Although we were born predisposed to certain personality characteristics, our development was affected more by our parents’ own internal conflicts and unconscious fantasies. Beyond awareness, yours or theirs, some of your responses mirrored parts of their inner makeup that they couldn’t bear to acknowledge, upsetting them beyond their emotional tolerance.
When you acted in ways that didn’t trigger these angry emotional responses, your parents were nurturing, so you too accepted that aspect of yourself. When your responses reflected their unconscious, negative self-images, they reacted negatively. Soon you too disowned these reactions of yours as “not-me” and relegated them to the shadowy realm of your unconscious.
Unaccepted parts of ourselves are upsetting when we see them in others.