How Children Learn Abuse, and Learn Not to Protect Themselves: An Internal Family Systems (IFS) perspective

When we talk about childhood abuse or neglect, we often focus on what happened to the child.

What’s discussed far less is what the child learns from those experiences, not consciously, but implicitly through their nervous system, and developing “parts.”

From an Internal Family Systems (IFS) perspective, children don’t just endure abuse, they adapt to it. And those adaptations quietly shape how they experience safety, power, and self-protection for decades afterward.

Learning the perpetrator-victim dance at home

In abusive or neglectful homes, children are exposed to unspoken rules about relationships. These rules include: who has power; who must submit; who is allowed needs; and whose needs aren't allowed.

IFS understands the mind as an internal system of parts, each formed to protect the child in the only ways available at the time. When a caregiver is frightening, unpredictable, or emotionally absent, a child’s system reorganises around survival rather than growth.

Some parts learn:

• “I stay safe by complying.”

• “If I don’t upset them, nothing bad will happen.”

• “My needs are dangerous.”

Other parts may internalise the perpetrator’s role, becoming harsh inner critics, controllers, or punishing managers, because predictable self-attack feels safer than unpredictable external attack.

Over time, the child’s internal system mirrors the external system: a victimised part carrying fear or shame, and protector parts that dominate, criticise, submit, freeze, or appease. This isn’t pathology, but a type of brilliance under impossible conditions.

Learning not to protect oneself outside the family

The second, often overlooked consequence is this: children don’t just learn how abuse works , they learn not to stop it. In homes where protection never comes, the nervous system draws a devastating conclusion: “Protection is not available, not from others, and not from myself.”

IFS would say that protector parts become organised around endurance rather than defence. Fight responses may shut down entirely. Freeze, fawn, dissociation, or appeasement become the safest strategies available.

So later, when that child goes out into the world and danger shows up outside the family, in friendships, workplaces, or

intimate relationships, the system doesn’t mobilise boundary-setting or escape. Instead, familiar protector parts step in:

• A fawning part smooths things over.

• A numbing part disconnects.

• A self-blaming part explains why it’s “not that bad.”

• A loyal part stays, because leaving feels more dangerous than staying.

  
  

Importantly, this is not a failure of insight or intelligence as many survivors intellectually know something is wrong. But knowing something intellectually doesn't equal knowing it emotionally or somatically, and this doesn’t naturally equal having easy access to Self-led protection.

Healing through Self-leadership

IFS and experiential therapies doesn’t aim to “teach boundaries” in isolation. It helps clients gently befriend the parts that learned abuse was normal and protection was impossible.

As understanding from Self becomes more available through calm, clarity, confidence, and compassion, protector parts begin to trust that something new is present. Slowly, the system learns:

• I am allowed to protect myself.

• I don’t need to replay old roles to survive.

• Power can exist without harm.

  
  

Healing, in IFS, is not about erasing the past. It’s about updating a system that learned its lessons too early and too well, and finally giving it an experience of safety it never had.

About the Author

Sean Cuthbert is a Clinical Psychologist, Psychology Board of Australia (PBA) Approved Supervisor, Certified IFS Therapist, and IFS-I Approved Clinical Consultant in private practice in Melbourne, online throughout Australia, and internationally. He provides 1:1 therapy for clients, and supports professionals through individual and group supervision/consultation.