10 toxic behaviors from parents

10 toxic behaviors from parents 

that make children less functional in adulthood

You may think that shielding your kids from pain protects them, but psychotherapist Amy Morin explains you’re just stunting their emotional growth.

By Amy Morin

 

Mary Trump’s book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” has some people wondering how family dysfunction affects kids. What kind of adults do they become when they’ve been exposed to toxic parenting behaviors?

 

Most people clearly recognize that serious maltreatment, like abuse or neglect, can have a lasting impact on children. But what about toxic parenting strategies that don’t rise to an extreme level of abuse? Or what about destructive parenting behaviors that might be less obvious?

 

As a therapist, I see some families who appear to function okay to the outside world yet are riddled with dysfunctional family dynamics behind closed doors. And just because these don’t constitute abuse, or because they aren’t visible to anyone outside the family, doesn’t mean they won’t prevent kids from becoming healthy adults.

 

Here are 10 toxic parenting behaviors that can make children less functional in adulthood:

 

1.  Shielding kids from pain

While you don’t want to expose kids to pain just for the purpose of “toughening them up”, you also don’t want to shield them from all discomfort.

 

Whether a parent insists the coach put their kid on the team or they say their missing cat is “on vacation”, kids who lack experience dealing with pain often become adults who crumble when they encounter adversity.

 

2.  Invalidating their feelings

Telling kids to “stop worrying” or “stop crying” send a message that their feelings are bad. It teaches them that they need to hide their feelings or fight those emotions. They may grow up to mask their feelings or numb their pain in unhealthy ways.

 

3.  Praising their achievements only

When parents raise kids for getting a perfect score on a math test or the most points in the game, they teach them that their accomplishments matter more than everything else.

 

Kids who only hear praise for their achievements (rather than for putting in the hard work it took to get there or a willingness to be brave and try something where they may fail/may grow up to become adults who think they need to succeed at all costs. They might be more willing to lie, cheat, and steal so they can come out a winner.

 

4.  Living vicariously through their kids

Parents have unhealed emotional wounds, too. And it can be tempting to try and live through your kids as a way to heal those wounds.

 

But when a parent insists that a child try to reach their own unrealized dreams, their children are likely to grow up without a strong sense of self. They may be resentful toward their parents while also being dependent on them to help make decisions.

 

5.  Expecting perfection

Setting the bar high can be good for kids. It teaches them that they can do more than they think.

 

But expecting perfection could cause them to feel like they can’t ever measure up. They may grow up to feel as though they aren’t good enough because they couldn’t achieve what you told them they could.

 

6.  Using fear to gain compliance

Whether a parent shoots kids intimidating looks or threatens to embarrass or hit them, scaring kids into complying can backfire.

 

They’ll be more likely to make decisions based on fear instead of on what they actually believe is right. This could cause them to become an adult without a healthy moral compass.

 

7.  Trying to win favor with their kids

Whether parents are co-parenting after they’re divorced or still happily married, some parents work hard to be the “favorite”.

 

And while winning a child’s favor might make a parent feel good momentarily, ultimately the kids lose in the end. They may grow up to become adults who manipulate others as a way to get what they want.

 

8.  Using guilt trips as a tool

Constantly reminding your child how hard you work to pay for their stuff or insisting that they’d listen better if they really loved you might guilt kids into doing what you want.

 

But it also means they’ll be easy targets for that friend who wants to cheat off their paper or that romantic interest who wants to have sex and use similar guilt trips. Or they may turn into adults who repeat the pattern by using guilt as a weapon against their loved ones as well.

 

9.  ‘Parentifying’ their kids

Parents who lack adult confidantes or are insecure about their decision-making may depend on their kids to step up.

 

Giving kids more information and responsibility than they’re capable of handling raises their anxiety and leaves them feeling like you aren’t equipped to lead the family. Consequently, they may grow up to become anxious adults who feel as though they need to constantly control everything around them to stay safe.

 

10.            Being emotionally unavailable

It’s cliché but it is true – kids need your presence more than presents.

 

Parents who are always staring at their phones or too busy and stressed out to support their kids emotionally aren’t fostering their child’s emotional development. Kids who grow up with emotionally unavailable parents may struggle to develop healthy, meaningful relationships in adulthood.

copy pasted from this link

Good Sex doesn’t always mean an orgasm

 

This article was copied from this link.

Good Sex doesn’t always mean an orgasm

According to science, an orgasm may have very little to do with sexual pleasure.

When the sex toy company Dame Products develops new items, they ask beta testers a variety of questions to determine how well a new design is working for their clientele. Testers are asked to assess the contours of the toy’s body, the strength and rhythms of its vibration, and, for an overall assessment, they’re asked if the product they just tested “got the job done.” As opposed to: “Did you orgasm?”

The Dame team doesn’t rely on euphemism because they’re shy about pleasure and sex. Rather, the phrase “get the job done” is more open-ended; it allows testers to determine for themselves how a product contributed to the success of their sexual experience. And notably, when testers are asked to define what “getting the job done” means for them, the answers are more diverse than you might expect.

