In a bid to instill discipline or correct the wrongs from their own childhood, parents sometimes end up being too strict. Or perhaps they just didn’t know better but felt that their way was the right way because they had good intentions. Despite their motives, growing up in a house with too many rules and overbearing parents can have negative, long-lasting effects on children. Here are some ways strict parenting can affect you even as an adult.
1. You deal with stress and burnout.
Years of worrying about doing what’s expected of you and not making any mistakes that might get you in trouble can lead to chronic stress in adulthood. You’re always on edge. You feel worthless and inadequate whenever your actions miss the mark, so you try to work harder to rectify things, which stresses you even further.
2. You have limited social skills.
Having parents who controlled every aspect of your social interactions and tried to shield you from the outside world as much as possible can leave you socially stunted. You may be anti-social, reserved, timid, or excessively anxious in social settings. You may have trouble making friends or find it difficult to maintain relationships with other people.
3. You engage in risk-taking behaviors.
For many people raised by parents who were overprotective or overly involved in their lives, adulthood is the first chance for them to exercise control over their lives. Unfortunately, you may find yourself compensating for the restrictions of your childhood by pushing the boundaries of normal behavior. This includes engaging in impulsive, high-risk activities like gambling, drug/alcohol abuse, extreme sports, speed driving, and promiscuity, without regard for precautions.
4. You have low self-confidence and self-worth.
Growing up with strict parents can afflict you with low self-esteem as an adult. Whether your parents made every decision for you or constantly criticized your every move, you now struggle to trust your own judgment even with simple things like deciding what to eat. You constantly feel like a fish out of water, lacking the competence and capability to manage your life, go after the things you want, overcome challenges, and thrive on your own.
5. You struggle with perfectionism and over-achievement.
On the flip side, having strict parents might push you to always strive for perfection at all times because that’s the only way you could earn their approval or escape punishment growing up. As an adult, you now find it almost impossible to let go of control. You’ve tied your entire personality to always being the best. There’s no room for error or less-than-perfect and you see even the slightest failures and rejections as a personal attack or commentary on your self-worth.
6. You have people-pleasing tendencies.
You live your life in search of external validation. You constantly defer to what other people want to avoid conflict or stay in their good graces. Your parents never taught you to stand up for yourself because to them that meant disobedience, and now the word “no” is not in your vocabulary. You put your needs last and let people walk all over you because it’s what you’re used to—it’s what love looks like to you.
7. You suppress your emotions.
One way that growing up with strict parents affects you as an adult is that it makes you accustomed to swallowing or ignoring your emotions rather than feeling them. Since you weren’t allowed to express certain emotions like frustration, anger, or sadness growing up, you learned to push them down. So now it’s hard for you to access your emotions or even make sense of them.
8. You have overwhelming feelings of doubt and shame.
When you grow up with so many rules regulating how you’re supposed to live and your parents constantly telling you that their restrictions and criticisms are for your protection, you grow into an adult who doubts everything they do. It’s hard for you to trust yourself. You may carry a lot of guilt and shame around mundane things like physical intimacy, disobeying authority, exercising your boundaries, or asserting your independence.
9. You have an anxious or insecure attachment style.
As a result of having your independence, freedom of expression, and emotions stifled in childhood, you’re more likely to develop an insecure or anxious attachment style. You may struggle to feel secure in your adult relationships and frequently obsess about what other people think of you and even doubt their feelings for you. You worry about being abandoned, act desperate, or keep your emotional distance to avoid getting hurt.
10. You have an increased aversion to risk-taking.
Strict parenting doesn’t always lead to increased risk-taking behaviors in adults. Sometimes, it results in the opposite: an extremely cautious adult who overthinks everything and has trouble adapting to change or challenging situations. You avoid taking any kind of risk even if your happiness depends on it.
11. You wrestle with mental health issues.
Traumas, repressed emotions, and negative experiences from having strict parents can manifest as mental health problems later in life. As an adult, you may suffer from OCD, PTSD, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, dissociative identity disorder, antisocial personality disorder, and other mental health conditions.
12. You struggle with relationships.
Depending on the type of strict parents you grew up with, you may have different kinds of challenges managing relationships with others. You may struggle to relinquish control, be overly sensitive to criticism, or avoid being vulnerable. You get defensive and interpret innocent statements or actions as attacks. You don’t know how to share what you’re feeling or thinking because you’re used to keeping it to yourself. You think that if you let people get too close they’ll realize that you’re broken or unlovable.
13. You have unrealistic expectations of others.
Growing up with strict parents can create unrealistic notions of appropriate behavior. You may think it’s normal to want to go through your partner’s phone and get offended if they won’t let you. In your mind they have to be hiding something, otherwise it shouldn’t be a big deal. But the truth is that your parents didn’t respect your privacy, autonomy, boundaries, or personal space and they sold it to you as a good thing when it wasn’t.
14. You have difficulty relaxing.
If you had parents who viewed free time or any kind of leisurely activity as idleness—something to be fixed or punished, you become an adult who doesn’t know how to relax. You’re always volunteering for something, learning a new skill, or working on a project. When you have free time on your hands, you spend it worrying and feeling guilty about all the stuff you could be doing instead. You don’t have hobbies, interests, or things you like to do for fun.
15. You have a tendency to lie, even when it’s unnecessary.
If the only way you could get some freedom or protect yourself from punishment was to lie, that habit can follow you into adulthood. Even though no one’s going to hurt you now for your choices or behaviors, you still feel the need to lie about them. You’re sneaky and secretive when there’s no reason to be. When you’re confronted about anything, your approach is to deny, deny, deny no matter how insignificant your actions may have been.
Enjoy this piece? Give it a like and follow PsychLove on MSN for more!
