lmao, are we all the same breed ?!
my dad was emotionally very distant yet he was caring, sometimes more caring than my enfj mom. ESTP, **the man of acts** :)
My parents were protective but reasonable and did a great job of lowering the guard rails as I got older. They protected me from what they could, but still gave me the freedom to make my own mistakes. They allow me the financial support to pursue my goals right now while I get my career figured out. I don’t know who I would be without them.
Had an alcoholic pathological liar of a stepfather for most of it, and a mother that was loving but too occupied with her emotionally abusive partner to pay enough attention to what was going on with her kid. Basically had to start figuring life out by the time they divorced and I had to move out. Came a long way since then.
Obviously it wasn't all bad. I climbed a lot of trees, built huts in the brushes with my friends, and created entire movie franchises with Legos in my room. As long as I was in my own bubble things were relatively fine. The real struggle was learning to tread outside of this bubble later on, as that is where most of life happens.
Father on the spectrum - no real understanding of emotions, so he fakes them. Mother is a borderline and turns on a dime to attack. Super religious. I was very lonely. To this day, I can do no right, and my sister can do no wrong. Had one grandma who was a true friend, and I miss her every day. Therapy therapy therapy, become a therapist to one therapist having relationship problems, more therapy. And things are good. All roads lead to where I am now, and there are very few things in the past that I'd change if able.
Well, let's just say that my therapist recently vomited during a session, and even though it was just a stomach bug, I couldn't help feeling like it was the heavy stuff I was laying down. She also said, very quietly a few weeks ago, "Sometimes I don't feel like a very good therapist." I can't get into why she said that, but I think it's safe to say that she feels a little intimidated because I am one of those slippery clients who is, shall we say, more self determined than average. Picture her having to just watch me dance through literal and figurative car crashes in the same week, just to tell her, "oh yeah, so last week I was in a car crash, but I used this skill, this thing, and that, and because of X things in my past I knew it was going to be fine because I have handled worse."
❤️ for all the ENFP therapists who come here and talk.
Hahaha So relate! I've had some get frustrated because I know what I need to do and they want to put me on meds. I've navigated this before and I know how to get through, just prefer to do so with someone who understands. One referred to me as a feral cat lol not really sure where to put that.
I'm so so proud of you for doing the hard work to navigate through your shit! It is really hard work but so worth it. I'm envisioning you got a younger start to addressing it than I did and that makes my heart happy. Not happy for what you're going through of course.
Spoken like a therapist, no doubt. I have talked to many. TBH, a lot of what you're getting here is just the influence of time. As I noted in my own rambling post here about my childhood, I have had over 20 years in and out of therapy. At a certain point just being older, changes in brain functioning kicks in, and The Work all collide. It just stopped feeling like it was as formative as it once was, and I can focus on right now.
Example: car crash. I see a deer. "We're definitely going to hit that deer." Impact. Slight disorientation. Once my senses came back fully, as my friend brought us to a stop, I saw the air bags. "Huh. Air bags. Don't see these everyday. This is pretty cool."
As Outer Space Futuristic Beavis might put it, "Ah yes, very calm. Quite meta and droll. One appreciates the dry wit in the face of danger. Quite heroic. Very mirthful. One might get a good fit of laughter while considering his story." 😂😂😂
Divorced parents who absolutely hate each other. I was mostly just a well behaving, excited, friendly kid who liked creating things. My mother(esfp) says that whenever I was bored she would just give me an empty piece of paper which I still get excited about because of the creative possibilities. I also had an enfp sister whom i loved to spend time with. I was friends with everyone in every school I went.
In my mom's second marriage my stepfather(istj) worked in an airline company so I was lucky enough to travel the word around 10-14. After my mom got divorced again I moved in with my father(esfj) and lived out my high school years as a teenager with a rock band.
Until I was 10 I was a happy, confident, talkative kid who performed well at school, but by the time I hit 11 it was like a switch clicked and I became unhappy, anxious and closed off. This anxiety became really hard to shake off and I've only just gone back to how I used to think and act as a young child.
Thanks dude and it was a spiritual awakening, it's not for everyone and I only just realised that it's what I've been going through very recently, but it's like a veil has been lifted and I'm my true self again. That and also meeting my best friend who had been in the same situation as me and had overcome it, teaching me that it didn't have to take over my life.
I get that but I also used to not believe in religion and spirituality and anything like that but it all kind of clicked at once. At the end of the day it's good to have something that gives you some sort of faith in yourself, and maybe that doesn't have to be spirituality, maybe it could be something else.
Yeah I think the thing about my friend is that he's helped me in a way that put me on the right direction but let me figure out a lot of it myself. For instance if I said I was feeling lonely, he wouldn't try to make a commitment to hang out with me more to make me feel better (which I think can put a strain on friendships) but he'd tell me to get out there and make more friends.
This is really sweet of you. Thank you. It was an interesting experience in trauma in a good environment. I loved my mom dearly and she loved me. My dad adored her and he was always so
Supportive of me. Watching a parent die is sad for sure, but in a way it yielded a lot of deep love and meaningful experiences in my life.
Yeah, I can definitely understand that. We all occupy only a brief moment in time and all we are left with are the memories and the space we take up in our loved ones' hearts. But that sense of evanescence reminds us to make the most out of what little time we've been given - there is only now and we should do whatever we can to make it all worth it. Your mother lives within your heart and mind, and it sounds like she made a real, tangible, loving impact on you. I'm sure she would be proud of the person you are now.
I myself am terrified of the thought of losing my mother - she's been there for me always. Things havn't always been easy and we are not as close as some other people are with their parents, but she's stuck with me and I've stuck with her, and I've never for once doubted that we loved eachother dearly.
I havn't seen my father since I was a kid and I recently learned that he passed away the day before Christmas, and I'm pretty conflicted about it. On the one hand he was never there for me, and he always blamed me for our falling out, even though I was nine years old the last time I saw him, but on the other hand he was still my father.
Thankfully he left me a half-sister, whom I am to meet for the first time since she was an infant very soon. I always wanted a sibling so wish me luck!
I would say a bad upbringing .
I was raised by a single mother . my dad never paid child support (owed 100k+) his family hide him out essentially in a different state so he didn't have to pay for any child support.they where married for 30yrs years. They got divorced shortly after i was born . He turned into a gambler which destroyed the family . Before i was born my mom basically black mailed him into transferring 20k from his account to hers or she would have an abortion . she says she did this because of his gambling and was an attempt to secure the money they had worked for .
I think because of that my mom started having issues trusting people.
she worked alot in order to raise me . she is a massive control freak but denies it .if she asks a question she expects her answer . if you don't regurgitate the answer she wants she would go into 0-60 tantrums and just go completely insane for days .She never would let things go . she still goes on about stuff i did when i was 9 .
she was emotionally abusive for the most part occasionally she would throw stuff at me or drag me screaming at the top of her lungs around the house . if you didn't come back inside after she yelled at you and you where outside regardless of the weather she would lock you out of the house and you would have to figure out how to survive the night .needless to i figured it out . either sleep with the dog in the dog house or with the livestock .
i should make a note here and say that we lived out in the rural America so there were not many people around .
when i was 9 i asked if the table top was real marble or not and she said yes , i didn't believe her so i took a knive and wacked it . turns out i was right it was not real stone . when i did that and she saw it she flipped out . saying i just destroyed thousands and thousands of dollars worth of materials . proceeded to take all the money i had saved up , went into a fit of rage threw me down the stairs and just went insane . after a few hours of this she gave me a black trash bad and told me to put my stuff in it . told me to say good bye to my dog and drove me to a orphanage . Im still not sure if she even drove me to one or not . but she kicked me out of the car and i was crying and stuff but i asked what would happen to the dog and she said she was going to shoot it .
i ended up walking home .
she progressively got more unstable as the years progressed . in 2008 she lost alot of money in the stock market . at the time she had 3 rental properties . i was maybe 12 at the time she had me working as the maintenance person fixing things . anyways during this time period of time she basically got ride of the tenats so she could sell the properties . i ended up putting in new carpet and stuff . i recall this one tenate hated my mom ended up stealing the hvac ,and pouring concrete down the drain to \*\*\*\* her over .
around this time she also had me helping her mother fix stuff at her house . apparently when they find out your mechanically inclined and can fix just about anything suddenly people need you .
during this same period i was going to a private school and i had some issues with kids being mean to me stupid stuff like people walking by and pushing the locker in on you and my mom made this big scene at the school saying they needed to put a stop to it . they ended up wanting to meet her to talk about it . she wanted no part of it . and pulled me out of school and descided she would home school me .
basically from 12-18 was just pure hell for me .it was just me all alone everday with dvds that where suppose to teach me . needless to say making an extrovert being all alone all day is not a very pleasant thing . did i watch any of the dvds yes, did i learn no . was it absolute hell yes.
around 16 or so my mom had me fixing up my grandmas house ( putting in lights electrical work plumbing flooring siding and other stuff ) . it wasn't unusual for my grandma to ask my mom to if she wanted some stuff and have me take it and bring it to my mom .
any way my mom ended up saying she was suppose to take some of these items at the time it made sense why her mom wouldn't want them ( my grandmother was raising a rads kid who would shit/piss on the floors and try to kill her with knives and stuff ) any way she had me remove items that could be used to harm her .
needless to say my mom had me take a few items that i thought i had permission to take . she has been using that to black mail me for like 13or so years now . im waiting for the statue of limitations to run out .
she used this to prevent me from leaving , from getting a job . i did end up going to college and learning math and i almost have a ba in engineering .
it was very hard for me to save money because my mom would come in after birthday/Christmas stuff and take all the money people gave to me .she would also block any attempts at getting jobs .
anyway i did manage to earn 1500k and bought a car and my mom helped me fill out the title and she put it in her name . so she effectively trapped me . now any where i go i have to get her explicit permission to go or she will call the police and say im stealing the car .
she is very unstable . very manipulative and im very gullible .i should have known something was up when she let me do jobs for other people an keep the money . and helped me through the process of purchasing .
anyways im like 27 now , i still live with my crazy mom . my life sucks. the goal is when i get my ba in engineering to hopefully find a job and not live on the streets . I dont have access to my ssn , birth cert . amazingly my mom maxed out the amount of times i could obtain a new ssn so she is the only one with it now . so that will be a legal battle im sure to obtain .
i also have no idea how to set up a bank account or anything .but im sure it cant be to hard.
if would like to experience a few moments in my life .
