11 Signs Your Parents Are Still Dysfunctional, Even Though You're An Adult Now
It's never too late to acknowledge and heal from your childhood.
F01 Photo | Shutterstock Navigating a child's transitions into adulthood can be extremely disorienting and confusing for parents, especially those that have crafted their entire identity, life, and routines around an unchanging family dynamic. With this anxiety, their unhealthy coping mechanisms, and additional emotional turmoil, these parents often struggle with adopting toxic communication styles and resentment towards their adult kids, like a study from Psychology and Aging suggests motivates tension in these relationships.
Especially in the presence of lingering childhood trauma between adult children and their parents, there are often several signs your parents are still dysfunctional, even though you're an adult now, in ways that actively sabotage the health of your family dynamics and personal health. By addressing these signs, many of which have simply evolved from your childhood experience, you can learn to set better boundaries and promote a healthier alternative to your interactions.
Here are 11 signs your parents are still dysfunctional, even though you're an adult now
1. Your parents guilt-trip you into spending time with them
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While many adult children are still acknowledging and healing from the toxic experiences and trauma they experienced growing up in a dysfunctional family, many of the underlying themes — lacking trust, codependency, or narcissism — that fueled their negative experience follow them into adulthood.
From maintaining a healthy relationship with their parents outside of their childhood home, to starting their own families and protecting their personal well-being, these indicators of a dysfunctional family don't simply go away; they continue to inform family dynamics between adult children and their parents.
Experts like psychologist Lynn Margolies suggest that a parent's tendency towards "guilt-tripping" is often fueled by their own uncomfortable feelings of shame and insecurity. Whether it's an internal emotional struggle or a difficulty coping with the inherent disconnect that comes with a child entering adulthood, these parents are yearning for a way to comfort their own anxiety, despite coming at the expense of their parent-child relationships.
Connecting with your parents, especially into adulthood, should be an exciting and fulfilling experience, rather than an anxiety-ridden one. Figure out what boundaries and conversations you need to have to ensure that you're not just helping your parents to feel supported, comfortable, and heard, but also setting clear expectations for your own respect and energy as well.
2. You're anxious about attending family events
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When you don't feel truly comfortable, supported, or heard by people in your life, it can be a struggle to prioritize spending time in their company.
Especially alongside accessible modern discussions on trauma and the emergence of "no-contact" orders as a solution for healing from toxic childhood experiences, many adult children prefer to skip family gatherings and events, rather than address and confront the anxiety rooted in their anticipation of time spent with parents.
While the consequences of a narcissistic or toxic parent, labeled "narcissistic wounding" by Nina W. Brown in her book "Children of the Self-Absorbed," tend to linger in adult children's relationships and lives, even after they've ceased contact or left home, many still stress holidays or celebrations where they're forced to place themselves in a similarly toxic environment.
Even if you haven't fully addressed toxic experiences or the root of your childhood trauma as an adult — and, in some cases, there may not be a big revelation to uncover — most people feel excited, more than anxious, to spend quality time with their loved ones. If you're consistently feeling anxious, sick, or fearful about this time, it could be one of the signs your parents are still dysfunctional, even though you're an adult now.
3. Your parents are still overly critical of your decisions
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While dysfunctional parents may be battling their own discomfort or anxiety, they're not always inherently malicious, especially towards their own children; rather, they're motivated by an overbearing or overprotective sense of love that transforms into toxic behaviors and communication styles over time.
Typically, these kinds of overprotective and overbearing parents tend to cultivate a toxic dynamic for their kids early in life, in ways that can later sabotage the independence and security of their kids in adulthood, like a study published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence argues.
Instead of supporting them in making autonomous decisions in adulthood or encouraging them with healthy praise, they resort to criticism or unnecessary judgment to "protect" them from making the wrong choices.
Of course, there's truly no "wrong choice" as an adult, especially for children that are making decisions from a self-aware perspective with their best interest in mind. There's only a parent's perception of what's best for their kids, often fueled by a misguided image of them in their childhood identities.
To cope with their feelings of guilt and an intrinsic yet still unhealthy obligation to protect their kids, criticism erupts as one of the clear signs your parents are still dysfunctional, even though you're an adult now.
4. You feel responsible for your parents' well-being
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Counselor and trauma therapist Dr. Liddy Carver argues that many adult children feel an intense obligation to look after their parents, even after leaving their family home. While they sometimes feel guilted into caretaking as a result of their parents' immature behavior, oftentimes adult children take on this burden because they're guilted into it by their parents themselves.
"If you feel responsible for your parents because of their immature behavior, you might think that you have to look after them even when you have moved out and have your own family. Doing this can have negative implications on your mental health and your own family who really are dependent on you," Carver says.
If you're still feeling anxious or guilty for prioritizing your own well-being and personal time by your parents, that is one of the clear signs your parents are still dysfunctional, even though you're an adult now. Whether they're motivated by insecure, attention-seeking behavior, or their own guilt, nothing should empower a parent to guilt-trip their own children into caretaking or burdening themselves with more anxiety than necessary.
