Time to Heal

"Being triggered by a child's behavior says more about our need to heal than their need to change." (by Parenting Pathways)

I think this quote is especially relevant in estrangement because being triggered can very easily masquerade as certainty about the other person. We feel hurt, rejected, disrespected, dismissed, abandoned, or misunderstood and almost immediately our attention moves outward:

They shouldn’t have said that.
She shouldn’t treat me this way.
He needs to stop doing this.
If she would just change, I wouldn’t feel like this.

But a trigger is information. It tells us that something happening in the present has touched something tender inside of us. And while another person’s behavior may absolutely be hurtful, inappropriate, or something we need to set a boundary around, our emotional reaction still belongs to us. That distinction matters enormously in estrangement. Because when we believe our child needs to behave differently in order for us to feel okay, we can unknowingly make their behavior responsible for regulating our emotional state.

And many of us did some version of this while raising our children without realizing it. Maybe we needed them to answer the phone so we wouldn’t feel rejected, come home for the holiday so we wouldn’t feel abandoned, speak warmly to us so we wouldn’t feel ashamed, reassure us that we were good mothers, explain themselves so we could stop feeling anxious. And now, during estrangement, those same wounds can become even louder.

The work isn't pretending their behavior doesn't hurt. And it certainly isn't deciding that everything our adult children do is healthy or acceptable. The work is learning to separate two questions: What is happening between my child and me? and What is happening inside of me because of it?

The first may eventually require communication, boundaries, accountability, repair, or changed behavior within the relationship.That is where we begin asking:

Why did this particular thing affect me so deeply?
What meaning did I immediately attach to it?
What am I afraid this says about me?
What old wound might this be touching?
What am I wanting my child to do so that I don't have to feel what I'm feeling?
Can I learn to care for that part of myself instead?

This is one of the reasons I talk so much here about doing our own work. Our healing cannot be contingent upon our children changing. And paradoxically, the more capable we become of tending to what is happening inside of us, the less pressure we place on our children to manage it for us.

That doesn't just help us survive estrangement. It changes how we show up in relationship and, if the opportunity for repair comes, it changes what we bring back to the table.