The Grief Survivors of Childhood Abuse FaceIt can be argued that the relationship between a child and their abusive parent is largely defined by grief. For many survivors of childhood abuse, grief for the childhood we never had follows us long into adulthood. Many adult survivors describe feeling as if they’re still a small child inside, desperate for love, affirmation, and guidance. Where the nurturing inner voice of a loving and encouraging parent should be, there is a gaping hole filled by a persistently shaming, blaming, and doubtful inner critic. Throughout childhood, a child in an abusive family experiences grief in a number of small ways, without necessarily having the cognitive awareness or tools to process what it is they are experiencing. There’s the tinge of sadness they feel when they experience a lack of warmth and connection to their parent, and the self-doubt and self-blame that so often follows. The grief is experienced by the child who cries themselves to sleep in the quiet of their bed, the only place where they feel safe enough to cry, wondering why their parent hurts them, yells at them, emotionally stonewalls and neglects them, or sexually abuses them. The grief is the lump in their throat when they visit a friend’s house and observe the kindness and love in the interactions their friend has with their parents. Other families love each other? Parents can actually like and enjoy their children? They feel as if they’ve entered a parallel universe. They are on the outside, looking in, aware their family and their relationship with their parent is somehow different. Being Unloved as a Child: Grieving the Lack of LoveGrowing up unloved becomes a part of the abused child’s identity. This can be the seed from which many core beliefs stem; beliefs like “I’m unworthy and undeserving of love”, “I am alone in the world”, or “No one cares” become the adult child’s reality. Unloved children often grow up to become involved in relationships with highly critical, emotionally unavailable partners, where their needs are often unmet and who they are as an individual goes unseen and unheard. In many cases, their experiences in their adult relationships echo their childhood experiences. Loneliness, betrayal, abandonment, neglect, and abuse are their “normal”. They may reject opportunities to have loving, securely attached relationships, as these relationships run counter to the narrative they’ve identified with and can seem “boring” or “unexciting” compared to the conflict-ridden relationships they witnessed in childhood. Grieving the Childhood You Never Had: The Impact in AdulthoodIn the earliest years of development, children view their parents as one might view God; omnipotent, all-knowing beings, incapable of having faulty judgment. When the abusive parent doesn’t respond to their attempts at connection and bonding with warmth and presence, the child’s sense of security is threatened on an instinctual survival level. Young animals in the wild rely on their mothers (and fathers) to survive. To the brain that is geared towards our survival, to be rejected by one’s parent is to essentially die. In an attempt to survive the lack of love, children make a much more empowered conclusion. If mom or dad doesn’t love me, there must be something wrong with me. From this reasoning, the child can attempt to win the toxic parent’s love and approval, and the hope of someday earning mom or dad’s unconditional love keeps the child going. It's less threatening to believe they are at fault for the lack of connection than it is to recognize their source of security and survival is the root of the problem. The child grows up feeling as if they are somehow too much and not enough at the same time. Their energy, rather than being focused on their own healthy identity development, socialization, and learning experiences, is instead directed outward onto the ever-changing emotional state and needs of the toxic parent. Their own emotions, needs, and experiences are suppressed. In a dysfunctional family where there is a narcissistic parent or otherwise personality disordered or abusive parent, there is no room in the atmosphere of the home for the children’s self-expression, identity exploration, or emotion. The family orbits around the abuser the way the planets rotate around the sun. The abuser’s opinions, beliefs, volatile moods, outbursts, and desires become the focus of the family. The children are deprived of the tools they need to develop a healthy sense of self, assert themselves and set boundaries, regulate their emotions, communicate in a constructive way, form lasting healthy relationships, experience safety and belonging, etc. While other children are learning, playing, and exploring who they are and the world around them, children in abusive, narcissistic families are focused solely on survival. They’re provided with little to no guidance and must later do this work themselves in the form of “reparenting” if they want to build a life filled with meaning and connection. This results in children who grow up to appear surprisingly mature and wise beyond their years due to the difficulties they’ve been forced to survive, while simultaneously lacking the developmental experiences they needed to act as a fully functional adult in their relationships. Adult children are often plagued by feelings of isolation and loneliness when they have difficulties relating to others and experiencing belonging in social groups, including the workplace. No Contact and GriefShould the adult child decide to go no contact and estrange themselves from the abusive parent or dysfunctional family of origin, they experience complicated grief. Although they might be the one who made the difficult decision to estrange themselves from the abusive parent or dysfunctional family unit, experiencing grief is normal when there is a loss of the relationship that was and could've been. The decision to go no contact and estrange oneself from one's family is a deeply personal and painful decision. Often, no contact is a last resort to preserve the adult child's safety and well-being. Adult children spent their whole childhoods trying to navigate their relationship with their abusive parent. When every avenue has been exhausted and the narcissistic parent refuses to take responsibility for their own behavior, it hurts more to hold onto the relationship than it does to let it go. Adult children of narcissistic parents are grieving someone who is very much still alive that has caused them immense pain and whose abusive influence has impacted almost every facet of their life. Yet, they may still love and care for this person in spite of it all. In addition to this, our culture has a way of idealizing parents (particularly mothers) and the family unit in such a way that platitudes like “family comes first”, “all mothers want what’s best for their children”, and “they loved you the best way they knew how” are the norm. For survivors of childhood abuse, these messages run completely counter to the reality they experienced and know to be true. They feel isolated and excluded from society even further than they did when they were children. For more on this, read my blog on Cultural Backlash When The Adult Child Goes No Contact. How Corrective Relationship Experiences Help HealCorrective experiences with a therapist well-versed in childhood trauma and attachment, as well as cultivating positive relationships, can help the adult child learn what healthy relating looks like. Experiencing safety, connection, and a sense of belonging within the therapeutic relationship can begin to provide the adult child with a framework from which they can begin to relate to themselves and others from. They can discover what healthy communication, boundaries, and relationship standards look like and begin to implement those skills in thier personal lives. A relationship with a pet can be a wonderful place for many to start. Animals may be easier to develop a secure attachment with, and they can provide us with unconditional love and warmth. Developing a spiritual relationship with God is life changing when consistent, unconditional love in which we are fully known for who we are is not something we have experienced. Other corrective experiences might come from joining a church group, recreational, or volunteer group. These relational experiences with others can begin to challenge maladaptive core beliefs picked up in childhood. Every individual has secure, healthy, and functional attributes within them. Tapping into these parts of ourselves and relating to others through them allows them to grow. With time, the grief becomes smaller, and easier to carry. It chips away from the weight of a crushing boulder, gradually wearing down to become a rock, and then a pebble that can fit in our pocket. The grief might resurface every now and then, when there is a reminder of the past in the present and our hand brushes up against the pebble resting in our pocket. The only way out is through. Adult children must develop an emotional capacity to sit with the pain, one small piece at a time, learning the emotional processing tools they weren’t provided with in childhood.
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Hi, I'm Hazel!I'm an Associate Licensed Counselor in Birmingham, Alabama and provide Trauma Recovery Coaching worldwide!
I earned my M.Ed. in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at the University of Montevallo. My special interests include trauma healing, abuse recovery, and attachment work. Archives
October 2024
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Disclaimer: All content is for informational and educational purposes only. The opinions stated within my content are mine and they do not represent the ACA, APA, any other individual, therapist, institution, or organization.