“Deal with it” came from the generation of people raised from WW2 veterans, who fought in a war and brought back that war. Raising children under “Shell Shock” (ptsd) and drowning in alcohol and “discipline” which was actually abuse. The common joke of growing up in 80s and 90s was when the toughest bunch arrived that were “resilient” not this “snowflake generation”.

Tough because you have to be, “resilient” because you were forced to be, isn’t exactly ideal. But how many of us grew up with emotionally autistic parents, emotionally unavailable and incredibly annoyed that you had needs as a kid?

The way a drawer was slammed in the kitchen or a deeply weighted sigh of disgust and discontent just because you existed? And what became of that parental failure, that awful environment? This isn’t one more blog blaming parents for what they never had, this is about what happened to the scapegoat. The kid that had to put up with a parent who frankly didn’t know what they were doing and caused lasting damage. This is about acknowledging the battle of the person that had to be the parentified child because their parent forced them into that role instead of taking ownership and getting help. It’s about honesty and awareness that we are in a tumultuous time of being a partner and a parent. Take a lot at the buffet of social media posts and videos about everyone finally feeling like they can confess; “Hey, I never asked for this.”

The way that a parents action communicate the most clearly is not just from what is said but what is shown. And raising yourself either as a latchkey kid or with a parent that just frankly wasn’t around or when they were, you wished they weren’t? Silence works not always in our favor as a young person just trying to make sense of life and understand identity. Unfortunately if the source/parent is unhealthy, we are trying to pull from an empty well. You can’t give what you don’t have.

Generational pain works like an invisible hovering entity that looms over the household. What one grandparent was an abusive violent alcoholic, carried down to the son who was filled with anger and rage, erupting at his children; as he had been the dumping ground for the father, so does he work in the same fashion to deposit then in the son and onward it goes. And desperately trying to make sense of coming home from school to an unprovoked beating, resulted in the birth of the avoidant.

What is the avoidant? Usually in childhood, their needs were greatly ignored, or if the needs were voiced were deliberately mocked and ostracized. Love wasn’t love. It was a lie, a punitive mockery of a bully that called themselves a “parent”.

“They did the best that they could.” Did they really? That would have to be evaluated on a case by case basis. Avoidance is survival for most. Whenever something is a perceived threat or associated with intimacy, it triggers the need to self preserve as if to say; “Oh, no, not this again.”

It’s okay to acknowledge parental failure without neglecting personal responsibility in how we responded to the failing. To say “they did the best they could” for some triggers that inability to forgive as it means “I’m letting them off the hook.” There may come a time and a place for working through that, having compassion for those that betrayed. But it should never be forced upon the person that experienced trauma from an unapologetic, unrepentant, toxic parent. Forgiveness is not reconciliation. To clarify, it’s to release and remove the tie that binds that unforgiveness shackles people to. Just as the middle eastern saying that compares it to drinking poison in expectation of the other persons demise.

Someone with avoidant tendencies developed them unknowingly sometimes automatically, to survive. The responsibility of the parent is to fill a child’s reservoir full with self-esteem so much that the world cannot drain it, or steal it. The child first gains their sense of self from the parent. But where the compound fracture exists is when the parent lacks autonomy, operates out of a place of emotional immaturity and dysregulated nervous system. Parenting is demanding enough as it is, but to be a traumatized “well meaning” parent reproducing children they can’t take care of, it would be a misnomer to justify this as “they did the best they could.” The point is dealing with the aftermath of a generation that needed to know the psychology behind attachment styles. Avoidance at its heart is not trying to deliberately deny themselves happiness and joy, real love. It was made to protect and shield from “love” that is actually a toxic counterfeit.

Generational curses isn’t some kind of voodoo slang without any real truth just lore. It is the sins of the father onto the son, or the mother to the daughter. Toxic begets toxic.

Often this cyclical way of being travels through the genes and hereditary traits; until one day it arrives on the child that honestly senses empathically that something is inherently wrong. It isn’t verbalized to them or obviously taught in school.

They know.

Something’s wrong.

That this was no way to live, that this wasn’t love. They have an undoing. They are the ones that view the family tapestry and pull the string, watching it unravel. At the cost of breaking ties, even severing contact. They chose a life without excuse. They say “no more.” They have an awakening. An awareness that life isn’t meant for abuse, violence, emotional manipulation, hate, malice. They are abolitionists at heart. They are advocates for truth, they are agents of change.

They may have their seasons of unrest, of suffering. Of having to fight their way out of the wreckage, to emerge from the water when they felt that they were being drowned, to gasp for air. They may even have a death of the self. But it was really just the version that they had to fabricate to survive, to live through what they had been put through at the hands of other people.

Children that grow up with toxic parents, either repeat the curse or break it.

The avoidant by definition is: one as an adult that appears to be aloof or distant. Inconsistent and often seemingly emotionally unavailable. They often communicate an unwillingness to be loyal by way of trying to maintain independence without feeling suffocated. They often question whether or not those that profess love, are actually trustworthy or safe. They show a want and desire to be intimate but then a pressure to leave and create distance. Over 15 years ago it was a reactive attachment that was highlighted. It often seemed like a bunch of adults with very childlike underdevelopments and emotional stunting that said they couldn’t give as much as they’d like to, they wanted to be married, they wanted to be parents but they were terrified. Often carrying wounds around from childhood into adulthood, essentially ruining every relationship for the worst. Bottom line it was a not just a fear of intimacy it was saying “I’m already trying to survive this deep fractured wound as it is, I feel like I’m inadequate and that I’m not whole anyway. I don’t feel like I have enough to give and even though I want to, I remember what it was like, all to well, to be in relationship with my parents who were “well meaning” and I wouldn’t want to carry on the family name to do you the disservice. I’m still carrying all of these wounds and I’m doing my best to conceal the version of me that I think is a failure. I’m terrified that you will see me as I really was, the ghost that still haunts me. I’m afraid of being hurt again. I don’t even know what I’m doing now. I’m just trying to get by everyday and even though you say you love me, I really don’t believe you. No matter how good things seem like they are. They could at any moment end. You say that you “love” me now, but that could change tomorrow and I have to go through emotional neglect, abandonment more trauma? I think you’re asking for more than I can give.”

Avoidant, Secure, Anxious, fearful, attachment styles are placed into categories to show that we really are as a whole, a generation that has to wade through the aftermath of all the things they never asked for or wanted.

To break a generational curse is to say “I never wanted to be like them” but then taking that declaration further to actively pursuing how to change the patterns, break the cycles and actively choose a new life, one that isn’t a repeat. It may appear to be like standing at the foot of the mountain and feeling the overwhelm of the height to which they will climb.

But every person has their Everest, but so can they choose to climb it.

If this resonates with you, if you could relate. I want to encourage you to know that no matter what you experienced in the past, your future is yet to be. It’s true, to look behind is to remain in state of depression, regret, fear. To obsess of the future would bring even more anxiety. But in this right and present now. If you were called to be a curse breaker, where the sins of the father/mother are not meant to be passed to the son/daughter; that calling isn’t for no reason. Being called means there is a way out, there is hope, there is truth. There is freedom. A blank canvas. Not those that others painted. But take the brush into the hand and paint a new masterpiece. Not from the influences of old.

“I wish you a kinder sea.” Emily Dickenson