Child Abuse: Is It Normal For Someone To Idealise One Parent And To Demonise The Other?

If someone was abused and/or neglected during their early years, it doesn’t mean that they will be aware of this. Due to how much time has passed and the defences that they have in place, they might not be able to remember what took place at this stage of their life.

Then again, they might only be able to remember certain things, and the things that they do remember could relate to the good things that took place. Either way, one is not going to have a clear idea about what took place at this stage of their life.

Breaking Through

Nevertheless, as the years go by, what is held deep inside them will probably start to come to the surface. The early trauma that has been repressed for so long will begin to enter their conscious awareness, making it hard for them to handle life.

However, this is not to say that some of this pain won’t have already been seeping into their conscious mind or that their life will have been fine. What this comes down to is that as a lot of what has been hidden is no longer hidden, their life will get harder.

Confusion

They could come into contact with anger, rage, guilt, shame, fear and terror. As they won’t have a strong connection to what took place when they were younger what comes up might not make any sense to them.

As a result of this, they could come to the conclusion that their feelings are irrational. Ultimately, how they feel will be a consequence of what they went through as a child and had to push out of their awareness to survive.

Joining the Dots

If they were to reach out for the support of a therapist or healer, for instance, they may start to understand why they feel the way that they do and why they have certain challenges. For so long, it will have been as if they were in the dark and now, thanks to what they are becoming aware of, it will start to get lighter.

At this point, they may see one parent as being the ‘good’ one and the other as being the ‘bad’ one. This could be because one of them was abusive and the other wasn’t or was only abusive at certain times.

A Strong Reaction

So while they may experience hate towards one parent, they won’t feel the same way towards the other parent. In fact, they might experience a lot of love and appreciation for this parent.

It will then seem as though they have a lot of wounds to heal when it comes to one parent and not many, if any, when it comes to the other. Also, if both parents are alive, they may speak to one but be estranged from the other.

A Stage

But, even though this might be the case right now, there could come a point in time when they see that there is far more to it. When this happens, they could see that it is not this black and white.

Before this takes place, though, they might need to work through many, many layers of pain. By doing this, it will give them the strength that they need to face up to the fact that their other parent also played a part in what they experienced and to no longer put them on a pedestal.

A Defence

Once they are strong enough to face up to how they feel and to acknowledge the part that the other parent played, they might realise why it has taken them so long to face the truth. Seeing one parent as good and the other as bad would have made it easier for them to handle what happened.

Said another way, they wouldn’t have been strong enough to come to terms with what happened. What they may see is that while one parent caused them a lot of harm, the other caused just as much harm by not doing anything about it.

A New Outlook

For years, one parent might have appeared to be a perpetrator and the other might have appeared to be a victim. Nonetheless, it will now be clear that this viewpoint was from the eyes and the mind of a child as opposed to an adult.

They will have both been adults and both of them will have had issues, hence why they ended up together. Thus, if one of them really was good and the other was bad, they wouldn’t have even met, let alone had a child or had children.

Awareness

The key here will be for one to work through what comes up, to let it pass through them. This is what will allow them to actually move on from what happened; what won’t allow this to occur is living in denial or staying angry at one or both of their parents.
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To be able to work through their inner wounds, they may need to reach out for external support. The assistance of a therapist or healer will enable them to go where they wouldn’t go by themselves.