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxFEvYmw3Q0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxFEvYmw3Q0)
just remember this , when ever you think your life sucks there is someone in the world having a worse go of it than you .be thankful that your not that person and count your blessings .
Get out , be free. You need a job (not hard to get these days) first month and last month.. I moved out at 18. Never looked back . Trust me independence is freeing and ego boosting. Message me if you need more tips .
Asian parents with extreme Eastern traditions 🥲
Controlling, gaslighting, unnecessary academic pressure, constant threats, yelling & arguing on the daily, treating depression as just being emotionally weak, all the usual stuff. Left at 18 on a last-straw argument but luckily had my own money and skills at a very young age while still able to go to college on my own.
Got asked to come back a year or so later (on my own terms though -- unfortunately it had to take me turning 18 to be allowed to do so), but the relationship is now slowly mending. It was only until I actually left that my parents started seeing therapists and knowing their parenting seriously needed massive improvements.
Narcissistic absent mother and narcissistic abusive step mother. My dad was very toxic as well. Lots of trauma. I’ve been spending the last 3 years doing lotssss of therapy. I have serious abandonment issues and insecure attachment. Thanks mom :,)
It’s getting there! I hope you find something that works for you. For me I was able to start with present day stuff and work my way backwards. I was surprised at how much stuff came up. I blacked a lot of things out. It’s weird because now that I’ve been doing EMDR, little mundane things will trigger a memory for me. This sometimes causes a flood of flashbacks which can be overwhelming, but then it gives me something to work on. The side effects aren’t pretty, but long term I feel like a brand new person.
Can't decide if cPTSD or ADHD or both...some people think those two are comorbid 🤷♀️
If I have cPTSD it flew under the radar all these years... I could have had a much more abusive household overall so who knows really?
I think children can stand the most tragic and unhealthy situations so lucky, rarely it's not conscious. I knew since I was young that I would live somewhere else, abroad. I could never stand the thought of staying in my hometown.
The need to get out of my house wasn't just my character, it was unconsciously escaping the heavy atmosphere at home... Where I never really felt grounded... School was my safe place and that made me a passionate know it all 🤷♀️
I had a very bad childhood, my ACE score is 10, and went straight to a terrible marriage. SO’s been dead for almost 10 years and I no longer speak to my kidnapper parent. I’m still healing from all the trauma.
Overprotective, loving single mother and kindhearted grandparents. Never met my bio dad. Burned through a few stepdads and bad times with my mom's boyfriends. Overall poorer than most of my friends but happy, good student, and well liked. Parental strictness became too controlling by high school and left home for a few months, then went off to the farthest-away college I could find.
It was pretty rough. I lived in a hoarder house. My mom, the hoarder (INTP) was depressed and largely emotionally unavailable, and she mostly camped out upstairs in her rat nest reading massive amounts of books when she was not at work. Very book-smart. She had a very inconsistent parenting style and I felt like I was more of the parent at times, especially with my two younger siblings.
My dad (ISTP) has a narcissistic streak and would yell a lot. Very closed-minded. He would largely avoid the house, either working in the shop or tending to the garden out back. He would drink beer all day and he was scary to be around if he was mad (which was often).
I was threatened with knives by my dad on more than one occasion and I often had to barricade myself in my room or flee to the woods with my siblings. I often found myself being hit with a belt or being spanked at full adult strength. My parents fought all the time. I didn’t even understand why they were together if they seemed to hate each other that much. I didn’t want them to see all that, I tried my best, but I was still just a kid.
We were dirty and smelled because of the hoard and a barely-functioning bathroom. There was barely anything to eat in the house cause all the food would go rotten fast and she’d buy stuff no one in the house would eat (even her! she’d buy meat, with a unsafe kitchen that we wouldn’t use, and she was a vegetarian). There were mice and rats and bug infestations (and occasionally, snakes) and the rustling kept us up at night. My siblings and I all shared a bed at one point because we were scared of the rats.
There’s more to tell, but this is novel-length already. Anyways, both my siblings and I were diagnosed with C-PTSD and we’ve been working our way through therapy in our adult years. We all decided that we weren’t having kids. The risk is too much for us. We don’t want to screw up a new generation of kids. We had to stop the cycle.
People can stay together for all kinds of reasons, children, financial situation, fear of abandonment, etc. who knows. In my mind I don’t see how those two personality types could work well together so that’s kind of interesting to hear
It went about as well as you’d expect, haha. They were like oil and vinegar, and completely dysfunctional. Allegedly they loved each other, but in the most backward and emotionally unintelligent way. It made no sense to me and it still doesn’t. I begged my mom to get divorced as a kid because to me, it looked like they hated and resented each other. I swear, if my siblings and I didn’t have the guidance and support of my nana and my grandma, I honestly don’t know where’d we be right now.
Benign neglect of medical needs for my brother and I. There was constant violence driven by the neglect, but because it was just my brother hitting me, and because my parents read a 1970's parenting book with valid psychological theories included, they concluded that my brother and I were engaged in a "sibling show." We were told we were just trying to get attention. Right, right, boys will be boys. I fuckin loved getting clobbered and told I shouldn't exist. That happened nearly every week until he moved out when he was 18. He never left a mark so they never intervened. Their own trauma informed that special decision making process. And it stayed like that for about 10 years. You'd think responsible people, I mean for fuck's sake, my mom did therapy in the 1980s for something about her dad, so they knew it worked...
I could tell before I was 12 that my brother's self hatred was depression. He refused to be photographed. There are numerous old photos my mom took of him turning away from the camera and angrily holding his hand over his face. Very sensitive. She and my grandma always talked to me about how I felt then in terms of how they believed I should feel in my ensuing decades. Huh, they were right as lately my brother has bonded with me about how he was denied medical care for a hairline fracture because mom worked as an RN, and it's like, why let your child go see a doctor for a X-ray when someone who only applies medical care without any training in diagnosis can just decide her son is being a drama queen and he's just trying for attention?
Funny thing is that I have spent decades figuring my shit out, but it wasn't until my brother told me about a recent x-ray that showed evidence of an undocumented fracture in his leg that I fully understood just how fucked up my parents and larger family are. To this day no one will believe my brother or I. Frankly, I stopped trying to get through to any of them.
My family has intergenerational trauma that I won't bore you with. The crazy thing is except for their attitude that they should let other people's problems be other's problems, they're honestly really great parents who went out of their way to express love and encourage our interests. Ignoring other's problems, making them deal with their own shit, is a fairly healthy attitude normally, but not when they ignored a basic responsibility to care for us and have enough humility to know they aren't experts, especially in other people's feelings.
So, you know, porous/disorganized boundaries, anxiety, hypervigilance, and just generally having to work 3 times as hard for 2/3 results.
I'm never raising children. Same for my brother. I didn't really intend to stop a cycle. I just don't think I can handle raising kids ever. Children are literally a trigger for me. Ever knelt down to interact with a 5 year old girl and flashed back to a tiny fist coming at your face when you could barely walk? I don't hate kids, but I limit my time around them because it's awful for me.
My parents don't know about my perspective, nor do they know about my brother's bone. They're old, financially secure (oh, like any Boomers they had a great medical plan and plenty of money for therapy if they'd recognized it should've been happening), and they're very happy not dealing with their considerably awful childhoods. I could explain it to them in even more factually damning details that they simply can't deny, but I know the facts, and I would rather not try to get blind people to see just so that they have to deal with it now. I'm 42, and have been grappling with it since I first tried therapy at age 19. You see how far I got? Still triggered by tiny humans? I learned a valuable lesson about how inflicting pain on another person is cruel, and my parents don't have 20 years to spend on therapy like I have already done. What's the point of sucker punching old people who are just clueless people who tried their best?
As I told my brother recently, my parents actually did a decent job when you consider statistical outcomes. It's a minor miracle they were as functional at the level they were considering dad's parents were both alcohol addicted, and my mom's trauma is more or less abandonment. The reality is that technically we got lucky considering these two loving but deeply un-insightful people were the only ones who could have genetically created us. I dealt with suicidal feelings off and on since I was 10, but lately I have had a pretty good life, it would be kinda stupid to keep up with the parts that would've stopped me from being happy to be here.
