Unlearning My Parents’ Patterns: How Toxic Upbringing Affected My Career

I almost didn’t write this. Reflecting on this topic meant confronting truths I had kept buried for a long time. Accepting that reality meant forcing myself to examine how I work and how I project confidence. Writing this felt like a point of no return.

This is a complex subject, shaped over more than three decades of my life. The way I handle emotions, work, and self-worth today didn’t form in isolation. It took root much earlier.

However, instead of dissecting my parents’ traits, I want to focus on the habits I picked up unconsciously and carried into my 14 years of professional life. If you are someone who’ve lived through similar dynamics may recognize these patterns without them needing to be named.

What I didn’t realize at the beginning of my career was how quietly these toxic traits had already begun shaping the way I showed up at work.

Early Patterns That Showed Up at Work

I have always struggled with impatience. I often jump to the next exciting thing before completing the current one. Strangely, the efforts that I put into my work usually made me the centre of attention. However, internally, I felt very uncomfortable with the attention. I constantly struggled between working quietly and going above and beyond to get promoted quickly. I was scared to stop the momentum I was building, fearing that the company leaders would no longer remember me and I might fall behind my peers.

The two times I had a colleague reporting to me, I did not do a great job at all! Folks like me who have toxic parents cannot become great leaders unless they work through the unresolved trauma and baggage that they carry every day. I constantly lost the battle to control my emotions, giving in to anger and frustration when a team member could not deliver according to my expectations.

Over time, these patterns stopped being invisible and began leaving consequences I could no longer ignore.

Moments That Made Me Reflect

I was unable to trust my peers or even my leaders when it came to sharing something. I tried to keep a tight control over projects that I was leading which ultimately led to burnout and exhaustion. I remember a recent conversation I had with my manager’s manager regarding my performance rating. She decided to reduce my rating by 3 points due to this one single feedback “Instead of providing solutions to a problem or trying to be a problem solver, you pinpoint and focus on faults and ask more questions”. This was a setback for me in many ways. My brain instantly labelled me as a victim and I carried this sting for months to follow. Instead of improving on this, I cancelled all my 1x1s with her, concluded that she is not my well wisher, and she just wants me to find another job.

Another incident which I remember is from a couple of years back. I was leading yet another project and there was an IT manager with whom I had to work on the project. The IT manager tried to communicate and make certain decisions which obviously did not sit well with me. This activity became so aggravated in my mind that I escalated this "issue" to his manager. My fear of confrontation stopped me from speaking with him directly on the matter. I could have also tried to see it as a helping hand to reduce burden from my plate.

These incidents forced me to confront a difficult truth: I am repeating a behavioral pattern I am very familiar with.

Looking back, these moments now feel less like isolated incidents and more like signals I had been avoiding. There is a bitter taste in my mouth. I could have done so many things differently. But how does one take the right path when all their life they have been conditioned to toxic traits from their family members or have been witnessing all the wrong behaviors which served as a model for their future behaviors? How does one untangle from it, unlearn it and move forward with a new start? Is it even possible?

Yes, Sumi. It is possible. Whispered a voice in my head like a breeze. In my long & difficult journey towards rediscovering myself, I realized that it’s never too late to unlearn harmful patterns and build habits that lead to a more sustainable life and a healthier relationship with work. At the same time, staying out of old cycles often requires difficult, deliberate choices.

Things are starting to look better with each day, and I want to share the ways I’ve started changing my life for the better.

Healing may be slow, but every insight that I gain gives me a chance to choose differently next time.

If this post helped you, you can optionally support my writing with a coffee ☕.

Thanks for reading. See you in the margins.