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# Ask Alex: How do I get along with my difficult parent?
- URL: https://it-can-only-get-stranger.ghost.io/ask-alex-how-do-i-get-along-with-my-difficult-parent/
- Published: 2026-09-26T16:59:39.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-26T16:59:39.000Z
- Author: Alex Steed

"I had a stupid argument with my mum recently. She's of a generation that like to carry on like nothing happened, whereas I can't stop thinking about it. When criticized, she becomes defensive and mean. I want to discuss it but I know this is how she'll react. How do I move forward?"

— Anonymous

One of the hardest things about conflict with family is the gap between the optimal outcome and the actual one. Optimally, we want to be heard, seen, understood, and loved. Ideally without condition and in good faith. That's true of conflict with anyone, though outside family the hope to be loved may be more a hope to be respected instead of loved, or recognized in some deeper sense.

With family, there are histories. Patterns of behavior we've internalized and started doing conscious and unconscious math around. Internalized pain, unmanageable discomfort, and adverse reactions attached to those patterns. This leads to loops and traps. Before we've even thought about engaging, something inside us has already said, "If I do X, they'll do Y. If I do Y, they'll do Z." We have the argument almost to completion in our heads before it ever happens.

Our brains do this to keep us safe. It's a useful set of learned responses for one area of survival. But our brains are fairly new to a lot of the relational dynamics we know today, so they lump a lot of things into the survival category. That's made worse by trauma from our pasts, including years of mismanaging these cycles because we never learned how to intervene upon them. Often because the people who might have taught us how to do this—our parents in particular—are stuck in the same cycles.

So we learn that love, being seen, and connection are available, but conditional. You can get them if you do it only if you do A, B, or C, and usually in very specific, contorted ways. If you ever do it in a way that reminds the people in your life of the pain they’ve caused, they shut down. You learn that some things can be discussed and some can't.

That causes resentment and frustration. We grow uncomfortable with the shapes we have to contort ourselves into just to feel seen. And even those contorted versions of us are fractions. They're nowhere close to the breadth of our truths. It hurts to be that way, and it hurts more that the people we want love and recognition from most are telling us, implicitly or explicitly, that we have to contort to be seen or heard and—in a deeper sense—loved.

This is why we often feel least like ourselves with the people we've theoretically been closest to the longest. It's why we can revert to who we were at 15 or 16 when we are around our parents as grown ass adults. That's probably when these dynamics were at their most extreme. In our heads, we go back to the scene of the proverbial crime. All the growth we've done since happened outside of this dynamic, often in spite of it.

There are people who seem to have totally healthy relationships with their parents. I always find it fascinating when I meet them. They're a rare breed. And every time I run into one, I feel like they're playing some elaborate collective trick on me.

These dynamics are also why I'm so fascinated by Wilhelm Reich's assertions that dictator states are born of the patriarchal family structure at home. It starts at home and carries outward. People internalize these responses as strengths. They've been propagandized into believing that the ways they were minimized and beaten made them stronger. They’ve been taught that to question this leads to a revocation of love. Love, they’ve learned, should be tough. So it makes sense that they seek more of that in their leaders and cheer it on. They've been sold the idea that these dynamics are good for them, when they're as toxic for anyone who experiences them as for the next person. And like their parents, they come to demand that tough love for other people, but never for themselves. 

I say all of this to validate what you're going through. Sometimes it feels silly. Like “It’s just a conflict with mom, and maybe I'm being a particular way.” I can't speak to the exact dynamic. But these things are not silly. They're at the root of who and how we are. That's why everything feels so much heavier with our people.

When we're hurting, we want to be acknowledged, especially by the people who matter most. And with family, we internalize very early that without their love, we will die. Those are the internal stakes. We do so much contorting in the face of that unconscious belief. So it doesn't just hurt when we aren't heard. A larger fear is being triggered. Depending on our past, there can be other fears too, including fear for our safety, learned from real behavior.

When we freak out because this feels like all those other times, we fall into the cycle. "If I do this, they'll do that. I hate that this is the case. This is family, why can't it be normal?" And we don't stop to ask what we actually need. “Have I ever presented my needs in a way that isn't laden with our dynamic? Have we talked about how to meet them, in a setting that's less triggering for everyone? Because you, mom, don't want things to be like this when you're thinking clearly. I don't either. Have we gotten on the same page?”

Here's the thing. The adult child shouldn't be responsible for any of that. The parent *should* be the one to start it. But they carry similar damage from similar systems. So someone has to start it, and it'll often be unrewarding. Eldest children often have a fundamentally different relationship with their parents than the youngest do. The parents got their fucked up stuff out on the eldest, and it was smooth sailing with the youngest. That shows how much of this is a learned process.

