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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I find the whole line of reasoning about what therapy is and does suspicious.

https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-missing-reasons.html

"But it runs deeper than that. Many members [of online groups for parents estranged from their adult children] truly can't remember what their children said. Anything tinged with negative emotion, anything that makes them feel bad about themselves, shocks them so deeply that they block it out. They really can't remember anything but screaming. This emotional amnesia shapes their entire lives, pushing them to associate only with people who won't criticize them, training their families to shelter them from blows so thoroughly that the softest protest feels like a fist to the face.

But it runs even deeper than that. Posts in estranged parents' forums are vague. Members recount stories with the fewest possible details, the least possible context. They don't recreate entire scenes, repeat entire conversations, give entire text exchanges; they paraphrase hours of conversation away. The only element they describe in detail is their own grief or rage. Nor do the other members press them for more information.

Compare this with the forums for adult children of abusers, where the members not only cut-and-paste email exchanges into their posts, they take photos of handwritten letters and screenshot text conversations. They recreate scenes in detail, and if the details don't add up, the other members question them about it. They get annoyed when a member's paraphrase changes the meaning of a sentence, or when omitted details change the meaning of a meeting. They care about precision, context, and history.

The difference isn't a matter of style, it's a split between two ways of perceiving the world. In one worldview, emotion is king. Details exist to support emotion. If a member gives one set of details to describe how angry she is about a past event, and a few days later gives a contradictory set of details to describe how sad she is about the same event, both versions are legitimate because both emotions are legitimate."[/quote]

This. I'm not estranged from my parents but I see this with my sister, who is estranged. She has come to them with detailed accounts of things that hurt her or resulted in abuse or neglect as a child (and she is correct, my parents did those things -- just because I'm not estranged doesn't mean I think she's wrong, I'm just handling it differently). My parents will handwave it away, say things like "well I don't remember it that way" or "you're being dramatic." My mom will act shocked by some of the things my sister says, as though she is hearing these stories for the first time. But she was there.

I do think they have blocked out significant portions of our childhood because they themselves were abused as children and the abusive, volatile, neglectful behavior they had towards of was generally an emotional reaction to some trigger regarding their own trauma. And I get it because I'm now a parent, and I know very well the mental confusion that occurs when your child does something for which you would have been hit or screamed at as a child. It happens to me all the time. I have been to therapy and done a lot of work on myself, so instead of hitting my kids or raging at them, I turn to calming techniques. I also use therapy speak! It helps me so much to articulate what is happening and work through it instead of just blowing up.

But my parents never learned that stuff and now what's done is done. They can't go back and undo all the items they hit us and screamed at us and ignored us and blamed us for their own problems or used us as pawns in their arguments with each other. They did it, it messed us up. My sister is mad and she has mostly stopped speaking to them. That's her choice and I respect it. My choice is to maintain a relationship but I stay emotionally detached and don't engage them on a wide range of subject, including the subject of my sister's estrangement, which they often try to get me to take sides in.

So often on these threads I see people who just think these kids cutting off their parents are selfish, ungrateful jerks, and it's obvious to me that those comments are coming from a refusal to contemplate what I means to grow up in an abusive home. Or a refusal to acknowledge that your home was abusive. Either way, usually when an adult cuts off a family member completely, there are reasons.[/quote]

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