'They Did Their Best' — So Why Am I Still Hurt?

You already understand them. You worked it out years ago. And you are still hurt — and every time somebody says that sentence, the hurt gets a little more illegitimate and considerably heavier.

By Abi Beri | Integrative Therapist & Family Constellation Facilitator · Dublin, Naas, Newbridge, Kildare & Online

TL;DR. THE SENTENCE IS USUALLY TRUE AND IT USUALLY MAKES THINGS WORSE. Not because it is wrong — because you already knew it. You can list their circumstances better than they could. And you are still hurt, so the hurt becomes illegitimate, and hidden, and heavier. THAT BIND IS NOT A BIND. It only looks like one because two different parts of you are being asked to agree, and they were never going to. WHY THE BELIEFS WON’T SHIFT: what forms in a child is not an opinion but an EXPECTATION — if I need something, this is what happens — laid down by repetition, largely BEFORE LANGUAGE. So it is not stored as a belief you could reconsider. It is stored as the way things are. You do not walk around thinking ‘I am not worth much’; you walk around in a world with that built into its architecture, the way a fish has no opinion about water. AND THEY WERE NOT DISTORTIONS. They were accurate readings of real conditions. A child who concludes the fault is theirs has done something sophisticated: of the two available explanations, only that one leaves a way forward. WHY UNDERSTANDING DOESN’T HELP: knowing and feeling run on separate systems, and only one of them has read the material. THE RESOLUTION: the adult understands completely. The younger one is under no obligation to be reasonable. Two truths, held apart, neither asked to apologise to the other.

The two truths — held apart

What the adult can hold	What the younger one holds
The whole generational picture.	One house, one year, one evening.
Their circumstances and history.	What was needed and not there.
That nobody was a villain.	That it was not enough.
Compassion, genuinely arrived at.	Anger, entirely legitimate.
Can understand completely.	Under no obligation to be reasonable.
Does the understanding.	Receives something else entirely.
Both true. Neither cancels the other.	Both true. Neither asked to apologise.

The beliefs you never chose

Quick answer: These are not opinions. They are expectations — predictions about how things go — arrived at by repetition rather than reasoning, in a small person doing what small people do: working out the rules of the place they have landed in. John Bowlby called them INTERNAL WORKING MODELS.

And a great deal of it forms BEFORE LANGUAGE — before you can hold a proposition, before there is any machinery in you capable of considering something and deciding whether it is true.

So it is not stored as a belief. It is stored as a way things are. Which is why you cannot find it by looking: you do not walk around thinking ‘I am not worth much’, you walk around in a world with that fact built into the architecture, THE WAY A FISH DOES NOT HAVE AN OPINION ABOUT WATER.

It shows up not as a thought but as a certainty. That you are about to be found out. That the silence means somebody is annoyed. That the correct move is to make yourself smaller. Nobody taught you those. You worked them out, correctly, at four.

They were right when you made them

Quick answer: These get called distortions, faulty beliefs, negative thinking to be corrected. THEY WERE NOT DISTORTIONS. They were accurate readings of the conditions you were actually in.

A child who learns not to need things, in a house where needing produced irritation or absence, has not made an error. They have made a correct observation and adjusted to it. That is intelligence.

And a child who decides the fault must lie with them has done something more sophisticated still. For a small person entirely dependent on the adults around them, there are only two available explanations when needs are not met: either the adults cannot or will not provide — which is unsurvivable information for somebody who cannot leave — or there is something wrong with the child, in which case there is a solution. Be better. Try harder. Be less trouble.

THE MIND TAKES THE SECOND ONE EVERY TIME. Not because it is stupid, but because it is the only one of the two that leaves a way forward.

The problem is not a defect in you. It is that the conditions changed and the adaptations did not — and they do not update on their own, for a reason that is almost elegant in its cruelty. To find out that people can be needed safely, you would have to need somebody. Which the model prevents. IT HAS NEVER BEEN WRONG BECAUSE IT HAS NEVER BEEN TESTED.

Why knowing better does not feel better

Quick answer: Knowing and feeling run on different systems. One is verbal and states facts. The other holds expectation and bodily state, produces reactions before you have consulted anything, and is older and faster — and it does not take instruction from the first.

You can know, with complete confidence, that your friend is not annoyed with you, and still feel the drop in your stomach when the reply is short. Both are happening. Neither is wrong. TWO SYSTEMS REPORTING SEPARATELY, AND ONLY ONE OF THEM HAS READ THE MATERIAL.

So please stop concluding you have not understood it well enough. You have understood it perfectly. UNDERSTANDING WAS NEVER GOING TO BE THE MECHANISM.

They gave you what they had

Quick answer: You cannot give a child something you did not receive. That is closer to a mechanical claim than a moral one — the capacity to soothe another person is not knowledge, it is a pattern built into you by being soothed, thousands of times, before you can remember any of it.

You can want to give something you do not have. YOU CANNOT ACTUALLY GIVE IT. And looking back a generation from your parents you usually find the same story, and the one before that, and back beyond anything anybody remembers.

But here is where I part company with how this is usually taught. THAT EXPLANATION IS FOR YOU. IT IS NOT A MESSAGE TO BE DELIVERED TO THE HURT PART OF YOU.

