The hardest part about being a young person (and I mean anybody who is around 25 years old or younger) is shedding that notion that your parents actions and opinions define who you are. Especially when you're a child or a teenager, we have this tendency to think that the things that happen to us and around us mean something about us.

What your parents do and their actions really don't hold any meaning about your worth as a person. I know that it's easier said than done (I spent YEARS wrestling with that and still struggle to get that through my noggin). I suppose we hang on their opinions so much because we love them. We look to them to help us find meaning in the world, and when their actions are negative, we take that to mean negative things about ourselves.

So, the big thing for you to take away here is to begin that process of realizing the truth about your parents: that their actions and what they say and do has nothing to do with who you are as a person and everything to do with who THEY are as people. They are only acting on what they know about the world, and they are only doing the best they can with the resources they have available. Often times they don't even think about how their actions affect you because, as an adult, the stresses of life can be overwhelming and it's easy to lose sight of what is important.