Reparenting Your Inner Child
We can normalise our own childhood trauma by making excuses for the people who created the trauma in our lives. Your adult mind can try to rationalise what happened to you by saying "yes but they did that because they were hurting". But by doing this without reparenting your inner child, you end up normalising your trauma and thereby invalidating your inner child. Blurring the needs of your inner child by trying to understand that person.
This is common in relationships where there is role reversal, a lot of guilt or you didn't feel seen.
Excuses can sound like this:
"But they gave me everything I needed as a kid"
"But he was hurting too"
"All parents do that"
"They were having a bad day"
"They had terrible parenting as well"
"She was going through some stuff"
"I was super privileged though"
"All parents want their kids to achieve"
"They were great the rest of the time"
"They were great when they were sober"
"It was another time, we did things differently then"
If you find yourself making excuses for those that created trauma in your life, take time to hear your inner child and see what her/his needs are under that excuse.