Did you have harsh parenting?

My father was a narcissist. I was an emotionally and verbally abused child. Papi passed away many years ago, but he left a rotten legacy I am still trying to eradicate—by being the change in the family I’ve created with my teenage kids and my long-term spouse.

I wrote this piece out of the questions I asked myself during my spouse’s job crisis. During those months-long uncertainty, my husband was around the house all the time—so much so that I jokingly called him nure ochiba (a fallen wet leaf, the Japanese term for retired husbands).

During that time, my body reacted to his presence—not consciously, but like a child-body reaction. I acted before I understood how deeply this response was tied to my late father’s mental health issues and how Papi treated me.

Originally, I asked ChatGPT to help me analyze my journal entries. I questioned it the way I question myself. Since it’s a large language model supremely good with words, it gave me many plausible answers. Of course, I sifted through them—gold versus slop. What follows are the gold nuggets. I think they’re worth your time, especially if you were raised by a tyrannical parent like mine (medyo normal ata ’to back in the 80s and 90s).

Why do I always feel like it is my job to make people in my family not feel bad?

In this home I have away from my late father, in this safe home I call my chosen family, I know I am loved. I know I am not in danger. And yet, when one of my teenage children frowns, or my spouse has that vague I’m-still-processing-it look on his face, I feel compelled to bend over backwards.

Deep inside, I still believe it is my responsibility, my duty, to keep the Man of the House or the Petulant Child regulated. My father, because of his narcissistic personality disorder and bipolar mood disorder, was often both. This is why men, especially men in authority, are a flash point for me. Whatever they say, whoever they are, I scan for signs of upset. Then I accommodate. I overexplain. I apologize. I become meek.

I know this is old conditioning.

So tonight, when my daughter was frowning all the way to the kitchen, and I was doing something I quite liked, I forced myself to relax into the task. I finished what I planned to do. I put my foot down hard on the gas.

When I treat PTSD patients, I teach grounding. That night, I practiced what I teach. I was doing something manual, so I anchored myself in sensation, what my hands felt, the rhythm of movement. And all the while, in my head, I kept repeating:

“I am safe, I am safe. Whatever that unknown is, it is not too bad. I can deal with it later when I am done with my task.”

I preach it. I will damn well practice it. Because it works. And because I am a psychologist. And because I am worth it.

There is hope for people with Complex PTSD, children of emotionally immature parents like my late father. I am worth saving.

But no doctor is coming to rescue me. Even if they did, I would still need to want the help.

Why does a frown or vague look from my spouse activate this so strongly?

Because it’s the flashing red warning sign.

It’s what comes before punishment, before blame.

In my childhood home, everyone was expected to respond to my father’s emotional and physical needs at all times. He had very poor boundaries, his legacy, which is still sadly in active service in my extended family. Papi interrupted whenever he wanted, unpredictably, without checking whether the other person was ready or receptive. I was, like all of my siblings and my mom, always on call.

That conditioning stayed with me even after I grew up. As Bessel van der Kolk said, the body keeps the score. Trauma is stored somatically, not just cognitively.

The neurocognitive wiring that resulted was laid down before I even had words, which makes it deeply ingrained, almost reflexive. You may be like me, believing that everyone else’s needs come before yours.

Sometimes that belief is appropriate, you know? Like when you’re prioritizing dependent children. But most of the time, I apply it indiscriminately.

It goes like this: Husband first. Children next. Me last. Or children first, husband next, me last. Either way, I self-obliterate. My thinking is, I don’t exist, neither do my needs. (Haha, my anorexic past makes sense here, doesn’t it? A waif vanishing into thin air.)

This kind of thinking, this rigid ordering, is where other people’s needs start to feel like threats, like forces that will override and erase mine.

Here’s the geeky explanation. In cases of Complex PTSD, especially from chronic childhood emotional trauma, the brain gets wired the wrong way.

The amygdala, our emotional command center, becomes hypervigilant, constantly scanning for threat even when none, or very little, exists.

