"A child's first bully was an unhealed parent."
This quote literally lives inside me, because I couldn't relate more.
A lot of people have suffered with this type of thing, especially nowadays, where people mostly don't show love and empathy to one another. Children, toddlers, adults, teenagers have suffered with parents being their child's first bully.
As a kid, your parents became your first haters. They started to yell at you, ground you, laugh at you, hurt you. It really was different for all of us, but most of these stuff were indeed the reality. You didn't really get bothered by it, because you were just a kid, just a little kid, who had no idea how life really was. Of course, you felt bad, but you didn't really get bothered with it. You were in your own world, playing, crafting, running around, smiling, jumping around. You were completely innocent at that time. You had absolutely no idea.
Later, as a teen, things would get worse. When you just became a teen, you come into puberty. First of all, you have absolutely no idea who you actually are, and that's your first goal to find out. To find out yourself, and to be yourself. Sounds pretty cool right? Wait until you hit the phase with your unhealed parents. As a teen, you find out things that will hurt you nowadays. Maybe things that you have had in your past, or in general, the way you feel things now. And these memories that hurt now, are mostly from your parents. A lot of people now, as teens, suffer a lot with their parents, because of things that parents have done to their children. Like blaming, judging, screaming, stressing over little things, hitting you, destroying your mental health.... etc. In the start, it feels so heartbreaking, it's terrible. It feels overwhelming, you're asking yourself; "why are they doing this?" "why are they treating me like this?" "did I do something wrong?". And especially there, your first negative thoughts start to build up. These bad thoughts start to punish you mentally, even if you don't know what you did wrong. And trust me, sometimes, you actually didn't do something wrong. Parents can be like this, they can easily hurt you, because they are the first person you have ever loved. They have taken care of you, they have fed you, they brought you to bed, they were here for you. But now, because they treat you like this, you don't know how to feel. You're confused, and you're overthinking about it. You start to blame yourself more and more each day, until your mind is tired. You get too overwhelmed, you get moody, you don't know what to do. You ask yourself; "why am I like this?", "why do I do this?" "why am I thinking like this?". It's not an ending cycle. Which is sad, but so true.
As an adult, you're trying to focus on the future. Past traumas haunt you recently, but you try to overcome it and move on with your life. It still hurts, it always did, but everyone has to move on. Because everything that happened in the past, is gone now. You may still remember it, but you don't experience it anymore. Even as an adult, you still have problems. Because as an adult, a lot of people go to therapy. They go to therapy because they seek help, because these past traumas always keep coming back, no matter what. They go to therapy, because someone actually is listening and not blaming them for everything. Because they can finally let out what they never could. An adult is still stuck with their trauma from their parent, even if it's been years.
Overall in summary, these people will always suffer, no matter what. You can't even imagine what is going through their head at all. Some of them gave up completely, just because parents are terrible. There are rarely good parents in this generation who genuinely care and love their kid as they are.
And in my opinion to this quote, is that, it's getting TOO normalised in this generation, that people start to be their child's first bully. I understand if children did something terribly wrong, but, bullying them, as if you hate them? That's so disgusting. If you're an unhealed person, you should NOT have a kid, only when you're healed and ready. Because having a kid takes a lot of responsibilities and braveness. It's hard to take care of a kid if you can't even take care of yourself. But I don't think people are genuinely ready for that conversation.
