“My Parents Did Their Best — and You Were Still Hurt”: A Somatic Therapy Guide to Holding Both

Both can be true. The work is not to make the two voices agree. The work is to let them both speak. A somatic therapist on the dual-voices reframe that finally lets the wound move.

By Abi Beri | Integrative Therapist & Nervous System Specialist · Dublin & Online

TL;DR. There are two voices that live inside most adults: the adult voice that has perspective on their parents — that knows about intergenerational trauma, that holds context, that understands they were doing their best with what they had — and the wounded voice, older and pre-verbal, that lived through the actual events and is still carrying what was not metabolised. Both voices are accurate. The adult is right about context. The wound is right about experience. The mistake most of us make is treating them as if they were in conflict, with the adult voice winning — but the wound does not get any healthier from being talked over by your own internal grown-up. The work is to let both voices be true at the same time. Your parents did their best, and you were hurt. Both. Real. Allowed.

Key facts at a glance

Most adults carry two voices at once — an adult voice with context, and a wounded voice that lived through what happened.
Both voices are accurate. They are not contradicting each other; they are describing different things.
“My parents did their best” is often used as a guard rail rather than a sentence — a way of silencing the wound.
The wound is not made healthier by being overridden, even by your own internal grown-up.
This dual-voices model is the clinical correlate of Richard Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems (IFS), which sees the psyche as composed of multiple parts.
It overlaps with Lindsay Gibson’s work on Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, Donald Winnicott’s “good enough mother,” and broader inner child work.
The wound runs on its own timeline, not chronological time.
Healing comes not from making the voices agree but from letting both speak.
Available in person in Dublin, Naas and Newbridge, and online worldwide.

The sentence I hear almost every week

Quick answer: “My parents did their best” is the most common sentence that brings people into this work, and it is often said not as a statement of generosity but as a guard rail — a way of stopping the wound from being felt before it can be acknowledged. The work begins when both can be true at once.

I want to begin with something I hear in my therapy room, almost every week. A client will be in the middle of describing something that happened to them. A way they were spoken to. A moment they weren’t met. A pattern in the house they grew up in. And right in the middle of saying it, they’ll stop. And they’ll say — but my parents did their best.

And they say it in a particular way. Not as a complete sentence in itself. As a guard rail. As something they are putting up between themselves and the wound they just started to describe. The sentence isn’t a statement of generosity. It’s a way of stopping themselves from feeling something.

What I usually say to them, very gently, is something like this. They probably did. Your parents probably did do their best. And you were also hurt. Both of those can be true. They are not in competition. You don’t have to choose between them.

The two voices that live in you

Quick answer: The adult voice is the one you have built — perspective, context, generosity. The wound is older — it lived through the actual events without context. Both voices are real. They are not in conflict; they are speaking from different vantage points.

Let me describe what I mean by these two voices more precisely. They are not metaphors. They are real layers of how the psyche works, and they show up in the body differently.

The first voice is the one you have spent decades building. The adult voice. The one who has read the books. Who knows about intergenerational trauma. Who can hold context. Who can see that your parents were once children too, that they were carrying their own unhealed material, that they were doing what they could with what they had. The adult voice has perspective. It is generous. It is, in many ways, the result of all the work you have already done on yourself. It deserves credit for being there.

The second voice is older. It was there before the adult voice was. It is the part of you that lived through the actual events. Not the version that has been processed and contextualised — the version that experienced things, in the body, in real time, at the age you were when they happened. This voice does not have perspective. It does not have context. It does not know that anyone was doing their best. It only knows what happened to it. What was said. What wasn’t said. The moments of bracing. The times nobody came.

Both voices are accurate. Both are reporting truthfully from their own vantage point. The adult is right about context. The wound is right about experience. They are not contradicting each other. They are describing different things.

The mistake most of us make

Quick answer: Most of us treat the two voices as if they are in conflict — and use the adult voice to silence the wound. That is not maturity; that is the same dynamic that produced the wound in the first place, repeated internally. The wound is not made healthier by being overridden.

The mistake most of us make, and most of us make it for years, is treating the two voices as if they were in conflict. As if the adult voice has to win. As if maturity means letting the adult speak and quieting the wound.

But that is not maturity. That is just another version of what was happening when you were small — a more articulate voice overriding a less articulate one. The wound does not get any healthier from being talked over by your own internal grown-up. The pattern was set up that way the first time. Repeating it inside yourself, even with very good intentions, simply confirms what the wound has always understood: that the more articulate, more powerful voice in the room will eventually take over.