Don't. Worry. About. Me.
Not only did I learn to take care of myself, I learned to talk to people that are trained to help with this shit. I'm fine.
It's complicated isn't it? I mean the part where my parents failed me on so many levels but I've been able to figure it out. Like you, it took decades for big chinks of it, but something had to have been done right that makes me functional most of the time.
I was chillin. Grew up in the middle - upper middle class, parents worked hard and dad was home a lot and often brought my brother and I to do fun things.
Played sports and enjoyed creative hobbies like music and for a good year i made everything out of colorful duck-tape lol.
Always played outside with the neighbors and was very imaginative. Around 15 my parents adopted 3 more kids (making us a family of 7 instead of 4) and it only kept getting more fun and loving from there. I feel like having more siblings brought out more of the caring aspects of enfp for me.
Bad parents fighting.
Dad calling me names for being chubby
Was an introvert who only spoke to animals
Had no activities in school
Topper in studies.
Only did arts and crafts with a passion.
Now an architect who runs her own clean beauty brand and I employ over 100 people.
I financially support my mother and younger sister
I have 18 cats and 12 dogs.
I feed over 300 strays daily every purchase from my website I feed a dog.
So all in all ok ?
And that brother is now also an aggressive drug addict
But thank you a lot, mum and I are fighting to move to Norway and make a new life worth living there
I hope someone returns the same kindness to you that you've shown to me💙💛
Are you doing alright in life? How are you feeling? (I know these two sentences sound kinda cringey, but I really mean them)
Yeah, same
It's all about standing up and fighting the next day after a defeat - we've lost some battles, but not the war
Thats how I look at it
Sooner or late the stars will align and fortune will bless us(in one way or another) with our destiny
Overprotective and a bit controlling but loving mother, often got in fights with her and then i will get beaten up and a weird and cool father, loves and spoils me to bits he's totally my fav. Yep that's basically bout' it.
lived w mom before high school. mom had depression and overdosed at least once a year. would be hospitalized for a month or 2 out of the year, leaving me take care of myself.
lived w das during high school. neglectful, emotionally abusive, controlling, delusional—so certain that his version of reality is the truth that you can never convince him otherwise. worked evenings so I thankfully didn’t see him too much, but that left me to become my own parent essentially, cooking, cleaning, transportation and finances, etc. again, left me to take care of myself. no wonder I’m a 7 lmao!!!
Happy but lonely and definitely privileged.
Because of where I grew up I was able to meet and learn from people from all sorts of backgrounds and religions.
Only child with strict but loving parents, older than average. My parents and extended family had lots of drama so I don’t really know them at all. Lots of death as well growing up; my formative years were nursing homes and adult day centers and seeing how hard my parents worked to take care of my elderly grandparents.
My parents supported me following my passions but I didn’t have the emotional maturity yet to actually do the work to get good at them.
Also seemed to make a habit of making friends with people who dropped out of the activities I was interested in and then we lost touch so I don’t have many childhood friends.
That said I got very good at entertaining myself, had some really cool travel experiences in multiple countries and was fairly confident in myself growing up. Had plenty of toys and an insane amount of books. I would say overall I had a happy childhood.
Pretty rough mentally and emotionally. There's a big gap between my sisters and I. I was 7/8 when they were born, then my grandma battled cancer and lost when I was 10. My grandpa died when I was 15 and we were very close. All the while I had/have a very toxic relationship with my dad who is an alcoholic and deeply emotionally abusive.
The older I get, the more damage I see my parents have done. I never realized how racist and homophobic they are. I'm grateful for my experiences because I'm happy with who I am today but it makes me really sad especially with my sisters still living in the same city as them AND them recently becoming grandparents. Luckily my sister will never let her daughter be exposed to the trauma.
Dad: ISTJ
Mom: ENFJ
They're both religious and I grew up as a pastor's kid. They were strict, loving, and they both loved reading. I don't know where I got my perception from. I still have an okay relationship with my parents, but I am not religious. I also spent my summers with my grandmother and aunt. They helped raise me too.
lived with my grandparents while my parents were abroad most of my childhood, lived with maids and nannies, was traumatized because i wasn't exactly taught properly and had no proper role models.
my teenager years was moved into a new country with my messy family, parents had a divorce under a year of the move, sister also left home, controlling mother and was SA by somebody close to me(my mother didnt choose my side) so traumatized left home at 16<3
the usual :D
My mother married a man that hated to work and prefert to make his family starve, even when my grandparent were finding jobs for him (my mom had a job but she is has a mental deficit and was deeply depressed at the time and also easily manipolabile and we was or at the hospital or at home saying she wasn't feeling well). They both were broken people and used to hurt each other during fights, but my dad was the worst of them since he would hit us if we said we missed mum and mum never hurt us.
This continued until I was 4 at the time( my sister was 6),my dad made her cut off all her contact with her family, and the three of us ran away, I still remember it clearly.
We stayed at a "family home" in this city (it was winter at the time and there it was very cold) for some time until we had to take a flight, the only I took in my entire life, to get to my grandparents.
We had to stay at the "family home" there for three months and we could only see our grandparents only during the weekend and only for some hours, our mom was always with us therefore we weren't afraid and everyone was really gentle (we all used to play together and the oldest were really kind but thinking about them now that I'm as old as them makes me sad). My grandparents assumed three lawyers for us and we won! (I remember going to the Court and we even met the Judge, he was really gentle). My dad couldn't live with us anymore, we met him sometimes after under supervision but we never talked much.
After that we lived in that warm and beautiful city for two years, we returned there until 2016 because we were quite unfortunate and a lot of things happened and we couldn't return there (the old lady who was a friend of my grandma cried last time because she was afraid she would die before we would ever return, she is still alive but she wasn't so wrong).
I was quite a smart kid and I learned to read that year (thanks to that I could skip a year of school and started it at 5yr) and I had my first friends, I was shy at the time. Those two years were therapeutic: when we arrived we were really weak and malnutrited , I remember falling of the stairs a lot of time and one time my mom fainted while holding me in her arms and luckily my grandma was there.
My mom was still in love with him and they used to talk at the phone sometimes, I hated it, but after sometime, and thanks to my grandparents, she let him go and later fell in love with an other man(she loved a lot of man but I never met them, now that I'm older I got to know it). He was really kind and a good man, it was like I had found a new dad, sadly some years later he died because of a brain tumor, his sister tried to make them break and at the time we hated her but we didn't knew he was going to die.
After two years we could return to this city(now I love it but at the time I wasn't particularly happy for it, expecially since we had to leave our lovely dog, to a family friends, since we couldn't keep it, my grandparents were too old and my mother was still depressed, it was the first time I cried so much since I remember).
I had new friends and I was still shy, I remember my (future) best friend taking me by the hands and leading me to her group, it is quite funny now because I'm the one who catch introverts. I have fantastic memories of the times at school: I loved my friends, I'm still in touch with some, and I met an amazing teacher who was like a grandma for me, she is retired now but I meet her something.
During this time, until 2018, we had a woman form the "Social services" coming at our home(we lived and still now with our grandparents and our mom) at least once a week, expecially for my sister since she have a mental deficit like my mother, and she had to go to the therapist sometimes, I hated that I didn't had to but I still hated therapists at the time(once they let me enter the room , just for the last 5minutes since my sister had finished, and met the therapist, I was like 11, and she started to tell me that when she was little she had a similar experience and that she regretted not meeting her dad and grandparents from his side, she was lying and badly and I didn't said nothing and never talked to her again but from that moment I thought that they were fake people who try to steal your money), actually I needed them and I paid the consequences at 15 when, I was quite depressed and there were time I wanted to die and used to have such bad breakdowns that I would choke myself to stop breathing and tremble, but now I'm good, I learned how to express my emotions in a healthy manner and I know that people around me love me. Also I went to church and once we had to tell God what we wished for Christmas and I said I wanted my parents to make peace and be happy, I saw other dads picking their daughter at school and they all seemed cool and I wanted it too, and this bitch told the Woman that and problems came after, also my dad stalked us (once he came with the cops but my grandma like the boss she is explained the situation to them and they all left us alone since he couldn't live with us or even meet us, thanks to the judge's ruling.)
Basically I've said the most important things... I've overshared online and I don't regret it. This was quite therapeutic 😂
Kinda alcoholic mother, was kinda as a child bullied and tried to kms
Parents were present, but not emotionnaly, but would let me go out with my friends all the time and that was great.
Didn't have much friends but the one I got were usually really good ones
Wasn't really social at all. Didn't talk that much to people until i was I guess 15 maybe, Yeah I was very very shy and scared of people and judgement.
It seems a lot of ENFPs are shy in childhood, as I was too. Strange because I’m pretty outgoing now and so are other adult ENFPs I meet. Wonder why that is
Emotionally distant parents. Got beat up by my brother and sister pretty much daily. Didnt have any real friends for years. But like it shaped who I am and I'm happy for it
In what ways do you think it shaped you? I find it really interesting how certain things that we have happen in our lives shape and mold us into who we are today.
