The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting: Summary & Key Insights

Every society, in one way or another, teaches children to silence their pain. We are told that the strict hand of discipline is ‘for our own good,’ that a lack of love is simply something to be endured, that obedience is synonymous with virtue. As children, we absorb these values not because they are true but because our survival depends on accepting them. Imagine the impossible position of a child whose parents are abusive or emotionally absent. That child cannot risk recognizing the cruelty in those he or she depends upon. To acknowledge the truth would be to face unbearable fear and loneliness. And so, the child represses awareness, internalizes guilt, and takes responsibility for the parents’ behavior. ‘It must be my fault,’ the child thinks. This lie becomes the foundation upon which many lives are built.

As adults, we may no longer face the same dangers, yet the denial persists. Many come into therapy, as I have seen through years of practice, convinced that their childhoods were happy, even while their bodies are consumed by unexplained pain or illness. The split between body and consciousness is the tragic legacy of our early defenses. To deny childhood suffering may once have been necessary, but in adulthood, it becomes a source of sickness. The contradiction between what we consciously believe (“I had loving parents”) and what the body remembers (“I was terrified and unloved”) inevitably reveals itself, usually in some form of physical expression.

Few emotional illusions are as tenacious as the idealization of parents. I have found again and again that people would rather suffer physical pain than risk acknowledging that their parents caused them harm. This idealization begins as dependency—without parental care, the infant cannot live—and evolves into a deeply moralized belief that to love one’s parents unconditionally, regardless of their actions, is an ethical duty. Cultural and religious traditions often reinforce this illusion, transforming obedience and forgiveness into sacred virtues.

But the idealization of parents is not love—it is fear disguised as virtue. It demands that the child repress any awareness of being wronged. When we convince ourselves that our parents were always right, that their cruelty was a form of love, we continue, as adults, to betray the truth of our experiences. The body, however, refuses this moral distortion. It remembers each humiliation, each cry that went unanswered. In migraines, in ulcers, in depression, the body speaks when the mind cannot. Healing begins only when we stop defending our parents at the expense of our inner child. To idealize them is to silence ourselves once more. To recognize their faults without hatred, and perhaps without forgiveness, is to reclaim the self that was once denied.