Forty years ago, the general consensus was that strict parenting was the way to get the best out of children. Modern psychology tends to disagree, primarily because children can display the following 18 personality traits due to overly strict parenting.
Emotional Restraint
If you grew up with strict parents, you’re likely to have difficulty expressing vulnerability due to fear of punishment. The difficulty you experience with emotional regulation may also cause complications in your personal relationships throughout your life if you don’t receive the correct treatment.
Deep Need for Approval
Having to meet high standards in childhood may have resulted in a deep need for approval from others later in life and stress when this is not met. Psychology Today even thinks that approval-seeking gets so bad in victims of strict parents that it becomes a threat to romantic relationships!
Conflict Avoidance
If you had strict parents, you may have found yourself sidestepping any disagreements in your life to maintain peace. This could be largely down to being ‘told off’ too much as a child and subconsciously doing everything in your power to prevent that from happening again.
Reliance on Structure and Routine
Adults who have grown up to stricter parents may feel lost or anxious without clear guidelines or structure. Therefore, they will often find themselves relying heavily on structure and routine to combat that anxiety, finding comfort in a more predictable lifestyle.
Intense Fear of Failure
Have you ever felt terrified of making mistakes? That could be a sign of growing up with strict parents. A lot of pressure as a child can cause you to avoid anything even remotely risky as an adult, sticking to safe options to prevent the risk of failure.
Low Self-Esteem
The pressure put on you by strict parents could result in anxiety and low self-esteem, according to VOA Cambodia News. This is especially true if you feel like you haven’t been able to live up to the expectations put on you by your parents, as many people do.
Overthinking and Second-Guessing
Everybody can be guilty of overthinking from time to time, but persistent worrying is often caused by parental strictness during a child’s developmental years. People who have experienced this tend to ruminate on their past actions and potential future scenarios, and they may also find it hard to make decisions.
Desire for Control
The complete desire for control and the fear of losing it are also indicators that a person was raised too strictly. The consequences of this can be a rigid lifestyle, and if anything gets in the way of that, feelings of helplessness and perhaps even despair can arise.
Difficulty in Relaxed Social Settings
As a child who was raised too strictly, you may find relaxed social settings particularly uncomfortable. Small talk might be difficult, and lack of a clear end time for a social event can cause serious anxiety to the point where these events may be avoided altogether.
Skepticism Toward Authority
Parenting Science reports that, ironically, excessive parenting can make children behave worse, manifesting itself in problems with authority in later years. Older children and adults might get in trouble with the police a lot if they’ve been raised by strict parents, fighting back against their past restrictions.
High Achieving but Inwardly Unfulfilled
No matter what those raised strictly achieve in life, they may still feel unfulfilled and empty. That’s because their sense of achievement will be more closely linked to approval from their parents instead of their own personal goals. In turn, external validation means more than personal satisfaction.
Extreme Self-Reliance
Children often develop independence from a young age to cope with strict rules. As they grow up, this can turn into an extreme level of self-reliance, and adults who’ve experienced this may, therefore, find it difficult to seek help, let alone ever rely on others.
Hypercritical of Self and Others
People are more likely to be judgmental of themselves or others if they were raised in a strict way. Constant criticism from parents can easily be internalized and then turn into self-doubt and harsh judgment. As a result, these people often struggle with their self-esteem or to make friends.
Social Anxiety
As well as giving judgment too easily, those raised strictly are afraid of receiving it themselves, which can cause severe social anxiety. VICE conducted interviews with victims of overly strict parents, discovering that the idea of public embarrassment is the greatest fear, which can even cause them to avoid social events altogether!
People Pleaser
Many people who were brought up in strict households will put much more emphasis on making other people happy than on looking after themselves. They may struggle to assert their personal needs and boundaries, becoming hypersensitive to other people’s opinions and approval.
Exceptionally Organized
You may find that you rely heavily on planning as a way to manage anxiety put upon you by your parents, raising you too strictly. The flip side of this is discomfort around any form of spontaneity. In fact, the most extreme outcome for this situation is to develop OCD.
Introspective
Deep reflection can be a blessing or a curse, but either way, it often arises due to strict parenting. The downside is that you may find yourself over-analyzing your own thoughts and behaviors, but it can, in fact, help you become a better person.
Highly Responsible
One last potentially positive outcome of strict parenting is that it gives people a sense of duty and reliability that they may not have otherwise had. Nonetheless, this, in turn, can cause problems with delegating tasks, and people may take on an excessive workload.
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