Nurse The Soul

Traumatized children originally adapted to familial abuse in order to survive within the abusive family system. They believed that only by adapting to their parents’ expectations of them would they remain protected. Maintaining the status quo, even if it was a sick status quo, was for these children better than being abandoned or losing their identity within the family. They protected themselves from the primal fear of abandonment even as they lost contact with their true selves. The abusive family they worked so painfully to stabilize by fitting in provoked them to abandon their authenticity. From the point of view of the children, these adaptations were a matter of life and death. Their utility was sanctioned by the most powerful animal instinct: survival.