How to Stop Resenting Your Parents

Call Her Daddy

In this emotional deep dive, Alex from 'Call Her Daddy' explores the painful yet common experience of resenting one's parents while still cr

Key takeaways

• Resentment toward parents often stems from unmet emotional needs during childhood, which continue to affect adult relationships.
• The desire for parental validation and love can lead adults to repeatedly hope that their parents will change—only to be met with gaslighting or defensiveness.

Main topics

• Childhood trauma and its lasting impact on adult relationships
• The cycle of hoping parents will change and the resulting disappointment

Notable quotes

"You're not broken, they did me dirty. All of this issue that you're trying to unpack, therapist lady, send it there. Send it down over to Idaho."

Conclusion

Healing from parental resentment isn't about forcing reconciliation or expecti

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Welcome back to another Sunday session with your father, everyone. You know, I love Sundays because they're just you and me, no distractions, no drama, just the girls chatting about life, right? Which I guess can actually inevitably... cause a little bit of drama, but we always aim to leave feeling a little bit better at the end of these episodes, right? We dive in, we address things head on. Sometimes they can be uncomfortable and then we lift ourselves right back up all on a Sunday. It's beautiful. So in the spirit of addressing things head on, something I always say we have to go back to on Call Her Daddy is Our childhood. Because. Speaker 1 (0:54) Like it or not, so much of who we are, how we love, how we react, how we fight, how we cope, it's deeply impacted by what happened to us when we were younger, right? I think we all know that. And the truth is, I think when you start actually reflecting on your past, it can be a total mixed bag, right? Sometimes it brings up really intense happiness and nostalgia. But a lot of the time, it more so brings up a lot of hurt and confusion or just raw emotion that maybe you've kind of swept under the rug years ago and continue to kind of sweep under the rug. And it's almost like as we grow up and we step into adulthood, it feels like the fog starts to clear. We start looking at life with a completely different perspective and something. that heavily influences us in a way that so similar to our childhood, yet totally different because now you're an adult with an adult brain is. Speaker 1 (2:02) Our parents. Our relationship with our parents, with them now versus back then, how we feel about them when we look at them adult to adult now, how they showed up for us or how they completely failed to do that, what their presence or their absolute lack thereof has done to our nervous systems as adults today and also back in our childhood. Speaker 1 (2:31) Parents are a lot. This is a big boy topic to take on because I feel like as an adult, you suddenly realize your parents aren't invincible superheroes who have it all figured out, right? They are flawed. They're traumatized. They're messy human beings who made mistakes, will continue to make mistakes. But I will say, knowing that logically, it doesn't automatically erase the damage. Like we can be like, no, no, no, I know. I know my parents are just some randos that decided to have kids, but I'm still messed up. And it's like, yeah, yeah, no, that's actually so fair. Today, I want to talk about what I truly believe is the ultimate emotional mind. Speaker 1 (3:20) which is resenting your parents while desperately wanting to love and be close to them. How do we do that? Growing up, we're fed the Disney version of family where your parents are these perfect heroes. Then you hit your 20s and your 30s and you go to therapy and you spend a lot of money and you look back and you're like, wait a second, that was actually so messed up. Wait a second. Oh my God, that is not, that is not okay what happened to me. And suddenly you're kind of like trapped in this exhausting tug of war, right? And so on one hand, understandably, you're angry and you resent the emotional neglect and the pressure and the projections or the boundaries that were constantly enforced on you as a kid. But on the other hand, it's like, you love them. And they're your parents and you see them getting older and you remember the good times and you just want them to get it. You want them to understand where you're coming from. You want that warm, supportive relationship. But every single time it feels like you try, you then leave the conversation feeling drained and judged or just totally unseen. Is this tracking for anyone else? Okay, perfect. Speaker 1 (4:43) And so, yeah, the truth is. Speaker 1 (4:47) I think let's just call a spade a spade. Moving past childhood resentment is one of the hardest things that you will ever do. Because like I said, when you're a kid, your parents are your entire world. So you don't have context for life yet. And so when they fall short, whether that was, you know, screaming matches, emotional coldness, severe neglect, micro criticisms about your appearance, making you feel like a burden. any of it. You don't think when you're a child, oh, that's just my mom. That's just my mom. She's projecting her unhealed trauma on me. Classic. Like, no. When we're children, we innately are like, wait, what is, what's going on? Something's wrong with me. It can't be my parents. Something must be wrong with me. And so you grow up and you go to therapy and you talk to your friends and their experiences and you read books on a concept. You experience relationships and you finally connect the dots and you start to realize like, oh, I was just a child and they really failed me. And I think that realization brings up this like. Speaker 1 (6:01) understandable burning rage for a lot of us, right? You're angry, rightfully so. Because suddenly you see all the ways that you were forced to, whether it was mature too early or all of the emotional mess that you're still trying to untangle in your adult relationships today. You're like, oh, now I get why. And you're pissed off that you have to spend your 20s and your 30s paying some therapist. that maybe isn't even that good to try to help you fix things that you weren't even the one who broke. You didn't break any of this. You're like, send the bill to John and Carla, okay? AKA my parents, because they did me dirty. All of this issue that you're trying to unpack, therapist lady, send it there. Send it down over to Idaho. And you're like, here you go. Here's the bill, parents. Speaker 1 (6:54) But obviously we can't do that. So what do we do? We are human. And because we fundamentally, we crave our parents and we want their love. And so we try to fix it in real time. And we think, okay, okay, I'm an adult now. Oh my God, we, guys, we're so gonna start fresh. Like those wounds. I don't feel them anymore. I'm an adult. They're an adult. It's perfect. We can have wine at dinner together. And so we hope that maybe, just maybe, you know, they've grown up too. And so we hope, okay, they're going to step up now. They're going to take accountability