When Families Become Estranged.
How to survive when love cannot heal
Families are designed for species survival, biologically evolved to be a self-supporting unit. This is true in much of the animal kingdom, and we are part of that.
A definition of family could be ‘a group of biologically related people who will somehow be there for each other and make sure each is ok, through thick and thin’. To love in-spite of foibles and idiosyncrasies, to be able to absorb the whole load of human variations in an acceptance of difference and a collective of blood and history with personal stories that chime with those of the other family members.
That is the ideal. A picture postcard image of family which we would all like to be true.
When it genuinely works it is great but often it is just not like that at all. Failure to meet this ideal does as much damage as anything and we need to explore that in more detail.
There is a dark side to family still not discussed often enough. Family abuse and breakdown.
Emotional abuse is now recognised as being the worst kind of abuse and it is the emotional abuse behind other forms like physical violence and sexual abuse which also underpins the longer term damage done and how hard it…