The hippocampus, which helps distinguish past from present, loses accuracy. What’s happening now, and is objectively not a threat, gets misregistered as something from the past. Wrong labeling.

Then the prefrontal cortex, the thinking and discerning part of the brain, temporarily goes offline. At that point, you’re not thinking logically. The emotional brain, the limbic system with the amygdala at its helm, takes over. The prefrontal cortex is what allows you to pause, reason, and delay. Without it, you’re literally not thinking. Boom. Impulsive, stupid actions.

In those moments you regret later, the brain replaying the trauma, you are re-living it. Not remembering it. The past overlays and overwrites the present, like a glitchy UI on your phone.

That wiring was built for survival, when you were a child and needed a way to cope just to get through the moment.

But it’s old wiring now. You, if you’re suffering from CPTSD, need to get rewired, like me.

That’s why I’m writing this piece.

Why do men in authority remain a flash point for me?

Simple, silly. Look at the Man of the House I grew up with.

Whose needs mattered when I was growing up? The one in power. My father.

My father was my attachment figure, but because of his mental health problems, he was also the ever-present threat to my safety. You can’t form secure attachments with emotionally immature parents like him. What develops instead is often disorganized or anxious-avoidant attachment.

Children like me adapt to a problematic parental environment in whatever way helps us survive. When I was a kid, I became overly self-reliant. Outwardly, I showed signs of obedience so I wouldn’t get scolded or worse. Like other children with disorganized or anxious-avoidant attachment, I also oscillated between getting close to my parents and withdrawing from them completely, depending on their moods. Because of the unpredictability, I often just refused to be cared for.

This disorganized or anxious-avoidant attachment is baggage I am still trying to put down to this day. Actively trying to, especially now that I am a parent. Of course I only want the best for my kids. I want them to be securely attached to me.

So when my spouse, or anyone in the house, yes, even my kids, interferes with my autonomy or solitude, I feel a kind of uneasy resentment. Uneasy because I know logically it is not right. You are supposed to feel okay with the presence of loved ones you are safe and secure with. This is the core of my problem.

I am trying to phase out my disorganized or anxious-avoidant attachment style. My father is no longer alive, and I live away from my mother. The attachments that matter now are with my chosen family. So why would I feel unsafe with them?

When my spouse raises his voice or tells me no, he becomes the Man of the House, the OG Bad Guy. His voice and his no trigger something fundamental in me, something animalistic. Even the raised voices of my children don’t do that to my head.

Men in power are my trigger. Authority figures, especially men with harsh voices or commanding stances, are my trigger.

Oh dear. If I do not fix this, I will be in trouble for the rest of my life. Imagine avoiding men in power or authority figures entirely.

The irony is that I am married to a man. And gentle as he is, he sometimes takes an authoritative stance, as all normal people do.

And you know what they say about projection. You see in others the parts of yourself you don’t like. Aggression and assertiveness somehow got stitched together in my primitive programming. So sometimes I am way too harsh with my kids.

Many of my clients who are parents come to me after they hurt their children by being loud or harsh. They recognize the parent who once terrified them, and they want to stop. I am the same. I will never, ever turn into Papi. Over my dead body.

There is an opportunity to change this now.

What is at the core of all this? Low self-worth.

The gist of my emotional dysregulation is that I do not experience myself as substantial, valid, or fully real. Following that fundamental belief, my needs don’t feel real either.

Growing up with a dominant Papi and a meek-as-a-lamb mom, I was told again and again:

You are not worth anything until you prove otherwise. You are just a fat, stupid, lazy girl.

Is it any wonder I accepted this as fact? Melany is not worth anything, so her needs do not matter. Thinking about herself is selfish. F*** self-care.

I learned to defer. Constantly. Or, in the opposite direction, I rebel. Or the third option: I run away.

My husband said that during the aftermath of his job crisis months back, I absorbed the crisis as if it were mine. I took it over, made it my own threat to survival.

See the hypervigilance? Classic Complex PTSD.

How do I heal myself from these childhood wounds?

I already gave you the geeky, neuroscience-backed explanation. I’m still digesting it too.

