Oliver’s mum was a narcissist and his dad avoidant. His own breakup forced him to address his dysfunctional childhood | Nicholas Purcell

Not every adult escapes their difficult childhood. And learning what a healthy relationship feels like takes time The modern mind is a column where experts discuss mental health issues they are seeing in their work We inherit more than eye colour and bone structure from our parents. We inherit rules, silences, habits, beliefs. We inherit the shape of our parents’ presence or absence, the flavour of their neglect and the confusion of thinking this is love. Every week in my therapy practice I meet people living out their inheritance, their family dysfunction: re-enacting childhoods, becoming the parents they despised, clinging to survival strategies that are slowly killing them. “I think I have a problem,” they tell me, “but I can’t see it.” American writer David Foster Wallace summarised the problem well: There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?” A fish doesn’t know it’s wet. A child doesn’t know her