The work, the actual work, is not to make those two voices agree. The work is to let them both speak. To let them both be true. To stop using the adult voice to silence the wound, and to stop using the wound to indict the adult understanding. To allow yourself, finally, to be both.

The adult voice vs the wound — a comparison

The adult voice	The wound
Runs on chronological time. You’re forty. Your parents are eighty.	Runs on its own clock. The age it was when the wound happened.
Has perspective. Has context. Has read the books.	Has experience. Has the body memory. Has what happened, raw.
Knows your parents were doing their best.	Knows what wasn’t there, what was said, what wasn’t said.
Articulate. Generous. Often the result of years of work.	Pre-verbal. Often present as sensation, image, mood.
Tends to make peace before the feeling is felt.	Wants to be felt before peace is made.
Forgives. Contextualises. Holds in compassion.	Grieves. Names. Has the right to feel exactly what it feels.
When made the only voice, produces premature reconciliation.	When made the only voice, produces stuck grievance.

Where this maps to the clinical literature

The two-voices framing has direct correlates in several well-established therapeutic models, which is part of why it lands so reliably in practice.

Internal Family Systems (IFS).Richard Schwartz’s IFS model sees the psyche as composed of multiple parts — protectors, exiles, and a core Self that can hold them all. The “adult voice” in the script roughly maps to what IFS calls protective parts and Self-energy; the “wound” maps to what IFS calls exiles. The IFS principle that the Self should witness the exiled parts rather than override them is essentially the same move described here.
Inner child work.The broader inner child lineage — from Eric Berne’s Transactional Analysis through John Bradshaw’s work — has long described the persistence of younger self-states inside adult psyches, and the necessity of acknowledging those states for healing to occur.
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents.Psychologist Lindsay Gibson’s widely-read work directly addresses the bind described in this script: how to be in relationship (internally and externally) with parents whose limitations caused real harm without making them villains or sainting them.
Winnicott’s “good enough mother.”Donald Winnicott’s observation that children need a caregiver who is not perfect but adequately present mirrors the both/and here: parents can have been good enough by Winnicott’s standard and still have produced specific wounds in their children.
Family Constellations (Hellinger).The systemic frame of Hellinger’s Family Constellations work emphasises the importance of acknowledging both what came forward through the line and what was specifically inadequate, without collapsing one into the other.

The wound has its own clock

Quick answer: The adult self runs on chronological time. The wound runs on its own clock — frozen at the age it was when the wound happened. That is why a perfectly reasonable adult can be triggered into a five-year-old’s reaction by a comment that, on the surface, is small.

The adult self runs on chronological time. You are forty. Or fifty. Or sixty. Your parents are eighty, or in their grave, or estranged. Time has passed.

The wound does not run on chronological time. It runs on its own clock — frozen, in many cases, at the age it was when the wounding happened. The body holds it as if it were still happening. That is why a perfectly reasonable forty-five-year-old can be triggered into a five-year-old’s reaction by a comment from a parent that, on the surface, is small.

Recognising this is part of the work. It is not that you are immature. It is not that you are failing to grow up. It is that part of you is, accurately, still the age it was. That part has not been wrong. It has been waiting.

Signs you are using one voice to silence the other

If several of these feel familiar, the pattern is probably running:

You finish describing a hurt with “but my parents did their best,” and the sentence feels like a brake.
You feel guilty for being angry at your parents — even when the anger is appropriate.
You feel disloyal when you acknowledge that something was missing.
You move quickly from the wound to the perspective, before the wound has been felt.
You alternate between idealising your parents and feeling exhausted by them, without finding a steady middle.
You suspect that some grief is sitting underneath your adult composure that you have never let yourself feel.
You feel a quiet pressure to forgive that you cannot quite produce.
You can talk about your childhood thoughtfully but feel surprisingly little in the body when you do.

