🧛 That never happened — you’re making it up!

The phrase in the title is something almost everyone who complains about their parents eventually says. Because beyond the actual trauma parents sometimes cause, there’s another wound — when, as adults, we finally try to talk seriously, they deny it ever happened.

Still, I suggest starting from a simple idea: most of us had good enough parents. They tried to give us as much love as they could but faced natural limits — lack of knowledge, lack of emotional resources, unresolved issues of their own.

If you come to a parent with an accusation, imagine how it sounds to them: “You failed at the most important task in your life. You hurt the person you loved the most — the child who depended on you.” That’s a heavy thing to accept. Especially without acknowledging another simple truth: we all hurt each other. It’s inevitable. Individual actions don’t make us bad people.

Now, let me tell you two stories. Story one. Misha is 9 years old. His mom shares her plan for a birthday gift for grandma and asks him not to tell. At some point, Misha gets upset with his mom and, out of spite, tells grandma about the surprise. Twenty years later, his mom still remembers it — and Misha doesn’t. Was she hurt? Of course. You trust someone with a secret, and they use it against you. Isn’t that a little cruel?

Story two. Misha, again 9 years old. He’s a straight-A student but once gets a C on some subject. His mom says: “My son’s a C student.” Misha is devastated. To him, a “C student” is someone who always gets Cs, and he just made one small mistake. Misha remembers this for 24 years, works through it with a therapist, and, after a huge amount of reflection, tells his mom: “You know, that really hurt me back then.” Misha is 33 now — the same age his mother was when she said it.

And she doesn’t remember. She doesn’t deny it, but of course she never planned to plant a time bomb inside him — one that would make him fear mistakes and overachieve for a quarter of a century. (Sounds scary, doesn’t it?)

What’s common in these two stories?

Misha and his mom love each other — yet they hurt each other. The difference is that a child is soft clay, fully dependent on the parent. That’s why a child’s pain can turn into trauma — but that doesn’t make the parent evil. It’s wonderful when a parent can recognize their mistakes, apologize, and act with emotional maturity. But even the Virgin Mary couldn’t raise a child without ever snapping at him — and hers was literally holy.

There’s something else these stories share: the one who caused the pain often doesn’t remember it. First, because they likely acted on impulse — what Daniel Kahneman calls System 1, the fast, lazy-thinking brain. Second, because we remember emotions, not facts — and neither Misha nor his mom were monsters who enjoyed hurting each other. The subject forgets the harm they caused; the object remembers, because they felt it deeply. The brain’s just trying to protect us — “don’t go there again.”

In my own case, that painful “C-student” moment finally stopped haunting me thanks to three things:

1. I imagined myself as that child. I pictured saying to him: “Oh, come on, you’re no C student. You’re doing great. And even if you were, I’d still love you.” And of course, my mom would have loved me too.

2. I realized my mom was 33. I see my friends in their 30s and 40s now — some still brag about drinking all night without a hangover. These are not sages! At nine, they seemed like gods to us, but really, they were just people doing their best.

3. And once I truly understood that, I knew how to talk to my mom. Not from a place of blame or a demand for apology — but from understanding and forgiveness. Not: “Look what you did to me!” But: “Ha, remember that silly thing? It really hurt me back then. I don’t blame you, but to deal with its echo, I’ll do this and this — just please understand and support me.”

And that made it easier.