Breaking the Cycle of Toxic Family Behavior Is Hard—Here's Why Experts Think It's Worth It

Yahoo

27-05-2025

Reviewed by Samantha Mann
Every new parent plans to do their best to raise children in a loving environment. But as kids grow from babies to toddlers to little people with their own firmly held opinions, idealistic aims for doing the 'best' can get lost in the day-to-day grind of parenthood. And in those overwhelming moments of chaos, toxic parenting patterns that were present in our own childhoods—or even ones that have existed for generations within our families—can emerge.
That's why some parents who identify these patterns decide that they want to 'break the cycle.' They intentionally choose to avoid harmful behaviors and parenting styles that they experienced as a child when parenting their own kids.
To find out more about what this means—and get some advice for implementing it—Parents spoke with Rachel Miller, Ph.D., LMFT, and founder of Hold the Vision Therapy.
Parents who commit to breaking the cycle in their families mean that they are ending toxic patterns that cause anger, grief, and trauma in other family members.
'When we talk about cycle breakers, we're talking about people who are willing to look at the patterns in their family and decide that this thing that we have always allowed is not ok. It stops with me,' said Dr. Miller.
These toxic family dynamics can encompass experiences like domestic violence, child abuse, and sexual abuse.
There are other scenarios outside of these extreme cases that motivate someone to 'break the cycle' of toxic family behavior. You could have been the child of a difficult divorce, or navigated a complicated relationship with a parent who struggled with their mental health, finances, or substance abuse problems.In practice breaking the cycle often looks parents making big choices for their families that might look drastically different than their own upbringing, often with a healthier or more positive outcome. It might look like never using spanking or corporeal punishment, having honest and non-judgmental discussions about sex, puberty, and menstruation, or allowing your own child to voice their opinion or make choices about what religion they want to follow, relinquishing some of control your own parents exerted over you.It's a vow to end patterns of behavior that might have felt harsh or cruel to you growing up, so that you don't create those lasting feelings of trauma in the next generation of children.Breaking the cycle starts with recognizing these patterns by taking a good look at your family history, sometimes going back generations.
'In marriage and family therapy, we see patterns that run through generations,' Dr. Miller began.
She goes on to explain that families are systems, and as with any other system, have patterns of behavior that are allowed and not allowed, which dictate how family members function and what behavior they decide is acceptable.
Cycle breaking isn't always a straightforward or intuitive process. Just don't do what your parents and grandparents did is not the end of the story. Dr. Miller emphasized that it's significantly more nuanced than that.
'I strongly encourage parents not to automatically do the opposite of what their parents did; that isn't necessarily going to give you different results.'
She explained how that scenario could potentially backfire, with situations like one generation of authoritarian parenting leading to a generation of overly permissive parenting. Or it can also show up as parents who did not get what they needed from their own parents attempting to get it from their children: For example, a parent who felt neglected as a child who then relies on their kids to provide validation.
When new parents or people who are about to become parents come to Dr. Miller for help breaking their family cycles of toxic behavior, trauma, or abuse, she begins by asking three questions: First, what do you believe was the parenting philosophy that your parents practiced? Second, how did that impact you? And third, is that philosophy currently aligned with your value system?'If you approach cycle-breaking from a value-centered standpoint—what are the values you are hoping to instill in your children? What are the values you practice in your day to day life?—it becomes clear how to break the cycle by aligning your parenting philosophy with those core beliefs,' she said.
Rather than issuing a blanket label to how you were raised (like toxic or harmful), start to identify the problematic beliefs, ideas, values and behaviors from your childhood, and get very clear for yourself what you do not want to pass down. Another way to think about it is: what do you believe your job is as a parent? What comes with that role, and where did those beliefs come from?
Once you answer those questions for yourself, you can start forming a parenting style that fits your value system.The level of inner reflection needed to successfully break cycles of toxic behavior might trigger old memories or feelings associated with abuse or other forms of harmful parenting, which is why might be particularly wise to move through this process with the help of a therapist.Dr. Miller also recommends Brené Brown's BRAVING acronym as a helpful tool as you begin this work.
The acronym breaks down trust into seven components: Boundaries, Reliability, Accountability, Vault, Integrity, Nonjudgement, and Generosity. Dr. Miller advises applying them to yourself as you evaluate your own parenting. Again that means engaging in sometimes uncomfortable or difficult self-interrogation.
You can ask yourself questions like,'Do you hold good boundaries for yourself? Are you reliable to yourself? Do you practice non-judgement towards yourself when you need to?'
'If you're practicing those things for yourself, you're modeling it for your child,' Dr. Miller explains.
Finally, in order to become a cycle breaker, Dr. Miller said, you have to get comfortable with making mistakes. After all, every single parent will cause their child some unintentional harm—what's important is that we are always trying to minimize the hurt we cause.
If your parenting decisions are rooted in your values, you should be able to take accountability for how your parenting choices play out in day-to-day life—and to sincerely apologize when you miss the mark.
The ability to be grounded in a philosophy—but then also take accountability for where that philosophy went wrong or where we didn't do it well or where it caused harm—is a key piece. What will accountability look like in your home, up to and including accountability for when you screw up?' she asked. Cycle breaking, she said, includes making room for everyone's full humanity—including your own.
You may wonder if, during the process of cycle breaking, you'll be able to heal your relationship with your own parents as well as identify how you want to show up for your own kids. Dr. Miller thinks it's likely that could be your experience; it's a situation she encounters a lot.
'When I work with teenagers, they often don't see their parents as people. Some of the work I do with them is helping them put their parents in context. The same thing happens with adults who are doing this work,' she said. 'You can say, I see why they showed up the way they did. It was still hurtful. It was still unhelpful for me. I still don't want to do that to my kids. But you can give them grace.'
In part, cycle breaking can help you to free yourself from believing that everything your parents did during your childhood was personal, and start to see that much of what they did was stemmed from their own struggles—whether with mental health or their own trauma,
'This can sometimes lead to forgiveness and moving forward in a different kind of way — with or without a relationship with them,' said Dr. Miller. 'It's you getting to a new place of understanding.'
Read the original article on Parents