How the work actually moves

The work moves not by making the voices agree, but by letting them both speak in turn. Practically, this can look like:

Naming both stances out loud.“My parents did their best, AND I was hurt by what was missing.” Said as one whole sentence, with both halves carrying weight.
Letting the wound speak first sometimes.Without the adult immediately rushing in to correct it. Just allowing what the wound is reporting, in its own language (sensation, mood, image, child-aged feeling).
Letting the adult speak too.Without using the adult to silence what the wound just said. The adult voice can hold context after the wound has been felt — not as a way of cancelling it.
Working with a witness.A trained therapist, particularly one familiar with inner child work, IFS, somatic methods or Family Constellations, makes this much easier. The presence of a regulated other lets both voices be in the room without one having to dominate.
Trusting the body.The wound tends to move when it is felt in the body, not just discussed. Somatic and polyvagal-informed work supports that.

What changes when you allow both

When the two voices stop fighting, something gradually shifts. The wound, no longer being silenced, stops having to escalate to be heard. The adult voice, no longer being asked to override, stops being a kind of internal project manager and becomes a quiet companion.

Your relationships with the actual people involved — parents who are still alive, parents who have died, parents you are estranged from — also tend to shift. Not because you have reconciled prematurely, but because you have stopped requiring the relationship to do what only the internal work could do. You can love them. You can grieve what was missing. You can be in occasional contact, or in no contact, or in some kind of peace. The internal coherence is the foundation; the external relationship is downstream.

You become, in a strange and quiet way, a more coherent person. Not because the parts of you have merged into one homogeneous self, but because the parts of you have stopped fighting. Because both voices are allowed to be in the room. Because the conversation, internally, has gotten kinder.

Frequently asked questions

Can you love your parents and still be hurt by them? Yes. This is the entire premise of the both/and framing. The two are not in competition. Most adults who do this work end up holding both stances simultaneously, with a kind of internal peace that neither pretending nor resenting could produce.

Is it disloyal to acknowledge that I was hurt? No. The wound is not a betrayal of your parents. It is a reporting of what your nervous system experienced. Acknowledging it does not make your parents villains; refusing to acknowledge it tends to extend the wound, often into your own intimate relationships.

What is Internal Family Systems (IFS)? IFS is a clinical model developed by Richard Schwartz that sees the psyche as composed of multiple parts (protectors, exiles, and a core Self). The dual-voices framing in this article maps directly onto IFS language.

What if my parents are dead? The work proceeds the same way. The internal voices are still real. In fact, the death of a parent often surfaces the wound more clearly because the option of changing the actual relationship is gone — only the internal one remains.

What if I am still in regular contact with my parents? The internal work tends to make the external relationship easier to navigate. Once the wound is allowed to speak inside you, you no longer need the parent to acknowledge it for you. That, paradoxically, often lets the actual relationship soften.

Do I have to forgive my parents? No. Forgiveness is one possible outcome, but it cannot be manufactured and it is not a prerequisite for healing. What matters is the internal honesty — that both voices are allowed to be true.

Is somatic therapy useful for this work? Yes, particularly. The wound lives in the body more than in the story; somatic, polyvagal-informed work reaches it directly. Family Constellations and inner child work are particularly natural companions to this.

Where can I learn more? Richard Schwartz on Internal Family Systems, Lindsay Gibson’s Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, and inner child literature more broadly. The companion somatic talk — You Are Allowed To Be Both — is on Insight Timer and wherever you listen.

Working with a Somatic Therapist for Inner Child Work & the Two-Voices Work in Dublin, Naas, Newbridge & Online

If this article has given you permission to stop forcing your two voices to agree, that is the work landing. The permission itself is the first move. If you would like to do this work alongside a witness, this is one of the central lanes of my practice. As a somatic therapist trained in inner child work, polyvagal-informed nervous system work, somatic methods and Family Constellations, I see clients in person in Dublin, Naas, Newbridge and across Kildare and Ireland, and online globally.

The work is slow, relational and body-based. It does not ask you to manufacture forgiveness. It does not make your parents villains. It does not require you to upgrade your story. It simply lets both voices be in the room — until the conversation, internally, gets kinder.

If you would like to find out whether we would be a good fit, the easiest next step is to book a short, no-pressure intro at somatictherapyireland.com. And if you would like a long audio companion to this article, the somatic talk — You Are Allowed To Be Both — is on Insight Timer and wherever you listen. They loved you. They hurt you. Both. Real. Allowed.

About the author

Abi Beri is an Integrative Therapist, Family Constellation Facilitator and Nervous System Specialist based in Dublin, Ireland. He is trained in somatic methods, family constellations, polyvagal-informed practice and inner child work, He sees clients in person from a practice base across Dublin and Kildare, and online globally. More at somatictherapyireland.com and blissfulevolution.com.