Trauma Therapist Explains Why Some People Find It So Hard To Show Affection To Their Parents
It's a deceptively simple reason, even if it feels complicated.
fizkes | Shutterstock When you have a difficult relationship or history with your parents, everything can feel fraught. But sometimes, the impacts are more subtle — rather than big, dramatic fights, it's the little things like simple affection that feel like huge, unmanageable lifts. One therapist claimed that the reasons why are simpler than we might assume.
A trauma therapist explained why some people find it so hard to show affection to their parents.
I have a challenging relationship with one of my parents, and while we've been able to mostly bridge that gap in recent years, the one aspect that's still a challenge showing affection. I'm not at all the type to shy away from such things, but it always feels awkward in this case — something that requires effort, like having to take a deep breath before lifting a heavy barbell.
fizkes | Shutterstock
Tricia Schutz, a trauma therapist with a focus on helping clients heal from the impacts of emotionally immature parents, said in a recent TikTok that there's a very simple reason for this, even if it feels really deep and complicated.
The therapist said that showing affection to emotionally immature parents feels 'disingenuous' because of your history with them.
The therapist described demonstrative affection as feeling like "dishonest harmony." It's not about your actual feelings, necessarily — of course you love your mom and dad, It's hard for that to change even in the worst of circumstances.
But SHOWING it is a whole other story. She said it's because of the awakening that often happens to adult children of emotionally immature parents, who she said frequently "grow up to recognize that the things that they experienced in childhood or the experiences that they had in their relationships with their parents were … abusive [or] toxic."
Once your eyes have been opened, the disconnect between affection and how you were treated becomes a bit hard to square, and can even feel to some extent like a betrayal of your own principles.
"Now that they're adults and they have autonomy over their own body and their own choices," she explained, "it really feels disingenuous to engage in physical affection with somebody that you maybe now have come to recognize did not treat you that good." This is ironic in a way because all too often, all we've ever wanted from our emotionally immature parents is affection.
Depending on how you were raised, showing affection to your parents may also feel coercive or manipulative.
As if all that weren't hard enough, the therapist said that how affection was handled in your home when you were a kid often also factors into this. "A lot of times it will give people the ick because … you probably wouldn't have been able to protest affection like that in your house" as a kid.
In other words, if denying affection would have caused a huge controversy or resulted in punishment as a kid, that lack of agency can feel like it's coming back to haunt you when it comes time to greet your mom or dad with a hug now as an adult.
"Especially if compliance was the priority and control was the priority … now that you're having these feelings and able to make different choices for yourself, it genuinely feels weird, it can feel yucky … because your brain is sort of telling you like, 'hey, this person might not be safe.'"
Giving affection is a very vulnerable thing, after all, so it's only natural this all feels a bit off. While it's very easy to feel a sense of guilt, or like there's something wrong with you, know that this is an entirely normal response to the experiences you've had.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.