Growing Up in the 80s and 90s Broke Us a Little

Garden hose water, feral childhoods and the emotional patterns we’re still dragging around.

In Episode 2 of The Carin CONFIDENTial, I’m talking about what growing up in the 80s and 90s did to a lot of us - and no, I’m not just talking about the hot hose water, feral summers, metal playground equipment, and random parties in the woods...I’m talking about the emotional stuff.

The way many of us were raised by parents who didn’t talk about feelings because their parents didn’t either. The way kids were expected to be obedient, quiet and tough. The way our opinions mattered less, our emotions were inconvenient and “go to your room” was basically emotional processing.

This episode is funny, nostalgic, a little unhinged and also very real. I’m unpacking how childhood experiences - from spanking and silence to mean girl dynamics and feeling unseen - can shape how we show up as adults in relationships, work and communication.

If you’ve ever wondered why you people-please, stay quiet in rooms where you should speak up or feel enraged when someone tries to bully you, this one might explain a few things.

🔑 Key Takeaways

• Growing up in the 80s and 90s was wild… and it left marks.
• Many of us were raised to suppress feelings, not process them.
• Childhood experiences shape adult communication patterns more than we realize.
• People-pleasing, silence, resentment and self-abandonment often point back to childhood experiences.
• If your voice didn’t feel important as a kid, that often shows up in adulthood.
• Familiar doesn’t always mean healthy.
• Conscious communication starts by noticing what triggers you and why.
  
  

💬 In This Episode, I Talk About:

• Surviving dangerously unsupervised childhoods
• Growing up with strict discipline, spanking, silence and emotional suppression
• How middle school and high school girl dynamics leave lasting wounds
• Why childhood conditioning can create adult patterns like people-pleasing and self-doubt
• How disconnection from yourself impacts relationships, leadership and communication
• What it means to choose a different response instead of reacting on autopilot
• Why “what’s familiar” can keep you stuck in things that aren’t meant for you.

Transcript

Childhood Adventures and Trauma

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I'm curious, is there like a scientific study about the long-term adverse effects of drinking nothing but hot water out of a hose for entire summers at a time? Because if there is, I need to be a part of it. And if not, there should be. Childhood trauma, let's get into it. Let's go. Welcome to the Karen Confidential. I am your host, Karen Campbell Smith. This is Real Talk about Real Life and Better Communication. This is episode number two. And today we are getting real about growing up in the 80s and 90s, childhood trauma. Because if you didn't fall off your bike and sustain a horrible injury only to be told you're fine, get sent to school with full-blown strep throat, or almost die of alcohol poisoning and a random party in the woods, did you even grow up in the 80s and 90s? Or such as me? Yeah, I don't know. Those of us who grew up in the age of no technology. So we were out here in these streets entertaining ourselves. We were climbing trees and falling out of them. We had metal playground equipment, third-degree burns going down slides, monkey bars falling onto our heads, the merry-go-round spinny-doo thing that like it was every kid's mission to like get somebody to fly off at 80 miles an hour, and then one kid would roll underneath. There weren't emergency room visits. We just put dirt on it. This is how we grew up. We rode around in cars that didn't have automatic windows. We didn't have cell phones. We didn't have GPS. Nobody knew where we were. We had the opposite of helicopter parents. We were feral children, basically raising ourselves. Which is why I would argue that we turned into helicopter parents. So I don't consider myself that. I did escape that. We did not talk about feelings. We were raised by parents who didn't because they were raised by parents who didn't. Therapy was for people who belonged in an insane asylum, certainly not normal people. And we did not tolerate moods. Unless you were an adult, and then you could be however fucking moody you wanted to be. But if you were a kid, no nobody wants to hear you crying. Nobody wants to be around your mood. Go to your room and figure it out. We were to be seen and not heard. Our voice mattered less than the big people's. And that's how it was. That's how we were raised. So it left marks. On me, it looks like people pleasing. Everybody else's needs matter more than mine. It looked like not wanting to be seen too much because I didn't want to be threatening to somebody else. So it looked like I would get good grades, but not so

