Is My Abusive Parent Mentally Ill? Or Just Mean?

The agony of this question will likely haunt you forever

Image by Jan Steiner from Pixabay

For the kids of abusive parents, the question of whether or not your abusive parent is (or was) mentally ill, or just plain mean, will be one you consider the rest of your life. I can’t even begin to guess the number of times I’ve wondered: Do my abusive parents do what they do because they can’t help it? Or because they like hurting my brother and me? Unfortunately, when you really don’t know, when you’re still hanging in there, trying to salvage the relationship, hoping and praying that there’s some bit of unselfish good in your abusive parent, that’s when they can still manipulate you. Whether they mean to, or not.

Even when you think you’ve finally figured it out, you’ll probably go on to second-guess yourself many, many times, and that’s okay, because it’s totally normal. You’ll wonder, because you care. It’s normal because you’ve been conditioned to worry about your abusive parent.

In fact, I don’t think I’ll ever stop asking myself how much of my parents’ abuse stems from from mental illness, and how much is can be attributed to conscious decisions they’ve made. After many years, lots of therapy, putting boundaries in place for one parent and cutting off contact with the other, I know for sure the answer to the…