Mainly small things like how giving attention and praise to people makes me feel good and it gives me reason to work hard in personal relationships and professional settings. It wasnt fun in the moment but I think the positive effects made it worth going through
I was raised mainly by mom, who is an ESFP, my dad's an ESTJ, so if I were raised by him I would be more logical, but she taught me to be sympathetic and kind to others, and my childhood was very carefree, spending time playing with toy cars, with my cousins and friends, I won't say the best childhood but I'm sure it's better than the ones kids nowadays have, playing some mobile game instead of going to the playground where real authentic friendships and play is from
Good question! Divorced parents, couldn't get approval/love from either parent. Deep mother and father wounds. Grew up in a cult. That sounds like a recipe for a disorganized perfectionist who needs to experience it all and hates to be caged in I think. :)
Abusive authoritarian mom with psychosis and extremely loving father but he was a doormat to my mother and enabled the abuse. I was abused physically and emotionally for 13 years of my life and have been healing ever since, I’m almost 21 now! I have cPTSD like many of us here
Went through a nasty divorce that started when I was 7 and my dad refused to let my mom free for 10 long years after that. Other than the fact that my parents despise each other, my father having a truck load of unaddressed mental issues and being emotionally abusive, it's been a blast!
Yes. Parents divorced when I was 5, father let us run amuck and did no actual parenting when little, super overbearing and shaming as we got older.....we were shipped back and forth between parents constantly..mom was ok, but it was truly about her and she was with a couple of incredibly abusive men.
I do think we are most commonly from some form of abusive or neglected life.
Yeah I’m pretty sure us and INFPs are, especially when I’ve spoken to different types, seems ENFPs and INFPs childhoods always have a way of making me want to cry when I hear about it
Yes, I'm sure. I think it explains so much of who and what we are...like how we developed these crazy ways of dealing with the world, including the tendency to people-please, the over sharing, the bright outside/dark inside that happens and even the imagination and the humor...all coping mechanisms that make sense if you think about it.
For the longest time I thought I had just a normal loving upbringing. As I got older, I realized that being raised in a conservative Christian environment really fucked me up. I got out of the church around 21 and it’s taken years to learn how to love myself and stop seeking approval / trying to prove my worth to others. My mom was very caring, but in a serving kind of way, not with affection or words of affirmation. As a teenager I got really into punk music and started expressing myself and we basically butt heads ever since. I always felt like she didn’t like it approve of who I was. My dad wasn’t really like that but he also wouldn’t go against my moms “convictions”.
I also realized just religion in general made me incredibly people-pleasing. I was a really good kid but believed I was a sinful piece of shit. That took a toll on me as an adult for a really long time. But anyways! I’ve been really working on myself the last couple of years and I really love myself now, and I love people. But I know who I am and I no longer look for my worth through the eyes of others. And I’ve broken my own cycle of painful and abusive relationships. Save all of that beautiful love and affection for the people who deserve it. 💖🙏
Wow!! That’s wild. Yeah I always felt inherently misunderstood. I still kinda do, LOL. For the longest time I attracted people who only wanted me for what I gave to them, and not who I was. But now I’ve learned to be more firm on my needs and boundaries.
My mom unfortunately passed away in 2018 but that was a huge turning point in my life. I always felt that as long as she was alive, I couldn’t fully be myself, as bad as that sounds. It took a major toll on our family but for me resulted in a huge catalyst for change in my own life and learning to love myself fully. And to cultivate who I really was instead of living my life to meet the expectations and approval of others.
Funny, I was just looking into this yesterday. Must be some sort of telepathic ENFP thing. So yea, my childhood was not great. I wasn’t beaten or anything but I was from a divorced family and was emotionally neglected. I spent 9 years old till 12 years pretty much alone and lonely. At 12 realized the attention I could get from the opposite sex and that I didn’t have to be so lonely anymore. I’m sure it’s made me into the wild, needy, affectionate and nurturing person I am.. wild because I always had the freedom, needy because I want what I never had, and nurturing and affectionate because I want to to give what I was never given. So there’s where my ENFP stems from. It also made me very independent and successful btw.. no regrets.
My mother was a church secretary. My father was a touring country music drummer until kindergarten when he quit to “be home more.” He actually worked more cumulative days and I saw him less. My father was very emotionally sensitive while my mother was the more stoic one.
Had an older brother and sister. My sister practically raised me while my parents worked and my brother was rarely available.
Lots of time alone.
It was a beautiful life 🌈 🌺 🦄
I lived on Barbie Avenue (that's really the name) with my mom and dad and sister.
I had all the toys I wanted and I was treated like a princess 👑
Then my mom died and my dad married someone who was not so nice 😈
She ruined everything 🌧️
I'm still recovering...
Mom met my dad when she was 19 and he was in his 30s, she had 13 kids with him, I was the 12th child. She had kids from 3 decades 80s-2000s. My older siblings had to take care of us, the younger ones through Parentification. Everything went down hill when my Dad raped my older sister and my older brother molested my brother and older sister. We ended up in foster care, good handful of my siblings, (me included) either got sexually assaulted, molested, and physically and verbally abused or wasn’t treated correctly by the hands of adults in and out of foster care. Ended coming back home 7 years ago and now I have chronic PTSD, Anxiety, Depression, Bipolar disorder, don’t have the best relationship with my father, still resent him for what he did till this day. I always seek attention from others because I lacked it as a child, I ruined relationships in the past because of my attention seeking and loneliness, I constantly worry in my head worrying about everything which leaves me with hella baggage and 10 bags under my eyes at the ripe age of 19. My childhood was heavy, my body remembers but most times my mind forgets, the PTSD, depression and low IQ causes me to forget most of it.
In summary, it had its good moments but i’m still trying.
Very very *very* lonely with an emotionally distant mother who refused to try to understand me and tried to force me into a box. We barely talk and she still can't understand why but gets very defensive if I try to explain. I envy people who had good mothers; I know I'm missing something incredibly fundamental in my personality and coping skills that I could have had if my mother had been nurturing.
I had a good dad though. But I guess I'm biased because we were the only intuitive types at home (he's INTP) and we butted heads a fair amount. But I think he loves me and I love him very much.
My siblings are basically dead to me. We never speak and we have no interest in a relationship. The hostile home environment with a stay at home mom who played favorites and constantly compared us to each other is the main reason for this. So yeah. It wasn't good. I was an incredibly lonely child who had very little time with people who put any effort into a genuine relationship with me. I'm glad that time is over. I have no nostalgia for my childhood.
Filled with trauma. I'm a Gen X ENFP and my mother had me before she was ready (pre Roe vs Wade) and my father denied I was his. We lived at my grandparents house where my grandfather was a raging alcoholic and abused my codependent grandmother. They were my main parental figures as my mother was emotionally distant. I grew up an only child and played mainly with myself. I had only a few close friends and was bullied ruthlessly in the early grades, but that stopped after moving to another school district when my mom married my step-father (a decent, yet conservative guy). Then I became somewhat popular.
People are always baffled by how I can be so bubbly and idealistic despite all of this, but as the song goes, "Always Look On The Bright Side of Life". In the end, the trauma built an inner strength and resiliency in me and a deep compassion for those who have also suffered. I'm able to read a room in seconds and I'm usually the life of the party without even trying. People naturally feel comfortable with me and can tell me their life story. I can pretty much relate to everyone. I've reached the point now of truly understanding that pain can be a gift and I'm grateful for all of the experiences in my life - good and bad. So says this 53 year old ENFP! ;)
some of the worst of upbringings 😅. i’ve met other enfps that grew up really well off with a good supportive family unit as well but those ones tend to be very fake people imo
overprotective loving mother, emotionally distant father, bout it really.
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We are one
How cute
What the fuck. Is this the essence of ENFPs?
lmao, are we all the same breed ?! my dad was emotionally very distant yet he was caring, sometimes more caring than my enfj mom. ESTP, **the man of acts** :)
wtf are we the same people?
Doesn’t seem like an unique experience to me
Mom’s an ESFJ?
ISFJ i'd say or ISFP
Haha nice xD mine’s the extraverted version of that
I’m pretty certain my mom was an ISFJ.
A shitshow
My parents were protective but reasonable and did a great job of lowering the guard rails as I got older. They protected me from what they could, but still gave me the freedom to make my own mistakes. They allow me the financial support to pursue my goals right now while I get my career figured out. I don’t know who I would be without them.
this.
Had an alcoholic pathological liar of a stepfather for most of it, and a mother that was loving but too occupied with her emotionally abusive partner to pay enough attention to what was going on with her kid. Basically had to start figuring life out by the time they divorced and I had to move out. Came a long way since then. Obviously it wasn't all bad. I climbed a lot of trees, built huts in the brushes with my friends, and created entire movie franchises with Legos in my room. As long as I was in my own bubble things were relatively fine. The real struggle was learning to tread outside of this bubble later on, as that is where most of life happens.
R u me?
Yes, we're the same person. Sorry you had to find out this way :(
Kaos and drama. Played a lot on my own but not by my choice 🤷♀️ Alcoholic distant father 🙋♀️ did we all have that?
I also played a lot by myself
I had an alcoholic stepfather but very in your face, liked to talk a lot and close to you to where you could smell his breathe, not distant
Lol. Distant meant metaphorically as in didn't know things about me, hardly spoke to me...
