When Our Parents Are Lost in Their Own Trauma

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What happens when the very people who are meant to protect us, to keep us safe and to wish us no harm, are the ones who cause us the deepest emotional pain?

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Sometimes our parents are so overwhelmed by their own unresolved trauma, so consumed by their own emotional suffering, that they are unable to see the impact of their words and actions on us. There is a profound and tragic lack of self-awareness—not born of cruelty, but of pain so loud it drowns out everything else.

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As children, teenagers, and even as adults, how do we cope when the person we long to turn to for comfort and support is absent—not necessarily in body, but emotionally and psychologically? Not only are they unavailable when we need them most, but they are often the source of our sadness, anger, loneliness and sense of abandonment. We want to shake them and cry out, “Stop. Can’t you see how you’re hurting me? Aren’t you the one who is meant to protect me?”

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Yet it feels futile. Our words fall into silence, like tumbleweed rolling through an empty space. They cannot hear us; they cannot see us. Their own pain occupies every corner of their awareness. And while it may not be their fault, it still wounds us—deeply.

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Unwelcome childhood memories begin to surface: moments when we had to gather up our parent, crumpled and broken, sometimes not just metaphorically but physically. At the time, it felt ordinary. It was simply how things were. Only later, as adults—perhaps with children of our own—do we recognise that it was not normal at all. It was profoundly wrong, and deeply damaging.

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So how do we begin to heal?

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Words like compassion, forgiveness and understanding may arise, but healing also requires something equally important: acknowledging and validating our own feelings, however uncomfortable or “ugly” they may seem. It is okay to feel angry. It is okay to want to shout, to swear, even to feel hatred. All of it is allowed. Perhaps self‑compassion must come first. Only then, in time, might we consider extending compassion outward.

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Let the tears come—whether they are born of rage, grief, or sorrow. Welcome them. Sit with the feelings, gently, for a few minutes. Allow them space. They will rise, reach a peak, and then, slowly, begin to soften. It will not be easy, but eventually there may be relief, a release, and an unfamiliar sense of lightness.

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If you had a time machine and could return to stand beside your younger self, what would you say? What would you do? Would you tell them that everything will be okay? That they are lovable and worthy exactly as they are? Would you hug them, sit beside them as they cry, hold their hand in silence?

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Ask yourself what that moment might feel like—and, most importantly, what it would mean to them.

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Often, when life was hardest, we did not have a compassionate witness: someone warm, steady and gentle who could see us and hear us. That absence is where much of the trauma lives. The beautiful truth is that we can become that person now. Today. No one spoke the words our younger self needed back then—but we can offer them now. We can be the gentle adult they needed, who provides unconditional acceptance, safety and love.