So let me put it this way. If you are a sufferer like me, no, a survivor like me, we need to interrupt learned reflexes that have been rehearsed for decades and encoded in what’s called the child-body.

We need rewiring. So the UI isn’t glitchy and can respond to us living in the now.

Trauma responses live primarily in the limbic system. When that system is activated, we fight, flee, freeze, or fawn. None of those are great. We need to anchor ourselves in the present instead of being hijacked by the past.

We rewire through grounding. The body reacts faster than thought, so we use the body. Like a handbrake. We hard-stop the panic attacks, the spiraling, the depression, the desperation, the substance-seeking reflexes. Stomp on the brakes. That’s what we need to learn now. And keep learning, until we get better and better. Because the kids, including our inner child, are sitting in the backseat. This is it. We are in the driver’s seat, whether we like it or not.

Grounding works because it reorients the nervous system to the present moment.

Trauma responses are wired into habit circuits, i.e., basal ganglia territory. (That’s why they’re automatic, fast, and unconscious). Grounding interrupts that loop long enough for the prefrontal cortex to step back in.

Thank nature that our brain is neuroplastic! Because with practice, the work can weaken old automatic threat responses and build new ones. Over time, it’s going to be like muscle memory. We’ll learn to drive intuitively, without thinking at all. The hard stops become less violent. A new reflex forms.

Insight alone doesn’t fix PTSD or Complex PTSD. I have clients with PTSD who still avoid fireworks like the last bat out of hell. But they try. They try to live a semblance of a normal life. We CPTSD survivors can too, but we can’t outrun normal family dynamics. We need a better strategy than avoidance.

Trust me, over time, thanks to the wonderful brain, you will learn that present-day cues are not the same as past danger.

A warning, though. Grounding doesn’t feel good at first. It feels forced. Fake. Like acting. Hypervigilance feels more familiar, almost like home. But that “natural” response is wrong. It’s the gas pedal when you need the brake.

And darling, in that moment, you need to keep your foot off the gas.

Sometimes I still want to go, go, go. But I just stop. I use my iron-hard will to resist that false comfort. Because it’s better for me. Because I’m trying to believe in myself. Because there are being I care for in the backseat who are looking at me with saucer-wide eyes.

“Mom. Don’t crash the car.”

Other tools matter too. These include:

• Getting involved in close relationships. Isolation will damage you more.
• Go to psychotherapy already.
• Journaling for pattern recognition.
• Body-based work: yoga, breathing techniques, Tai Chi, and the like.

Complex PTSD heals through relationships. Practice makes good enough. And finally, you need to move your butt. Be adult enough to take the wheel and drive.

It’s your life, after all.

Is there hope for CPTSD? What is the healing trajectory?

Definitely, there is hope for CPTSD.

There is a procedure to it. The way out is through, not around, not over, not under—through.

Through the dark forest, we walk into the darkness first. Only then do we find our way out. Inward before outward.

Just like breathing: in, then out.

Research on trauma recovery consistently shows this pattern. We stabilize ourselves first using internal work—emotional regulation, nervous system skills. Only after that can we begin to make meaningful changes in our external lives.

When your nervous system is dysregulated, solving problems from the outside world is whacked. You are all over the place, impulsive, short-sighted. You become impulsive, scattered, short-sighted. You’re reacting, not responding to yourself.

So remember the sequence: in, then out. Just like breathing.

Remember: in and then out.

Following this general procedure, here are some signposts—ways to know where you are in the healing process. Think of them as phases: awareness, interruption, integration, and expansion.

Phase 1: Awareness

You’re here when you can name your patterns, spot your trigger words or trigger moments in social interactions, and begin to understand what went wrong in your childhood. What you endured. The atrocities you experienced. How much pain you suffered. I got here a long time ago. I’ve moved on to Phase 2.

Phase 2: Interruption

You’re here when you can catch the damn reflex—the old wiring kicking in—and interrupt it.