Because what happens, over and over, is that somebody does the work, arrives at genuine compassion — and then turns it inward as an instruction. Right. Now that I understand, I should be finished with this. And the part that is still hurt does not accept the memo. It never does. And they conclude they have failed at forgiveness, and add that to the pile.

The understanding is real. It was simply not addressed to the right recipient.

The practice — one rule

The rule is the practice: you are not allowed to explain anything. No context. No ‘but they were doing their best’. All true, and none of it welcome here.

1. Notice where you are speaking from. The you of here and now. Grown, in a room, with decades of life since. This one already understands — that work is done and does not need doing again.
2. Let the other one be present. Whatever age arrives, and one usually does, and it is often younger than expected. Do not go into the story. Just let them be there.
3. Ask one question, and wait. ‘WHAT DID YOU NEED THAT YOU DID NOT GET?’ Do not answer for them. The answers are usually very simple: to be noticed, to be believed, for somebody to be pleased to see me, for it to be quiet in the house.
4. Do not explain it to them. The urge will come and it will feel like kindness — but she was exhausted, but he had his own troubles. ALL TRUE. NOT FOR THEM. Because that sentence does to a child exactly what it did the first time: it takes the complaint and returns it with a reason attached, and the child learns again that their hurt is an inconvenience requiring management.
5. Say the simple thing instead. ‘YOU WERE RIGHT. IT WASN’T ENOUGH.’ Slowly. Then: ‘And you weren’t wrong to want it.’ For many people something gives way at this point, often across the chest or throat, and it can be abrupt — because that sentence may never have been said in that direction before.
6. And then what only the adult can say. Not an explanation. A fact about the present: ‘I know now. I am not going to explain it away, and I am not going anywhere.’ Then stay. Nothing needs to be resolved.

What you owe goes forward, not back

There is an idea in the Indian traditions of a debt to those who came before — taken seriously, as a recognition that you did not make yourself and were carried at real cost. And the striking thing is the DIRECTION OF REPAYMENT.

You do not repay it backwards. There is no arrangement by which you settle the account with your parents. You repay it forwards — to your own children, or whoever comes after, or the people around you now.

Which is clarifying, because a great many people are trying to settle this account with the wrong parties: waiting for an acknowledgement that is not coming, managing an elderly parent’s feelings about a childhood they do not remember the way you do, or waiting to be released from loyalty by somebody who has died and cannot release anybody.

And there is something in nearly every tradition about the difference between HONOURING and OBEYING. You can honour where you came from without agreeing that it was all right. Those were never the same thing, and somewhere along the way we collapsed them, and a great many people have paid for that confusion with their inner lives.

Frequently asked questions

My parents did their best. Why am I still hurt? Because two different parts of you are being asked to agree and they were never going to. The adult can understand them completely. The younger one who was actually there does not have that picture, would not understand it, and is under no obligation to be reasonable about it.

Why doesn’t understanding change anything? Knowing and feeling run on separate systems. One states facts; the other holds expectation and bodily state and produces reactions before you have consulted anything. The second is older, faster, and does not take instruction from the first.

Is it wrong to be angry at parents who were struggling? No. The compassion you have for them is real, and it is addressed to the wrong recipient when you turn it inward as an instruction to be finished. That is not a failure of forgiveness — it is a delivery error.

Were my childhood beliefs distortions? Generally not. They were accurate readings of real conditions. The problem is that the conditions changed and the adaptation did not.

Do I have to forgive my parents? Nothing here requires it, and forcing it tends to drive the hurt underground where it runs the show from. What is available is holding both — that they were people shaped by their own history, and that something was missing and a child noticed.

Should I talk to my parents about this? Usually not as the first move, and the work does not require their participation or even that they are alive. If a conversation becomes right later, it will be a different conversation and you will know.

What if I feel guilty even reading this? Extremely common, and it is the pattern itself — the sense that having a grievance is a betrayal. Notice that nothing here asks you to convict anybody. Both things are being held at once, which is the opposite of a prosecution.

Do you work with this one-to-one? Yes — in person across Dublin, Naas, Newbridge and Kildare, and online globally, including constellation work. Free 20-minute intro at somatictherapyireland.com.

About the author

Abi Beri is an Integrative Therapist, Family Constellation Facilitator and Nervous System Specialist based in Dublin, Ireland. He is trained in somatic methods, family constellations, polyvagal-informed practice and inner child work. He is IPHM-accredited. He sees clients in person from a practice base across Dublin, Naas, Newbridge and the wider Kildare area, and online globally. More at somatictherapyireland.com and blissfulevolution.com.

Irish support

Samaritans Ireland — samaritans.org/ireland · free, 24/7 · call 116 123.
Pieta House (Ireland) — pieta.ie · free crisis support · 1800 247 247 or text HELP to 51444.
Aware Ireland — aware.ie · depression and anxiety support · 1800 80 48 48.
HSE — Find a GP (Ireland) — hse.ie/find-a-gp · the door if you do not know where to begin.
IACP — Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy — iacp.ie · find an accredited therapist in Ireland.

Tagged Ancestral Healing, Family Constellation Therapy, innerchild, Personal Growth

‘They Did Their Best’ — So Why Am I Still Hurt?