THE NEST OF VIPERS
I have been revisited recently by some painful thoughts about my youth and birth family.
A question - What is it that drives a person to estrange themselves permanently from a birth family?
One thing that helps me to understand this dynamic is to remember the dreadful and often violent conflicts that regularly patterned my childhood, youth and young adult life. If I had known in the early days that all the conflicts would come only to permanent estrangement, then maybe I wouldn't have struggled to keep things together at all. I could have let go sooner. One never knows with hindsight. We never know how long we are going to suck on the poison. I would say that my physical estrangement is a symbol only; the real estrangement was always in place - it was in the abuse.
I don't know what others think, but it is my view that estrangement is the natural result of abusive parenting. Even if a semblance of polite normality can be maintained in adult life, the victim always remembers the abuse; that is their first thought when they think of this person. The most definite part of this remembering is the knowing that the parent put their own perverted gratification, physical or psychological, over and above their child's welfare.
My mothers repeated and hopeless mantra to me over the years was, "Don't rise to the bait; he only wants to hurt you. Once he knows that you are hurt, then he will be satisfied."
Fortunately, there are not too many of us that have had to live like this, but I'm interested in what others have to say about the dynamic. I want to share.
Philos
I have been revisited recently by some painful thoughts about my youth and birth family.
A question - What is it that drives a person to estrange themselves permanently from a birth family?
One thing that helps me to understand this dynamic is to remember the dreadful and often violent conflicts that regularly patterned my childhood, youth and young adult life. If I had known in the early days that all the conflicts would come only to permanent estrangement, then maybe I wouldn't have struggled to keep things together at all. I could have let go sooner. One never knows with hindsight. We never know how long we are going to suck on the poison. I would say that my physical estrangement is a symbol only; the real estrangement was always in place - it was in the abuse.
I don't know what others think, but it is my view that estrangement is the natural result of abusive parenting. Even if a semblance of polite normality can be maintained in adult life, the victim always remembers the abuse; that is their first thought when they think of this person. The most definite part of this remembering is the knowing that the parent put their own perverted gratification, physical or psychological, over and above their child's welfare.
My mothers repeated and hopeless mantra to me over the years was, "Don't rise to the bait; he only wants to hurt you. Once he knows that you are hurt, then he will be satisfied."
Fortunately, there are not too many of us that have had to live like this, but I'm interested in what others have to say about the dynamic. I want to share.
Philos