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So, for a change, a semi-serious thread. One thing that dysfunctional parenting can do to you is leave you unable to reliably-distinguish between people who are trying to reach out to you, and people who are trying to control you.
This is particularly a problem for people who had controlling, manipulative or narcissistic parents - because most of the time, they _were_ trying to control you!
In my case this led me to two particularly-extreme situations, one involving a nutcase manager at work (I wasn't able to "see" the toxicity in his behaviour until it became really overt) - it was bad enough that after I quit, he started following me to my new workplace!
(I literally had to move city to shake him off - I know he was still trying to track me down as recently as summer 2017)
There was another situation involving an ex-friend who denigrated all of my interests and tried to forcibly-recruit me for his. This went on for years, and was unpleasant. (I use the word "friend" because we were, once, before things got bad.)
As a result of dysfunctional socialization in childhood, sometimes when people reach out to you, you panic, because your hindbrain thinks someone is trying to lure you into another toxic relationship.
Other times, when people fail to take no for an answer, treat every boundary as a challenge and show no interest in you _as a person_ ... you don't necessarily see the red flags, because that ability was conditioned out of you as a child.
Lastly, toxic parenting also makes it very hard to assert appropriate boundaries in relationships, because the word "no" was absolutely verboten from you, and any attempt to use it would solicit their worst behaviours.
It's pretty clear how inability to distinguish harmless/controlling behaviours and difficulty setting boundaries adds up to a self-destructive mix (this is, of course, exactly what your poisonous parents wanted, because this way you can never be a threat to them)
(As a personal example, my "no"-substitute behaviours involve withdrawal from conversations, attempts at re-direction and shutting down, because those were the only safe options for child!me. It's fairly unusual for me to turn round and flatly say the N-word)
I'll be honest that I have no magic solutions to this set of problems. However, the first step toward dealing with a problem is being aware of it, and I'm hoping this thread might be useful in that regards, so here we are.