Many respondents define “getting the job done” as experiencing orgasm (or, in some cases, a particularly strong orgasm, or several orgasms in a row). But in a survey conducted by Dame during the development of the Pom – a flat, slightly curved vibrator designed to fit in the palm of the user’s hand – 14 % testers reported that they don’t see orgasm as a necessary criterion for a toy to be considered good. Instead of orgasm, these respondents cited “relaxation” or “pleasure” or, in one case “a throbbing clitoris” as their goal – all experiences that can coexist with orgasm but certainly don’t have to.

Data shows again and again that women are more likely than men to struggle with orgasm. Studies report that women are significantly less likely to experience orgasm during heterosexual sex than their male partners, and women experience orgasm-less sex at a higher rate than men. There’s an assumption that the absence of orgasm is the result of an incompetent partner or insufficient stimulation – the kind of problem that vibrators are supposed to solve. So why are some people, who are invested enough pleasure and sex toys to beta test vibrators, also happy with products that don’t result in a big finish?

Alexandra Fine, the CEO and co-founder of Dame Products, says the existence of a significant cohort of people who experience pleasure, enjoy masturbation, but don’t prioritize orgasm is a sign that the way pleasure and orgasm are talked about isn’t fully accurate. Although Fine is personally a fan of orgasms (they’re “done”, she tells me), she things focusing on orgasm as the sole purpose of a sexual experience is too limiting when trying to assess the effectiveness of a sex toy.

“There continues to be a debate about what the function of orgasm is. One function could be getting blood back out of the genitals.”

“Socially we’re taught that [pleasure and orgasm] are one and the same thing,” says Nicole Prause, a scientist at the sexual biotechnology company and research center LiberosCenter who researches what happens in the brain and body during masturbation and orgasm. Orgasm is framed as “the ultimate pleasure, the peak experience.” But maybe pleasure and orgasm are less tightly entwined than assumed. What if experiencing pleasure is more important than having an orgasm?

“There continues to be a debate about what the function of orgasm is,” says Prause. “One function could be getting blood back out of the genitals.” If orgasm is purely a way of flushing blood from the genitals, its connection to pleasure is tenuous: It may feel good most of the time, for most people, but the good feeling isn’t guaranteed or essential. Indeed, people who suffer from persistent genital arousal disorder (PGAD) routinely experience spontaneous orgasms that are more uncomfortable or painful than pleasurable; in the absence of sexual arousal, orgasm is not the same thing.

Orgasm could still be seen as an important component of a sexual experience, insomuch as clearing blood from the genitals helps bodies return to an unaroused state. “But if that is what orgasm is for, then it’s completely disconnected from pleasure,” Prause says. And whether or not a person had an orgasm ceases to be an accurate measure of whether they enjoyed sex or masturbation.

This isn’t to say that people who feel orgasm is essential to their pleasure or sexual experiences are wrong or misguided. Even if orgasm itself isn’t a pleasure response, the fact that it often co-occurs with intense pleasure can lead the brain to associate the contractions of orgasm with that pleasure, making them feel like an essential part of the pleasure response.

If orgasm itself is not the ultimate source of the pleasure experienced during sex and masturbation, it would help to explain some curious things – like, for instance, the fact that some orgasms can be painful, uncomfortable, or even just underwhelming. If your brain doesn’t associate the contractions of orgasm with pleasure, or if an orgasm occurs during an underwhelming sexual episode, those promised heights of pleasure might not arrive – not because you’re doing orgasm incorrectly, but because orgasm isn’t pleasure without the context of intense, exciting stimulation.

Detaching pleasure from orgasm helps explain some of the more confusing results Prause has observed during her studies. During her research, Prause monitors several data points while her subjects masturbate, including their brain activity, presence or absence of anal contractions (generally considered to be a sign of orgasm), and, of course, the subject’s own perception of whether they’ve had an orgasm and how long it lasts.

“A lot of women said they’re having climax and there’s no evidence of contractions,” Prause says. Even more confusing is that some women exhibit similar contraction patterns indicating an orgasm had occurred, yet not all of those women would describe said contractions as orgasmic. “One woman would say, ‘I had an orgasm at that time,’ and another woman would say, ‘I had no orgasm,” she reports. “Some women are clearly waiting for those contractions as a symbol of their climax, and others seem completely independent of it” – perhaps because subjects are identifying orgasm, not as involuntary contractions, but as a major surge of pleasure that occurs independently of that physical response.

Tempting as it is to try to parse which of these women are “really” having orgasms, it’s worth asking why so many thing that question mattes. If women are reporting enjoyment and pleasure without experiencing orgasm, or are identifying pleasure as orgasmic even if it doesn’t look the way orgasm is expected to, chances are good that they’re still reaping the mental and physical health benefits associated with orgasm. On her end, Prause says that the much-discussed “orgasm gap” is only an issue if women who aren’t experiencing orgasm aren’t experiencing pleasure either. If they are experiencing sufficient pleasure, she says, then less frequent orgasm isn’t really a pressing issue.

“a lot of women really struggle to have an orgasm. A lot of women aren’t positive whether they have orgasm or not,” says Fine. But even when orgasm is difficult or impossible to achieve, “there’s pleasure potential for sure,” she says.

Focusing on pleasure is far more likely to lead to enjoyable sexual experiences and to, in the words of Dame Products, “get the job done,” however that’s defined.