these situations, we would feel obliged to step up to the role in order to deserve the parent’s love. The effects on our sense of self-worth and our idea about love are far-reaching, though not immediately apparent.

Parentification is a boundary violation. You were forced to grow up faster than you should. You had nobody to look up to or rely on for guidance. You had to learn and accept that your needs would not be met and that having your own dreams and desires was not acceptable. As a result, you learn to shove your feelings down. You learn to deny your innermost thoughts and ignore your own needs so you can avoid disappointing your parents.

When parentified, you had to parent your siblings as well. You might end up feeling as if you fell short or like you failed because, by default, it is impossible for a child to perfectly fill the role of a parent. You may also feel guilty when you have to leave home (e.g. when you go to college and have to ‘leave our siblings behind’). Psychologically, you feel like a parent walking out on their children.

There is no way we could have helped our parents with their emotional pains or many dissatisfactions with their lives. You believe it was your fault and that you were not enough. This affects you even as you grow into adults. You have an overly obligated sense of responsibility in relationships and may overcompensate for this. You do not learn to say “no” or to recognize when to stop giving. You are always too eager to help or rescue other people from pain and might be attracted to partners that take more than they give. Eventually, you can become emotionally drained and fatigued.

What makes the situation worse is your difficulties in getting angry at your parents. When we were parentified, we intellectually understood that they did not mean to be abusive and were just limited or vulnerable. As sensitive children, you felt very compassionate and protective of your parents. This protective instinct hinders you from admitting the truth of what you have been deprived of.

Ongoing research has proven that this sort of abuse is a risk factor in a child’s normal development, this is why it is considered a toxic family dynamic. It leaves deep emotional wounds that endure into adulthood. Behavioral manifestations that begin in childhood tend to become worse in adulthood, making it challenging to maintain healthy relationships.

As the primary caregiver for your parents and siblings, there is often no emotional support, no safety net. For the most part, you were expected to keep it together and never show signs of distress. As adults, you may have trouble saying “no” to people. You are often unable to express anger and have a hard time trusting others.

Toxic Family Dynamic 3: Having Emotionally Unavailable Parents

Some caregivers can be emotionally unresponsive to their children due to mental illness, limited psychological capacity, work or health demands, and neuro-atypical traits like Asperger’s syndrome, ADHD, or autism. This unresponsiveness, in turn, makes the children feel shut out and abandoned.

Parents need to acknowledge children’s expression for them to develop a sense of self-worth. This is done through a process called mirroring. Children need to feel wanted and welcomed by their parents. To achieve this, parents applaud a child, encourage them and converse with them in an affirmative way.

Sure, a parent cannot be there for the child at all times. A parent has work or other commitments to attend to. But as a baseline, we receive enough mirroring experiences to build a foundation. If we have received sufficient mirroring as a child, we will have enough memories to draw from and no longer require constant reassurance. We will grow up with a good sense of self-worth and an ability to self- regulate. If, however, we have not had enough mirroring experience, the development of our internal-mirroring can be hindered, and part of our psyche remains child-like and dysregulated.

In the Still Face Experiment by Edward Tronick in 1975 (there is a short, provocative video clip on Youtube) which demonstrates the process and importance of mirroring, a mother is asked to keep a blank face and ignore the child’s attempt to engage her. The child “rapidly sobered and grew wary” on getting no response from the mother. After several failed attempts, he resigned and turned away, looking hopeless. These events occurred quite quickly, such that they could have gone unnoticed. The experiment shows that we learn to regulate emotions by mirroring. Babies only learn to manage and regulate how they feel when they have other people as mirrors.

This skill is particularly crucial for empathetic children. You are likely to have an active mirror neuron system that makes you more prone to emotional contagion and being affected by other people’s feelings. It is easy for you to get overwhelmed by other people when you cannot self-regulate.

Adults in some families may disapprove of children with scorn when we try to connect with them. This emotional neglect takes a substantial toll. We do not easily forget these hurtful events and undo the impact of the toxic family dynamic.

