Breaking the cycle: how abuse is perpetuated generationally, and why I decided to take a stand

Part of an ongoing series about life with complex post-traumatic stress disorder

People didn’t want to believe me when I told them I’d become an angry tyrant at home; it felt like they didn’t want to label me as an abuser because I have experienced so much trauma and because I am so (relatively) young. But for about a year, I was controlling, manipulative, dismissive, unfriendly, belittling, demanding…in short, many things my parents were to me. This was all triggered due to some extreme life circumstances and unusual stressors (serious health issues, moving 4 times in a year, being laid off from a job with a toxic boss, living in a new city without a support network, struggling with untreated depression, anxiety, and PTSD). But it wasn’t excusable — my behavior was not ok. It was the only way I knew to behave, but as an adult, it is and was my responsibility to make sure that I was getting the help I needed to take care of myself enough so that I could be safely in relationship with others.

When I thought about it, it turned out that I couldn’t be in an intimate relationship at the same time as working on myself. My instincts to please or control others were too strong for me to be able to hear and acknowledge my own needs. So I’m off the market for the next 1–3 years while I retool my emotional engines. I will not have children until I am able to trust myself, and when I do, I will be sure to be in a parents’ support group.

Having gone through this, I know that it is hard to say to yourself, I was being a terrible person. I was an abuser. I hurt someone who mattered to me. I caused them pain. It was extra hard for me to admit because having been abused in the same ways, I knew the emotions — pain, fear, anger, and desperation to please that the person I hurt was feeling. I was so miserable that I spawned misery in my wake, and it was my subconscious mission to flatten the smile off of anyone’s face who did not share in my pain.

I just didn’t know that relationships could exist where each person was equal; I thought it was, dominate or be dominated. I had always been the one being abused, but it turns out it sucks to be the person in control and causing fear, too. I can’t count how many times the other person just wanted me to be sorry, to acknowledge their pain I was causing, how not ok things were. I was an expert at rationalizing my behavior to them. I realize now that it was because if I admitted the pain I was causing them, I would have had to admit the immensity of the pain and torment I had felt in the decades I was trapped in an abusive home as a child. It is very hard to come to terms with the fact that your parents did not treat you well, that they were not loving, and that they will never accept who you are as a person. And the people around me paid the price of that until I was finally able to internalize how wrong it was for me to have been treated like that, and what a cretin I was to treat others in a way I knew acutely was not ok.

So I want to say, there is nothing abnormal about you if someone abused you, and you abuse too. Maybe you hit your spouse or children. Maybe you try to control others’ behavior in your family. Maybe you tease people mercilessly or call people mean nicknames. Many, many times parents repeat how their parents treated them, and not even consciously. But as common as this may be, you do have a responsibility to own your behavior and work on yourself. My partner of ten years dumped me because unmedicated, undiagnosed, and not knowing I needed to work with a trauma therapist, I just couldn’t keep it together enough to not repeat the toxic behaviors that I had seen and heard so many times, and then had to listen to on repeat in flashbacks in my head. Anger explosions became the norm at home. It was a wake up call. But you don’t have to wait for someone to dump you to make change. You can go after it right now, starting today. If you know you say or do things you shouldn’t but don’t know how to behave differently, you are not alone. Counselors hear about these things all the time. You do not have to be ashamed to share your struggles. We are all human. You have worth despite your failures or your sins.

When you abuse someone once, it is not a life sentence. You are not forever someone who is abusive. You are not unsaveable. There is hope. It takes a lot of work, but you can deal with the trauma that is causing bitterness inside of you, so that you stop puking that bitterness out on other people in the form of shouts or slaps. Usually you first need to address any substance issues you may have, with alcohol or other forms of escapism, and then you can start working on codependency, anger management, PTSD management, DBT, EMDR, or whatever else you need. Just because you’ve hurt other people once does not mean you are doomed to do it again. But you cannot expect yourself to change without trying to fix the problems in a new way, and being open and real about what the problem is.

If you choose to seek help from professionals to undo all the unconstructive modes of being you learned in a toxic family growing up, you are being brave, you are courageous, you are getting the support you need to make a healthier life for your family. There is no shame in needing support, because no one is born knowing how to be kind, how to deal with stress, how to communicate and regulate their emotions. You have to be taught. And if you didn’t have the right teachers at home, you need to find some teachers now, as a grown up. You can learn to manage yourself, regulate your emotions, and become one of those people whose mouth isn’t always turned down or who isn’t always about to fly off the handle. I know, because that was me, and now it’s not.

A list of resources to begin learning healthier behaviors:

• Online therapy with Talkspace/Betterhelp
• Info and resources on CPTSD
• Toxic parent resources
• Narcissistic family resources
• Emotional regulation skills workbook