When children grow up in families where pain is left unspoken, they may learn to keep secrets, avoid conflict, and become overly focused on keeping everyone else happy.
After all, family rules teach children to accept the leaders’ (that is, parents’) views of reality without looking at or talking about more truthful views.
So, adult children from hurtful families usually have only a vague idea of what constitutes appropriate relationships.
As we learn more about healthy relationships and personal boundaries, we are better prepared to evaluate people’s atitudes and actions.
Too often, though, wounded followers get re-wounded because the magnitude of deception is often beyond their comprehension.
Sometimes, what we learned to survive as children becomes what we have to unlearn as adults. Yet, we need to remember that healing begins when we learn that keeping the peace should never require losing ourselves.
