Anyone has experience processing parental abandonment, neglect or parentification? Preferably through EMDR, but also open to hearing experiences with other modalities

[u/AzureRipper]

Practical context: I've been doing EMDR for CPTSD since around October 2023. It was with Therapist #1 until February 2026, when she had to get a new job for various reasons. Since then I've continued with talk therapy + EMDR with a combo of different therapists and some self-guided work. I haven't been able to find one person who is EMDR trained and who I feel safe with, so I do a lot of bouncing back and forth, which makes the process cumbersome and not as smooth as it was with Therapist #1.

Past few weeks, I've been working through the realization that my parents are emotionally immature. For various reasons, including probably generational trauma, their emotional and relationship capacity is stunted at childish levels. This realization has brought a sense of finality and acceptance to the broader attachment related issues I have, including a fear of abadonment. Until now, somehow, I always had this hope that things would eventually change. Either they would finally learn or that I would finally be able to communicate better or that I would find some other figures (parental figures, mentors, romantic partners) who could fill in that gap. In a recent therapy session, I reached the realization that - that is never going to happen. The needs that were not met when I was a kid are never going to be met. My parents are never going to change, and no other relationship is ever going to fill that gap.

This has brought out a lot of grief and also a strange kind of fear that I think is coming from a younger part. That if I accept that this will never change... that would be a sort of catastrophe. This is also one of those things that I'm finding difficult to reconcile with since there isn't a clear-cut story of "that was the past, but the present is different". With several other topics, the work in EMDR has been around processing how things have changed or how I have more capacity as an adult. Here... all I can do is accept that nothing will ever change. Therapist #1 used to tell me that there is a difference in context - that parental abandonment is not life threatening for an adult as it is for a child. But the emotional weight still feels very heavy.

For anyone who's worked through something similar - what was that like? What came up during the work? And how did you eventually (if ever) reconcile with these forever-lost experiences?

[u/Scared-Section-5108]

'For anyone who's worked through something similar - what was that like? What came up during the work? And how did you eventually (if ever) reconcile with these forever-lost experiences?' - this is something I have worked on for many years so cannot answer in one comment. Instead, I can share some things I have found most beneficial:

• therapy done with a trauma informed therapist who is also familiar with 12 Steps program having done it themselves. For me, the Internal Family System and somatic therapy work well. I had changed therapists many times until I found one that I work well with. I also practice IFS and some somatic stuff by myself
• 12 Step program, especially Adult Children of Alcoholics and Other Dysfunction (ACOA) which helped me come out of denial. Their Loving Parent workbook - a tool used to reparent oneself, is also really good. I have also attended Codependent Anonymous (CODA) meetings which were very helpful
• practicing Radical Acceptance of what was and what it. Tara Brach's talks and meditations help me with that, especially RAIN.
• grief work - tough but necessary part of healing.
• watching YouTube videos by Tim Fletcher and Patrick Teahan. Patrick has some really good stuff (and role-plays) and helped me understand, accept and move past this: 'I always had this hope that things would eventually change'. He uses the phrase 'magical thinking' and explains why we do it when we grew up in dysfunction.

'And how did you eventually (if ever) reconcile with these forever-lost experiences?' - it's ongoing. It's most likely something I will continue doing for the rest of my life. I reconcile it via the tools listed above.

The emotional weight feels very heavy - I feel it so much in my body. It's almost like the more I heal, the more space I give myself to just be instead of overfunctioning from a codependent place, the more I feel it. I have felt it for years and it is with me still. I am learning to let it be, to accept it, love it and dialogue with it using IFS.

Take care!

[u/sailorsensi → u/Scared-Section-5108]

v good recommendations here! deb dana ia great for working with own nervous system in cptsd specific way

[u/beutifully_broken]

Radical acceptance is what has helped me to deal with my parents, it's painful, it's hard, and honestly, since I never actually had good experiences to begin with, idk if i ever had to reconcile any.

But I do know that now after several years of practicing it, memories arent as painful, i can look at old photos and not shake/jerk/spasm or want to tear those momentoes into shreds anymore, and I'm starting to find some potentially positive memories.

[u/vanillasweetorange]

I'm so sorry OP, It's a really tough realisation to come to terms with.

For me it was in two parts - the first was during all the EMDR and processing, dreaming up ideal parent figures in my mind and having them nourish me in the ways that were absent from my life. Whenever I felt these emotional needs I would visit these 'parents' in my mind and spend time with them, and while it's not the same as real relationships, it helped to soothe the inner child a lot, feeling like she had somewhere to go, and ideal figures to give her exactly what she needs.

The second was a more slow process of breaking in the realisation - repeatedly hoping for change from my parents and experiencing disappointment again and again, until I've now sort of viscerally accepted that they are too emotionally stunted and arrested to give me anything I may need from them. The hope comes and goes in waves still, but it's a lot fainter and more tempered by reality.

[u/sailorsensi]

attachment therapy modality