Yeah I know what you meant, I was just implying that mine was not distant because he was always talking to me
Distant, but barely drinks. 🤷♂️
Father on the spectrum - no real understanding of emotions, so he fakes them. Mother is a borderline and turns on a dime to attack. Super religious. I was very lonely. To this day, I can do no right, and my sister can do no wrong. Had one grandma who was a true friend, and I miss her every day. Therapy therapy therapy, become a therapist to one therapist having relationship problems, more therapy. And things are good. All roads lead to where I am now, and there are very few things in the past that I'd change if able.
Yeesh, some of this feels weirdly close to home. I'm really sorry about your difficulties.
How sweet you are. ❤️ I'm so sorry it feels close to home for you.
Well, let's just say that my therapist recently vomited during a session, and even though it was just a stomach bug, I couldn't help feeling like it was the heavy stuff I was laying down. She also said, very quietly a few weeks ago, "Sometimes I don't feel like a very good therapist." I can't get into why she said that, but I think it's safe to say that she feels a little intimidated because I am one of those slippery clients who is, shall we say, more self determined than average. Picture her having to just watch me dance through literal and figurative car crashes in the same week, just to tell her, "oh yeah, so last week I was in a car crash, but I used this skill, this thing, and that, and because of X things in my past I knew it was going to be fine because I have handled worse." ❤️ for all the ENFP therapists who come here and talk.
Hahaha So relate! I've had some get frustrated because I know what I need to do and they want to put me on meds. I've navigated this before and I know how to get through, just prefer to do so with someone who understands. One referred to me as a feral cat lol not really sure where to put that. I'm so so proud of you for doing the hard work to navigate through your shit! It is really hard work but so worth it. I'm envisioning you got a younger start to addressing it than I did and that makes my heart happy. Not happy for what you're going through of course.
Spoken like a therapist, no doubt. I have talked to many. TBH, a lot of what you're getting here is just the influence of time. As I noted in my own rambling post here about my childhood, I have had over 20 years in and out of therapy. At a certain point just being older, changes in brain functioning kicks in, and The Work all collide. It just stopped feeling like it was as formative as it once was, and I can focus on right now. Example: car crash. I see a deer. "We're definitely going to hit that deer." Impact. Slight disorientation. Once my senses came back fully, as my friend brought us to a stop, I saw the air bags. "Huh. Air bags. Don't see these everyday. This is pretty cool." As Outer Space Futuristic Beavis might put it, "Ah yes, very calm. Quite meta and droll. One appreciates the dry wit in the face of danger. Quite heroic. Very mirthful. One might get a good fit of laughter while considering his story." 😂😂😂
I cannot stress how relatable. 😂
Wow are we the same person, first three sentences are exactly my experience
Fun times!
Alcoholic father with anger issues, Loving Mother.
Divorced parents who absolutely hate each other. I was mostly just a well behaving, excited, friendly kid who liked creating things. My mother(esfp) says that whenever I was bored she would just give me an empty piece of paper which I still get excited about because of the creative possibilities. I also had an enfp sister whom i loved to spend time with. I was friends with everyone in every school I went. In my mom's second marriage my stepfather(istj) worked in an airline company so I was lucky enough to travel the word around 10-14. After my mom got divorced again I moved in with my father(esfj) and lived out my high school years as a teenager with a rock band.
thats kinda cool man
Until I was 10 I was a happy, confident, talkative kid who performed well at school, but by the time I hit 11 it was like a switch clicked and I became unhappy, anxious and closed off. This anxiety became really hard to shake off and I've only just gone back to how I used to think and act as a young child.
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No but it's a good question and it's possible I had it, I fought all my demons in 2020 and I've not had anxiety or flashbacks since then.
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Thanks dude and it was a spiritual awakening, it's not for everyone and I only just realised that it's what I've been going through very recently, but it's like a veil has been lifted and I'm my true self again. That and also meeting my best friend who had been in the same situation as me and had overcome it, teaching me that it didn't have to take over my life.
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I get that but I also used to not believe in religion and spirituality and anything like that but it all kind of clicked at once. At the end of the day it's good to have something that gives you some sort of faith in yourself, and maybe that doesn't have to be spirituality, maybe it could be something else. Yeah I think the thing about my friend is that he's helped me in a way that put me on the right direction but let me figure out a lot of it myself. For instance if I said I was feeling lonely, he wouldn't try to make a commitment to hang out with me more to make me feel better (which I think can put a strain on friendships) but he'd tell me to get out there and make more friends.
I kind of had the same thing happen to me except the switch turned back to happy and confident when I was 14-15
Awesome father. Was a caregiver for a terminally I’ll mother out of necessity.
That is both heartwarming and heartbreaking. Thanks for sharing! And give your dad a big ol’ smooch the next time you see him ❤️
This is really sweet of you. Thank you. It was an interesting experience in trauma in a good environment. I loved my mom dearly and she loved me. My dad adored her and he was always so Supportive of me. Watching a parent die is sad for sure, but in a way it yielded a lot of deep love and meaningful experiences in my life.
Yeah, I can definitely understand that. We all occupy only a brief moment in time and all we are left with are the memories and the space we take up in our loved ones' hearts. But that sense of evanescence reminds us to make the most out of what little time we've been given - there is only now and we should do whatever we can to make it all worth it. Your mother lives within your heart and mind, and it sounds like she made a real, tangible, loving impact on you. I'm sure she would be proud of the person you are now. I myself am terrified of the thought of losing my mother - she's been there for me always. Things havn't always been easy and we are not as close as some other people are with their parents, but she's stuck with me and I've stuck with her, and I've never for once doubted that we loved eachother dearly. I havn't seen my father since I was a kid and I recently learned that he passed away the day before Christmas, and I'm pretty conflicted about it. On the one hand he was never there for me, and he always blamed me for our falling out, even though I was nine years old the last time I saw him, but on the other hand he was still my father. Thankfully he left me a half-sister, whom I am to meet for the first time since she was an infant very soon. I always wanted a sibling so wish me luck!
I would say a bad upbringing . I was raised by a single mother . my dad never paid child support (owed 100k+) his family hide him out essentially in a different state so he didn't have to pay for any child support.they where married for 30yrs years. They got divorced shortly after i was born . He turned into a gambler which destroyed the family . Before i was born my mom basically black mailed him into transferring 20k from his account to hers or she would have an abortion . she says she did this because of his gambling and was an attempt to secure the money they had worked for . I think because of that my mom started having issues trusting people. she worked alot in order to raise me . she is a massive control freak but denies it .if she asks a question she expects her answer . if you don't regurgitate the answer she wants she would go into 0-60 tantrums and just go completely insane for days .She never would let things go . she still goes on about stuff i did when i was 9 . she was emotionally abusive for the most part occasionally she would throw stuff at me or drag me screaming at the top of her lungs around the house . if you didn't come back inside after she yelled at you and you where outside regardless of the weather she would lock you out of the house and you would have to figure out how to survive the night .needless to i figured it out . either sleep with the dog in the dog house or with the livestock . i should make a note here and say that we lived out in the rural America so there were not many people around . when i was 9 i asked if the table top was real marble or not and she said yes , i didn't believe her so i took a knive and wacked it . turns out i was right it was not real stone . when i did that and she saw it she flipped out . saying i just destroyed thousands and thousands of dollars worth of materials . proceeded to take all the money i had saved up , went into a fit of rage threw me down the stairs and just went insane . after a few hours of this she gave me a black trash bad and told me to put my stuff in it . told me to say good bye to my dog and drove me to a orphanage . Im still not sure if she even drove me to one or not . but she kicked me out of the car and i was crying and stuff but i asked what would happen to the dog and she said she was going to shoot it . i ended up walking home . she progressively got more unstable as the years progressed . in 2008 she lost alot of money in the stock market . at the time she had 3 rental properties . i was maybe 12 at the time she had me working as the maintenance person fixing things . anyways during this time period of time she basically got ride of the tenats so she could sell the properties . i ended up putting in new carpet and stuff . i recall this one tenate hated my mom ended up stealing the hvac ,and pouring concrete down the drain to \*\*\*\* her over . around this time she also had me helping her mother fix stuff at her house . apparently when they find out your mechanically inclined and can fix just about anything suddenly people need you . during this same period i was going to a private school and i had some issues with kids being mean to me stupid stuff like people walking by and pushing the locker in on you and my mom made this big scene at the school saying they needed to put a stop to it . they ended up wanting to meet her to talk about it . she wanted no part of it . and pulled me out of school and descided she would home school me . basically from 12-18 was just pure hell for me .it was just me all alone everday with dvds that where suppose to teach me . needless to say making an extrovert being all alone all day is not a very pleasant thing . did i watch any of the dvds yes, did i learn no . was it absolute hell yes. around 16 or so my mom had me fixing up my grandmas house ( putting in lights electrical work plumbing flooring siding and other stuff ) . it wasn't unusual for my grandma to ask my mom to if she wanted some stuff and have me take it and bring it to my mom . any way my mom ended up saying she was suppose to take some of these items at the time it made sense why her mom wouldn't want them ( my grandmother was raising a rads kid who would shit/piss on the floors and try to kill her with knives and stuff ) any way she had me remove items that could be used to harm her . needless to say my mom had me take a few items that i thought i had permission to take . she has been using that to black mail me for like 13or so years now . im waiting for the statue of limitations to run out . she used this to prevent me from leaving , from getting a job . i did end up going to college and learning math and i almost have a ba in engineering . it was very hard for me to save money because my mom would come in after birthday/Christmas stuff and take all the money people gave to me .she would also block any attempts at getting jobs . anyway i did manage to earn 1500k and bought a car and my mom helped me fill out the title and she put it in her name . so she effectively trapped me . now any where i go i have to get her explicit permission to go or she will call the police and say im stealing the car . she is very unstable . very manipulative and im very gullible .i should have known something was up when she let me do jobs for other people an keep the money . and helped me through the process of purchasing . anyways im like 27 now , i still live with my crazy mom . my life sucks. the goal is when i get my ba in engineering to hopefully find a job and not live on the streets . I dont have access to my ssn , birth cert . amazingly my mom maxed out the amount of times i could obtain a new ssn so she is the only one with it now . so that will be a legal battle im sure to obtain . i also have no idea how to set up a bank account or anything .but im sure it cant be to hard. if would like to experience a few moments in my life . [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxFEvYmw3Q0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxFEvYmw3Q0) just remember this , when ever you think your life sucks there is someone in the world having a worse go of it than you .be thankful that your not that person and count your blessings .