It's stupid and hurtful that you have to be the one to draw boundaries, explain them, and explain why their behavior is harmful. It hurts because we think, "You should want to do this. Why haven't you? Why don't you want it enough to figure it out?"

I'm not excusing bad behavior, impact, transgressed boundaries, petulant self-centeredness, or any of the harm that comes from them. But our parents went through this with people who had even less access to the kinds of conversations we're having now. And those people had even less. Go back far enough and a child was just future labor. That's not that long ago. God, for many people today, kids are just collateral damage. We are very new to figuring all this out.

I'm also not saying everyone should be bottomlessly understanding of all fucked up parents. Some parents have thought about their behavior quite a bit and still—heartbreakingly—landed in a fucked up, inhumane place. They've committed to the belief that the way you turned out, the way you chose to become, is bad and represents bad things to them. I don't think that makes them inherently bad. A lot happened to get them there. But they've committed to that position. My friends who are marginalized in one way or another have reached very understandable impasses with parents whose actions, taken together, are abusive, neglectful, or ideologically abhorrent. This isn't about that.

But a lot of people aren't dealing with parents who've committed to being bad parents. Circumstances got them where they are. They're moderately comfortable being aloof, and there's never been a larger conversation outside the dynamics. There's some agency available to everyone involved.

So the first step is conceiving of all this and figuring out where you stand. Then it helps to reorient. To draw up boundaries and figure out how to engage them. And to ask, "What do I actually need here, versus what do I feel like I need because it represents some unspoken idea of safety?"

You are safe. You are safe without their love and validation. Of course we want it, for a lot of reasons. But you're safe when they disagree with you, even though it doesn't feel that way. The things we spin out about not getting are rooted in what we need to feel safe, what we need to feel loved (which we equate with safety), and what we need to feel whole. Caught in these dynamics, we start to feel diminished and small. Then we simmer with resentment, because if anybody should love me for who and what I am, it should be these people.

Only once those boundaries and needs are articulated can we see what's actually on the table. I can't speak to every step after that. If you need help with that part, I'd talk to a professional.

What we often do is learn how dynamics work and memorize the whole structure of them, and think that's the work. But if you're anything like me, your anxiety just spins out on mapping and remapping the logistics. Not on learning how to actually show up in the conflict. How to identify what you need. How to say, "When this happened, I was hurt this way. Here's what I actually need." Knowing what the structures look like isn’t the end of the work; it’s just the beginning. 

This will be uncomfortable. So much of how we engage now, thanks to the surveillance capitalism of it all, is stripped of the discomfort that growth requires. This will be triggering, painful, and disappointing. It'll be hard to be the adult in the room. Approach it with compassion for yourself, and for them, even though that'll be hard to muster.

If you decide to actually try, there's a strong chance you won't get everything you want. You'll make progress. You might get some of what you want. You might be pleasantly surprised and get all of it. You might also learn, by holding boundaries in earnest, that none of it is on the table right now. Either way, you'll learn a lot.

I think a marker of any healthy relationship, measured against the depth we have with that person is this: Is it possible to come to that person and say, "This thing you did hurt me," and talk about it without that person’s ego crumpling? If the answer is no, there’s some work to be done. 

A lot of people I love from a distance now are people who struggled with that. I still love them. They are not this way because they are bad or inherently nefarious. That's just how they learned to be, and the damage seems pretty well entrenched. I've had to do the math and say, "I can't engage with that anymore." 

That's not because I strive for comfort in every part of my life. People close to me might argue I seek out discomfort in ways they find perplexing. But sometimes I've reached an impasse. “One of the most fundamental things I need from people I'm close with, you're incapable of doing. And I'm sad for us, because it means we can't do much more in our relationship. I'm sad for you too. It's a limiting way to be. It shrinks your ability to have deep experiences, deep relationships, and real impact.”

It’s taken me a long time to get to this place too. It’s not really taught or positively reinforced by many of our systems. 

So I think that's a minimum. And there are people in my life where I think, "I know you're not there right now, but I know you're moving toward it." They've shown it. Maybe the damage they carry has kept them from being the most introspective. But I've seen evidence of their ability to change. Not a projection of my hope that they can. An illustrated ability that shows it's on the table for them.

That's the other thing. We have to be clear-eyed about what's actually on the table, based on illustrated behavior, and what's hopeful projection on our part.

The question isn't, "What do I do to get right with my mom?" That might come out of this. The question is, "What do I want? What do I need? How do I go about getting it here?" In getting uncomfortable and figuring this out, you'll learn about yourself, about other people, and about how you engage with them. You'll build skills that help you step outside the dynamics you fall into when you're triggered. And you'll carry that into everything, not just your relationship with your mom.

I hope any of this helps, my friend. 

—

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