How Your Family Might Be Making You Sick

It’s the start of a new year and as people head back to work after several weeks off some will still be struggling the effects of a hangover. Not the alcoholic kind the emotional kind. Emotional hangovers happen when we spent too much time with our families who wounded us as children.

Trauma is often the cause of illnesses like IBS, chronic pain, anxiety, autoimmune flair ups, fertility issues and increased inflammation. If the trauma occurred in your childhood, returning to your family home and seeking an apology or validation from your family may lead to further emotional and physical damage for you.

Stepping back into the homes we grew up in as children where neglect and abuse occurred can be emotionally very triggering, especially if YOU have not taken ownership of YOUR own healing. Seeking validation from our parents or siblings who caused emotional trauma will only lead to rage and disempowerment for ourselves if our parents are unable to provide it. It will cause further rage and conflict when we confront our abusers and demand apologies or acknowledgement of their behaviour.

Why?

They might not even remember the incidents. They may have no memory of the events that happened, or they may not be able to take ownership of their behaviour.
Siblings might stick up for your parents validating them saying that never happened because it never happened to them. Children can grow up in the same household and have completely different experiences depending on sex, birth order, timing of childhood and their personality such was the case in my family. My sister was at direct odds with my father. She confronted him on his behavior time and time again starting at a very young age. I witnessed my father’s violence and was careful to do nothing to trigger his rage and subsequent fists. She went into battle and suffered violence. I avoided it. As a result, my sister maintains that I as my father’s favourite. The point is we had completely different experiences growing up. My sister holds onto an anger that I was treated differently. Conversely, I have an estranged relationship with my mother while my sister is very close to her. She was a narcist and emotionally very abusive.

Like my sister, I wanted my mother to acknowledge her behaviour. I believed I needed her to say sorry in order for me to be healed and made whole. What I discovered was this – me telling my mother about all the times her behavior hurt me was like screaming I the wind. There were no empathetic responses from her. There was no apology or acknowledgement of her short comings. All she kept saying over and over was, “I kept you alive.”

It did nothing for me emotionally to tell her what it was like growing up in a war zone with her and my dad. It was as though I was talking to a total stranger. My mother was completely detached from her behaviour and took no responsibility for the impact it had on me or my sister.

The same situation played out for my sister when she wrote a long email to my dad outlining his abuses on her – and trust me, there were many. My dad upon receiving it declared it hurtful and untrue. He had no memory of what she had justifiably written.

Here’s what neither my sister or myself understood at that time:

If our parents had not done their own healing, they would never be able to validate our wounds. They could only meet us where they were at emotionally.
We did not need our parents’ validation or our siblings validation to heal our wound. THAT IS OUR RESPONSIBILITY.

Healing is an internal job. It’s OUR job. Needing others to heal us only creates more wounds. I realized talking to my mother how disempowering it was for me. I felt nothing but rage and powerlessness.

Walking back into our family homes and expecting or needing validation will trigger rage, powerlessness and take us right back to the moment where we were first wounded. It will open up those wounds again and trigger our fight flight response especially if our parent’s behaviour has not changed.

When I am working with trauma patients who are heading home for the holidays I joke “please don’t undo all our good work,” knowing that if they are not aware of the emotional impact their family has on them, they will be blindsided or fall victim to it.

People come to me for health reasons anxiety, depression, gut issues, insomnia, migraines, severe jaw pain and headaches.

Trauma is often at the root of their body’s illnesses

In the fight-or-flight state: