Grieving the Living
Family estrangement has become quite the hot topic over the past couple years. But, for those of us therapists who work with clients around attachment and childhood wounds, it’s something we explore all the time within our sessions. How do I have a relationship with this person I call a parent, when they really don’t even know me and don’t seem to be curious about me at all?
At the root of all significant family disconnect is trauma. What I’m talking about isn’t just a simple repair-and-move-along temporary sort of disconnect. This is more long standing, more complicated, and very messy. A chronic misattunement. It may not always be so obvious to an outsider, and the original trauma may not even be between the parent and the child. Most often, something generationally is left unresolved and it pours into present day parenting. For example, a parent who had an abusive alcoholic parent may not necessarily become an abusive alcoholic parent themselves. But the impact of surviving in that sort of environment may now look like the type of parent who is so depressed and disconnected from their own children, that it prevents that attunement from ever flourishing. The generational trauma continues on, sometimes in different forms.
It’s not always about the things that happen to people, sometimes the things that don’t happen are equally as painful. As children, we’re hard wired to internalize those messages. Developmentally, a child brain recognizes the need for attachment in order to survive. The preservation of the parent-child relationship overrides the ability to become the most authentic version of yourself. If you can’t get an emotional need met from a parent, the brain begins to internalize and default to something they have done, that it’s their own fault, that it’s something bad about themselves, in order to make sense of the disconnect and still maintain the relationship. You can imagine how this formation of negative self talk and false beliefs can carry right into adulthood. Into relationships, into the way you parent, into the way you continue to view yourself. This is why adult children commonly struggle with anxiety, ruminating, hyper vigilance, identity formation, playfulness, confidence, and self worth.
Attachment to our parents is a strong tether. Even when I worked with some of the most abused children in residential facilities at my very first job, it was so eye opening to watch children cry for their parents. Their parents were the reason they were removed from their homes and placed in residential. It was so unsafe to reside in the same home. They would still cry out for their parents, the very ones who had harmed them, sometimes in violent or sexual ways. It was heartbreaking that they didn’t know a life of comfort outside of the harm they had endured. It’s an extreme example of how hard wired we are in attachment, and why it’s so damn hard to navigate this.
In those extreme cases, in abuse or severe neglect, it becomes an emotional AND physical safety importance to separate oneself from family. Even in those cases, there is still such tremendous grief of how much childhood felt robbed from them, and the disappointment of never having the kind of unconditional love that every child deserves.
In many other cases, it can feel so complicated, like all lines feel blurry. The over-anaylsis comes in, the attempts at repair, and the grief it feels to lack that connection with a parent who was supposed to take care of you. Emotional needs are just as valid as physical needs for food, clothing, and shelter. A long road of setting boundaries, and figuring out what those boundaries even look like, often occurs alongside finding alignment within themselves.
I have come to discover that what drives the disconnect is having a parent who has not explored healing, or even acknowledging their own pain, and a complete lack of self worth. Imagine if your parent had so much love for themselves, it would spread like wildfire! How could it not? Sadly, so many walk around just a shell of themselves, and it becomes the adult child who is responsible for carrying the pain of their lineage, healing generational traumas, and learning how to love themselves so much that their own children never need to experience this deep pain that can linger inside, no matter how many boundaries are in place.
Your grief is so valid. You have every right to feel disappointed, in pain, unsafe, angry, saddened, and confused. If you relate to any of this and you’re curious to explore this or already have, your heart has the best intentions for you. Hold that closely, because this work is painful and liberating, and whether it’s your kids or whoever surrounds you, know you are doing the most meaningful work of your life.
