This section is especially fascinating: http://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-reas...)

> Why Do They Do It? [omit context and details in their accounts of various incidents]

> "So their children's words can't reflect badly on them" is the obvious reason. Members who have aired their children's grievances outside the endlessly enabling warmth of estranged parents' forums have been stung by people who took their children's side, and they've learned not to give their opponents ammunition.

> But it runs deeper than that. Many members truly can't remember what their children said. Anything tinged with negative emotion, anything that makes them feel bad about themselves, shocks them so deeply that they block it out. They really can't remember anything but screaming. This emotional amnesia shapes their entire lives, pushing them to associate only with people who won't criticize them, training their families to shelter them from blows so thoroughly that the softest protest feels like a fist to the face.

> But it runs even deeper than that. Posts in estranged parents' forums are vague. Members recount stories with the fewest possible details, the least possible context. They don't recreate entire scenes, repeat entire conversations, give entire text exchanges; they paraphrase hours of conversation away. The only element they describe in detail is their own grief or rage. Nor do the other members press them for more information.

> Compare this with the forums for adult children of abusers, where the members not only cut-and-paste email exchanges into their posts, they take photos of handwritten letters and screenshot text conversations. They recreate scenes in detail, and if the details don't add up, the other members question them about it. They get annoyed when a member's paraphrase changes the meaning of a sentence, or when omitted details change the meaning of a meeting. They care about precision, context, and history.

> The difference isn't a matter of style, it's a split between two ways of perceiving the world. In one worldview, emotion is king. Details exist to support emotion. If a member gives one set of details to describe how angry she is about a past event, and a few days later gives a contradictory set of details to describe how sad she is about the same event, both versions are legitimate because both emotions are legitimate.

> Context is malleable because the full picture may not support the member's emotion. If a member adds details that undermine her emotion, the other members considerately ignore them. For example, one woman posted that she felt wounded and betrayed because a few days beforehand, her daughter had agreed to let the mother and one of the mother's friends drop by her house to visit. On the day of the visit, the daughter said she wasn't up for a visit. She had gone to the doctor so the doctor could examine her incision for infection. She had gotten the incision two weeks earlier, when she had a C-section while miscarrying a near-term baby the day before Christmas. The mother was broken because her daughter accused her of being selfish. The members all agreed that the daughter was the selfish one, that she had no right to speak to her mother like that, and that she should be more supportive of her mother in her mother's grief for her lost grandchild.

> Emotion creates reality.

> In the second worldview, reality creates emotion. Members want the full picture so they can decide whether the poster's emotions are justified. Small details can change the entire tenor of a forum's response; members see a distinction between "She said I'm worthless" and "She said something that made me feel worthless." Members recognize that unjustified emotions (like supersensitivity due to trauma, or irritation with another person that colors the view of everything the person does) are real and deserve respect, but they also believe that unjustified emotions shouldn't be acted on. They show posters different ways to view the situation and give advice on how to handle the emotions. In short, they believe that external events create emotional responses, that only some responses are justified, that people's initial perceptions of events are often flawed, and that understanding external events can help people understand and manage emotions.

> The first viewpoint, "emotion creates reality," is truth for a great many people. Not a healthy truth, not a truth that promotes good relationships, but a deep, lived truth nonetheless. It's seductive. It means that whatever you're feeling is just and right, that you're never in the wrong unless you feel you're in the wrong. For people whose self-image is so battered and fragile that they can't bear anything but validation, often it feels like the only way they can face the world.