Growing Up With a Cruel Parent's Worldview

What happens when your most trusted source teaches you that everyone is two-faced? This episode unpacks the cognitive inheritance of growing up with a chronically cruel parent — the kind who conducts running character assassinations on everyone in their orbit. We explore how that shapes a child's social epistemology, why hypervigilance becomes exhausting, and the crucial distinction between fearing judgment and expecting duplicity. For anyone who grew up in a home where "tough love" was the cover for systematic criticism, we break down how the schema gets installed, why it persists, and what actually helps you gather evidence that people can be genuinely kind.