Why does my childhood estrangement still affect me?
Perhaps you were estranged from a parent or other family member when you were young.
At the time, you may not have fully understood what was happening.
You may have adapted.
You grew up, built your own life, formed relationships and became an adult.
Perhaps you rarely think about what happened anymore.
And yet, something can bring it back.
Becoming a parent yourself.
A family occasion.
A relationship ending.
Seeing other families together.
Or simply reaching a point in your life where you start looking back differently.
You might find yourself wondering:
“Why is this affecting me now?”
“I thought I’d dealt with this years ago.”
“Why do I still want something from them?”
“Was what happened really my fault?”
You were a child then, but you’re an adult now
One of the difficult things about childhood estrangement is that you experienced it at a particular point in your development.
You may have had very little control over what was happening.
You may have had to adapt to changes in your family without really understanding them.
Perhaps you were expected to accept things that felt confusing.
Or perhaps you simply learned to get on with things because that was what you had to do.
As an adult, you can look back with a different understanding.
You may now have a clearer sense of relationships, parenting, responsibility and the choices adults have.
Sometimes that can change the way you see your childhood.
Becoming a parent can bring things back
For some people, becoming a parent can be particularly significant.
You may find yourself looking at your own childhood through the experience of raising a child.
Questions can surface that you hadn’t previously considered.
“Why did that happen?”
“How could my parent make that decision?”
“Would I treat my own child that way?”
Or perhaps the opposite:
“I can understand my parent in a way I couldn’t when I was younger.”
You might experience compassion, anger, sadness or confusion.
Sometimes all of them.
There isn’t a particular way you’re supposed to feel.
Old family roles can follow us into adulthood
Childhood estrangement can also shape the role you took on within your family.
Perhaps you became the responsible one.
The peacemaker.
The difficult one.
The one who stayed quiet.
The one who tried to keep everyone happy.
Those roles can sometimes continue long after the circumstances that created them have changed.
You may find yourself still seeking approval, avoiding conflict or taking responsibility for other people’s feelings without really understanding why.
That doesn’t mean your childhood has determined who you are.
It may simply be useful information about where some of your patterns began.
What if you still want something from your parent?
This can be one of the hardest things to acknowledge.
You can be an independent adult and still want your parents’ approval.
You can know that someone wasn’t able to give you what you needed and still wish they had.
You can understand why a relationship didn’t work and still grieve the relationship you wanted.
Being an adult doesn’t necessarily remove those needs.
And recognising them doesn’t make you childish or weak.
Sometimes part of moving forward is allowing yourself to acknowledge what you didn’t receive, rather than judging yourself for still wishing you had.
You don’t have to rewrite your childhood
You may never arrive at one neat explanation for what happened.
Perhaps your understanding will change over time.
Perhaps there are things you will never know.
You don’t have to decide that your childhood was entirely good or entirely bad.
You don’t have to excuse what happened.
And you don’t have to blame yourself for things that were outside your control.
You can begin to look at the experience with the understanding you have now, rather than only through the eyes of the child who lived through it.
What does it mean for you now?
The important question may not be:
“Why am I still affected by this?”
It might be:
“What is this experience asking me to understand about myself now?”
Perhaps there are feelings that haven’t had much space.
Perhaps there are old beliefs about yourself or relationships that no longer fit.
Perhaps there are questions about your family that you still want to explore.
Or perhaps you simply want to understand why certain situations affect you in the way they do.
You don’t have to go back and relive everything in order to make sense of it.
Sometimes it is about understanding what happened, how it shaped you and what you want to carry forward into the life you’re living now.
You were a child when it happened.
You’re an adult now.
And you get to decide what that experience means to you today.
Hello, I’m Sarah Swain, an accredited therapist and coach working online across London, South East, Kent and the whole of the UK. I’ve worked as a therapist across the NHS, charities and Employee Assistance Programmes for over 15 years. I am trained in integrative therapy, coaching and EMDR and I support adults navigating estrangement.
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