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  "description": "Divorce, rejection, and how therapy sometimes treats the words spoken rather than the reason they were said.",
  "path": "/blog/divorced-rejection/",
  "publishedAt": "2025-09-18T13:21:00.000Z",
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  "tags": [
    "ADHD",
    "AUTISM",
    "CHILDHOOD",
    "NEURODIVERGENCE",
    "PERSONAL",
    "PSYCHOLOGY",
    "INTROSPECTIVE",
    "TRANSITIVE"
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  "textContent": "When I was nine, my parents got divorced, and my grandmother, – on my father’s side, told me it was my fault. Not to my brother, not to my sister, who were both sat next to me at the time, but to me. At nine years old, and already struggling with life for a bucket of reasons, I didn’t take that very well, but I was already seeing child therapists, so that got added to the list of things to deal with. Eventually, I learned that it wasn’t my fault, but that their marriage had problems, none of which involved me, and for years, that was that – old news. However, years later, I’ve realised that, I think I always knew it wasn’t my fault, the problem was never the validity in the accusation, but its origin. But in therapy, only the validity in accusation was ever tackled. I guess, it is the difference between being told something wasn’t your fault, and finally understanding why it felt like it was. My dad is the type to dismiss the existence of autism, but when autism is living in the same house as you, it’s a bit harder to dismiss, so instead, he dismissed me. My brother was the more typical boy, – sports, popularity, confidence, fighting, all that normal boy stuff. My dad spent time with my brother, doing all the normal father stuff. But with me, – my memories of him consist mostly of him sitting there in silence, ignoring me, looking disgusted that I was in the same room, – the useless non-verbal autistic one. I think I always knew my father didn’t like me, or want me, I think I learned that long before I learned the words for it. But, aside from being a bit of a difficult child with apparently “no awareness of my surroundings”. I knew – whilst it was a strange thing for my grandparent to say, the breakdown of the marriage was not my fault. But my recent realisation is that the blame wouldn’t have come from nowhere, all of them years, the therapy, was aimed at the wrong cause, for they focused on the truth in the words, instead the reason behind the words. And that was the problem all along. Being told it wasn’t my fault was like painkillers for an injury, never actually healing the injury. And you can learn to function around that, you can even convince yourself it has healed. And I find it interesting that everyone thought I felt guilt, and I was given therapy to repair that guilt, strut off believing I’m healed, when all along, not understanding why I still felt injured. On a side note, I had a recurring dream as a child (pre-divorce). I was in the car with both my parents and my siblings, and then I was let out while they all remained inside. My mother was crying, my father stared ahead, my brother and sister seemed oblivious, and then they drove away, leaving me behind. Not one of them would look me in the face. I always saw it as a dream about abandonment. But looking back, in particular, my father’s face – annoyed, as though he just wanted it over with. Even back then, the feeling I had was that this was his idea. Maybe that sense of rejection had already been there all along. But anyway, basically, I’ve come to realise that the problem I had with the divorce as a child was never actually about “being my fault”, but about being rejected from my father, and in that brief moment, my grandmother highlighted that rejection I felt, and gave it life, all with just a few words.",
  "title": "DIVORCED REJECTION",
  "updatedAt": "2026-05-11T17:34:00.000Z"
}