Building Healthy Relationships After Growing Up in Chaos

Building Healthy Relationships After Growing Up in Chaos
When we apply the strategies we learned in chaotic relationships as children, they can undermine our adult relationships and personal growth. Alejandro J. de Parga/Shutterstock
Nancy Colier
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When we grow up in emotionally chaotic households, we face challenges in establishing healthy adult relationships. We learn to silence our experience because it feels too dangerous to speak up for ourselves or call anyone out on their behavior.

As children, we need to belong; to belong is to survive. To express our experience of the family craziness would be to risk the love of our caretakers, our belonging, and thus our survival. When a home is emotionally chaotic, it’s not generally filled with adults who are open and interested in the child’s experience; there’s often no safe person for a child to talk to and even less chance for there to be someone who will take responsibility for or change what’s happening.

Nancy Colier
Nancy Colier
Nancy Colier is a psychotherapist, interfaith minister, thought leader, public speaker, and the author of "Can't Stop Thinking: How to Let Go of Anxiety and Free Yourself from Obsessive Rumination,” “The Power of Off,” and the recently released “The Emotionally Exhausted Woman: Why You’re Depleted and How to Get What You Need” (November, 2022.)
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