It Happened to My Friend, Son, Granddaughter …

If I had stopped talking back … If only I had stood up for myself and my siblings instead of burying my head in a book … If I wasn’t too stupid to get good marks in school … If I had … If I hadn’t … I could have stopped them hurting me. They would have loved me. They would have protected me.

Looking at this from our adult perspective, we can see if this is true. In that power under position, could we have actually done something significant enough to effectively protect ourselves? As a child, with our level of brain development, could we have done anything other than we did?

It is less threatening to take on the blame than to admit we were powerless and the people who were supposed to love and protect us were hurting or ignoring us.

Dr Gabor Maté is a medical doctor and trauma specialist. At a workshop I attended, he asked people not to imagine what they were feeling in that situation or why they acted in a certain way. Bring to mind early experiences in your life where you were hurt, scared and disconnected. How old were you? What was the situation? Now imagine you had a dear friend or a child at that age in a similar situation. What if the experiences of hurt and neglect happened to someone you love?

Take a moment and visualize their face, their body language, what they might be feeling…