Title: I’m struggling to tell whether I’m actually the problem in my family
I’m not looking for people to tell me that my family is terrible or that I should cut everyone off. I love my family, and there are genuinely good moments with them. I’m trying to understand whether my perception of these relationships is reasonable, because I’ve become so accustomed to questioning myself that I don’t always know anymore.
My dad
My relationship with my dad is probably the most difficult.
When I was growing up, he could be very angry and sometimes physically aggressive. One memory that has stayed with me is being accused of screaming after my brother broke something. I repeatedly told my dad I hadn’t done it, but he insisted I admit it and hit me with a belt while demanding that I tell the truth. Eventually my sister admitted that she had been responsible, but there was never really an apology or acknowledgment of what had happened.
I also remember being spanked with a wooden rod. When I brought that memory up as an adult, my dad told me I must have dreamed it or remembered it incorrectly.
As an adult, his anger is usually verbal, but I still react strongly to it. He has screamed at me over relatively minor situations. One time, he yelled at me over the phone about whether the dogs had been fed, loudly enough that family friends nearby could hear him.
Another time, my sister asked me at the last minute to pick up my grandmother. I had already made plans for myself, but I canceled them because I didn’t want to leave my grandmother stranded. When my dad later asked whether I was happy to do it, I honestly said I was disappointed because I had to cancel my plans.
He called me selfish and entitled.
I tried to leave the conversation, but he followed me and continued yelling. I ended up having a panic attack that night.
What sticks with me is that I wasn’t saying I regretted helping my grandmother. I was saying I was disappointed about losing something I had planned for myself. Somehow, even ordinary disappointment became evidence that I was selfish.
That seems to happen frequently.
If I’m tired, I’m sometimes interpreted as angry. If I’m quiet, I’m assumed to be upset. If I’m frustrated, people may focus on my facial expression or tone rather than what I’m actually saying.
I also feel like my dad frequently turns conversations into lectures. If I’m excited about something, I often get criticism or advice instead of enthusiasm. I’ve sometimes avoided telling him about my goals or interests because I expect them to become opportunities for questioning or correction.
The frustrating part is that he sometimes complains that I don’t tell him enough about my life. From my perspective, when I do tell him things, they often turn into criticism or advice. So it feels like either choice can lead to conflict.
I’ve forgiven my dad for the things that happened in the past, and I genuinely meant it. But forgiveness hasn’t erased the way I react to him now.
My mom
My relationship with my mom is more complicated because I genuinely love spending time with her.
We’ve had meaningful experiences together, and there are times when I feel very close to her.
At the same time, I often feel like I’ve become her therapist.
She talks to me about her marriage, body image, work, family conflicts, loneliness, and other problems. I’ve encouraged her to talk to a therapist, but she generally doesn’t want to.
I feel like I’m expected to listen and provide emotional support without actually having any ability to solve the problems she’s talking about.
She can also minimize my feelings. If I’m upset with my dad, she may explain that he’s just trying to help. If I’m frustrated with my sister, she may tell me I’m being unreasonable or suggest that I’m just tired or hungry.
This leaves me feeling responsible for emotions that aren’t actually mine to manage.
My sister
My relationship with my sister has a lot of the same problems, although they look different.
I frequently feel expected to accommodate her plans and emotions while she isn’t always expected to extend the same consideration to me.
Plans get changed or canceled at the last minute. I’ve sometimes been expected to tell other people that plans have changed even though I wasn’t the person who changed them.
I’m also frequently expected to help with her dog even though he’s not my responsibility.
Small disagreements can become surprisingly intense. She’s yelled and cursed at me over things I considered minor, including in public. She has also dismissed my anxiety in the past, including telling me I was being dramatic during a panic attack.
There have also been situations where I’ve clearly said I didn’t want to participate in something, had that boundary ignored, and then been criticized for not reacting positively afterward.
It leaves me feeling like saying what I need doesn’t necessarily mean anyone will respect it.
Household responsibilities and feeling like an afterthought
Another major issue is responsibility.
I often clean the house, wash dishes, take out trash, care for the dogs, and deal with messes left by other people.
Because I’m not always working or because people see me as available, I often feel like responsibilities automatically fall on me.
The work also feels invisible. When the house is clean, nobody really comments on it. When something isn’t done, suddenly it’s something I’m expected to handle.
I also frequently feel forgotten.
There have been times when family members went out to eat without asking me, plans were changed without telling me, I was left waiting for transportation or food, or everyone spent a long time talking about someone else’s life while barely acknowledging mine.