The Impact of Parenting Styles

SPEAKER_00 3:00

good that somebody else was mad at me for it. So maybe you didn't grow up in the 80s and 90s, but all of us have childhood, I don't want to say trauma, but it is things that happened to us when we were smaller that made us into the adults that we are and make us behave in certain ways that a lot of times we don't even realize that that's where it's coming from. I know from my childhood, I was to be obedient, or there would be swift and immediate consequences. There was no, we're gonna talk it out and we're just gonna take a minute and breathe. No, no, no. There was getting your ass spanked. In our house, we had this like cheese board thing, like a wooden, it looked just like a paddle, and that's what we called it. It was a paddle board. So it was kept in the bread drawer, which is a very loud big drawer. So when you hurt, when you messed up and you knew your parents were pissed, and that drawer opened, you were fucked. Like you knew your ass was about to be beat. And it wasn't just that you would get spanked, like you had disappointed your parents. So then you got the silent treatment. And again, this is like my experience growing up in the 80s, but I also have I have some like vivid memories that have stuck with me on this topic. So remember there was one day I was out in my backyard, like zoning out, playing, whatever. And all of a sudden, I like get knocked to the ground by being spanked on my ass. And it scared me so bad that I peed my pants. And so I like land on the ground and I'm crying and I peed my pants and I look up and and my dad's standing over me, and I'm like, and he's like, What is going on with you? And I'm like, you scared me. I just peed my pants. And he starts laughing. He's like, Well, why'd you do that? I'm like, uh, and to this day, I don't even remember what I did to warrant like him sneaking up on me and beating my ass. But he loved the element of surprise. So I clearly did something. There was another time that I remember that I guess I'd been unkind to a neighborhood kid. And my mom, she worked a lot, but she was actually home that day. And I guess she was watching out the window. She saw it happen. And so she comes storming out of our front door down the porch, grabs me. He was trying to pull off on his bike. She's like, get back over here, Billy, whatever the hell his name was. She pulls me over to him and she goes, There is no reason for her to be that way to you. And then she looks at me and she goes, whack, and she starts beating my ass in front of this kid. And she goes, How do you like it, Karen? Does it feel good? And this kid's standing there, like, oh Jesus, what is happening? And I'm sobbing, and she's like, That's what you get for being mean. And she like storms back in the house, leaves me there, and I'm just like, and he's like, rides off. And of course, it's the 80s. So every freaking person at my

Navigating Mean Girls and Social Dynamics

SPEAKER_00 5:49

school had heard about it the next day. So then I'm getting absolutely roasted for getting my ass beat in front of the neighborhood kid. That was a good time. And like that was just before I was 10. My life was split into like two major like time periods. I lived in West Virginia until I was 10. Both of my parents born and raised there. I was born and all of my family raised there until I was 10. And then my parents decided to move to Florida. So that's like kind of how my childhood is split up. Like I have West Virginia and Florida. So once I moved to Florida, it was like around the time of like finishing elementary school, but getting into middle school. So most of my formative memories from Florida childhood are like middle and high school years. And that's when you got into the mean girl shit. Why are girls so awful to each other? Like I remember the middle school thing to do was back in the day on a landline, you could do three-way calling. So you'd be on the phone with your friend, and then you'd get another girl on the phone, and she wouldn't know that this other girl was on the phone. And so this Queen B would be like, hey, don't you hate so-and-so? She's a bitch. And she would get you to agree and say bad shit too. And then the person you were talking about would be like, B, I'm on the phone. Who do you think you are? Like, literally start a fight over nothing. And then that would extend to school, and everybody would be mean to you because of that. Like, that happened to me so many times. You would think I would have learned. I think, I think by high school I did. But by the time you get to high school, then you had girls sleeping with your boyfriends. That happened to me. Girls are vicious, man. They are awful. I mean, first of all, I'm glad I had sons and that I didn't have to relive that through them. Boys have their moments, but I don't think they're nearly as vicious as girls are. But also, I can see that women still do it, first of all. It's not, there are some people that never outgrow that, but I know I see it that it's coming from a place of they are feeling less than, and so they get power by knocking somebody else down and taking the power from someone else, which is really ugly and it's really common. And I hate it. There was this phenomenon in high school where you'd be really good friends with girls one day and you'd literally show up the next and nobody would talk to you. That happened often too. And I feel like that continues into adulthood. There are still women that do that. It's just, again, it's insecurity and it's ugly and it's ego driven, but it's real. And it definitely leaves a mark. Like even talking about it and thinking about it, I feel it here. Like it's it just it leaves a mark. To this day, if I feel like somebody is trying to do that to me or bully me, I am enraged. Like that is a seriously deep wound that I still have. And that's something that I have to consciously work through when it happens, because a very ugly side wants to come out in me when that happens. But a big part of being a teenager in the 90s was existing without being tracked.

The Wildness of the 80s and 90s

SPEAKER_00 9:03

So we did things like I would tell my parents that I was going to my friend's house to spend the night. And then she would tell her parents she was coming to my house. And we would actually go to a party in the woods or some random adult's house that was like early 20s, but stuck around, didn't go away to college. And we basically would be drunk at midnight or one o'clock in the morning and not have any idea where we were sleeping that night. And our parents didn't check. They didn't double check. They'd call so-and-so's mom and go, hey, is it good if Karen comes over?

unknown 9:33

No.

