Mother is the first influence of a child. The child’s behavior will depend on what he learns from his Mother.  Which is why good parenting is an absolute necessity.

However, most people don’t realize that they have raised in a toxic home environment until they reach the adulthood.

Mothers who carry a promise of love and care, while at the same time mistreat their child, are called toxic mothers.

In fact, you may not even realize that she is toxic in the first place!

Here are eight signs that you were raised by a toxic mother:

1. You have low self-esteem

Toxic mothers frequently ruin their children’s self-esteem and Compare their own Children to siblings or other children.

You may also spend a lot of time feeling worthless because of these reasons. This is a sign that you were often made to believe that you are worthless and bad.

2. You always put other people first

Toxic mothers rarely pay attention on what would make their children happy.

They believe that they are aware of what is best for their children. They use their children to meet their own emotional needs. As an example, they only care about the grades and performance of the children at school regardless of children’s emotional aspect.

You might have experienced working hard at school to impress your mother while keeping your feelings hidden.

You were raised to think you should always put others before yourself, therefore currently you may be in the habit of being busy anticipating the needs of others.

3. You Seek Out Validation Or Reassurance

Toxic mothers continually make children feel wrong or guilty. Therefore, children may stick to some bad relationships just because their partner occasionally gives them compliments.

4. You Feel Afraid

Toxic mothers use different tactics to control their children. What this means is that they would deliberately make you feel afraid of your simple life choices.

If you had lot of fears during your childhood towards the life choices, as a result of that you will still struggle to choose the correct life choices.

5. You are impossible to reach your goals

Toxic mothers teach that a child’s dreams, aspirations and goals are impossible to reach.

If you’re settled in a life you never meant to have, it may be because you grew up with someone who wanted to achieve their goals before yours.

6. You Justify Their Behavior

Did you grow up believing that your parent was physically or emotionally abusive to you because you deserved it?

Therefore, as a child you may find yourself claiming that they are tired when they don’t want to hear about your life. Alternatively, you may excuse their critical attitude as them just having a bad day.

Even if you are an adult now, when someone treat you wrong, you’ll have a habit of internalizing all the blame without standing up for yourself.

7. You will blame yourself:

Your friends are experiencing friendly conversation with their mothers. The common complaints other people share about their mothers seem silly compared to what you’ve experienced.

Therefore, you will blame yourself for coming to this world.

8. You feel guilty:

Every child has experienced a guilt trip from their parents, but toxic mothers resort to this tactic on a regular basis.

Even as an adult, your parent might still be expecting certain things in return. If you fail to do as they want, they will then try to make you feel guilty about your actions.

If most of the points above resonate with you, it might be a good idea to think how your mother’s parenting style has affected your life and relationships and find out strategies can help you minimize the damage your mother’s toxicity has on your life.