Your parents should be looking out for your best interests, even if that means taking accountability and uncomfortable responsibility for their own lives.
5. They consistently overstep your boundaries
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Dysfunctional parents often get comfortable overstepping their children's boundaries long before they enter into adulthood, disrespecting their privacy in a family home, going through their things, or even upholding unrealistic expectations for success intended to humiliate and discourage their kids.
Into adulthood, boundaries and expectations may shift between parents and their kids, but the respect adult children deserve and advocate for often goes consistently overlooked.
In this stage of your life, the signs your parents are still dysfunctional revolve around boundaries, but they look much different — expecting you to answer their calls all the time, stopping by unannounced, giving you unsolicited advice, and even publicly criticizing your decisions.
Not only do dysfunctional parents disrespect their kids, they often don't view them as autonomous independent adults deserving of clear boundaries or individual space.
6. They dismiss your emotions
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Often a byproduct of unsolicited advice and unnecessary judgment, dysfunctional parents have a tendency to invalidate and dismiss their adult children's opinions, emotions, and experiences, even in passing conversations.
Instead of setting their own ego aside to support their kids through challenging times, celebrate their adult wins, or communicate healthily with them about new life stages and decisions, dysfunctional parents rely on guilt-tripping, attention-seeking behaviors, and passive-aggressive comments to command a room.
Whether it's their own insecurities talking or a tendency towards overprotective and overbearing behaviors, these parents don't make space for their children's needs; instead, they make assumptions about what's best for them without truly listening or understanding.
7. Your parents avoid uncomfortable conversations or conflict
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With greater accessibility to discussions about toxic parents and childhood trauma, especially for generations of children now entering early adulthood, it's inevitable that more families will be forced into uncomfortable conversations about their experiences and behaviors from growing up.
While parents may not have the same experience as their kids, it's important that they're willing to listen and support any uncomfortable emotions that might arise when discussing this link between childhood experience and adult struggle, helping their kids to feel heard and understood, for the benefit of their relationship.
However, dysfunctional parents tend to avoid these conversations and most kinds of conflict in general, feeling specifically "called out" and offended by any perceived attack on their superiority, image, or parenting. While it might be uncomfortable, the healthiest parent-child relationships revolve around an ability to have open communication and empathetically support each other.
8. They're perfectionists
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Family coach Ellen Nyland argues that perfectionism is a "relentless pursuit of flawlessness" that often manifests itself as unrealistic expectations, self-criticism, and a fear of rejection or failure in our daily lives.
For dysfunctional parents who are also perfectionists, they not only hold their kids to unrealistic standards and expect them to be "perfect," they're also incredibly harsh on themselves — trying to be the perfect parent and paint a perfect picture of their family.
These expectations not only spark resentment between parents and their children, especially into adulthood when the stressors of a new career, family expectations, and money stress appear, they can cultivate toxic family dynamics between siblings, parents, and partners, where nobody feels truly heard, unconditionally loved, or supported.
9. They're impulsive
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From showing up randomly at your house to making huge life decisions without a comment in a family group chat, impulsivity is one of the many signs your parents are still dysfunctional, even though you're an adult now.
In many cases, this impulsive need for change or chaos is a coping mechanism for their own low self-esteem or hyperactivity, but in other cases, it's an attention-seeking behavior intended to grab the attention of adult children who might've otherwise been busy living their own lives.
To cope with the discomfort that comes from familial disconnect, a natural experience for parents and children as they enter adulthood, these dysfunctional parents will do anything — even if it's entirely subconscious — to get their kids' attention or to feel "needed" again by other people in the family.
10. They refuse to respect your differing opinions
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Counselor Dr. Rachel Glik argues that changing opinions, values, and beliefs can often spark tension in parent-child relationships, especially as children enter into adulthood and start crafting their own independent lives.
Coupled with the inherent disconnect already rooted in these evolving relationships, many dysfunctional parents struggle to make space for understanding their children's new belief systems and perspectives.
Rather than compromise and find shared experience, they prefer to latch onto their misguided sense of superiority — viewing their own ideas, mindsets, and perspectives as "right," and everything else as inherently wrong.
The same is true for providing advice for their adult children — they may not trust their kids' decision-making skills, believing that they have all the answers for adulthood because they've been in the same life situation before.
11. Your parents still view you as a child
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Many parents find comfort in continuing to view their adult children in their adolescent identities, not only because it soothes their desire to feel "needed," but because it gives them a misguided sense of freedom in overstepping their boundaries and interjecting unsolicited opinions into conversations.
According to counselor Dr. Rachel Glik, this mindset often manifests into controlling behavior from dysfunctional parents, sparking feelings of disconnect, resentment, and mistrust in families.
Healthy parent-child relationships revolve around mutual understanding, respect, and trust. Without these important foundational elements, adult children only continue to feel overlooked and invalidated by their parents. Every relationship deserves space to evolve and grow, even if it's uncomfortable at first.
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a staff writer with a bachelor's degree in social relations & policy and gender studies who focuses on psychology, relationships, self-help, and human interest stories.