Family
You love them too and the list of things you'll never get from them is long enough that you can't pretend it isn't there.
You can list specific things they did. You can also list specific things they did right. The list of things you’ll never get from them is long enough that you can’t pretend it isn’t there. The list of obligations you still feel toward them is also long enough. You either go through the motions of having a relationship with them, or you’ve stopped going through the motions and you feel guilty about it. Either way, the hating sits there.
The hate isn’t an overreaction. It’s what’s left after the loving didn’t fix the parts that needed fixing.
The hate is back the next time they do the thing they always do.
Educational, not diagnostic. Not a substitute for clinical assessment.
© The Institute for Applied Strategic Therapy. All rights reserved.
You very likely came up needing something specific from them that they couldn’t give, and you’ve spent decades trying to find a different way to ask for it. You may have been the kid who learned to manage the parent’s mood instead of having your own, and you’ve been waiting for them to finally see you in a way they’re not equipped to. You may have absorbed from culture or from your own conscience that you owe them respect because they raised you, and the obligation has been incompatible with the truth of how they actually treated you. You may have lived through a stretch when you tried to confront them directly, and the response confirmed everything you were afraid of about what they were capable of acknowledging.
You’ve been trying to get a different relationship out of the same parents. The relationship you have is the one their personalities and yours produce together. Without one or both of you changing, the same relationship will produce itself again at every visit.
Trying to make them see you, or apologize, or change, has been keeping you in the role of the child still asking. As long as you’re in that role, the system keeps running on the same fuel.
If you’ve gone no-contact and feel guilty, see I went no-contact and I feel guilty . If one of them is narcissistic specifically, see My mother is narcissistic or My father is narcissistic .
You can’t make them into the parents you needed. You can change what you’ve been doing in the position of needing them to be.
Strategic therapy gets you out of the role of the child still asking. We change what you do during contact and between contacts, the small ways you’ve been keeping the door open for a relationship that isn’t on offer. Once you stop running on the hope that they’ll finally meet you, the relationship reorganizes around what’s actually available, which is usually less than you wanted and more than the hate alone makes room for.
You’ll relate to them as they are. The hate stops being the only honest response left.
Write to us and we'll get back to you personally. A qualified practitioner answers every inquiry, usually within two business days.
Message received. We'll be in touch at the address you provided.