and they're going to finally be the warm, supportive, safe parent that I always needed. Like now, now we can finally, we can put this to bed, right? And so you get. You get excited. You're like, okay. And I remember this. Like I'll talk to my friends about this. It's different for everyone. Like sometimes this happens to you if you're in college and you're like your parents are coming up on certain weekends and you're like, ooh, now I'm an adult with autonomy. You're not really in college, but it feels like it. And there's like, you're starting to feel that or it's right when you get out of college, right? And you're like, ooh, I've got my own apartment and I'm living and like they're coming into the city to see me. And so like you feel like there's, it's almost like equal ground now. Like I'm not a baby anymore. Like these are two adults. having an adult conversation at this restaurant. And so you take a chance and you open up and you extend the olive branch and you call them to share good news or you bring up a painful memory trying to get closure and you're expecting them to be different like you are and say, you know, I am so sorry. I see how much that hurt you. And then the letdown happens. And more often than not, I think it's the letdown rather than like, oh my God, listen, some parents may actually be quite evolved and changed and like you're a lucky one. But for the most part, the letdown happens. And instead of accountability, you get gaslit. And maybe it's your mother or your father and they say, Speaker 1 (9:17) I never said that. Becky, I never said that. Or they say, you're being way too sensitive. Or they hit you with the, we did the best we could. You're so ungrateful. Or I guess worst of all, they just go complete defensive stonewalling. Speaker 1 (9:37) Like it never happened. Literally, they make you feel crazy. What are you actually talking about? And at that moment, that exact second is where you realize as an adult that they still fall short and they still can't give you what you need. And so it breaks your heart all over again. And it re-traumatizes the exact same wound from when you were seven years old. And we're back to square one. And you're left standing there thinking, how do I stop? How do I stop this? How do I stop holding on to this resentment when they keep proving to me that they haven't changed? But also, why can't they change? And so today, oh, parent-child dynamics. Let's get into it. So I think the first dynamic to address in relationship to child-parent dynamic is Speaker 1 (10:54) When I was thinking about it, there basically are generally two distinct paths people take when growing up with parents who ultimately fall short. Okay, so path A is you basically are someone who put your parents on a massive pedestal only to watch them fall off of it. Or path B is you were someone who never respected your parents in the first place and you saw right through them from day one, baby. Okay, on the surface. These two adults, it looks probably completely opposite, right? Because you're like, oh, at one point you thought your parents were great. I never thought mine were great. But underneath the hood of that, these two paths, no matter which one you grow up with, they are suffering from the same exact fundamental wound, which is the deep aching void of not feeling unconditionally loved and supported or safe with the people who brought them into this world, right? So I want to first kind of acknowledge and start with the people who held their parents on a pedestal at one point in their life. And I am not, and it may feel distant, right? You may be like, oh, let me just dust off those cobwebs, babe, because God damn. I think at one point it was, that happened, Alex, but it's been, it's been decades, honey. I get it. I get it. It's been a long time, but let's go, let's go back for a second. Okay. If you were this kid, you're Parents at one point could do no wrong. Maybe they were very charismatic. They were high achieving. Or maybe they just provided you a great lifestyle, right? Or maybe they were just your absolute heroes and you hung on to their every word and you just idolized them regardless. something eventually happened, right? Everyone is going to have a different situation, whether it's through a big betraying moment, like infidelity happened in the dynamic with your parents, or there was substance abuse or a financial mess or a slow realization that their love was conditional on basically you pleasing them. Something happened. There was a rupture. And when the pedestal falls, it feels disorienting and it impacts your identity and it creates self-doubt because you just went from thinking these are the greatest people in the world that will protect you at all costs. And now you're like, wait a second, hold on. What is going on? And then your whole reality is shifted, right? Because your foundation was built on trusting their perfection. And so when they fall, your whole And reality, yes, collapses. And so you start asking yourself, okay, if they aren't who I thought they were, then who the fuck am I? And now I'm a part of them and they're a part of me. So how does this work? And you're constantly second guessing yourself and your own intuition and you question your judgment in adulthood, right? And you then essentially... You do go into a form of shock when this happens, and it may not be as extreme for some people, but to some degree, you're going to go into shock when you realize your parents aren't who you thought they were. And the transition from worshiping your parents to betrayal is going to cause significant grief. You don't just lose a parent, but you basically lose the blueprint of your entire childhood. Everything you thought that was real has somewhat shifted. And then as you get older, you could possibly start hyper fixating on trying to fix them, right? I'm not saying that's for everyone, but some people may try, right? Because in your head, there may be some people that are like, oh my God, but like, I know how good it felt when things seemed right. I just want to get back to that. And so you spend a massive amount of your adult energy now trying to bargain and push or rehabilitate them back onto that pedestal. So you can feel safe again, which also is so hard in therapy because then you also start to realize as a child, we don't see things completely clearly because our brains aren't fully developed. So then you're like, oh my God, even if you went back and you looked at the pedestal now through your adult vision, it usually isn't a pedestal. It's like a little dinky rock. And you're like, oh my God, it looked so big back then. And it looked so mighty. And it looked so... incredible. And it's like, no, it actually wasn't a pedestal. Like it was a piece of shit on the ground. Then you were you were reaching. But again, some people did have the pedestal, right? That's one dynamic. And then there may also be some people listening who would say. Speaker 1 (15:35) I never had the luxury of a pedestal. I actually never even had the luxury of that little rock you're talking about, Alex. I never even had that. Never even got close to that. Even