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Trying to come to grips with my parents and my childhood traumas

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David1959

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Let me start off by saying that I loved both my parents deeply and they loved me as well. This is what is making this process so complicated. With guidance and help from my T I am beginning to understand my childhood was more complicated. My parents had their issues and got divorced when I was 13 but I am beginning to realize that their problems led me to a path where I did not want to bother them with my issues but also I am realizing that I was sort of alone to raise myself in some ways.

I am beginning to face the fact that I had some big hurdles to overcome and did not handle that well and am left with a lifetime of blaming myself for things that happened that were not really my responsibility and in fact I did not have the tools to cope either. From my CSA by an unrelated Pedophile from 10-12 to my intense drug use from 13-19 to my failure to go to college.

I have resisted what my T has been saying but it began to make more sense when she asked me, would I accept how I was raised for my kinds? Of course the answer was No, No & No. I have blamed myself for 50 years for failures of my childhood many of which were not the purview of a little boy to deal with. As a matter of fact as I look back I had no way to deal with this.
 
Attachment to our parents is something that I find extremely interesting intellectually and probably the pain of all our issues, trauma or not, to a point for most of us. I can empathize with your pain. Even though I went to therapy fully aware of my childhood trauma, it never cease to amaze me the consequences of covert/overt parental failure in a child...so subtle and yet so profound. I am holding you while you journey through the maturation and individuation process of humble human.
 
Going from “My childhood was okay. We had food, and nobody beat me” to the recognition that one’s parents had had a much larger role to play that they completely ignored or neglected, is a big first step. Harm to a child does not only come with bruises, and it’s okay to say that.
 
My relationship with my parents looks much like a heartbeat.

They’re good people.
I love them.
They’re still people.
People who do NOT parent like I do, or think like I do, or share the same values, etc.
Yet still? Damn good people.
It’s complicated.
Which, I think, is a sign of growing up. The ability to see them as people. Rather than as icons to live up to, or enemies to vanquish. Just... people. That I love. That are very different from me.
 
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