Toxic Family Dynamic 4: Enmeshment

According to Separation-Individual theory (1975), babies have a natural symbiotic relationship with their mothers at birth. However, they still need to have a sense of self and know their mothers as a different entity from them in order to develop healthily. Some parents have a hard time letting go and separating themselves from their children, usually due to their own insecurities or unfulfilled lives. This eventually denies the child opportunities to take risks, explore, make productive mistakes and become resilient.

Anxious parents may subtly send emotional messages to their children like “I cannot survive without you”, “don’t go”, “don’t grow up”, “you can’t go”, “you can’t make it without me”, “it’s a dangerous world out there”.

Often, these parents’ need to maintain control comes from their fear of being dispensable. They may try and use the child to fill a void they feel from being displeased with their own lives or relationships. Alice Miller, in her seminal work, “The Drama of The Gifted Child”, explains this particular complex trauma. On having a child, the parent may feel as though she finally has someone who will love her unconditionally and proceed to use the child to fulfil her own need to be wanted (the female pronoun is used in old psychoanalytical texts. We should be careful not to preserve this mother-blaming culture). We can imagine why it is tempting for the parents to use an empathic child as a confidant— they are loving, perceptive, and sensitive. They can sense when their parents feel down even before they actually do.

When our parents’ needs override our own need to be independent, we develop an identity that is tailored to suit them. After all, we were afraid of losing their love. This results in enmeshment— a relationship where people become excessively involved with each other. In enmeshment, family boundaries are blurred or non-existent. A switch in someone’s mood quickly affects the whole family. Since you did not grow up with firm emotional boundaries, you struggle to set them as adults. You have a blurred sense of identity and find it difficult to differentiate between your feeling and the feelings of those close to you. You feel an obligation to help others, sometimes compulsively. It may be difficult for you to have balanced relationships.

Enmeshment is an insidious, toxic family dynamic because it often occurs under the guise of love, loyalty, family, or unity, which makes it even more deceptive. Rather than love or family, it comes from a place of fear. A truly loving family encourages the young ones to be independent, to be a “self” rather than an “us”. A child should not feel like there is a condition upon which they are loved. Parents should not feel like their children are their only source of happiness, fulfilment, or wellbeing.

Enmeshment is not a malicious scheme by parents. This toxic family dynamic often is a family pattern, passed down from generations. Parents are usually not even aware that they are enmeshing their young ones; they only are repeating a cycle.

Toxic Family Dynamic 5: Competition and Oppression

Parenthood comes with an array of emotions; anger, joy, grief, pride, and so on. While it is not commonplace to talk about it in society, jealousy is one of these emotions that parents can feel towards their children. When this envy is unmanaged, it becomes a toxic family dynamic and erodes the health of the whole family system.

Parents with unfulfilling lives may be particularly threatened by seeing what their children have— opportunities that were not available to them in their youth. As they watch their children grow, their childhood wounds are reopened, and they go back psychologically to when they themselves were children. Sometimes, parents even begin to perceive their children as competitors.

This becomes a paradox. On one hand, parents genuinely want their children to succeed. On the other hand, they feel intimidated seeing their children more beautiful and more successful than they were or are. They may feel betrayed as the child becomes more independent, considering how much time and energy they had sacrificed for the child. Parents who are not self-conscious may exhibit their resentment and envy in dysfunctional ways. They may give their children backhanded or sarcastic compliments, subtle criticism, or even more direct attacks and scorn.Generally, parents are their children’s first role models. However, when role models insult us for our accomplishments or put us down, we begin to develop low self-esteem and hate ourselves. As adults, we may feel very guilty or ashamed of our successes in life. We may even sabotage ourselves, stay average, and purposely underachieve.

Carl Jung explains that nothing has a stronger psychological influence on children than the unlived lives of parents. Although it does not justify how they behave, most competitive parents at a point in their childhood were victims of a toxic family dynamic or deprivation. They find it difficult to give positive feedback to their children because they never had it themselves.

https://eggshelltherapy.com/sensitivity-and-childhood-trauma/

The time is now to take control and make the changes you need to heal. Be the person you needed . Support is out there. Love yourself enough to fight for your peace , I PROMISE , it's worth it. You are the one your family has been waiting for .

Xo- jazzy