‘Tis the season for emotional flashbacks.

Because the people who gave birth to you or raised you, didn’t seem to want you, does not mean there is something wrong with you. 

Because the people who were “supposed” to love and support you, doesn’t mean you’re not lovable or worthy of support. 

There are thousands of people who have the experience of not feeling wanted, loved, or supported by their family of origin. 

We tend to internalize this experience— to assume that it “must” be something about us that “causes” them to respond to us like that. 

After all, family is “supposed” to “unconditionally” want, love, and support you, right? 

Here’s the thing: it’s not anything about you that “cause” that reaction in them. 

We CAN’T “make” someone love us, or not love us. 

We CAN’T “make’ someone want us, or not want us. 

We CAN’T “make” someone support us, or not support us. 

There are all sorts of reasons why people don’t seem to want, love, or support their family members— but it’s never a reflection on your basic worth. 

Yeah. I said “never.” (Cue someone arguing in the comments that “well, SOMETIMES…”)

It is not on you, as either a child or adult, to “earn” someone’s love. 

At this time of year, so many adults are headed into family situations where relatives will superficially go through the motions of wanting, loving, or supporting them— but they’ll feel like a Martian trying to fit in at those occasions. 

Certain family functions in adulthood seem almost fiendishly designed to induce emotional flashbacks, specially in survivors of abuse or neglect. 

We flash back to feeling unwanted. Unloved. Unsupported. 

And we frequently flash back to our absolute conviction that if we just try hard enough; if we say just the right thing; if we just achieve enough…maybe we’ll be “worthy” of “their” love. 

Maybe if our body is just the right shape or size this year. 

Maybe if we bring along just the right romantic partner. 

Maybe…maybe…maybe.

Emotional flashbacks around the holidays are particularly insidious, because they dredge up feelings that we very often try to bury during the rest of the year. 

This feelings often include the conviction that we’ve disappointed and failed our family of origin— that whatever we’ve done with our lives, hasn’t been enough. 

That we’ve failed to “earn” the “right” to be wanted, loved, and supported. That we’ve somehow forfeited that right. 

You need to know that no matter how strongly you might be feeling that right now, it’s bullsh*t. 

We don’t “earn” or “forfeit” our lovability. 

There will always be part of us that thinks we can “solve for (X)” in the equation of “how can I get my family to want, love and support me?” 

We want to think it’s a solvable equation. 

We want to think we can fawn our way into feeling comfortable and safe within our family. 

But that’s an illusion. There is no solution to that equation, because there can’t be. 

And that is not your fault. 

It’s not about you. 

Maybe you are or aren’t wanted, loved, or supported by your family of origin. You need to know that you’re definitely not alone— and it has ZERO to do with your worth or the value of your life. 

It sucks. But it does not mean what Trauma Brain is trying right now to convince you it means. 

I know. But breathe into the grief. 

Breathe; blink; focus.