The Shame Around Bad Parenting

One of the first questions a therapist asks when you start therapy is 

"Tell me about your childhood."

There is a stigma attached to mental health and while the world at large has started to make peace with that now, there's still shame attached to bad parenting.

My childhood was spent in survival mode. My parents had me when they were in the midst of trying to figure their life out. They didn't have a manual and frankly, didn't know how to raise a child. They wanted to raise a warrior.

My folks taught me life lessons as they learned them. If there was a traumatic event, their immediate reaction towards that event was a lesson for me.

As a result, I was raised to be a perfectionist, a complete and absolute winner, a hustler who would be considered weak if she needed a break.

For them survival equated to constant hustle and top performance. But my child mind couldn't comprehend that.

Result? I developed what you call a "fixed mindset".

I'm either great at something or a complete failure.
It's either a success or nothing at all.
I either get a standing ovation or I'm an utter disappointment.

There are no gray areas. There's no learning period. And there's no scope to make mistakes. 

They didn't do it intentionally but denying it doesn't help. I was the first child. They were learning on the job.

All through my adulthood, wins brought validation and failures led to disappointment. 

I'm not blaming them. They did what they thought best.

I'm working on it. I'm rewriting those life lessons.

But what I'm trying to do right now is asking to open the conversation. Let's not judge. Let's not get offended. 

Let's admit that sometimes parents screw us up. And that's okay.