The childhood experiences that can leave you doubting yourself as an adult

Psychologist Dr Emma Kavanagh explains how parents with strong controlling or antagonistic traits can influence a child’s sense of reality, self-trust and identity — and why understanding these patterns can help adults make sense of their past.

The relationship between a parent and child shapes some of our earliest beliefs about love, trust and who we are. While most discussions of psychopathy focus on crime, work or adult relationships, psychologists are increasingly interested in how certain personality traits can affect parenting and family dynamics. Understanding parental psychopathy, controlling behaviour and the psychology of self-trust can help explain why some adults struggle to understand their childhood experiences — even when those experiences looked normal from the outside.

Our first understanding of the world comes from the people who raise us. Before children can question what is happening around them, they rely on their parents to explain reality. Parents teach children what love looks like, what relationships feel like and whether their own thoughts and emotions can be trusted.

Psychologist Dr Emma Kavanagh says this is what makes parental psychopathy such a complex and important area to understand.

“Parental psychopathy is not talked about at all,” she says.

Psychopathy is often discussed in relation to crime, workplaces or adult relationships. But the parent-child relationship is different because a child does not enter it with an established sense of who they are. “They didn’t have a worldview of their own to begin with,” explains Kavanagh. “We as parents all build our children’s worldview. That’s part of the job.”

The question is what kind of worldview is being built.

When a child becomes part of a parent’s needs

Healthy parenting involves helping a child gradually develop independence. A parent provides safety, guidance and support while allowing the child to discover who they are.

But Kavanagh, author of The Psychopath Effect: The mind-altering power of the psychopaths among us (Seven Dials, £22), says some parents with high levels of psychopathic traits may approach relationships differently. Rather than seeing a child as an individual developing their own identity, the child may become something that serves the parent’s emotional needs, status or sense of control.

“Think of it as like Frankenstein’s lab,” Kavanagh says. “I’m building something for me.”

The phrase is deliberately uncomfortable because it captures a key distinction. The child is not being supported to become themselves; they are being shaped around what the parent wants them to be.

Why this can be difficult to recognise

One of the reasons parental psychopathy can be so confusing is that these parents may not appear obviously harmful to others. Kavanagh says many of the parents described in her research were highly functional people: successful, respected and outwardly generous or involved.

That creates a difficult reality for children who later question their experiences. If everyone else sees a caring parent, why does the relationship feel so confusing from the inside?

Kavanagh says the issue is often not whether moments of kindness existed, but whether the relationship was consistently focused on the child’s needs or the parent’s. A parent may show affection while also demanding loyalty, provide support while controlling how the child thinks and behaves, or appear loving while making the child responsible for protecting the parent’s emotions.

Learning to distrust yourself

For many people who grow up in these environments, the most lasting impact is not a single event but a sense of uncertainty.

Children naturally assume that their caregivers understand the world better than they do. If a parent repeatedly dismisses their feelings, denies their experiences or changes the meaning of events, the child may begin questioning their own judgement.

Kavanagh describes manipulation techniques such as gaslighting as particularly damaging in parent-child relationships because the child has no alternative reference point. “If you don’t trust yourself, how do you interact with the world?” she asks.

Self-trust is one of the foundations of development. It allows people to make decisions, form relationships and understand their own emotions. When that foundation is repeatedly challenged, a child may grow up becoming highly focused on other people’s reactions while losing touch with their own needs.

Some adults who grew up in difficult family environments describe becoming highly alert to changes in mood and behaviour. They learn to notice subtle shifts in tone, expression or expectation because maintaining harmony may depend on anticipating what the parent wants.

Over time, this awareness can become a survival skill. The child becomes extremely skilled at understanding other people while remaining disconnected from their own feelings.

Seeing childhood differently

Kavanagh says one of the most significant moments for many adults comes when they begin viewing their childhood experiences from a different perspective.

For some, this happens when they become parents themselves. Seeing how they naturally respond to their own children can create a powerful comparison.

“They aren’t thinking, ‘How could my parent do this?’” Kavanagh explains. “It is more, ‘How could anyone treat a child this way? I would never treat my child that way.’”

That realisation can change how people understand their past. Experiences they once considered normal may suddenly look very different.

Understanding without oversimplifying

Kavanagh is careful not to suggest that every difficult parent has psychopathic traits, or that every painful childhood experience can be explained by one label.

Human relationships are complicated. Parents can struggle for many reasons, and harmful behaviour exists across many different personality patterns. But understanding the psychology can help some people make sense of experiences that previously felt impossible to explain.

The central issue is not whether a parent was ever kind. It is whether the child was allowed to become their own person. Because one of the most important tasks of parenting is not creating a child who reflects the parent. It is helping a child discover who they are.

Words: Lucy Rawlinson, Images: Shutterstock