Working things through with our parents therefore has the potential to affect all our relationships profoundly, even our relationship with ourselves. Because the internalized image of our parents is so formative of our own sense of self, we are mistaken if we think we can rid ourselves of our parents simply by putting the distance of time or space between them and us. Decades, indeed a whole lifetime, can go by without seeing them, but our relationship with them will not cease to live on inside our own minds. Even if we have consciously “forgotten” them, they are nevertheless operative and present to us unconsciously, that is, outside of our awareness. Insofar as we successfully dissociate ourselves from them inwardly, all that we actually accomplish is to split them off from our ego awareness; unfortunately, in doing so we also cut off any possibility for growth, change, or healing to take place in relation to them.

Bearing the Unbearable: Trauma, Gospel, and Pastoral Care
Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger