The corrosive effects of parental conflict

André Vella (May 14) has pointed out that, where couples are in conflict within marriage, their children suffer psychological harm.

I have to add that the harm inflicted on children by warring parents can last throughout life. As a hypnotherapist I work with many adults of all ages who seek to be free of anxiety and nervousness, and also free of their medications – anti-depressants and a plethora of drugs they may have been taking for years.

These symptoms can be acute. Typical clients have told me, “I feel afraid when I wake up in the morning”, “I become frightened… anxious… nervous…” They live with a constant undercurrent of fear. In deep relaxation these adults can undergo regression to the time when these problems started. Quite often, they discover themselves as children and can hear grown-ups shouting at each other. Their parents are fighting and arguing. During my dialogue with a regressed client, there may be a recollection that the parent told the child that s/he has nothing to do with the situation, but the child is too young to comprehend this. All the child feels is the absence of affection and of love, of the feeling of being wanted and of feeling safe. Often, therefore, the child blames him or herself.

The parents struggle on, battling with each other day in, day out, because they are locked into the marriage.

The child absorbs this strife and takes it to heart. S/he struggles on through adolescence and into adulthood, with low self-esteem and a lack of self-acceptance and affection.

The memories of constant anger and especially the unpredictable emotional responses of angry parents are incorporated into the subconscious mind… a toxic dump of memories menacingly flowing day by day, waiting to erupt when some trigger reactivates those internalised responses.

Parental conflict that is witnessed and heard by children is more than a short-term stressor. It can, and often does, become a ticking emotional time bomb, leading to trauma, depression, nervousness and chronic low self-esteem. There are long-term consequences of forcing innocent children to suffer the corrosive effects of living with parents fighting each other bitterly and continually within marriage.