Those times in life when you feel let down, unheard, ignored, left….. the sadness of broken promises…
When expectations are not upheld, and you look about in wonder or confusion.
Those times.
When a government sets aside the inherent promises of work hard in your life, pay your dues, and in return on attaining a certain agreed age you will be supported in part by the state in the form of state pension. Those promises broken.
When a partner spends emotional and sexual time with another person. That promise broken.
When an employer makes it impossible for you to do your job and you are forced to leave. That promise broken.
When overpromises are made and are not achieved.
When an item is bought online and doesn’t arrive and the seller doesn’t address the matter. That promise broken.
When parents who are supposed to love, respect and nurture you for who you are, do the opposite and demean all your efforts, fill your ears with spiteful words of hatred, or who are absent through being drunk most of the time. Those promises broken.
All those promises made, known, unspoken or clearly agreed upon – if the other person or people involved in those mental and emotional meeting spaces fail to work towards fulfilling those promises, we can be left wondering.
Hurt. Confused. Angry.
But mostly hurt.
Especially if there was an inherent need to trust those promises, and that trust is broken, repeatedly, then it can be very difficult to trust again.
A young child needs to rely on parents to keep them safe, feed them, supply the things needed to grow and survive – it therefore follows that for a child to disagree strongly with parents doesn’t follow as a logical or safe thing for that child to do. And if the situation already involves abusive and emotionally unstable parents, then disagreeing or telling them to stop the abuse might further endanger the child.
Sometimes, afterwards, in adult life, we can find ourselves relying on the stored energy of anger to fuel our living efforts, as we maybe make ourselves sharp so people don’t get close enough to risk hurting us again, or maybe we find ourselves agreeing to everything, even things against our very moral compass, just to avoid discussion where possible differences of view could lead to further rejection.
If promises are broken often, and from a young age, then just talking about it as if it were a narrative story might not cut it. We already know the details of those broken promises, and repeating them may just be that – repeating them.
Sometimes it could be more useful to review those broken promises in terms of how we can rejoin the effort of communication, to clarify our wishes and needs, so the others around us know that these are Important Promises.
And sometimes before rejoining that effort, we might need to work on our own inner child selves, to help and support and love them, the way they needed to be helped, supported and loved back then.
So we can feel strong, steady, and worthy of asking and requiring to be heard.
We can do this reparative healing work in the here and now.
And in this healing work we can Recover.
Rosalyn Young is a qualified mental health nurse with 30 years
Experience in govt and private agencies helping those in crisis
and in recovery. She has studied counselling to degree level,
and specialises in working with survivors of childhood abuse
and neglect, PTSD, DID, and emotional regulation problems.
She lives in Lincolnshire with her husband and a variety of
companion animals, is a brewer of mead, and student of
growing things in the garden.
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