Bethenny Frankel: How My Tough Childhood Helps Me Today (Video)

Toby Canham/Getty Images

Reality star Bethenny Frankel opened up about how her painful childhood is affecting her family life on CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight on Tuesday.

"I could have come up from a much worse upbringing," she admitted but went on to talk about her "lack of parenting."

VIDEO: ‘Housewives’ Stars Show Off Their Luxurious Closets

"It wasn't easy; it was brutal," she told Morgan, adding that her childhood still affects her relationships today. "It is difficult, and it affects me and my life and my relationships now. It has come with me my whole life, the childhood that I've had, the lack of parenting."

Frankel in the past has said she grew up in a household where "alcohol abuse, eating disorders and violent fights" were the norm and she would have to care for her mother, whom she says was severely bulimic and drank too much. But now, she told Morgan, she's learned to "fight to intervene" and therefore not let it hamper her life.

PHOTOS: Women Taking Over Hollywood

"It's my nature to run from relationships because I've never seen a good one so instead I intervene, I stay in relationships, and I work on my relationship with my husband, and I go to therapy," she said. "Breaking the chain is just about deciding the life you want to have, going forward, saying, 'I can have the life I want it to be.'"

Frankel, who got her big break on Bravo's The Real Housewives of New York, has built a successful brand that encompasses lucrative endorsement deals, workout DVDs and speaking engagements.

PHOTOS: NYC’s Biggest Showbiz Players

As The Hollywood Reporter first reported, Frankel sold her Skinnygirl cocktail line to Beam Global in March 2011 for $120 million. She recently signed on for a third season of her hit Bravo series Bethenny Ever After, is working with Ellen DeGeneres on a talk show pilot for Telepictures and recently released a third book, A Place of Yes.