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.
