To those of us on the forum who were abused by our parents and developed PTSD as a result, I propose a question: if you were raped, physically attacked, or emotionally abused by someone other than your parents, would you want to have a relationship with that person?

If the answer is no, why are our parents held to any other standard? Is it because we were conceived by them? (which in my opinion doesn't hold any weight - most anyone can have sex and reproduce).

Best,
Rachel

My parents are dead now. But I did try to have a relationship with them for many years, only to be re-abused over and over. Finally gave up. I think part of it is denial......the denial can be powerful. We want to 'excuse' them and still blame ourselves, like we did when we were little.

If they were alive now. I'd never have any thing to do with them. I don't with my brothers and sisters, who have been very cruel and unsupportive with me. They are toxic.
I don't even refer to these people in my own brain or in conversations with friends who know.........as my parents or 'family'...........I call them my abusers. This really helps me.......they tried to destroy me, all of them.

Good question, Rachel, and one that I used to agonize over. It's particularly maddening, precisely because they are our parents ... There is some inescapable tie there that just makes chaos, because it's never easy to walk away from your parents ...

I have run the gamut of relations with my parents --> from having nothing to do with them for years, to being beside my mother at her deathbed and helping her to die with as much calm as possible ...

Go figure ...

My father is still alive, and I haven't seen him in over six years.

I tried to change, or even just maintain, my relationships with my family simply because, I believe, that's the way we humans are wired. Oxytocin wired, specifically. Knowing why (humans started out as prey animals and prey animals are better off in groups) didn't change the drive or the need to have a family, a tribe, a sense of connection/belonging, however ailing that connection was. It was all I had. And, because those people were initially essential to my survival, all sorts of confusing primal stuff gets mixed in to make one gloppy, messy, confusing situation....at least that's the way it was for me.

I made the decision to remove myself from my bio-family. I do feel the loss. I do grieve the loss of family, even the idea of one. I do feel "alone in the world" in a lot of ways. Due to my trust issues, I really only have my spouse for full on support, so if something happened to her I'd have only the support of friends.

Because of all that, I gave the family relationships every single chance that I could but, for me, it didn't work out.

-Dylan

I guess I would say no, that I would not have anything to do with the person if they were a stranger, but it wasn't. It was my family that abused me. I was molested, abused physically, emotionally and mentally.

I tried for many yrs to be IN the family, because I had been ostracized for so many yrs, but finally had to walk away a little over 5 yrs ago. No, I do not have anything to do with my family, but I don't hate them either.

I learned that I had to forgive in order to move forward. It's a personally choice to do this, but IMO you either have to forgive or become indifferent in order to move forward. Hatred doesn't allow you to heal.

I never had a relationship with one parent, and cut off the other as soon as i could get up the sterngth when I was young and single. I feel the same way you do: just because people are related to you, by blood or some other way, that does not give them the right to stay a part of my life after they abuse me. If they were just neighbors, i would drop them in a heartbeat.

Once I came out of denial about what happened to me, I put my parents and relatives in the same category in my mind as if the trauma had been inflicted by someone else. I've never really found this difficult to do - why should they be held to different standards? (I still have trouble detaching from them in my mind and part of me still wants parents but I can see where that's come from)

However, I've experienced other people inflicting this belief on to me. There seems to be an assumption that parental bonds trump whatever they did to me - that I should forgive them because parenting is hard and everyone makes mistakes. Or that I'm some kind of freak for cutting them out of my life. F--- that!

Sometimes I think this issue hits a raw nerve for those who are in denial about their past, or those who cannot or will not believe that mothers can be abusive because it shakes their inner view of the world. Even if people haven't had abusive childhoods, nobody is perfect - I get the impression from a lot of people I know that they idealise their parents and that their parents can do no wrong. Maybe I've misinterpreted this, I don't know.