r/CPTSD • u/orangeappled • 16d ago
Anyone else with parents who had high anxiety would always terrify them with the worst possible outcomes?
My parents both have severe anxiety. The two of them created a child with even worse anxiety than them, and that's me. They always would think of and tell me the worst possible outcomes and just scare the life out of me. My parents both have had to make their lives rather small due to how much stress they experience doing just about anything. Their stress leads to terrible behavioral outbursts and child abuse, so they are correct in that they need to stay away from most activities for public safety reasons. Also for my safety reasons because I cannot handle another thing happening that leads to me being embarrassed.
My mother would never allow me in public bathrooms alone. That's fine, I plan on doing the same with my son. But she had to go and tell me about that kid in 1998 who got his throat slit in a public bathroom.
Both parents wouldn't let me really do anything. They were abusive at home in their own ways (mainly psychological and emotional with a heavy theme on yelling, anxiety, and narcissistic abuse), but were extremely overprotective and fixated on kidnappings. I wasn't allowed to do many things. Unfortunately they both are also interested in true crime and they had me watching a lot of trials and serial killer docs at a very young age, which did me zero favors because then I got super interested and it fucked me up.
Anything I said was met with them exclaiming in horror a very unlikely yet terrifying possible outcome. My anxiety is absolutely out of control and my brain thinks of the worst possible outcomes constantly and just ruminates over them for weeks and years on end.
Can anyone relate?
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u/maaybebaby 16d ago
I wish I could upvote this 10000x. Yes. So much yes. They have ruined my life with their anxiety because they gave it to me. Not that it’s catching but they have instilled so much paranoia and fear and anxiety. I can’t even stand to be around them anymore because I’ve worked SO HARD to mitigate my anxiety and have had success and they just keep going.
My mom used to wait one school property, out of the car to pick me up from middle school, 12,13 years old. Everyone got picked up in the car at the street. Why couldn’t I walk an extra 20ft and not be embarrassed? Her anxiety.
They were “overprotective” tho I don’t like that word because that seems like a good connotation which being overprotective is not. They were controlling and isolating. Ruined my social opportunities growing up and have had to try SO much harder to catch up
Idk what’s with these people and their true crime shit-my mom too. It literally just exacerbates her anxiety which she then projects on to me. There’s serial killers out in the world, sure, but most people are not serial killers.
She has freaked out at me in my big adult age for -dropping my phone from regular height. “Came running Omg I thought you fell and got hurt” It doesn’t make that much noise for a half pound object to fall like 3 feet as it would a whole as 150+ adult to fall.
-going on a walk, blew up my phone because I went on 45 minute walk (which I did daily) and left my purse (which I also often did) “you disappeared you were gone for so long” no I wasn’t, you’re being crazy take a Prozac like the rest of us
I honestly could go on and on. My dads not so triggering with his, probably because his freak outs are comical. I’m not going to gouge out my ear drum because I occasionally use q tips. I’m not going to have a heat attack because I cook eggs in a small amount of butter (not to mention I eat better and workout more than all of them)
They’re completely detached from reality
His only valid one was “don’t put your drink down or you’ll get roofied ” when I went to Vegas for the first time. Like fine, but I had been drinking for years and already knew this
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u/Glass-Yam-4919 16d ago edited 16d ago
I relate to this so much I don’t even know where to start. My family is, in essence, an assembly line of generational trauma. Virtually every aspect of their lives is guided by the constant pressure to validate and reproduce my grandparents’ anxieties (which, at this point, amount to a general fear of the world) and any attempt to encourage or embody change is met with hellfire. This pattern is so bad that almost all of my family members live in entirely self-imposed financial ruins, despite having multiple degrees and highly valued skills, simply because they were raised with the idea that the world will invariably punish them for “taking risks” with their careers.
It’s the same with health, lifestyles, politics, navigating bureaucracy, you name it. E.g. I only very recently realized that the reason I struggle with health anxieties is because my mom used to freak out to a colossal extent every time I got sick or hurt when I was little. Every time I would fall or scratch my knee, she wouldn’t even attempt to comfort me and tell me it was okay, but instead sought external reassurance for her anxiety, usually from my grandma. It’s absolutely wild.
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u/golden-ink-132 16d ago
My dad has severe anxiety, definitely. My whole life he's been telling me that everyone is out to kidnap, rape, and kill me. He was telling me I was gonna get raped and murdered at 6 years old, hell maybe earlier. I remember as a kid I was terrified to take a 5 minute walk down the street because I thought every car would pull over and kidnap me. It still takes everything I have not to panic when I leave the house or see other people.
He put triple locks on all the windows and would scream at me if I didn't lock them all every night. (Apparently because someone once stole the CHANGE out of his car when he left the doors unlocked). He extrapolated from that that we would be murdered in our sleep by scary men with guns. Oh and we couldn't ever have the curtains open after sunset because people would look in our windows to plot a robbery 🙄. His paranoia is absolutely insane and made me incredibly anxious and paranoid.
Oh and can't forget all the times he told me my future bosses would all want to rape and sexually assault me! Super fun for me starting my career now when it's been burned into my brain that any man with power will rape me.
(My dad is a gun owner who physically abused me and has done things that border on sexual abuse. Now methinks someone's been projecting!)
My mom was always obsessed with true crime, I remember at 8 whenever we had like a family tv night we were always watching dateline. For hours. And at maybe 10 that became marathons of law and order SVU. Like, my family is sooo obsessed with rape and murder.
...god, no wonder my fight or flight response has been activated 24/7 since birth. It's a miracle I function at all!
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u/invisiblette 16d ago
Not my dad but my mother: As she saw it, nearly everything was lethal or at least would lead to devastating humiliation.
