The Threads We Carry

(8 minute read) HOME

In my work, I often notice a particular contradiction. A client may say, “I had a good childhood,” and then describe adverse experiences that still affect them. A client might say quite frankly, “I had a shitty childhood,” and almost immediately add, “But my parents did the best they could.” There are many variations: “They loved me.” “They had a difficult childhood themselves.” “Other people had it much worse.” Each of those statements may be completely true, yet sometimes hidden within the word “but” is a conflict that can follow us into adulthood.

It can become an entangled dilemma. Acknowledging our own experience can feel like betraying someone we love, but remaining loyal to them can lead us to downplay or negate parts of our own experience. Maturity eventually asks us to see the people who raised us as human beings rather than simply as caregivers, heroes, or villains. They had strengths and limitations, their own wounds and resources, and choices they got right and choices they didn’t. Some gave everything they knew how to give. Others behaved in ways that were deeply harmful to us.

They were human beings having their experience, and we were children having ours. Because this is not like doing algebra. One does not cancel out the other. Seeing their humanity doesn’t require us to diminish our own experience.

Children are veritable sponges. They become remarkably resourceful and develop ways of coping and adapting to the environment they have. They learn to read the room, becoming attuned to tone of voice, changes in mood, and the emotional atmosphere around them. They learn what brings connection, what threatens it, and how to keep the peace. Some become exceptionally responsible or accomplished. Some make themselves as small as possible. Others become fiercely independent, determined not to need anyone. A reversal of roles isn’t uncommon either, with the child becoming emotional support for the adult in the room. We’ve all known these children. We sat beside them in classrooms, played with them on playgrounds, or maybe you were one of them.

These adaptations aren’t necessarily conscious, and many of them work incredibly well. A child who becomes highly attuned to other people’s moods may become remarkably perceptive. A child who learns to take responsibility may grow into a capable and dependable adult. We don’t need to reject those strengths in order to acknowledge that there may also have been a cost to developing them so early. The child who learned, “I’ll take care of it,” may become the adult who struggles to let anyone care for them.

The circumstances that made those survival skills useful have changed, but sometimes the patterns remain. We discover that we’re still living by rules we learned in rooms we no longer live in.

We may understand that a caregiver had their own painful history or simply lacked the resources to parent differently. That understanding can bring genuine compassion, but sometimes we become so practiced at understanding the people who hurt us that we leave very little room for acknowledging what their behavior did to us. “They did the best they could” may be true, and their best may still have been deeply harmful to us. Intent and impact aren’t the same thing.

For some, “they did the best they could” may not reflect a lived experience at all. Some childhoods included experiences that were genuinely horrific. Someone else having had it worse doesn’t diminish what happened to us. We can only live our own experience. There may also have been wonderful memories and times when a caregiver showed up beautifully. Those matter too. It’s about allowing ourselves to acknowledge what was actually there. Sometimes the harm came from another trusted person and was compounded by how a caregiver responded, or failed to protect us.

One small word can reveal a conflict: “My parents did the best they could, but my childhood was painful.” “They loved me, but they hurt me.” That word “but” can quietly place two truths in opposition, as though one must somehow diminish the other. What happens when we allow “and” instead? “They loved me, and yet some of what happened harmed me deeply.” “I understand what they lived through, and what I lived through matters too.”

Love and anger, compassion and resentment, gratitude and grief, understanding and disappointment can coexist. We don’t need another person to agree that something hurt us before we’re allowed to acknowledge that it did.

Maybe this conflict is difficult precisely because it isn’t just one knot. There are many threads woven through our experience: love and loyalty, hurt and grief, guilt, identity, and our need to understand. Over time, those threads can become so tangled that it’s difficult to distinguish one from another.

As children, we aren’t standing back looking at the individual threads. We’re living inside the fabric while it’s being woven. Only in hindsight do we have the perspective to really look at that fabric and begin recognizing some of what is there. For some of us, the fabric contains both beautiful and painful threads. For others, what happened in childhood may have been profoundly dark. Looking honestly at our own history doesn’t require us to soften what happened or characterize our childhood in any particular way.

Looking honestly at our history doesn’t inherently require us to pathologize it. We can begin with curiosity to recognize the beliefs we absorbed, the ways we learned to cope, and how those experiences may still influence the way we move through everyday life today. Which feelings belong to our own experience? What are we carrying that may not have begun with us? What once helped us but may now be getting in our way? Where has compassion for someone else left too little room for compassion for ourselves?

Maybe beneath those questions is one that matters deeply: Can I finally stand on my own side without feeling that I have crossed over to being against them? Standing on our own side doesn’t require us to stand against someone else. It means allowing our own experience to matter too.

We can spend years in talk therapy and understand our history intellectually or philosophically. If something in the present touches an old wound, we can still fall back into old patterns. Understanding matters. It can help us make sense of what happened and recognize patterns we couldn’t see before, but understanding is not necessarily the same as resolution.

And then another layer can creep in: “I’ve already talked about this.” “Why is this popping up again now?” “So why the hell do I keep doing this?” Along with that frustration, we may carry shame or guilt, or even a sense of disloyalty for harboring negative feelings at all.

Resolution can mean that we recognize an old pattern more easily and respond with the resources we have now in a way that better fits our present circumstances.

What remains emotionally active from our past doesn’t always announce itself as a childhood issue. It may show up as anxiety, habits that are difficult to change, or ways of coping that are now getting in our way. Sometimes we understand perfectly well why a pattern exists and still find ourselves caught in behaviors, feelings, or beliefs that work against us.

Our earlier experiences influence our relationships. We may find ourselves repeatedly tolerating or gravitating toward people who reinforce familiar beliefs about who we are or what we deserve, even when they aren’t a good fit for us. What began as someone else’s message can, over time, begin to sound remarkably like our own voice. Whose echo is that?

Some of us become fiercely independent and find it difficult to trust and depend on others. Without realizing it, we may recreate familiar relationship patterns. Wanting love, support, and security from the people closest to us is part of being human. Healthy relationships give us room to depend on one another. The difficulty comes when we expect another person to fill a void rooted in our formative years.

We deserve someone who is right for us, someone with whom we can feel peaceful and safe. That isn’t the same as expecting them to make us whole. A good relationship gives us the safety to be ourselves. We can be vulnerable, imperfect, or downright silly. We can exhale and simply be.

One of the most satisfying parts of my work is hearing clients say they’ve found hypnotherapy to be a valuable adjunct to talk therapy, helping them address patterns that years of understanding and insight alone haven’t changed. In my work, hypnotherapy isn’t about rehashing childhood or assigning blame. Nor is it about erasing memories or putting on rose-colored glasses. The focus is on what remains active in the present and how it influences the way we experience everyday life: how we feel, how we see ourselves, the choices we make, and our resilience when life inevitably throws us a curveball.

We can think of it as working with the fabric rather than tearing it apart. Some threads may need repair. Others may have served their purpose and can finally be tied off. Clients often describe feeling lighter, not because the past has changed, but because it no longer has the same grip on them.

Maybe the movement isn’t from defending a caregiver to condemning them. Maybe it’s making room for ourselves in the story too. Maybe “they did the best they could” remains completely true. It simply no longer needs a “but” after it.

We didn’t get to choose what was woven into our past, but we do get to choose what we weave from here. We can put down some of the burden we’ve carried with us. Over time, those new choices can begin to feel less like something we’re consciously practicing and more like the way we naturally respond: a new baseline.

There is still life left to live fully.