When Friendship Wasn’t Allowed: Growing Up Controlled, Isolated, And “Too Much”

Growing up, I never understood why friendships never seemed to last for me.  Anyone I tried to be friends with was never quite “good enough” at home.  At school I drifted in and out of different groups, never settling, never staying long enough for anyone to really know me. It always felt like I was on the outside of something everyone else naturally belonged to. For years I thought this meant something was wrong with me, but now I see it for what it was, a childhood shaped by control and emotional restriction.

Looking back, I can see how small my world really was.  I wasn’t allowed to have friends over. I wasn’t allowed to go into anyone else’s house when I was out playing.  I grew up in a home where other people were framed as “not safe”, “not right”, “not to be trusted”, or simply “not for me”.  These are experiences many people with narcissistic or controlling parents may recognise, even if they didn’t have the language for it at the time.

By secondary school the rules became even tighter.  I wasn’t allowed to go out with friends.  I couldn’t go shopping with them.  If there were more than two of us, she called us a “gang”, even if it was just three or four of us, as teenage girls looking at clothes.  What most teenagers experienced as normal socialising with friends, I was taught to see as dangerous or inappropriate.  This kind of isolation can be a common but overlooked part of growing up with a controlling parent, especially in families affected by narcissistic behaviours.

Not that I had any money for clothes anyway.  I never had a clothes allowance.  I wore whatever I was told to wear.  And when my friends went to the shops that teenagers normally go to, she told me those places wouldn’t have anything that fitted me because I was “too big”.  That message stayed with me for years.  It was another way of keeping me out, keeping me separate, keeping me ashamed, and making sure I never felt like I belonged anywhere outside my home.

For anyone who grew up with a controlling or emotionally neglectful parent, these patterns might feel painfully familiar.  Isolation.  Lack of independence.  Being cut off from friendships.  Being criticised about your body or your clothes.  Having your choices tightly controlled so they weren’t actually choices.  These experiences shape your self-worth and your ability to form healthy relationships later in life.

I didn’t understand any of this as a child. Why would I?  I genuinely believed I wasn’t the kind of person that people stayed friends with.  But now, as an adult reflecting on childhood trauma, it is so clear how difficult it is to build friendships when your world has been deliberately narrowed to keep you dependent, quiet, and small.

When you aren’t allowed to choose your friends, your clothes, your spaces, or your experiences, you don’t really get the chance to choose yourself either.

This is what I’m unlearning now.

Slowly.

Gently.

Allowing myself the friendships, freedom, and identity I wasn’t allowed to have growing up.  Rebuilding a life that finally belongs to me.

Rebecca Bloom