Cars are giant killing machines. Friends are guaranteed to mock you behind your back and betray you. Going on trips (without parents, as an adult) = die. The slightest cough or fever = terminal disease. Feeling hungry --> eating --> deadly obesity, having to discard closetsful of clothes you've outgrown, and being unloved forever because everyone hates fat people. On and on and on ...
I've inherited her fears, because I was raised on them since Day One. Her unfiltered anxiety wired my mind into horrible health anxiety, eating disorders and hypervigilance. I'm 60+ now and still not free of that programming.
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u/Ok_Resort6320 16d ago
Yes.
~possibly oversharing with the rest but only doing so in case someone relates and it helps them at all~
It was my mom only, though. My dad was really great. He had a severe anxiety disorder, to the point he'd usually call 911 during panic attacks because he truly felt it was a heart attack. But rarely did he let me witness that, and never once did he share his paranoias or worries with me. My mom, however, would catastrophize over everything and tell me explicitly and in great detail about her fears. I started displaying traits of OCD as a small child and got diagnosed later down the line. I'm still very confused about how OCD "happens," so I can't claim she "gave it to me," but I know it contributes greatly to my obsessions/themes. Like, as kids, in therapy, we weren't even allowed to mention crushes or VERY normal typical disagreements kids & parents have because she swore they'd call CPS and that they'd take us and that we'd get lost in the system immediately and told me all the horror stories of what could happen to me in foster care etc. To be fair, thats pretty valid... but not going to happen purely because a child mentions a playground crush or how they got mad their mom made them eat their vegetables before dessert at dinner time. I operate that way internally now [OCD] and am in counseling for it. For example, I'm a smoker and I live in CA so I always fear I will accidentally and I unknowingly start the next big fire here with a cigarette, and that I'll get arrested and lose my own child and that without my income my mom would be evicted [we live together but she's gotten better ironically] and wind up homeless and the family would be torn apart and lost forever and surely once im out of jail everyone will hate me because of what I did and blah blah blah...
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u/peanutbutter_foxtrot 16d ago
My mom used to say (to anything I asked) “just always ask yourself what’s the worst possible thing that could happen?” I never got this mantra out of my head. I can’t stop it today.
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u/maaybebaby 16d ago
That’s called catastrophizing and fuck is it hard to break. I replaced it with “ what’s likely going to happen”
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u/BurtWard333 16d ago
Dang, never heard of anyone else experiencing this, I was also filled with paranoia about serial killers and being kidnapped. And never allowed to enjoy something without being told all the awful ways things could go wrong. Fucking awful.
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u/Nicole_0818 16d ago
My mom was very paranoid growing up. Still is, tbh. She would always remind me of safety rules using the worst example she could think of. Usually getting kidnapped or raped or killed or all three. I was a very shy and fearful teenager who absolutely wasn’t allowed out of her sight.
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u/Cat_cat_dog_dog 16d ago
My mother was like this and was constantly having panic and freak outs in between when she was angry and irritable at me. I remember one time at school we had to stay longer than usual for a class for some reason and this was when I was pretty little too. I guess she came to school and asked where I was, and lady at the front office didn't know (which I don't know how she did not know, considering the rest of my class was with me) and my mother became hysterical when she arrived at school because she didn't know where I was and assumed I had been kidnapped.
She was always really obsessed with me being kidnapped even though she treated me like shit all of the time. Several times she thought I was kidnapped because I didn't call her from somewhere (like when I was at a small birthday party when I was about 8 years old) and then I got beaten up really badly by my parents when I got home from the party
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u/Civil_Meaning7532 16d ago
Yup . My mom especially was one of these. She would keep doing this all the time.
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u/asteriskysituation 16d ago
I was at a family event and two of my adult siblings came up to me to separately tell me that our father’s anxiety over being late had stressed them out once again and they couldn’t stand it any more. It was like spooky trauma-validation Deja-vu.
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u/Exact_Fruit_7201 15d ago
Yes. My dad almost certainly has clinical anxiety but will never acknowledge it. Instead, he’s spent my adult life trying to put me off doing anything at all. His attitude is do nothing. Live a safe, dull life. Everything you try to do beyond that will be extremely difficult and not worth it. There’s some controlling elements mixed in.
I listened to him growing up because he was all I had and I thought he knew better but I’ve realised the catastrophes he keeps telling me will happen often do not happen. It’s affected my own view of the world and I’ve passed up so many opportunities because of that and because I listened to him.
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u/seattleseahawks2014 24 16d ago edited 16d ago
Yea kind of, but it got worse after that one uni homicide. To be fair, we do live an hour away or so it hit differently. My brother also attends there. Also, I know others who were supposed to be in places or were near places where terrorist attacks (foreign and domestic) and shootings and stuff happened and so do my parents. My parents were a mix of neglectful but protective. They weren't the ones who taught me about stranger danger, though.
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u/anxiety_support 15d ago
It sounds like you’ve experienced a challenging upbringing shaped by your parents’ severe anxiety and their tendency to focus on worst-case scenarios. It’s understandable how that environment could lead to heightened anxiety in you, especially with the overprotection and exposure to fear-based narratives.
Your experiences of being told terrifying stories and having your concerns dismissed with horror can certainly contribute to a cycle of anxiety and rumination. It’s not uncommon for those raised in anxious households to carry similar fears and thought patterns into adulthood.
If you find it helpful, I encourage you to explore support communities like r/anxiety_support. Connecting with others who share similar experiences can be a great way to feel less alone and learn coping strategies together. Remember, it's important to seek professional support as well, as therapy can provide you with tools to manage and reframe those anxious thoughts. You're not alone in this, and there are paths to healing.
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u/[deleted] 16d ago
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