The Cut of Differing Realities

One family, two histories, and the fight over "The Truth"

Dear Kathy,

My daughter and I are at a standoff. She insists on a version of our family history that is simply not correct. She didn’t feel supported by me, and now she is taking space. To me, facts are facts—but she treats reality like it’s something she can bend to fit her feelings. When she speaks her “truth,” I don’t just disagree—I bristle. Inside, I feel frantic, like I am literally coming apart. I know I need to find a better way to handle this, but when I try to accept her version, I feel like I’m falling. I’ve always relied on my perception of reality to feel safe and confident. If I can’t trust my own eyes, who am I? How do I reconnect with her without feeling like I’m falling apart?

— Upset, Confused, and Off-Balance

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Dear Off-Balance,

You are describing a sensation of psychological vertigo. Your daughter’s insistence on having her own reality versus yours deeply troubles you. When you grew up, there wasn’t such a thing as “differing realities.” There has been a generational shift toward allowing for differences in perception—more space to recognize that each person experiences the same event in a different way. You aren’t practiced at this, and trying to do it makes you feel uncomfortable—unstable even.

Something happened between you where your daughter didn’t feel supported, and you hate having to think about her seeing you in that way. You want to argue for your “truth,” but that is getting you nowhere.

Why It “Hurts Your Head”

You mentioned feeling like you are “coming apart.” This isn’t just a metaphor; it is a neurological event. Human beings use certainty as a biological survival mechanism—we need the floor to be solid to walk. When your core perception of the world is challenged, your brain’s anterior cingulate cortex—the part that processes physical pain—actually fires.

When you hear her “truth,” your brain registers it as a physical threat to your safety. You have used your “Correct” memory as a compass to navigate the world. To accept your daughter’s version feels like demagnetizing that compass.

“As the teacher Pema Chödrön suggests, that feeling of ‘falling’ happens when the rigid ground of our certainty begins to crumble.”

Losing your balance is frightening! Furthermore, you likely don’t like how you are depicted in this different version of reality. You might look selfish, thoughtless, or unkind. It isn’t a fair version of you, and your instinct is to fight it. Your daughter’s refusal to accept your version is destabilizing because it threatens your image of yourself as a “good parent.”

The Intergenerational Ghost: Difference Can Feel Dangerous

Why does a difference in memory feel like a life-or-death emergency? For many, “The Truth” is the only thing keeping the world from dissolving into chaos. You may have grown up in a home where “The Truth” was the only safe harbor—where seeing things differently carried a heavy price of exile, shame, or conflict. In that environment, “lying” (which often meant simply seeing things differently) wasn’t just a mistake; it was a moral catastrophe. You could feel condemned or worried you would lose love if you didn’t conform to the one truth in your family system.

Perhaps, beneath a confident exterior, your sense of self is more fragile than at first glance. When you cling to your version of history, you are clinging to the only scaffolding you have to stay “held together.” To accept her differing reality feels like a structural failure that will cause your entire identity to buckle. You aren’t fighting your daughter; you are fighting your own internal collapse.

From “The (Only) One” to “The Two”

As the psychoanalyst Dr. Jessica Benjamin points out, moving from “I am right” (The (Only) One) to “We both exist” (The Two) is inherently unstable. What does Benjamin mean by “We both exist”? It means that although our perceptions are different, we can both be correct, at least to ourselves.

We are both here. We don’t agree, but we can stand next to each other, respecting how we each see things. If you acknowledge and recognize your daughter’s reality, you are acknowledging her view, her value, and her importance in your world. This is not the same as agreeing—it may be agreeing to disagree. But you don’t have to “murder” her reality in order for you to exist. You can both exist, and no murdering is necessary. You can be adjacent, differing, loving, and connected. This transition feels like a loss of power, but it is actually the birth of a real relationship.

Re-finding Your Balance

When that frantic, fragmenting feeling starts to rise, try these four shifts to stay in the room:

• Describe the Fear to Yourself: Say to yourself: “My system is feeling threatened because my ground is moving.” Acknowledging the biological reaction helps move you out of a panicked “survival mode” and back into your thinking brain. Allow yourself to feel both the act of accepting her reality and the fear that comes with it.

• Two Climates, One Horizon: Accepting these different perceptions can feel like you are in separate realities. In the drawing for this column, the realities are adjacent. Notice that both hearts are bandaged; they are both hurting and carrying the weight of this divide. The heart depicting your distress is on crumblier ground, but if you can accept these separate realities, you can look up to see you are looking at the same horizon—you have more in common than you realize.

• Focus on Impact, Not Facts: When your daughter shares her perception, don’t look at your “records” to compare experiences. Look at her face to see that she’s in pain. Listen to her words—that she has been wanting you to take in her reality. If you can focus on her experience rather than YOUR evidence, you will find you don’t fragment as much. You remain the “Good Enough” parent who can witness your child’s life.

• Continue your self-exploration: What makes your daughter’s version of reality so deeply painful? What happens that you need to defend your perception instead of trying to understand hers?

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So, Dear Off-Balance,

If you feel like you are falling apart, it may be because you’ve used your “Correctness” as your gyroscope for a very long time. You’ve used it to protect a part of you that feels surprisingly shaky. But here is the secret: You don’t have to be “Right” to be alive, to thrive, or even to be loved. You can accept your daughter’s reality without losing your own. Accepting and living this will profoundly help you feel more connected with her.

The goal isn’t to find out who is “lying”; it’s to find enough room in your heart for two different versions to live in the same family. When you stop fighting for the monopoly on truth, you might find that the ground isn’t actually crumbling—it’s expanding to hold you both.

Best wishes as you navigate this new, shared ground,

Kathy

Please contact me at Ksinsheimermft@gmail.com or in the Comments section.

This is column # 29