I know I’m here because I use grounding techniques regularly. Some people stumble into this naturally. One client of mine, a kindergarten teacher, realized she could use the “count to ten” technique on herself because that’s how she helped her students regulate.

I use yoga, mindful eating, mindful walking, mindful anything. It still surprises me how grounding house chores can be, as long as they’re done mindfully.

Put on the hard brakes if need be to stop runaway thoughts, adult ADHD feels, or anxiety-attack feels live here. This requires discipline, but not harshness. Think stern-but-wanting-the-best-for-you father energy. Masculine energy that is healing in its firmness and clarity. He is who you need now. A wise guide who imposes rules and order without cruelty.

Phase 3: Integration

This is the stage when the new response starts to feel less forced and more natural, like when a habit becomes automatic—tapos effortless na siya.

I’m not here 100% yet. I’m working toward it, and there are good, bad, better, in-between grayscale days. Think range, not extreme opposite poles.

Let’s cheer each other on

Phase 4: Expansion

At this point, we’re supposed to feel liberation, like the energy flows unfettered and all that.

We get more creative daw, and relaxed. Less emotional volatility or lability. When you’re not easily triggered. Sounds like heaven to me, but as I said, I’m getting there.

Because I’m working on it, and I’m meant to give you some hope or encouragement, let me put it this way. I do get glimpses, especially after deep mindfulness practice or journaling that results in a major realization. Jung calls these events the transcendent function. I’ve been lucky enough to experience some moments like these over the past few years. Afterward, clarity and calm arrive instantly, like all those annoying anxiety-thoughts got bug-sprayed and died, and there is just silence and peace. Maybe you’ll experience this too as you go along the path. But carrying this Zen through most of my days, wala pa ako diyan.

So yeah, personality traits matter too, as being high-strung is factored by the trait called neuroticism. (Welp.) At the same time, we can transcend traits. Both things can be true. With healing, I’m becoming better at shifting from high-strung to regulated, and loosening my identity around being “that way.” The Chinoy in me calls this being one with the Tao (道).

Emotional regulation has a learning curve. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the mental health field, like me. Teaching it is not the same as applying it. We can all do our best every day to serve our higher Selves. (Self here is capitalized because it refers to the Jungian concept called The Self.)

Bottom line: how to keep healing is consistency, pacing, and kindness to yourself. Imma do that. Let’s keep trying.

Why does mothering yourself might work better than self-love?

In Phase 2, interruption required firm, positive father energy, masculine. In Phase 3, we must channel positive mother energy, feminine. Here, care and warmth guide our actions.

Think Yin and Yang. Feminine energy becomes the field, the prevailing attitude of gentleness and attunement. Masculine energy shows up like a backbone, a spine.

I imagine it like a nurse administering medication. She’s caring, calm, attuned, and she still insists you follow the schedule. That gentle prodding is where the anima and animus intermingle. Yes! Nurse yourself to better mental health.

My way of thinking about it is self-mothering. It works for me because I learned it backward. I first learned how to mother by doing it for my children. I learned attunement, patience, and care through them. Only later did I turn those skills inward.

Mothering is solid. I’ve done it. I know how it looks in real life. Self-love always gave me the ick. Too syrupy and a tad narcissistic. So I say self-mothering, or its more famous cousin, self-care. No ick there.

Especially if you are a mom, try this route. If you’re a dad, try it too. Fur parent? Pwede rin. That mothering energy is available to all of us. It is feminine, and it is profoundly healing.

If you didn’t receive enough mothering growing up, this might be your way in.

Last words

Thank you for reading this all the way through.

Writing this helped me immensely. I hope reading it helped you too.

There is a Post-it on my memo board that says:

“Husband + kids = safe. Origin family ≠ safe.”

Maybe you need this sort of reminder too. Grab a pen and write it down now. ’Coz we need physical reminders of our present, CPTSD survivors.

These are field notes from my own healing, written as I practice being a wounded sage, a wounded healer. I’ll write more about this topic in future posts.

If any part of this resonated with you, drop me a comment. I’d love to hear where you are in the CPTSD healing process or journey.