Debunkeries #1: You are not protecting them

There have always been, there will always be, adult clients who prohibit themselves from indicting their parents, from naming the abuses done to them in their childhood. After "fear," the main reason given is that this would devastate their parents. It would crush them, they would be mortally injured, their heart would collapse and die.

I want to disabuse these clients of their excuse, their delusion. Your parents could not care about your feelings then, and they cannot care about or be wounded by them now. Their response to your truth will be anger, self-pity, contempt and mockery, minimization, projection or denial. None of these reactions will kill or even hurt them. But they might kill you. Your real reason for refusing to name your pain and injustice is that somewhere inside you, you maintain hope for the love that never came, the being seen by them that never happened, and you fear that being yourself, being real, will destroy that possibility. But to continue to hope is to still be the child. To be an adult, you must become hopeless that they will know and love you, even with the possibility that they may someday find an epiphany of healing, of transfiguration.

I know that being the child in that sweet and melancholy dream feels better than leaving your internal home forever. But you have always been homeless.