Kids in troubled families blame themselves for their parents' problems because questioning a parent feels too dangerous. A child thinks if they just perform better—better grades, more joy—they can fix things. That belief in their own inadequacy often lasts into adulthood.
a child, for example, that's growing up in a family where there's a lot of conflict, they can't take into account that their parents maybe are flawed and that they have their own problems. Because when you're young, you look to your parents for survival. Yeah, you literally think that your parents are God when you're young. Like, everything they say, you're like, yes, because it's a survival mechanism. And so if something is wrong with them or off, or there's just something wrong in general, the default response in a child's brain is there must be something wrong with me. It feels safer, weirdly enough, than to say there must be something wrong with this caregiver who I'm depending on for my survival. Really? Yeah. So we say there must be something—
You can't say mom and dad are messed up, like they're really screwed up. No, you don't do that. Because then you're screwed.
Exactly.
Because you're like, well, if they're screwed, then I'm not safe, right? It's like, so I'm messed up.
Because in a weird way, it gives you a sense of control. Because if there's something wrong with me, maybe there's something I can do to be good enough and fix the situation.
Interesting. Maybe if I perform better, if I'm more joyful, or I can sing better, if I can get straight A's, then it's going to fix the problem.
Exactly.
But usually it never fixes the problem.
No. And what it does is it creates this part of you that doesn't feel good enough. And it creates these beliefs that you're not good enough when that was never actually the case.
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