For decades, many adults carry invisible labels handed down to them during their formative years. These verbal designations—often delivered in moments of frustration, anger, or systemic family dysfunction—can quietly govern a person’s self-worth, relationship choices, and psychological development for a lifetime.
For trauma-informed author and digital creator Stephanie Roese, untangling the origins of her own childhood label was a journey that spanned forty-five years. It began behind a closed bedroom door, in the damp chill of a New York summer night, where a single, devastating sentence from her father fused family secrets with personal shame.
At fourteen years old, Roese found herself seeking refuge in her darkened bedroom. Outside, the loud hum of a window air conditioning unit filled the space, accompanied by the steady, rhythmic drip of condensation. Underneath the door, the harsh light of the hallway cut through the darkness. On the other side of that door, her father was banging his flat hand against the wood, screaming at her to return to the dining table to finish her dinner.
Roese had fled the table after her older sister struck her. When she refused to return, her father delivered a statement that would alter the trajectory of her self-perception for the next four decades:
“Well, you know, I used to give your mother a good swift kick in the ass when she deserved it. You act like that, and you get what you deserve.”
For Roese’s entire life up to that point, her father had vehemently denied ever committing physical violence against her mother. He had denied it during a bitter divorce; he had denied it to her maternal grandparents. Yet, in two sentences, he not only validated the long-suspected abuse but weaponized it to justify the physical assault Roese had just experienced
at the hands of her sister.
In that moment, Roese was handed a narrative: she was a person who provoked violence, and she deserved the harm that came her way.
The Dinner Table
To understand the events that culminated at that bedroom door, one must look at the daily rituals of Roese’s childhood. For as long as she could remember, dinner with her father was accompanied by a relentless stream of personal criticism.
Every meal became an interrogation of her habits. Her father routinely commented on how slowly she ate, how much she talked, and how she attempted to negotiate for dessert as if closing a business transaction. He developed a specific, mocking caricature of her voice—a nasal, pinched, irritating imitation of a young girl—to ask, “How many bites ’til I get dessert?”
While presented under the guise of playful teasing, the repetition transformed the behavior from a casual joke into a foundational identity. He frequently and consistently referred to her as a "royal pain in the ass."
Intriguingly, the rules did not apply equally. Roese’s older sister, Jill, could leave her plate unfinished and ask for dessert without facing similar mockery or reprimand. The focus of her father’s irritation was singularly trained on Roese.
On paper, Jill was the family’s high achiever—physically attractive, a gifted student, a varsity athlete, a talented musician, and multilingual by young adulthood. Roese, by her own estimation, felt aggressively average in comparison.
However, beneath the surface of the family dynamic lay a much more volatile reality. Jill struggled with severe mental illness that occasionally manifested as dangerous, physical instability—a reality the adults in the household were either unable or unwilling to fully address. In a home where one child was experiencing a profound mental health crisis, Roese’s normal childhood behaviors and dinner-table chatter became a convenient repository for her father’s unexpressed anxiety, anger, and frustration.
Without realizing it, Roese was cast in a specific family role: the designated, annoying "pain in the ass."
The Night It Became Permanent
The underlying tension of the family dynamic erupted during a summer visit to New York when Roese was approximately fourteen. After an ordinary afternoon trip downtown to get Baskin-Robbins ice cream with her sister, the family gathered for dinner.
True to form, her father began criticizing Roese for her eating habits, focusing on the fact that she had eaten ice cream before dinner. Looking at her sister’s unfinished plate, Roese decided to speak up. She looked her father in the eye and asked why he constantly targeted her, while ignoring the fact that Jill had eaten the exact same ice cream and had also left her dinner unfinished.
The comparison angered Jill, who lunged across the table and struck Roese across the back with an open hand, leaving a physical mark. Roese fled past her father and locked herself in her bedroom, leading to the confrontation at the door.
