| Adapted from an online discussion. Dear Carolyn: Growing up my brother and I were frequently subjected to corporal punishment, like slapping and spanking. I’ve been resentful and struggled with intrusive violent thoughts from a young age that my therapist says stem from my early childhood exposure to aggression. This came up during a recent conversation with my mom. She shut me down and said she never hit us. She’s downplayed it before but not that explicitly. My dad also denied ever hitting us. I mentioned a time when he slapped me and my brother for denting the car with our baseball. My dad denied it. After my brother confirmed the story, my dad apologized “if that happened” but continued to say he didn’t remember it. I think I can forgive them for hitting us, parents are humans and I know it was common back then (’80s and ’90s). But I’m having a really hard time getting over them not remembering this and other things that reflect poorly on their parenting, like making us skip meals as a punishment, or my dad laughing at our sports failures when we were teenagers. I’m so angry that these incidents where I felt so helpless and miserable were so insignificant to them that they weren’t even worth remembering. I don’t know how to proceed. I’m sick of feeling resentful toward them, and they tell me I need to stop dwelling on the past. I’ve spent years of therapy trying to stop thinking about these things, but it hasn’t worked. My therapist thinks an honest acknowledgment of their failings would help, but they seem incapable of doing that. What should I do now? — So Angry | 
