“How do you recover from trauma when family members continue to bully you from childhood to adulthood and all you ever hear is to keep on forgiving and be Christian and its not Christian to stay away from family ie; siblings and parents who are the very people who make you feel scared and under attack all the time.” Obviously, this issue is more common than you might imagine. So thanks for the heads-up on this.
The simple answer for this issue (if you are not still a teenager, or a young adult still living under your parent’s roof) is establishing appropriate boundaries. There are a couple of issue here that have to be faced and unfortunately, you are the only one that can do this as family members are generally oblivious to the hurt they are causing.
The natural order of things is that at some point in time, parents must mature from being the director (controller) of a child’s life to being a peer that simply provides constructive input. If the parent refuses to enter that role, then the child is left with one of three options; a) just suck it up and continue to take what you get from them, b) exercise your personal right to either cut off or minimize contact with them, or c) tell your parents what behavior they can no longer exhibit toward you and what behavior you expect from them. If they refuse to modify their behavior toward you, then your options are either a or b. Take your pick.
With siblings, you really only have one choice and that is ‘c’ from above. Draw a line in the sand so-to-speak. Here is a major truth bomb for you; People can not and will not give you what you want until you tell them what you need. Put the ball in their court. If they choose to continue to berate you, you can choose to no longer have contact with them until they make another choice.
I can hear the responses already, “Easier said than done!” You would be right, although what other choice do you have?
The reason all this is a problem for you is that for some reason you have felt that you had no voice, no right to oppose their treatment of you. People will use all manner of means to manipulate you, including supposed Christian principles to attempt to shame you into getting the response they want. Many species also eat their young. In order to survive, the young have to put some distance between them and extinction until they grow to a size and strength that they can defend themselves. So it’s time to ask the Lord what has not developed properly that has kept you in the place with no voice? Where have you given in to fear?
Let’s address this Christianized baloney that says you have to just keep on being abused and continue to forgive the abuse. First of all, our number one charter for living as Christians is to love God and one another. Relationships always hit the rocks when both parties are in love with the same person. A relationship, even one between parents and children, has to have an element of love from each party in order to work. That means that if one party continues to knowingly hurt another, and after being informed of the hurt it is causing, refuses to change, the one being hurt has a decision to make. Saying you are a Christian and actually acting like one are two separate things.
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