The damage of her father’s subsequent remark lay in its psychological fusion of two distinct concepts: his own history of domestic violence and the assertion that Roese was inherently responsible for the violence directed at her. Lacking the cognitive tools of an adult to separate these concepts, fourteen-year-old Roese absorbed them as absolute truth.
What Forty-Five Years of Being "the Pain in the Ass" Actually Cost Me
The developmental consequences of growing up in a highly critical environment are well-documented. A 2025 meta-analysis published in the journal Child Development evaluated sixty-five studies involving more than 19,000 adolescents. The researchers identified a distinct, measurable correlation between critical, rejecting parent-child dynamics and an adolescent’s propensity toward deep-seated shame.
The study highlighted that the primary driver of this shame was not merely a lack of parental warmth, but the active presence of criticism, rejection, and highly conditional love. It established a pattern wherein children learn they are only deemed acceptable when they conform to rigid behavioral expectations.
For Roese, this internalized shame manifested in her adult relationships. The label of being a "pain in the ass" became a defense mechanism. Early in dating relationships, she would preemptively make jokes about her difficult nature, presenting the label as a punchline before anyone else could use it against her.
Unconsciously, she fell into a pattern of selecting partners who would ultimately validate this low self-appraisal, confirming her belief that she was unworthy of sustained affection, fidelity, and care.
Psychologists refer to this behavior as repetition compulsion—the subconscious drive to recreate unresolved childhood trauma in adult relationships. The goal of this compulsion is not to experience pain, but to attempt to master the original conflict, hoping to achieve a different, healing outcome from a new figure of authority. In reality, Roese remained emotionally frozen in that cold, fourteen-year-old bedroom, waiting for a different response from the other side of the door.
The Other Side of Him
A realistic assessment of familial trauma requires acknowledging the complex duality of human behavior. Roese’s father was not a caricature of abuse; he was also a source of support and mentorship.
He funded Roese’s entire college education without hesitation. When she graduated and built a highly successful career in sales, the dynamic between them shifted. Though he occasionally teased her about her unexpected professional drive, he expressed genuine pride in her accomplishments and took an active interest in her career.
The two spent hours on the phone discussing business strategy, and he transitioned into a valued professional mentor. This support was real, forming what Roese recalls as one of the most meaningful relationships of her adult life.
In his final years, as Alzheimer’s disease began to decline his cognitive faculties, her father’s demeanor softened significantly. For decades, Roese’s expressions of love on phone calls had been met with a polite but distant, “Okay. Thanks, hon, bye.” Toward the end of his life, however, he began returning the sentiment freely and warmly, greeting her with unconditional affection.
During one of these late-stage conversations, he made a quiet, somewhat shameful confession: he admitted that he had initially been disappointed when he found out he was having daughters instead of sons. While the admission carried a brief sting, Roese recognized it as an act of vulnerability—an acknowledgment of his past limitations and a silent apology for the expectations he had projected onto his children.
These positive experiences did not erase the trauma of the locked bedroom door or the decades of self-doubt, but they existed alongside them. He was simultaneously the man who excused physical violence and the mentor who supported her independence.
What I Know Now
Reconciling these conflicting realities is often the most challenging aspect of healing from family trauma. Through a psychological lens, the paradox can seem impossible to resolve. Through an emotional lens, however, it becomes possible to accept that a person can be generous, supportive, and loving while also being capable of causing profound emotional harm.
For those grappling with their own inherited labels and complicated family histories, Roese offers a perspective rooted in her work as a trauma-informed creator:
The labels applied to children by critical parents are rarely objective truths. Instead, they are often projections—stories constructed by adults to rationalize their own reactions, frustrations, and behavioral failures.
Healing involves recognizing that one can harbor anger toward a parent for their abusive behaviors while still cherishing the genuine, loving aspects of their character. Human beings are rarely monolithic; they are capable of both deep kindness and destructive cruelty.
For adult survivors of childhood criticism, the path forward lies in recognizing that the labels handed down at the family dinner table do not define their worth. The invitation of adulthood is to set those labels down and reclaim the right to self-definition.
