This content was created by Lewis Howes. This content was uploaded by Lewis Howes. This is a YouTube video titled "The ONE Thing TOXIC Parents Do That Ruins Kids Forever" featuring a conversation between Lewis Howes and John Delony. The discussion, recorded on June 3, 2025, explores the impact of generational trauma and dysfunctional family cycles on adult behavior.
What's the worst thing a parent could do then to their kids over and over again that will almost surely make them dysfunctional as an adult?
The thing that's going to make them more dysfunctional as an adult is to not break their own cycle from their own past, bringing that cycle to their current nuclear family and not knowing it.
So bringing the generational trauma onward and.
The generational programming and the generational emotional wi fi that's been going on and they just bring that right into here, that's going to mess them up more than ever now. Does abuse and narcissistic meanness, do all those things affect the kid? Of course it does.
Screaming and all this stuff.
Yeah, exactly. Of course it's going to. But it's not the screaming that's the underlying problem.
That's a symptom of something.
That's a symptom of how the family has been dysfunctional and toxic. And it can come out in different ways. Narcissism, alcoholism, abuse, workaholism, sex addiction. It can come out in gambling and all kinds of symptomatic ways. But underneath all of that is an enmeshment to a family whose trance has never been broken.
Wow.
The origin family, the Origen family, it's never been broken and now you're just living it out. Only John's living it out that way, Mary's living it out that way. But that's the underlying important dynamic.
And if we don't break the trance of the family, the origin family of ours, if we don't break that trance, then we're just going to relive that pattern in our adult, adult relationships as.
Well in some way. And it may not even look like the way mom and dad did it, but the pattern's still there. So people will go, well, I'm not like my parents. Oh, well, hold on just a second. Let me ask you. But what you're doing is the same theme and it has origins in your family of origin. You may have chosen the opposite, but up 180 degrees from unhealthy is unhealthy. So people go, oh, well I'm all the way over here. Oh, now you're just a class B unhealthy rather than a class A unhealthy person. And you feel superior over them because you're over here, right? You haven't broken the cycle. You're living the pendulum life.