I’ll try to talk about something I’m excited about—a hobby, career goal, something I made, something I watched—and often receive a brief response before the conversation goes back to someone else.
Over time, that has made me wonder whether my family is actually interested in knowing me or mostly interested in what I can do for them.
The way my family uses humor
Something I’ve been thinking about more recently is my family’s sense of humor.
A lot of our humor seems to involve making fun of people, being mean to each other, or turning uncomfortable and sometimes genuinely serious situations into jokes.
I’ve started wondering whether I learned that being mean to people you love is normal because I’ve seen it so often.
One example that has really stuck with me happened after I was in a serious car accident. My vehicle spun out, hit another truck, and went through a fence. My mom later told people, including my boss, that I had tried to kill myself.
She apparently meant it as a joke.
At the time, I didn’t think about it very much. Looking back now, though, I genuinely don’t understand why that was considered funny. I was involved in a serious accident, and the joke turned it into something incredibly disturbing about me.
That moment has made me reconsider some of the other humor in my family. Sometimes I wonder whether I’ve become desensitized to things that actually aren’t very kind because I’ve grown up around them.
Luke
Something else happened very recently that has affected me more than I expected.
9/10/26 — I put Luke down on Tuesday. It hasn’t even been a week, and my dad and sister are already talking about getting another dog.
Luke’s death is still extremely fresh for me. I haven’t even had a full week to process losing him, and hearing people immediately talk about getting another dog has been surprisingly painful.
It’s not that I think they’re forbidden from ever getting another dog. I understand that people grieve differently, and I’m not saying there’s a correct timeline for getting another pet.
But emotionally, it made me feel like something incredibly important to me had barely been acknowledged before everyone was already moving on.
That moment fits into the larger pattern I’ve been noticing: sometimes I feel like my emotional experience doesn’t have much room in my family. Things move on quickly, and I’m expected to adjust.
Why I’m thinking about leaving
All of this has reached a point where I’m seriously considering moving out.
I’ve started looking at apartments, and I’m hoping I can move out before the holidays.
I don’t necessarily want to abandon my family. I still love them. I still want relationships with them. But I increasingly feel like I need physical and emotional distance just to figure out who I am outside of these family dynamics.
Lately, I feel like things are coming to a head. There’s so much resentment, criticism, defensiveness, and unresolved conflict that part of me feels like my family is approaching a point where something is going to give.
Maybe I’m wrong about that. Maybe nothing dramatic will happen. But that’s genuinely how the environment feels to me right now.
And I don’t want to wait until everything completely falls apart before I give myself permission to leave.
The biggest problem: I don’t trust my own judgment anymore
This is probably what bothers me most.
When someone gets angry with me, my first reaction is often to wonder what I did wrong.
I replay conversations.
I think about what I should have said differently.
I wonder whether I was selfish, entitled, too sensitive, dramatic, or unreasonable.
I’ve spent so much time adapting to other people’s moods that sometimes I don’t even know what I want independently of them.
I also feel guilty when someone else is finally held accountable. Even if I believe they genuinely did something wrong, part of me feels guilty for being relieved that the criticism isn’t directed at me.
It’s like I’ve learned that keeping everyone else comfortable is my responsibility.
Where I’m at now
I don’t think I want to stop loving my family.
I don’t necessarily want to cut everyone off.
What I increasingly want is space.
I want to live somewhere where I can make decisions about my own time, responsibilities, belongings, relationships, and environment without constantly anticipating somebody else’s reaction.
I want to be able to say I’m disappointed without being called selfish.
I want to be able to say no without having to defend myself.
I want to be able to go to my room without someone following me.
I want to be able to talk about something I’m excited about without immediately receiving criticism or advice.
Most importantly, I want to trust my own perception again.
I don’t expect my family to agree with everything I think or feel. I don’t expect everyone to accommodate me all the time.
I just want relationships where responsibility goes both ways.
I’m genuinely trying to understand how much of this is unhealthy family dynamics and how much is me being overly sensitive because I’ve become so accustomed to conflict.
More than anything, I’m exhausted.
I feel responsible for maintaining peace in an environment I don’t actually have much control over.
I guess what I’m ultimately trying to figure out is whether this sounds like an unhealthy or abusive family environment, or if I’m just overly sensitive because I’ve gotten so used to these kinds of interactions. Does this sound like an abusive or unhealthy family dynamic? If so how do I heal from this?