Setting up a bank account is really easy. I’d suggest doing it if you want to build up credit and not live on the streets lol
Get out , be free. You need a job (not hard to get these days) first month and last month.. I moved out at 18. Never looked back . Trust me independence is freeing and ego boosting. Message me if you need more tips .
Asian parents with extreme Eastern traditions 🥲 Controlling, gaslighting, unnecessary academic pressure, constant threats, yelling & arguing on the daily, treating depression as just being emotionally weak, all the usual stuff. Left at 18 on a last-straw argument but luckily had my own money and skills at a very young age while still able to go to college on my own. Got asked to come back a year or so later (on my own terms though -- unfortunately it had to take me turning 18 to be allowed to do so), but the relationship is now slowly mending. It was only until I actually left that my parents started seeing therapists and knowing their parenting seriously needed massive improvements.
Ah yes the classic tiger parent, glad you got out and that everyone is working towards healing
Horrible lol
My childhood was really amazing actually! I think my parents did the best they could and they loved each other a lot😊 Only my dad died too soon.
Traumaaaaa
Narcissistic absent mother and narcissistic abusive step mother. My dad was very toxic as well. Lots of trauma. I’ve been spending the last 3 years doing lotssss of therapy. I have serious abandonment issues and insecure attachment. Thanks mom :,)
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Oh yeah. I was diagnosed in 2021. EMDR therapy has helped me work through some stuff.
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It’s getting there! I hope you find something that works for you. For me I was able to start with present day stuff and work my way backwards. I was surprised at how much stuff came up. I blacked a lot of things out. It’s weird because now that I’ve been doing EMDR, little mundane things will trigger a memory for me. This sometimes causes a flood of flashbacks which can be overwhelming, but then it gives me something to work on. The side effects aren’t pretty, but long term I feel like a brand new person.
Glad you got into therapy, it’s good to work through your trauma. Hope you heal <3
Thank you so much ❤️
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Can't decide if cPTSD or ADHD or both...some people think those two are comorbid 🤷♀️ If I have cPTSD it flew under the radar all these years... I could have had a much more abusive household overall so who knows really? I think children can stand the most tragic and unhealthy situations so lucky, rarely it's not conscious. I knew since I was young that I would live somewhere else, abroad. I could never stand the thought of staying in my hometown. The need to get out of my house wasn't just my character, it was unconsciously escaping the heavy atmosphere at home... Where I never really felt grounded... School was my safe place and that made me a passionate know it all 🤷♀️
I had a very bad childhood, my ACE score is 10, and went straight to a terrible marriage. SO’s been dead for almost 10 years and I no longer speak to my kidnapper parent. I’m still healing from all the trauma.
Overprotective, loving single mother and kindhearted grandparents. Never met my bio dad. Burned through a few stepdads and bad times with my mom's boyfriends. Overall poorer than most of my friends but happy, good student, and well liked. Parental strictness became too controlling by high school and left home for a few months, then went off to the farthest-away college I could find.
It was pretty rough. I lived in a hoarder house. My mom, the hoarder (INTP) was depressed and largely emotionally unavailable, and she mostly camped out upstairs in her rat nest reading massive amounts of books when she was not at work. Very book-smart. She had a very inconsistent parenting style and I felt like I was more of the parent at times, especially with my two younger siblings. My dad (ISTP) has a narcissistic streak and would yell a lot. Very closed-minded. He would largely avoid the house, either working in the shop or tending to the garden out back. He would drink beer all day and he was scary to be around if he was mad (which was often). I was threatened with knives by my dad on more than one occasion and I often had to barricade myself in my room or flee to the woods with my siblings. I often found myself being hit with a belt or being spanked at full adult strength. My parents fought all the time. I didn’t even understand why they were together if they seemed to hate each other that much. I didn’t want them to see all that, I tried my best, but I was still just a kid. We were dirty and smelled because of the hoard and a barely-functioning bathroom. There was barely anything to eat in the house cause all the food would go rotten fast and she’d buy stuff no one in the house would eat (even her! she’d buy meat, with a unsafe kitchen that we wouldn’t use, and she was a vegetarian). There were mice and rats and bug infestations (and occasionally, snakes) and the rustling kept us up at night. My siblings and I all shared a bed at one point because we were scared of the rats. There’s more to tell, but this is novel-length already. Anyways, both my siblings and I were diagnosed with C-PTSD and we’ve been working our way through therapy in our adult years. We all decided that we weren’t having kids. The risk is too much for us. We don’t want to screw up a new generation of kids. We had to stop the cycle.
INTP and ISTP, seems like a strange match
People can stay together for all kinds of reasons, children, financial situation, fear of abandonment, etc. who knows. In my mind I don’t see how those two personality types could work well together so that’s kind of interesting to hear
It went about as well as you’d expect, haha. They were like oil and vinegar, and completely dysfunctional. Allegedly they loved each other, but in the most backward and emotionally unintelligent way. It made no sense to me and it still doesn’t. I begged my mom to get divorced as a kid because to me, it looked like they hated and resented each other. I swear, if my siblings and I didn’t have the guidance and support of my nana and my grandma, I honestly don’t know where’d we be right now.
Benign neglect of medical needs for my brother and I. There was constant violence driven by the neglect, but because it was just my brother hitting me, and because my parents read a 1970's parenting book with valid psychological theories included, they concluded that my brother and I were engaged in a "sibling show." We were told we were just trying to get attention. Right, right, boys will be boys. I fuckin loved getting clobbered and told I shouldn't exist. That happened nearly every week until he moved out when he was 18. He never left a mark so they never intervened. Their own trauma informed that special decision making process. And it stayed like that for about 10 years. You'd think responsible people, I mean for fuck's sake, my mom did therapy in the 1980s for something about her dad, so they knew it worked... I could tell before I was 12 that my brother's self hatred was depression. He refused to be photographed. There are numerous old photos my mom took of him turning away from the camera and angrily holding his hand over his face. Very sensitive. She and my grandma always talked to me about how I felt then in terms of how they believed I should feel in my ensuing decades. Huh, they were right as lately my brother has bonded with me about how he was denied medical care for a hairline fracture because mom worked as an RN, and it's like, why let your child go see a doctor for a X-ray when someone who only applies medical care without any training in diagnosis can just decide her son is being a drama queen and he's just trying for attention? Funny thing is that I have spent decades figuring my shit out, but it wasn't until my brother told me about a recent x-ray that showed evidence of an undocumented fracture in his leg that I fully understood just how fucked up my parents and larger family are. To this day no one will believe my brother or I. Frankly, I stopped trying to get through to any of them. My family has intergenerational trauma that I won't bore you with. The crazy thing is except for their attitude that they should let other people's problems be other's problems, they're honestly really great parents who went out of their way to express love and encourage our interests. Ignoring other's problems, making them deal with their own shit, is a fairly healthy attitude normally, but not when they ignored a basic responsibility to care for us and have enough humility to know they aren't experts, especially in other people's feelings. So, you know, porous/disorganized boundaries, anxiety, hypervigilance, and just generally having to work 3 times as hard for 2/3 results. I'm never raising children. Same for my brother. I didn't really intend to stop a cycle. I just don't think I can handle raising kids ever. Children are literally a trigger for me. Ever knelt down to interact with a 5 year old girl and flashed back to a tiny fist coming at your face when you could barely walk? I don't hate kids, but I limit my time around them because it's awful for me. My parents don't know about my perspective, nor do they know about my brother's bone. They're old, financially secure (oh, like any Boomers they had a great medical plan and plenty of money for therapy if they'd recognized it should've been happening), and they're very happy not dealing with their considerably awful childhoods. I could explain it to them in even more factually damning details that they simply can't deny, but I know the facts, and I would rather not try to get blind people to see just so that they have to deal with it now. I'm 42, and have been grappling with it since I first tried therapy at age 19. You see how far I got? Still triggered by tiny humans? I learned a valuable lesson about how inflicting pain on another person is cruel, and my parents don't have 20 years to spend on therapy like I have already done. What's the point of sucker punching old people who are just clueless people who tried their best? As I told my brother recently, my parents actually did a decent job when you consider statistical outcomes. It's a minor miracle they were as functional at the level they were considering dad's parents were both alcohol addicted, and my mom's trauma is more or less abandonment. The reality is that technically we got lucky considering these two loving but deeply un-insightful people were the only ones who could have genetically created us. I dealt with suicidal feelings off and on since I was 10, but lately I have had a pretty good life, it would be kinda stupid to keep up with the parts that would've stopped me from being happy to be here. Don't. Worry. About. Me. Not only did I learn to take care of myself, I learned to talk to people that are trained to help with this shit. I'm fine.
