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But when he comes close, the pain of separation is triggered and he moves away again. Thus a circular pattern begins of moving toward a person and then moving away again. When a relationship is established, intimate contact in the relation is often very difficult.
If one parent carried a lot of anger against the other, but never expressed it, then often a child (usually of the same gender) will take over this anger. Feelings that were taken over (fear, anger, guilt, anxiety, etc.) are usually more extreme than one’s own feelings. When anger has been taken over
from a parent, then in a later relation this anger tends to be expressed towards the partner. This is called a double shift: not only has the anger shifted from parent to child, but also the target of the anger has shifted from the other parent to one’s partner.
Often without knowing, part of our attention can be bound in an entanglement. If someone was excluded from the family system, forgotten, and died in painful circumstances, then the family system is out of balance until this excluded person is seen and acknowledged. More ...