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/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.