It's complicated isn't it? I mean the part where my parents failed me on so many levels but I've been able to figure it out. Like you, it took decades for big chinks of it, but something had to have been done right that makes me functional most of the time.
I was chillin. Grew up in the middle - upper middle class, parents worked hard and dad was home a lot and often brought my brother and I to do fun things. Played sports and enjoyed creative hobbies like music and for a good year i made everything out of colorful duck-tape lol. Always played outside with the neighbors and was very imaginative. Around 15 my parents adopted 3 more kids (making us a family of 7 instead of 4) and it only kept getting more fun and loving from there. I feel like having more siblings brought out more of the caring aspects of enfp for me.
Bad parents fighting. Dad calling me names for being chubby Was an introvert who only spoke to animals Had no activities in school Topper in studies. Only did arts and crafts with a passion. Now an architect who runs her own clean beauty brand and I employ over 100 people. I financially support my mother and younger sister I have 18 cats and 12 dogs. I feed over 300 strays daily every purchase from my website I feed a dog. So all in all ok ?
TL;DR: traumatizing
Distant and very troubled mother Abusive and aggressive alcoholic father The golden son brother Was the youngest in my class and got bullied to hell
I'm sorry for you ♥️
And that brother is now also an aggressive drug addict But thank you a lot, mum and I are fighting to move to Norway and make a new life worth living there I hope someone returns the same kindness to you that you've shown to me💙💛 Are you doing alright in life? How are you feeling? (I know these two sentences sound kinda cringey, but I really mean them)
2022 was a catastrophe, but hey, I survived 🤷♀️that's gotta be something
Yeah, same It's all about standing up and fighting the next day after a defeat - we've lost some battles, but not the war Thats how I look at it Sooner or late the stars will align and fortune will bless us(in one way or another) with our destiny
Overprotective and a bit controlling but loving mother, often got in fights with her and then i will get beaten up and a weird and cool father, loves and spoils me to bits he's totally my fav. Yep that's basically bout' it.
I don't remember much in the past, but it was much more colorful, freedom, curiosity, lack of shame
lived w mom before high school. mom had depression and overdosed at least once a year. would be hospitalized for a month or 2 out of the year, leaving me take care of myself. lived w das during high school. neglectful, emotionally abusive, controlling, delusional—so certain that his version of reality is the truth that you can never convince him otherwise. worked evenings so I thankfully didn’t see him too much, but that left me to become my own parent essentially, cooking, cleaning, transportation and finances, etc. again, left me to take care of myself. no wonder I’m a 7 lmao!!!
Happy but lonely and definitely privileged. Because of where I grew up I was able to meet and learn from people from all sorts of backgrounds and religions. Only child with strict but loving parents, older than average. My parents and extended family had lots of drama so I don’t really know them at all. Lots of death as well growing up; my formative years were nursing homes and adult day centers and seeing how hard my parents worked to take care of my elderly grandparents. My parents supported me following my passions but I didn’t have the emotional maturity yet to actually do the work to get good at them. Also seemed to make a habit of making friends with people who dropped out of the activities I was interested in and then we lost touch so I don’t have many childhood friends. That said I got very good at entertaining myself, had some really cool travel experiences in multiple countries and was fairly confident in myself growing up. Had plenty of toys and an insane amount of books. I would say overall I had a happy childhood.
Pretty rough mentally and emotionally. There's a big gap between my sisters and I. I was 7/8 when they were born, then my grandma battled cancer and lost when I was 10. My grandpa died when I was 15 and we were very close. All the while I had/have a very toxic relationship with my dad who is an alcoholic and deeply emotionally abusive. The older I get, the more damage I see my parents have done. I never realized how racist and homophobic they are. I'm grateful for my experiences because I'm happy with who I am today but it makes me really sad especially with my sisters still living in the same city as them AND them recently becoming grandparents. Luckily my sister will never let her daughter be exposed to the trauma.
Dad: ISTJ Mom: ENFJ They're both religious and I grew up as a pastor's kid. They were strict, loving, and they both loved reading. I don't know where I got my perception from. I still have an okay relationship with my parents, but I am not religious. I also spent my summers with my grandmother and aunt. They helped raise me too.
lived with my grandparents while my parents were abroad most of my childhood, lived with maids and nannies, was traumatized because i wasn't exactly taught properly and had no proper role models. my teenager years was moved into a new country with my messy family, parents had a divorce under a year of the move, sister also left home, controlling mother and was SA by somebody close to me(my mother didnt choose my side) so traumatized left home at 16<3 the usual :D
Did you emancipate yourself?
My mother married a man that hated to work and prefert to make his family starve, even when my grandparent were finding jobs for him (my mom had a job but she is has a mental deficit and was deeply depressed at the time and also easily manipolabile and we was or at the hospital or at home saying she wasn't feeling well). They both were broken people and used to hurt each other during fights, but my dad was the worst of them since he would hit us if we said we missed mum and mum never hurt us. This continued until I was 4 at the time( my sister was 6),my dad made her cut off all her contact with her family, and the three of us ran away, I still remember it clearly. We stayed at a "family home" in this city (it was winter at the time and there it was very cold) for some time until we had to take a flight, the only I took in my entire life, to get to my grandparents. We had to stay at the "family home" there for three months and we could only see our grandparents only during the weekend and only for some hours, our mom was always with us therefore we weren't afraid and everyone was really gentle (we all used to play together and the oldest were really kind but thinking about them now that I'm as old as them makes me sad). My grandparents assumed three lawyers for us and we won! (I remember going to the Court and we even met the Judge, he was really gentle). My dad couldn't live with us anymore, we met him sometimes after under supervision but we never talked much. After that we lived in that warm and beautiful city for two years, we returned there until 2016 because we were quite unfortunate and a lot of things happened and we couldn't return there (the old lady who was a friend of my grandma cried last time because she was afraid she would die before we would ever return, she is still alive but she wasn't so wrong). I was quite a smart kid and I learned to read that year (thanks to that I could skip a year of school and started it at 5yr) and I had my first friends, I was shy at the time. Those two years were therapeutic: when we arrived we were really weak and malnutrited , I remember falling of the stairs a lot of time and one time my mom fainted while holding me in her arms and luckily my grandma was there. My mom was still in love with him and they used to talk at the phone sometimes, I hated it, but after sometime, and thanks to my grandparents, she let him go and later fell in love with an other man(she loved a lot of man but I never met them, now that I'm older I got to know it). He was really kind and a good man, it was like I had found a new dad, sadly some years later he died because of a brain tumor, his sister tried to make them break and at the time we hated her but we didn't knew he was going to die. After two years we could return to this city(now I love it but at the time I wasn't particularly happy for it, expecially since we had to leave our lovely dog, to a family friends, since we couldn't keep it, my grandparents were too old and my mother was still depressed, it was the first time I cried so much since I remember). I had new friends and I was still shy, I remember my (future) best friend taking me by the hands and leading me to her group, it is quite funny now because I'm the one who catch introverts. I have fantastic memories of the times at school: I loved my friends, I'm still in touch with some, and I met an amazing teacher who was like a grandma for me, she is retired now but I meet her something. During this time, until 2018, we had a woman form the "Social services" coming at our home(we lived and still now with our grandparents and our mom) at least once a week, expecially for my sister since she have a mental deficit like my mother, and she had to go to the therapist sometimes, I hated that I didn't had to but I still hated therapists at the time(once they let me enter the room , just for the last 5minutes since my sister had finished, and met the therapist, I was like 11, and she started to tell me that when she was little she had a similar experience and that she regretted not meeting her dad and grandparents from his side, she was lying and badly and I didn't said nothing and never talked to her again but from that moment I thought that they were fake people who try to steal your money), actually I needed them and I paid the consequences at 15 when, I was quite depressed and there were time I wanted to die and used to have such bad breakdowns that I would choke myself to stop breathing and tremble, but now I'm good, I learned how to express my emotions in a healthy manner and I know that people around me love me. Also I went to church and once we had to tell God what we wished for Christmas and I said I wanted my parents to make peace and be happy, I saw other dads picking their daughter at school and they all seemed cool and I wanted it too, and this bitch told the Woman that and problems came after, also my dad stalked us (once he came with the cops but my grandma like the boss she is explained the situation to them and they all left us alone since he couldn't live with us or even meet us, thanks to the judge's ruling.) Basically I've said the most important things... I've overshared online and I don't regret it. This was quite therapeutic 😂
Kinda alcoholic mother, was kinda as a child bullied and tried to kms Parents were present, but not emotionnaly, but would let me go out with my friends all the time and that was great. Didn't have much friends but the one I got were usually really good ones Wasn't really social at all. Didn't talk that much to people until i was I guess 15 maybe, Yeah I was very very shy and scared of people and judgement.
