A parent who keeps hurting youStep 1 of 9

Before you read on

Read this first. Some of what gets called a difficult parent is not difficult, it is dangerous, and this course is the wrong one for it. If you are frightened of a parent or a relative, if you have been threatened, if someone is holding your passport or your documents, if you are being pressured into a marriage or threatened over travel or marriage, if someone controls your money so that you cannot leave, if a child in the family is being harmed, or if you are having thoughts of not wanting to be alive, then stop here. Go to the course called When home is not safe, and reach a service today. Forced marriage and honour based harm need a service that handles exactly that, not a general counselling line. Nothing here is scored, and nobody is being told what is happening to them.

Lesson 4 of 6

Two things that are not the same thing

People hear the word boundary and think of an ending. A door closed, a phone number deleted, a family split into camps.

That is not what is meant here, and it is not what this course is pointing at. There are two separate things that get treated as one.

The tie. Kinship, greeting, presence when it matters, help when help is needed, supplication, and speech that does not humiliate anybody.

The access. How often, how long, in whose house, about which subjects, with whom else in the room, and how much of your life is available as material.

The tie is not what is being reduced. The access is.