🎠What it means to have grown up with a psychotic parent
Growing up with a psychotic parent meant navigating a reality where the boundaries between truth and delusion shifted constantly, leaving you to become the keeper of what was real while protecting your parent's fragile grip on the world.
You may have learned to live in multiple realities simultaneously - your parent's internal world filled with voices, visions, or beliefs that others couldn't understand, and the external world that expected you to function normally. You became skilled at translating between these worlds, knowing when to gently redirect your parent back to shared reality and when to simply hold space for their experience without judgment.
You may have developed an extraordinary capacity for compassion and understanding, learning to see beyond symptoms to the person your parent truly was. The unpredictable nature of psychotic episodes may have taught you to find stability within yourself, becoming remarkably adaptable and resilient while carrying the heavy responsibility of being your family's anchor to reality.