A parent who keeps hurting youStep 1 of 8

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 5 of 6

One. Your siblings

Brothers and sisters do not get the same parent. That is not a figure of speech. Birth order, gender, who was easy, who was the favourite, who left, who stayed, who sends money. The house you remember is not the house they remember, and neither of you is lying.

So when you say what happens to you, a sibling can honestly say they have never seen it. And you hear that as being called a liar.

There is a second thing. A sibling who is currently complying has an interest in you complying too, because the moment you stop, the demand moves. Nobody plans this. It happens anyway, and it explains a lot of phone calls.