I’ve been thinking quite a bit about families and how helpful they can be, especially Spanish speaking families and the strong bonds of love and support they have.

‘Family is everything’ they often say.

The love is very real, and both physical and emotional support of love is very self-evident in these families.

But for me ‘Family is Nothing’. No emotional support. No love. Nothing.

I was born into a family where my father didn’t just ‘not like me’ but had constant seething contempt for me. This was permanent and was there until his death.

My Mother was obsessed with my father, so no support from my mother.

Both my sisters were supporting each other, so once again no support there.

When I turned nine my middle sister suddenly stopped liking me and also started having seething contempt for me (just like me father). This continues to this day.

When I left home my father would write me these letters asking me to come home. My mother wanted me to come home apparently, and my father kept writing letters asking me to come home. I didn’t want to come home because my father hated me.

My parents would visit me when they would come to Adelaide, but these visits were approximately 10 to 20 minutes because my father could not bear to be around me. So it was a cup of coffee and they would get up and leave.

For me family is very unpleasant and unsupportive, so at some point I stopped having contact with them.

What are the results of this experience?

Intimate relationships trigger my family abandonment issues. It usually takes a while for them to kick in but I will start getting very angry when the partner does something I don’t like. I mean really angry. The problem is I can’t control it. And it has a devastating effect on the other person. The anger is my childhood trauma coming up.

The other issue is codependency. I act like the way I think the other person wants me to be. This acting takes a lot of energy, so I cannot maintain the illusion and have to have time out and be totally by myself to recover. This pattern keeps going as long as the other person can put up with me…then they end the relationship or I will.

Even around friends, if I go on holiday with them, I will need to have to have time out so I can just be myself.

All that hatred I experienced as a child has had me feeling very unworthy. I’ve spent most of my like feeling unloved and unworthy. Knowing this stuff is very powerful because awareness is gold.

Just good to get this out there and on paper. Gavin.