SPEAKER_00 9:34

They did not check. And we didn't have any device to track us. So they believed us. I remember being 17. I was a senior in high school, and we were allowed, there were like eight of us. We went to Daytona for spring break and stayed in a hotel by ourselves and drank in bars with fake IDs. I don't even remember where we got them. And then I remember like the cleaning crew was smoking weed. And so a couple of us decided to smoke weed with them and ended up passing out because it was really freaking strong weed. And two of our wallets were gone. So like the fact that I survived that pretty much unscathed is kind of a miracle. But I'm telling you, man, the 80s and 90s were crazy. They were wild times. So all of us have those experiences as children, as adolescents, as teenagers that have kind of shaped us into who we are. So for me, again, it turned me into somebody who believed that if I'm in a meeting, my opinion doesn't really matter because I can't possibly be the smartest person there. So what I have to offer probably doesn't matter. I mean, when you're a kid whose voice doesn't matter, then you become an adult who thinks your voice doesn't matter. And I'm not trying to get woo and therapy like on you, but I am saying that that stuff is what causes you to be in a room like that and behave that way. And you don't even realize that you're doing it. My upbringing also caused me to consider others before myself, which sounds noble. But at the same time, if you're constantly pouring all of your time and attention into other people and never considering yourself and not giving yourself what you need, I can tell you from experience where it'll land you is extremely resentful, unfulfilled, lost, disconnected from yourself, and it does not serve you well. I learned that the hard way. But I was unaware that I was operating from that place for a very long time. I didn't realize that the reason that I was resentful and the reason that I was angry is because I kept saying yes when I wanted to say no. I didn't feel like I had permission to. I was so crippled by wanting to be chosen and wanting to be liked that I gave no consideration to myself for what I needed. And that's how I landed in my mid-40s, completely lost and completely disconnected for myself and everyone else.

Finding Your Voice and Self-Identity

SPEAKER_00 12:07

So again, all of us have our backgrounds and our ways that we maybe don't show up in the best way. But what I teach now and what I've learned is the more disconnected you are with yourself, the more disconnected you are with everyone else. And you can't have trust and relationships or lead if you're in a position of leading, which a lot of people are HR. You can't do that effectively if you aren't in check with yourself. So conscious communication is now the platform that I teach, and it came from all of that. So it came from me realizing that the reason that I was disconnected so much is because I was in a chaotic, emotionally abusive, toxic marriage for a very long time. And I was overfunctioning and overgiving in every relationship of my life. So when I landed in a place where I didn't recognize myself, I was resentful, I was angry, I was unfulfilled, I was lost, I had no idea who I was or what I wanted, I finally decided to make the change that worked for me. And that was choosing myself and getting out of my marriage. I'm not here advocating that for everyone. What I am saying is if you do feel some resentment or that you're lost, maybe look at what in your life you're giving away or what in your life you're saying yes to that maybe you want to say no to, what in your life is draining you? Because what is not meant for you will disappoint you repeatedly. Let that sink in. If it is not meant for you, it will keep disappointing you. It will keep showing you that it's not meant for you. I saw that on Instagram and I was like, holy shit. It made me think of my marriage. It made me think of jobs that I've had where I just, no matter what I did, no matter how hard I worked, no matter, you know, how much I tried to be relevant and give my opinion and do all these things, it just never fit. It's because it wasn't for me. But I think we get to a place in life sometimes and are afraid to make change because we're comfortable. And where does that land us? The other thing is you got to pick your uncomfortable because where you are, if you're unhappy, is uncomfortable. It's just familiar. So to get uncomfortable in the unknown allows you to get to a place that you actually want to be rather than stay in a place you don't want to be because it's familiar. So part of why I'm here and part of why I get so vulnerable and why I'm so honest about

Reconnecting with Yourself

SPEAKER_00 14:48

things that have happened to me in my life and things that I've learned is because I would love for other people to start considering the same things in themselves so that they can start to reconnect with themselves. Maybe your marriage is great, but maybe you still feel a disconnect. There's a million things that can make you feel disconnected. Maybe look back at how you grew up and think about maybe things that you just considered normal, that you considered no big deal, they might have left a mark. And they may be why you're reacting in certain situations the way that you are. That is part of reconnecting with yourself. So the best place to start with that is what are the times when you get super emotional, like instant wave of emotion. Dig into those moments. That's a really good way to get to know yourself because under that big emotion is an ego pattern that happened when you were smaller. And again, I'm not your therapist, I'm not gonna get woo on you, but I'm telling you, if you start digging into this and start getting to know yourself, you'll be able to recognize those moments. And ultimately, if you want to get better at it, in those moments, you'll take a breath and not react on autopilot. You will respond from the current moment. What I just said is the crux of conscious communication, which is what I now teach in rooms, is what I teach wherever and whenever I can, because I think it's something that everybody should consider, especially if you lead people. Everything that I've talked about in these first two episodes, everything that I've been through and everything that I've learned has led me to this place of teaching this concept because I've learned it myself and I've started to share it on social, and people are resonating with it. And so I want to introduce the idea to as many people as possible. So the shit does get real, and I am gonna share a lot. Maybe it's oversharing. I don't know. I'm an overshare, add it to the list of shit that's wrong with me. We're all human, guys. We all have our issues. But I'm really glad that you're here. And I'm really glad that you tuned in and I hope that you'll stay and tune in for the next episode. But for now, that is all for this episode of the Karen Confidential. I'm so glad that you were with me. I hope I'll see you next time. Okay, bye. Hey, thanks for watching. Can't get enough, Karen? Well, share, subscribe, and hit the notification bell for new episodes. You can also follow me on social or visit my website. And if you want to connect, send me an email. Okay, bye. Let's go.