How To Make Peace With Your Parents
- Dec 2, 2024
- 6 min read
Julia Dencker is a multi-passionate entrepreneur and expert in inner peace and peaceful leadership. She founded The Peaceful Path, hosts a German-speaking podcast, and provides recourses, mentorship, workshops, and retreats to promote sustainable conflict resolution for a possible peaceful world.
Making peace with our primal caregivers is one of the most pressing questions in adulthood. Luckily, not everyone grew up in a dysfunctional home. But unfortunately, many of us did. To begin, it’s important to understand that, often, our parents didn’t intend to hurt us. They tried to protect us from life’s challenges, but they did so in a non-adult way. When a hurt child in an adult body tries to protect a child, they react to life from a place of fear. This fear is often rooted in their own childhood struggles to survive.
Hurt people hurt people
When one or both of your parents grew up in a survival state, they likely only grew up physically but did not mature emotionally. In my opinion and based on my own life experiences, this is one of the biggest sources of inequality, injustice, and conflict within the human race.
When we are emotionally immature as adults, we are unable to make wise decisions. We react to life rather than acting from a place of wisdom. As long as we are too afraid to look within and learn to listen to our hurt inner child, we remain immature, no matter how grown-up or old we appear.
That inner child will rebel against an unjust world, trying to protect everything it perceives as its own, not realizing that nothing truly belongs to it except itself.
The dysregulated household
If you grew up in a family where you suffered not just occasionally but over many years, it’s likely you had at least one emotionally immature parent or primary caregiver. Perhaps you were raised by a single parent or in foster care. While these conditions aren’t ideal, not all children who grew up in such situations become immature adults.
Those who do mature often reach a point where they understand that their parents were just hurt children themselves. Everything they did—presumably wrong in our childhood— stemmed from their dysregulated nervous systems crashing under pressure.
I speak from experience. My mother, deeply hurt by her own childhood, was left alone with her alcoholic father at just one year old. She had to grow up instantly and never felt safe. They were poor; she had to clean and take care of her father. She never had the chance to be a child, nor did she have a mother to teach her how to be one.
For both of us, my upbringing was a nightmare: constant fights, control, emotional hot- and-cold behavior, and verbal put-downs, like being told I was incapable and would end up dependent on social services if I didn’t change.
All I longed for was pure motherly love. Everything I did was to be seen by her, to bridge the gaps our behavior had created. But nothing worked. The fights continued, even years after I moved out.
Becoming an immature adult yourself
I was well on my way to becoming an immature adult. The deeply hurt little girl inside me led me to hate people, complain constantly, and live in misery. At one point, I nearly cut ties with my family because I thought I couldn’t handle it anymore. But a persistent question kept surfacing: Is there a way out of this situation?
The answer is yes.
If you want to be the adult in the room, you must do the work—the deep inner work. Unless you can move past a victim mentality—blaming others for your feelings and behavior—you will only grow more immature over time.
Emotional intelligence and maturity
Emotional maturity means seeing the bigger picture beyond our wounds. When we reflect on situations where we play the victim, we realize how much power we give away to others. While this isn’t a conscious act, it’s often rooted in thoughts internalized as children, such as:
I’m not worthy.
I’ll never be good enough.
Something must be wrong with me if I’m being punished like this.
Finding peace within such an internal climate of self-hate inflicted by our caregivers is hard work. It’s not a vacation, a fluffy self-help practice, or spiritual woo-woo. It’s serious, transformative effort.
Growing up is inherently evolutionary work. If you want to make peace with your parents, you have to take the first step. Yes, you. Not them.
Your parents couldn’t mature emotionally, so why wait for them to change? The next life? Better not, because your suffering in this one will continue until you step up.
Grow up now
During my burnout at age 26, my therapist told me in one of our first sessions:
"It’s time to grow up and become an adult, Ms. Dencker."
My dysregulated inner child’s reaction? “What did he just say?”
I was furious and hated him for a while. But sooner rather than later, I understood his point. I was immature. I blamed everyone and everything outside myself for how I felt and experienced life.
I never learned to take responsibility for my life. I was replaying patterns I learned from my parents, conditioned to live in a way that made me sick. My body eventually forced me to stop.
Thanking the crisis
Today, I am grateful for that major life crisis. It was my chance to turn things around and discover who I truly am beneath all the conditioning.
The moment I turned inward was the moment I started holding space for my hurt inner child. By listening, feeling, asking what she needed, and giving it to her, I began to mature. It’s an act of accountability and self-responsibility.
Maturity means knowing that, no matter what happened when you were dependent on others, you are now in control. It’s up to you to leave victimhood behind and take charge of your life.
Taking back your power
Remember, making peace is not about erasing the past or denying the pain you've experienced. It’s about choosing a new way forward—one that aligns with the person you want to be, not the wounds you’ve carried. This process may feel overwhelming, but it’s also deeply liberating.
You don’t have to have all the answers or do it alone. Healing from abuse of any kind is a journey, and every small step you take is a step toward freedom, joy, and connection. No matter where you start, the most important thing is to start.
Making peace
Making peace with yourself and others is a profound act of courage and love, and you don’t have to walk this path alone. If you're ready to dive deeper into your healing journey and create a life of inner peace, I’m here to guide you. Join me in one of my exclusive online Inner Peace Retreats—offered just a few times a year—or explore my groups, resources and tools available to step back into your power.
Whether you’re just beginning to turn inward or you’ve already started the process, there’s a space for you here. Let’s work together to transform pain into peace and step into the life you deserve. Visit my website to learn more, book your spot, or explore how I can support you on this journey.
You are not alone—I see you, and I believe in you. Let's begin.
Read more from Julia Dencker
Julia Dencker, Inner Peace & Conflict Transformation Mentor
Julia Dencker is an expert in peaceful leadership and inner peace, focusing on fostering holistic well-being in personal and professional environments. With a background in leadership from a young age, she combines her experience with her MA in Peace and Conflict Studies to help others find peace holistically. As the founder of The Peaceful Path and host of its German-language podcast, she explores the transformative power of inner peace. Julia is currently writing two books: a memoir on her journey to inner peace and a guide to the '8 Dimensions of Inner Peace,' a model she developed after four years of research. She provides mentorship and conflict-resolution strategies to individuals and organizations worldwide.