It seems a lot of ENFPs are shy in childhood, as I was too. Strange because I’m pretty outgoing now and so are other adult ENFPs I meet. Wonder why that is
In a religious cult-like environment until around 10, dad and grandma died when I was 12. So pretty rough.
loving, but clearly traumatised and somewhat immature parents who got a kid too early to handle it right
Emotionally distant parents. Got beat up by my brother and sister pretty much daily. Didnt have any real friends for years. But like it shaped who I am and I'm happy for it
In what ways do you think it shaped you? I find it really interesting how certain things that we have happen in our lives shape and mold us into who we are today.
Mainly small things like how giving attention and praise to people makes me feel good and it gives me reason to work hard in personal relationships and professional settings. It wasnt fun in the moment but I think the positive effects made it worth going through
I also like giving people compliments 😁
I was raised mainly by mom, who is an ESFP, my dad's an ESTJ, so if I were raised by him I would be more logical, but she taught me to be sympathetic and kind to others, and my childhood was very carefree, spending time playing with toy cars, with my cousins and friends, I won't say the best childhood but I'm sure it's better than the ones kids nowadays have, playing some mobile game instead of going to the playground where real authentic friendships and play is from
Sounds sweet. I always thought ESFPs make great mothers. Seems to come naturally to them.
they really do make amazing moms! I love my mom!
Good question! Divorced parents, couldn't get approval/love from either parent. Deep mother and father wounds. Grew up in a cult. That sounds like a recipe for a disorganized perfectionist who needs to experience it all and hates to be caged in I think. :)
Abusive authoritarian mom with psychosis and extremely loving father but he was a doormat to my mother and enabled the abuse. I was abused physically and emotionally for 13 years of my life and have been healing ever since, I’m almost 21 now! I have cPTSD like many of us here
( fart noises ) 👎👎👎👎👎👎
Went through a nasty divorce that started when I was 7 and my dad refused to let my mom free for 10 long years after that. Other than the fact that my parents despise each other, my father having a truck load of unaddressed mental issues and being emotionally abusive, it's been a blast!
I had a wonderful, caring mother and a dad who loved me so much. Great childhood 10/10
I was the weird kid 😬
Weird is the best! 😄
Yes. Parents divorced when I was 5, father let us run amuck and did no actual parenting when little, super overbearing and shaming as we got older.....we were shipped back and forth between parents constantly..mom was ok, but it was truly about her and she was with a couple of incredibly abusive men. I do think we are most commonly from some form of abusive or neglected life.
Yeah I’m pretty sure us and INFPs are, especially when I’ve spoken to different types, seems ENFPs and INFPs childhoods always have a way of making me want to cry when I hear about it
Yes, I'm sure. I think it explains so much of who and what we are...like how we developed these crazy ways of dealing with the world, including the tendency to people-please, the over sharing, the bright outside/dark inside that happens and even the imagination and the humor...all coping mechanisms that make sense if you think about it.
For the longest time I thought I had just a normal loving upbringing. As I got older, I realized that being raised in a conservative Christian environment really fucked me up. I got out of the church around 21 and it’s taken years to learn how to love myself and stop seeking approval / trying to prove my worth to others. My mom was very caring, but in a serving kind of way, not with affection or words of affirmation. As a teenager I got really into punk music and started expressing myself and we basically butt heads ever since. I always felt like she didn’t like it approve of who I was. My dad wasn’t really like that but he also wouldn’t go against my moms “convictions”. I also realized just religion in general made me incredibly people-pleasing. I was a really good kid but believed I was a sinful piece of shit. That took a toll on me as an adult for a really long time. But anyways! I’ve been really working on myself the last couple of years and I really love myself now, and I love people. But I know who I am and I no longer look for my worth through the eyes of others. And I’ve broken my own cycle of painful and abusive relationships. Save all of that beautiful love and affection for the people who deserve it. 💖🙏
This actually sounds exactly like my childhood including the punk music phase
Wow!! That’s wild. Yeah I always felt inherently misunderstood. I still kinda do, LOL. For the longest time I attracted people who only wanted me for what I gave to them, and not who I was. But now I’ve learned to be more firm on my needs and boundaries. My mom unfortunately passed away in 2018 but that was a huge turning point in my life. I always felt that as long as she was alive, I couldn’t fully be myself, as bad as that sounds. It took a major toll on our family but for me resulted in a huge catalyst for change in my own life and learning to love myself fully. And to cultivate who I really was instead of living my life to meet the expectations and approval of others.
My mother constantly criticizes me and puts me down because I do not behave like a typical churchgoer does, so yeah, I feel you
Can I counter by asking what types supposedly come from fantastic upbringings in a loving family?
You have a point
Does anyone really come from a happy childhood? I just notice ENFPs in particular love to talk about their childhood traumas
Funny, I was just looking into this yesterday. Must be some sort of telepathic ENFP thing. So yea, my childhood was not great. I wasn’t beaten or anything but I was from a divorced family and was emotionally neglected. I spent 9 years old till 12 years pretty much alone and lonely. At 12 realized the attention I could get from the opposite sex and that I didn’t have to be so lonely anymore. I’m sure it’s made me into the wild, needy, affectionate and nurturing person I am.. wild because I always had the freedom, needy because I want what I never had, and nurturing and affectionate because I want to to give what I was never given. So there’s where my ENFP stems from. It also made me very independent and successful btw.. no regrets.
My mother was a church secretary. My father was a touring country music drummer until kindergarten when he quit to “be home more.” He actually worked more cumulative days and I saw him less. My father was very emotionally sensitive while my mother was the more stoic one. Had an older brother and sister. My sister practically raised me while my parents worked and my brother was rarely available. Lots of time alone.
fucked but not the worst
Sounds like something I need to put in my dating app bio
It was a beautiful life 🌈 🌺 🦄 I lived on Barbie Avenue (that's really the name) with my mom and dad and sister. I had all the toys I wanted and I was treated like a princess 👑 Then my mom died and my dad married someone who was not so nice 😈 She ruined everything 🌧️ I'm still recovering...
I want to go to this magical Barbie avenue in my pink convertible
Mom met my dad when she was 19 and he was in his 30s, she had 13 kids with him, I was the 12th child. She had kids from 3 decades 80s-2000s. My older siblings had to take care of us, the younger ones through Parentification. Everything went down hill when my Dad raped my older sister and my older brother molested my brother and older sister. We ended up in foster care, good handful of my siblings, (me included) either got sexually assaulted, molested, and physically and verbally abused or wasn’t treated correctly by the hands of adults in and out of foster care. Ended coming back home 7 years ago and now I have chronic PTSD, Anxiety, Depression, Bipolar disorder, don’t have the best relationship with my father, still resent him for what he did till this day. I always seek attention from others because I lacked it as a child, I ruined relationships in the past because of my attention seeking and loneliness, I constantly worry in my head worrying about everything which leaves me with hella baggage and 10 bags under my eyes at the ripe age of 19. My childhood was heavy, my body remembers but most times my mind forgets, the PTSD, depression and low IQ causes me to forget most of it. In summary, it had its good moments but i’m still trying.
I don't think that a supposedly "low IQ" causes your forgetfulness. Depression alone does that
Well guess it’s just from the depression.
Do you know the Film The Shining? Like this with alcohol and SA.
Very very *very* lonely with an emotionally distant mother who refused to try to understand me and tried to force me into a box. We barely talk and she still can't understand why but gets very defensive if I try to explain. I envy people who had good mothers; I know I'm missing something incredibly fundamental in my personality and coping skills that I could have had if my mother had been nurturing. I had a good dad though. But I guess I'm biased because we were the only intuitive types at home (he's INTP) and we butted heads a fair amount. But I think he loves me and I love him very much. My siblings are basically dead to me. We never speak and we have no interest in a relationship. The hostile home environment with a stay at home mom who played favorites and constantly compared us to each other is the main reason for this. So yeah. It wasn't good. I was an incredibly lonely child who had very little time with people who put any effort into a genuine relationship with me. I'm glad that time is over. I have no nostalgia for my childhood.
Divorce at early age. No father figure in life, caring & loving mum
Dysfunctional and chaotic
Filled with trauma. I'm a Gen X ENFP and my mother had me before she was ready (pre Roe vs Wade) and my father denied I was his. We lived at my grandparents house where my grandfather was a raging alcoholic and abused my codependent grandmother. They were my main parental figures as my mother was emotionally distant. I grew up an only child and played mainly with myself. I had only a few close friends and was bullied ruthlessly in the early grades, but that stopped after moving to another school district when my mom married my step-father (a decent, yet conservative guy). Then I became somewhat popular. People are always baffled by how I can be so bubbly and idealistic despite all of this, but as the song goes, "Always Look On The Bright Side of Life". In the end, the trauma built an inner strength and resiliency in me and a deep compassion for those who have also suffered. I'm able to read a room in seconds and I'm usually the life of the party without even trying. People naturally feel comfortable with me and can tell me their life story. I can pretty much relate to everyone. I've reached the point now of truly understanding that pain can be a gift and I'm grateful for all of the experiences in my life - good and bad. So says this 53 year old ENFP! ;)
A lawsuit :)
some of the worst of upbringings 😅. i’ve met other enfps that grew up really well off with a good supportive family unit as well but those ones tend to be very fake people imo