the child’s behaviour can frighten the parent, or make him angry
If the parent’s mentalizing ability is underdeveloped as a consequence of their own traumatic experiences, the child’s behaviour can frighten the parent, or make him angry. If a parent has been physically or sexually abused himself, the inner world of the child may bring up old memories of the parent’s own traumas.
For example, a child who is angry with his parent because he wants candy and the parent said ‘no’ might say: ‘I hate you.’ For the parent, this can bring up memories of being abused and humiliated in childhood, which can be so overwhelming that the parent’s stress level takes him out of his Window of Tolerance.
The child triggers the parent and becomes a source of stress for the parent. The parent is then not able to react to the child adequately. This can result in the parent – outside his Window of Tolerance – saying to the child: ‘You’re trying to boss me around, you’re trying to make me mad, you’re doing it on purpose.’ This, however, reflects the inner world of the parent much more than that of the child. The parent’s mentalizing skills are a protective factor for the child. These skills help the parent to stay within his Window of Tolerance and to realize that it is only logical for the child to be angry because he wants candy and that does not mean he is a terrible parent. […]
The child may start to believe these ideas about himself and his own intentions, such as ‘I am a bad child who torments his parents on purpose’, ‘I am scary, it is my fault, I am worthless’; or about the perpetrator, ‘He is almighty.’ Children often believe that abuse is their own fault, because perpetrators and others have said this to them and because they cannot think of any other reason why the – in their eyes – good parent is hurting them.
Besides, their impaired mentalizing ability makes it hard for them to imagine other’s intentions. So it is not surprising that traumatized children draw the wrong conclusions about themselves, about others and about the world. The child evaluates every new situation with safe adults of children on the basis of the incorrect working model that ‘you can’t trust anyone and I am worthless’.
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It is better for the child to think that it is all his own fault than that his parents are doing something wrong. Guilt and shame can help the child to continue to see his parents are good and idealize the parents. From a survival perspective it is imperative not to risk being rejected by ‘the hand that feeds’, otherwise you die. Children are therefore programmed to see their parents as ‘absolutely good’ and ‘always knowing best’ and idealize them. If their parents hurt them, they will first try to find out what they have done to cause this, which is logical and advantageous from a survival perspective.
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However, when the internal conflict between the needs of the different aspects of the child becomes stronger, the child can resolve this with structural dissociation and amnesia. When the child cannot remember behaving in a certain way, these parts have become separate parts of the personality and structural dissociation has occurred. […] Because a compromise can no longer be found between both systems, the personality is divided up into different parts, which is called structural dissociation of the personality. The fundamental reason to develop structural dissociation is the problem of the attachment to the abuser. In order to survive the child needs to attach to the person who is hurting them. They cannot escape. The only way to keep the attachment system active and stay connected to the parent is to block the traumatic information coming in through the senses. The reality needs to be dissociated.