Having Empathy For a Parent Who Emotionally Abused You As a Child

How Empathy Can Set You Free

Written by JH Simon

Having Empathy For a Parent Who Emotionally Abused You As a Child

Stockholm Syndrome is a fascinating phenomenon. If your life is in the hands of your violent captor, and you acknowledge their power to inflict unspeakable suffering onto you, then the terror will eat you alive. You will go mental. Luckily, the brain has a cutoff. It floods you with positive emotions, and gets you to attach to your hostage taker, and to use that to persuade them not to hurt you. By morphing yourself into an ally, into the opposite of a threat, you regain a sense of power in a helpless situation.

Precisely the same thing happens to a child with an abusive parent. Even in a loving family, a child understands subliminally that their life is in the parent’s hands. The child’s chances of survival increase if they can be submissive, cooperative and loving. To top it all off, the child idealises the parent and convinces themselves that the parent can do no wrong, and commit no harm....


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If you have just started your narcissistic abuse recovery journey, check out How To Kill A Narcissist. To become bulletproof against narcissists, take a look at How To Bury A Narcissist.


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JH Simon is the top-selling author of 'How To Kill A Narcissist' and 'How To Bury A Narcissist'. His books on narcissism have sold hundreds of thousands of copies and helped countless people navigate their way out of narcissistic abuse and toward freedom.

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