Psychological damage done by parents is often so subtle and normalized that we don’t even realize it. One example is the way that a lot of parents will invalidate their child’s experience if it somehow threatens a reality that that parent needs to believe.
Why Parents Invalidate Their Children’s Reality
I had a conversation with my mom and my brother where we were discussing a trip that we went on during childhood. My mom was like, “That was a really great time, wasn’t it?” And my brother was like, “Oh, actually, what I remember from that trip is I got really sick, and I was throwing up a lot.” She was like, “Yeah, but you weren’t sick the whole time. And then remember, we went on this excursion, and we had such a great time, and it was really cool.”
I just felt physiologically inside myself that sense of exhaustion, and I immediately wanted to leave. It’s one of the most quietly exhausting parts of being in a relationship with my mom. It always is actually about her, even when it seems like it’s not. It comes back to: you need to say things that make me feel good, and I will invalidate your reality—however subtle—if it doesn’t make me feel good, if it doesn’t reflect well on me, if it doesn’t match the version of events that I need to believe.
How This Creates Lifelong Self-Doubt in Children
For whatever reason, as the child in a dynamic like this, you learn to not trust yourself. “My version of reality—isn’t it right? Am I remembering that wrong?” It instills self-doubt in you and your perception. It’s also deeply lonely because you know—your body knows—it’s not about you. You’re not seen in your experience at all.
And that’s a very small example. Over time, it compounds. It happens on a daily basis. It happens in every interaction. So you start editing yourself. You can’t have an authentic relationship with that parent because that parent can’t withstand authenticity if it threatens them in any way. If you’re suffering, it’s very hard to bring that to a parent like that because they’ve already trained you that they can’t handle that. They need things to be good.
The Invisible Emotional Labor Parents Require
This is also how our parents train us to do emotional labor. The unspoken rule of this dynamic is: as your children, we take care of your feelings. That is learned very young. It’s so insidious, it’s so invisible. It doesn’t look overtly cruel. There’s no ability to have a genuine relationship when you have to edit yourself like this. And it’s exhausting on the kids.
Over time, you lose touch with your own instincts. You start to question whether what you feel is real. You become hyper-attuned to everyone else’s needs while ignoring your own—because that’s what you were trained to do. The damage isn’t loud. It’s quiet. It’s in the way you hold your breath. It’s in the way you apologize for things that aren’t your fault. It’s in the way you shrink so someone else can feel big.
Healing begins when you recognize that your reality was never the problem. The problem was that someone else couldn’t hold space for it.
