Was Your Childhood a Lie? The Myth of a Normal Upbringing
Childhood Illusions
"The truth about our childhood is stored up in our body, and although we can repress it, we can never alter it. Our intellect can be deceived, our feelings manipulated, and conceptions confused, and our body tricked with medication. But someday, the body will present its bill."
— Alice Miller, The Body Never Lies
Is there such a thing as a normal childhood? Or is it only what we survived.
Some were clothed and fed, sent to school, never hit. Their parents smiled in photos and made dinner most nights. To the outside world—and even to themselves—it looked fine. But when the house is quiet, their stomach coils for no reason. They find it hard to breathe. Hard to feel. Hard to stay.
The dragon in their belly sleeps—coiled around forbidden emotions, unspoken grief, and the weight of a story they were never allowed to tell.
Others were brutalized. Yelled at. Manipulated. Used. They have no illusion of normal. But even they might say, “It wasn’t that bad,” because the mind protects what the body remembers. And no one ever told them the truth: childhood is not defined by what happened. It’s defined by what didn’t get to happen. No matter how loving or monstrous the adults were, every child adapts. And that adaptation becomes the wound.
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Defending the Giants
Some of us were trained to defend our parents. Others rebelled. Some still carry the scripts we were handed—they did their best, it wasn’t that bad, everyone has issues. That defense often isn’t loyalty. It’s survival. Because the truth would destabilize everything we built our identity on. Because without that story, we might drift—unmoored, parentless in a sea of memory.
The fear of seeing our childhood clearly can be stronger than the urge for truth. So some of us stayed loyal to the myth. The myth of the normal family. The myth of the good-enough parent. The myth that what we felt was just a phase, or a misunderstanding, or our own fault.
We were taught to rationalize. To minimize. If we weren’t hit or starved, we were told we were lucky. Many of us started to feel guilty for the tension in our own bodies. We stopped trusting the coil in our gut. We questioned the sadness in our chest. We thought we were just being dramatic.
That’s the spell. The one that tells us not to trust our instincts. The one that hands us silence and calls it love. Some of us lived years, even decades, as characters in a story we didn’t write—smiling in photos, performing roles, while a buried scream coiled tighter inside.
The Land of Giants and the Mask We Made
As children, we lived in the Land of Giants. These giants weren’t just tall—they were gods. Their approval meant survival. Their rejection meant annihilation. So we adapted. Maybe your tears annoyed them, so you became quiet. Maybe your curiosity threatened them, so you learned to obey. Maybe your joy made them uncomfortable, so you dulled your shine. And the tragedy is, you called this love.
“Experience has taught us that we have only one enduring weapon in our struggle against mental illness: the emotional discovery of the truth about the unique history of our childhood.”
— Alice Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child
This isn’t “just how life is.” This is the crucible where your false self was forged. Psychologist Alice Miller called it the adapted child—the part of you that amputated emotion, need, and instinct to stay safe. That part didn’t go away. It became your mask. And unless you turn and face it, it will keep living your life for you.
The Wound That Leaves No Mark
The deepest wounds are invisible. Emotional neglect doesn’t leave bruises. It leaves silence. Absence. That sick, unnameable nothingness at the center of your being. Were you ever asked how you felt? Was your sadness received, or pushed aside? Did anyone say, “You don’t have to be strong right now”? If not, you weren’t raised. You were programmed.
Children raised without emotional presence learn to self-abandon. They stop crying, stop asking, stop needing. They become high-functioning adults who feel hollow inside. They chase productivity and call it purpose. They achieve, perform, and please—but the dragon never wakes. And then one day, they find themselves whispering to a therapist or staring into the void and saying, “I don’t know who I am.” That whisper is the child. Still alive. Still waiting.
Why the Truth Matters
You cannot walk the Wizzan Path while your inner child is in chains. You cannot awaken the Dragon Current while defending the very system that buried it. The gate to transformation doesn’t open through spiritual bypass or forgiveness theater. It opens through truth. And the truth is this: your childhood wasn’t normal. It was an initiation into a broken world. What you called love may have been fear. What you called discipline may have been control. What you called safety may have been silence.
That doesn’t mean your parents were evil. It means they were unconscious. Wounded children themselves. But until you stop protecting the illusion and start honoring your experience, you will stay stuck in the spell.
The Real Path Begins at the Root
The way out is not blame. The way out is revelation. To feel what you weren’t allowed to feel. To grieve what you never received. To rage where you once froze. That is not regression—it is reclamation. Real healing doesn’t happen by replacing your parents with a spiritual fantasy. It happens when you become the witness your younger self never had. You name the pain. You break the spell. You walk backward through the fire and find the child still breathing in the ash.
The Wizzan Way: Breaking the Spell
In the Wizzan Temple, we don’t glorify trauma—but we don’t deny it, either. We go to the root. Because it’s in the root that the dragon sleeps. Until that root is touched, nothing else matters. You can chant, visualize, journal, or meditate. But unless the child is seen, the current stays blocked. This path isn’t about transcending the past. It’s about transforming it. This isn’t about being grateful for what hurt you. It’s about naming what happened and owning what it cost.
The myth of a normal childhood is one of the deepest spells cast over the modern soul. Breaking that spell will cost you your illusions. But it will give you back your fire.
—Zzenn
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