Dear Liquidsnake:

You answered your own question when you wrote: “so that we feel emotionally safe and comfortable and dont want to lose their presence in our life, thinking about the good times we had with them”-

Safety is the Key Word here: “safe”.

An abused child is a threatened child, the child’s safety is threatened. Like any animal, danger is attended to first, every time, before searching for food, mating and definitely, before relaxing.

So the child attends to the danger, the lack of safety by focusing on the source of danger aka as the abusive parent. The child will do any mental exercise possible to imagine she is safe, and this is where delusion starts.

It is about clearing out delusions, false beliefs and seeing reality for what it is, that will heal us from the dynamic you are referring to. I have much more to say about this- and I am sure you do (as well as others- so hope you post again.

anita