Writing the 'ideal' letter

From those who have harmed you

Morning,

A few years ago I set up a group for therapists who are estranged from their family. It came out of a presentation I did to a therapists group on estrangement and how to help those who are experiencing it.

Several therapists reached out to share that this was their own experience and I decided to set up a peer support group. Enquiries of about 12 dwindled to 6 definites and several years on the group is now a pairing. Myself and a male therapist meet every fortnight to support each other around the issues that family estrangement brings up.

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

People’s judgements and misunderstandings are often top of discussion. The grief is layered and complex. The grief of not having original family members to share in the struggles and triumphs of everyday life is something that doesn’t fit neatly into the pocket of most people’s everyday understandings.

The logical, ‘This is a nurturing choice for myself’ is light years ahead of the emotional, ‘But I long to be nurtured by (insert family member here)’. A good while ago I wrote about writing a no send letter to those who have hurt you. It can be extremely helpful for that part of you that feels a sense of injustice, that needs someone - or something - to witness the harm that you feel.

However, this week I suggested another technique, which is to write an ‘ideal letter’ from the person who has harmed you. In an ideal world where they DO understand the harm they have caused, what is it that you wish they would say to you? This offers up the opportunity to grieve what was absent, what was never experienced.

Writing these kinds of letters, whether it is an imaginary ‘perfect’ letter from someone, or a no send letter to someone, shifts things. You can speak the unspeakable and then let it go.

It helps to change your perspective, own your narrative, without the negative repercussions of it not being heard in the way you needed. And you can keep it, pull it out when you need encouragement; to remember why you are doing what you are doing.

Writing the ‘ideal’ letter

In the ideal type of letter you can give yourself the apology you need to receive, but never have. Write it in your family member’s voice. Not in the critical, misunderstanding voice. The one beneath that, the one that is just a human who is lonely, fearful, confused, hypocritical.

Give yourself the validation that has been withheld your whole life. It might be, ‘You’re not too sensitive, you’re right’. Whatever the words are that were never said, but that you needed to hear.

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Name the harm: ‘I see how you felt… I understand how you endured…’ Write it as if they finally own it.

Allow the letter to be confused, to be honest about how they have let you down, but allow them to be the complex person they are. For we all have our complexities.

In your letter grieve what was never there. Give yourself permission to be witnessed.

If this kind of work interests you, you may be interested to read ‘The Apology’ by V. Doing this kind of work is powerful. It leads to a settling of something in the subconscious.

If writing about it feels too painful, get curious. What metaphor, image or phrase can you use instead? In EFT tapping work, we have a protocol called the ‘Movie technique’ where you label the issue as if it were a movie title. Creating this cognitive distance may be a helpful way to allow yourself to stay with it so that you can transcribe what you need to onto the page.

We all have our actual selves and our ideal selves. Carl Rogers believed that the gap between the our ideal self and our actual self is what can create psychological distress. I believe that it isn’t just the gap we note in ourselves, but the gap we experience of others, of our sense of how others ‘should’ be in an ideal world and who they actually are.

We are all messy humans, rarely attaining or sustaining our ideal selves. Oh what grief that brings! But what a chance to see the common humanity in all of us when we allow ourselves to fully grieve the loss of the ideal.

This week’s episode of Words in the Wilderness really speaks about this gap and the frustration it can create. I share my own story of how my ‘actual’ parent self fell short of my ‘ideal’ parent self… which I, of course, documented in a poem!

Jacky ✨