Nope: it wasn’t about you.

When I say “it’s not about you,” I’m not asking you to make an “excuse.” 

I’m not asking anyone to deny or disown their role in anything they genuinely had a role in. 

I’m not saying we’re powerless over every situation we find ourselves in. 

But when I say “it wasn’t about you” in reference to how you were treated by your parents or caretakers growing up, that’s literally what I mean: that wasn’t about you. 

We cannot “make” our parents or caretakers do their jobs. 

We cannot “make” someone abuse us. 

We cannot “make” someone neglect us. 

I don’t care if you were the most difficult kid in the world to parent: it was your parents’ responsibility to figure that sh*t out. 

It was emphatically NOT your responsibility to be an “easy” kid for them to raise. 

It was NOT your responsibility to be THEIR parent or caretaker. 

It was NOT your responsibility to figure out how to “make” them love or care or you. 

Some people read stuff like this and say, “Well, that’s OBVIOUS. Why are you saying OBVIOUS things that EVERYBODY knows?” 

Because, believe it or not, there are complex trauma survivors out there who really haven’t internalized this. 

They truly think it was their fault that they weren’t cared for. 

They truly think they were unloved because they were, or are, essentially “unlovable.” 

They truly think the problem was that they were a “difficult” kid to raise, and their parents, who were “just doing their best,” shouldn’t have to bear the blame for the sh*t show that was their childhood. 

If you follow my work, you know I’m not big on “blame.” 

I feel “blame” paradigms unduly center abusers and bullies, instead of the recovery work of survivors. 

But over and over again I encounter survivors blaming themselves, often harshly, for how they were treated growing up. 

I’m not saying kids need “perfect” childhoods. 

I’m not saying parents need to be “perfect.” 

I’m not saying that poor parenting is the only cause of CPTSD. (In fact, I think childhood bullying gets vastly UNDER-discussed in CPTSD spaces in contrast to bad parenting.) 

What I want everyone to understand, though, is that, no matter how you feel about your parents or caretakers, no matter what their situation or challenges were, no matter what they have or haven’t taken responsibility for or apologized for since, it was not on you to accommodate them growing up. 

It was not on you to be their therapist. 

It was certainly not on you to be any kind of “partner” to your parents in any kind of adult sense. 

I don’t care how smart you were. 

I don’t care if you were an “old soul.” 

That sh*t was not on you. Shouldn’t have been on you. 

Adults who turn to children to get needs met that should be meet by other adults, harm children. 

You are not the exception. 

And it wasn’t about you. 

But— letting that go can be a b*tch. 

Give it the time it needs.