Stages of healing from a difficult relationship with a parent.
When this important relationship isn’t working, the adult child often faces a painful and confusing journey through many stages of healing. Particularly if the parent is not willing to work on themselves as part of caring for the relationship.
This is a guide to illustrate what this journey may look like.
**0. Normalizing / Minimizing**
You feel anxious or unhappy in the relationship, but you push those thoughts and feelings away.
- "It wasn't that bad. Other people had it worse." “That’s just how they are” “They had a bad childhood” “family is everything”. “They’re the only parent you will ever have”.
- You ‘explain away’ their behavior or your own emotions - because particular beliefs/stories have been normalized. You may see their behaviour as ‘normal’, because that’s the way it’s always been. You don’t yet know that healthier relational dynamics exist / are possible.
**0.5 Self-Blame**
- You take responsibility for their emotional state / behaviors instead of them.
- "If I was easier / more successful, grateful / less sensitive, selfish etc…
THEN this relationship would work."
**0.8 Breaking open**
Something happens, big or small, which forces you to acknowledge your own suffering/pain.
This might be a pregnancy, birth of a child, a new relationship, marriage, divorce, a health scare, a job loss, a death.
The parent offers criticism, control, pressure, minimization, absence, adds overwhelm.
The pain isn't new, but your willingness to pretend it isn't painful breaks.
**1.0 You slowly start letting emotions in**
You know things aren’t ok, but you feel untethered. Unsure what to think, how to feel, how to communicate what you need in the relationship. It may feel confusing and lonely.
Your voice, opinions, preferences, your ‘yes’ or your ‘no’ are not strong yet. They haven’t been exercised in the past. You may even believe/feel like you’re ‘not allowed’ to have a say in the way you’re treated.
**1.2 The Sensitive Conversation Stage**
- You may try to take to your parent about the problem. You name your feelings and needs: "When X happens, I feel Y, I need Z."
- You hope if you say it ‘just right’, they will finally understand and change or show they care about how you feel. Even when previous attempts to converse haven’t gone well.
- At this stage you’re likely still listening to advice from other people: "Just forgive, they did their best, don't be so sensitive, respect your parent."
**1.5 The Self-Doubt Loop**
- After you speak up they:
Deny - ‘It didn’t happen that way’
Deflect - ‘You/someone else is to blame/the problem, not me’
They may cry, rage, or go silent.
- You question your memory and perception: "Did I make it up? Am I too much? Am I wrong? stupid? selfish, ungrateful?”
**1.8 The Research / Hypervigilance Phase/‘Problem-solving’**
- You start reading everything, learning attachment language, trying to diagnose: “narc” “emotionally immature”, “bpd”, attempting to understand them perfectly so you can fix the situation = fix your heartbreak.
“How could this happen? why? what? who?” Lots of questions, lots of ‘trying to solve the problems’.
You think if they understood themselves better, if they understood the pain they cause - they could/would change.
**1.9 Self awareness**
You start to look inward. You notice your own body sensations, emotions and thoughts. You get curious about them and why they might be there. You develop the ability to make choices about your behaviour that are dictated by your values (what’s important to you), rather than by your automatic thoughts and emotions.
**2. Changing Our Expectations**
- You start seeing who your parent actually is, with their limitations and history. We see less fantasy/filter/illusions & more reality. ‘They can’t meet my needs’ ’This is how they show love/care’. ‘They are limited in their ability to show empathy, care, attention, support’. You are willing to ‘feel’ the emotions that come with these realisations.
- You stop expecting them to be a different kind of parent/person.
**2.5 Anger**
- Legitimate internal protest, not external disrespect. "That was not okay to do to a child." “This is not ok for me to endure anymore”. “I deserved better”.
- The anger that was previously hidden/pushed down by trying to be ‘understanding’. Trying to be the ‘good’ child.
**2.8 Bargaining**
- Testing smaller, diluted versions of the relationship.
- "Maybe if I:
only see them on holidays / only talk about surface/shallow things,
choose to view their behaviour/words as ‘underdeveloped’, an ‘inability’, ‘childlike’,
bring someone with me to the interactions, debrief after the interactions,
…then it might be ‘okay’.”
**3. Setting Ourselves Some Boundaries. This is also self care**
- Rules/care for yourself, not punishments for them:
what topics you won't discuss,
how long visits lasts,
what will make you leave or end a call,
what you will/won't share.
**3.5 The Backlash / Guilt Spike**
- When you hold the boundary (ie. You make some changes to what ‘you’ will do), the system does not like this & it pushes back: guilt trips, other family members sent to talk to you, love bombing, or punishment.
- The work here is tolerating your own feeling of guilt and allowing other people to feel uncomfortable - without abandoning your boundary.
**4. Starts To Distance**
- Creating emotional and/or physical space for regulation and rest, not revenge.
- Less frequent contact, more time to hear your own thoughts and focus on other important aspects of your life. Relief and guilt can coexist.
**4.5 Identity Confusion**
- "If I'm not the good daughter / the peacekeeper / the responsible one, who am I?"
- Untangling the role you were assigned in the family. “I can be the caring daughter/son, and also care for my own needs at the same time”. “I don’t have to fix or save everyone from their own choices”.
**5. Grieve / Sadness**
- Grieving what happened, what didn't happen and should have, and the parent/relationship you wished you had. “I needed support, to be seen, adored, known by my parent. That did happen and likely never will”.
**5.5 Shame**
- Different from guilt. Guilt says "I did something bad." Shame says "There must be something wrong with me that my own parent couldn't love me properly."
**5.8 Re-Parenting / Self-Parenting**
- Learning to give yourself what you kept trying to extract from them: validation, soothing, protection, celebration, support, encouragement, care.
**6. Accept**
- Acceptance does not mean approval. It does not mean things are ‘ok’. It means: "This is what it is”. “This is what it was." You see reality.
- You stop debating whether their behaviour was ‘bad enough’ to count. Or whether your feelings are wrong/right.
**7. Less Interest**
- The relationship stops taking up so much mental real estate.
- You stop monitoring their mood, rehearsing conversations, waiting for an apology.
-Indifference replaces intensity/triggers.
**7.5 The Forgiveness Pressure Stage**
- Other people and your inner critic push for premature forgiveness as ‘closure’.
- Real forgiveness, if it comes at all, is last and optional. It does not require reconciliation/repair or ‘forgetting’ what happened.
**7.8 Testing Re-Engagement (or Not)**
- From a calmer place, you may test limited, conscious contact — or decide to continue distance.
- Both can be healthy. It's a choice point.
**8. Move Forward With Our Life Based On Our Values**
- Turning energy back to your own life: what kind of person, partner, parent, friend do you want to be based on what’s important to you (your values).
**8.5 Integration**
- The story stops being the central wound and becomes one chapter.
- You can hold two truths: "They hurt me and shaped me" AND "I am building my own life now."