Why Do I Have to Heal What Someone Else Caused?
There can come a point when you start looking more closely at your childhood and think:
Why am I the one who has to do all this work?
Someone else caused the hurt. Yet you are the one trying to understand why certain comments affect you so deeply, why setting boundaries brings up guilt or why you keep reacting in ways you consciously want to change.
Meanwhile, the other person may not acknowledge what happened. They might minimise your experience, become defensive or continue behaving in the same way.
It can feel incredibly unfair.
And honestly, it is.
Sometimes blame is part of the process
I don’t think blame is something we always need to rush past.
Sometimes recognising where responsibility belongs is how we begin validating our experience, particularly if our feelings were dismissed when we were younger.
You may need to acknowledge:
That hurt me
I needed more than I received
I shouldn’t have had to manage that as a child
The way I was treated affected how I learnt to see myself
I deserved to feel heard, protected and emotionally supported
There can be relief in finally admitting these things to yourself. There may also be anger and grief for the childhood, relationship or parent you needed but didn’t have.
Understanding that your parents or caregivers had their own wounds may give you context, but it doesn’t erase how their behaviour affected you.
Both can be true.
What happens when you keep waiting for them?
The difficulty comes when your ability to move forward depends on the other person finally understanding.
You may be waiting for them to acknowledge what happened, apologise, take responsibility or do their own healing.
Of course you want that. There may still be a younger part of you waiting to hear, “You were right. That shouldn’t have happened to you.”
But what if they never say it?
When your healing depends on someone else changing, part of your life remains in their hands.
Taking responsibility for your healing doesn’t mean that what happened was your fault. It means recognising that you are the adult who gets to decide how much influence those experiences continue to have over your life now.
When an adult moment touches an old wound
Childhood trauma and emotional wounds don’t always show up as clear memories. Often, they appear in ordinary moments.
You might notice that:
A parent questions your decision and you spend the rest of the day doubting yourself
A family member calls you “too sensitive” and you immediately feel the need to defend how you feel
Someone seems disappointed when you say no, so you change your answer
A sibling jokes about something from childhood and you laugh along while feeling hurt inside
A comment about your parenting, work or relationship leaves you feeling small, ashamed or desperate to explain yourself
It might be your mum, dad, another caregiver, a sibling, your partner or someone at work. It doesn’t have to involve yelling or an obvious argument.
Sometimes it is a facial expression, a change in tone or the feeling that someone disapproves of you.
You can know in your mind that you are an adult and still feel very young in that moment. Your body may be responding not only to what is happening now, but also to the earlier experiences of criticism, rejection or not feeling heard.
Responsibility is different from fault
Fault asks, “Who caused this?”
Responsibility asks, “What do I need now?”
Taking responsibility doesn’t let the other person off the hook. It doesn’t mean minimising what happened or telling yourself to get over it.
It means recognising that you have choices now that your childhood self didn’t have.
You can end the conversation.
You can say no and allow someone else to feel disappointed.
You can stop trying to explain yourself to someone who isn’t willing to understand.
You can decide what kind of contact feels right for you.
You can believe your own experience, even when someone else refuses to validate it.
This is part of learning to respond from your adult self while offering the younger parts of you the support and protection they may not have received at the time.
Healing also doesn’t require you to forgive, reconcile or remain close to someone. For some people, healing changes the relationship. For others, it brings firmer boundaries or more distance.
There isn’t one right outcome. What matters is that your decisions begin to come from what feels healthy and true for you, rather than from guilt, fear or obligation.
When you understand the pattern but still react
You may already understand why you people-please, over-explain, shut down or feel responsible for everyone else.
But knowing where a pattern came from doesn’t always stop it from happening. Sometimes your body responds before your conscious mind has time to step in.
This is part of why I work with kinesiology and Rebirthing Breathwork Mastery.
In a kinesiology session, we begin with an area of your life where you would like to experience change. Using muscle testing, we gently explore the emotions, beliefs and protective patterns that may still be influencing how you respond today.
In breathwork, we begin with an intention and use the conscious connected breathe to notice what happens within you as you move towards what you want. This can create space for feelings and parts of yourself that haven’t always had somewhere safe to be expressed.
Neither approach is about forcing you to revisit every painful childhood experience. We work with what is present now, what your mind and body are communicating and what is ready to be supported.
You don’t have to wait for them
You may never receive the apology, accountability or understanding you deserved. There can be real grief in accepting that.
But you don’t have to wait for someone else to change before you can begin changing how those experiences affect your life.
You can acknowledge who caused the hurt without leaving what happens next entirely in their hands.
You didn’t create the original wound. You are simply choosing to care for the part of you that is still carrying it.
If childhood experiences are affecting how you feel, communicate or relate to others, kinesiology or breathwork may offer a different way to explore what is sitting underneath those patterns.
I offer kinesiology sessions in Narre Warren, close to Berwick, Endeavour Hills, Hallam and Cranbourne, with online sessions also available. Rebirthing Breathwork Mastery experiences are offered in person and online.
Sarah x