If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it—usually to those closest to us: our family, our neighbors, our co-workers, and invariably, the most vulnerable, our children.
Richard Rohr
The greatest transformation in my adult life has not been around my transition, coming out, or shifting from school to ten years into a career. It’s been around my emotional literacy and mental well-being.
It didn’t come easy
This transformation was never assured. There were a few pivot points, all of which occurred in my first intimate relationship in my mid-twenties.
The first pivot point was the night where I had a panic attack and vomited in bed. I had had these every night since I was fifteen, which my boyfriend would help me through. But this night was worse than the others. “This has to stop,” he told me. Those words got me to see my GP. My doctor prescribed me SSRIs and within months the panic attacks ended. It’s been almost ten years since then and they’ve never come back.
The second pivot point was when my boyfriend and I decided to see a relationship counselor. My fights with him were ugly but also all I knew given my upbringing. I would say the most hurtful things. He might pin me to the floor and threaten me. I thought arguments had to have a winner and a loser. The therapist transformed my understanding of conflict from something to fear and avoid into an opportunity to grow closer with my partner. I learned about the toxicity of indirect communication like my passive aggressive comments, got to practice being direct about my needs and desires, learned to listen to the feelings underlying expressions of hurt instead of getting defensive, and came to express my own anger constructively using fill in the blank sentences. The therapist also provided a safe environment to share difficult words. Thanks to her help and hard work from my partner and I, our relationship metamorphosed into a deeply intimate friendship.
The third pivot point was over a longer stretch, but it had to do with my boyfriend affirming his boundaries, and making me aware that I was entitled to my own. In so doing he helped give me words to what bothered me so much about my parents then regularly disregarding my agency. It also later protected me when subsequent partners wanted me to give up my reproductive choices, job, and/or church community to align with their values. It gave me a path forward to make my life a more enjoyable one.
The slow path forward
More than anything, these pivot points distanced me from the values of my parents. Had it not been for the life-changing encounter of my first boyfriend, I think it’s quite possible that I would have hurt a lot more people that I care about. Not out of any desire to harm them – quite the contrary – but out ignorance, entitlement, and insecurity.
As time went on I saw a number of therapists, each of which helped me become more like the person I aspired to be. One of them introduced me to Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) which helped me gain the emotional regulation skills that I had never acquired growing up: mindfulness to notice when my feelings were snowballing, distraction to defuse them in the moment, and time boxed delay strategies to address the underlying conditions at a more propitious time. These tools put an all but end to the self-harm that had initially started in adolescence to avoid getting beaten at home but then became an automatic response to all mental health crises. I found the DBT Skills Workbook tremendously valuable to continue on the work of my therapist.
Beyond the workbook, I also found reading Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, Children of the Self-Absorbed and Toxic Parents to be of great help. Likewise with Taking Charge of Anger, Codependent No More, and Trans Sexual Violence Survivors: A Self-Help Guide to Healing and Understanding. I realised through them that there was a body of knowledge to address the specific maladaptations I had acquired over my youth, adolescence, and young adulthood.
Having friends and family model possibilities was also important. I had felt a lot of shame for taking the actions I needed to do in order to protect my mental health, like not having any contact with my parents for a while. Seeing my friends do this, and later my step-sister and sister, gave me the strength I needed. I also admired my sister when she nonchalantly brushed off the news of my parents considering legal action against her so they could see their grandchildren more often. The ground breaking work of those around me was helpful to establish new norms for my well-being.
Pivot points or not, the path forward would still be bumpy. When two men in their fifties sexually assaulted me on separate occasions in my twenties, I took it, because I felt shame for saying no – the shame my parents have kept trying to instill in me to this day. I’ve also had a number of relationships end due to my own attachment issues. I have much work to do, but I do not lose sight of all the progress I’ve made thus far.
I also let go
For a good while, I was angry at my parents. As I came into my own, my negative experiences growing up and a recognition of how it had shaped me overshadowed more and more of my pleasant memories. This despite my appreciation for their making sure that I was housed, fed, clothed, had plenty of extra-curricular activities and was supported in my creative expression growing up. By the time I approached the age my parents had me at, I lost the excuses I had made for dangling me over a stairwell as a child asking me if I wanted to die, hitting me regularly in frustration, threatening to beat me as a teen, or the numerous heartless comments as an adult and the unwillingness to apologize for any of it to this day.
In the end I let my anger go. Anger is an important emotion that wants things changed. But the past can’t be changed and there gets to be a point where that anger erodes the present. My parents were the product of their own life experiences and they have come out of it with an under-developed capacity for empathy and introspection. They are not going to change and so getting frustrated is without benefit. What I can change is me. I have full agency over my life and can become the person I want to be. The parent I want to be. I don’t need to forget the past to live in the present and let go of that hurt.
Part of that also means letting go of the anger for how they treat me and my siblings in the present. That one was harder but it went away when I realized that all the work I’ve put into myself enabled me to have emotional intimacy with those I love. I was angry because I felt like their actions had been without consequence, that they could say and do hurtful things and dismiss its impacts when brought up. When I realized that they were missing out on emotional intimacy with me, and that there had been consequences all along, those feelings went away.
I still love my parents of course and I spend quality time. They are generous and loving people. But that quality isn’t from our conversations, but about sharing space with some mutual unspoken affection. They’ve established that they aren’t safe to open up to and be vulnerable around. It took many deeply wounding moments to accept this. Instead, we talk about the weather and other pleasantries. I don’t engage when they get to subjects of personal sensitivity. They were my only family not to know about my bottom surgery. They have not met either of the two people I’m currently dating or my ex. I ignore the passive aggressive remarks by realizing that they disregard my feelings to meet their emotional needs. I’ve let go of hoping they could change. It’s not up to me. I accept the reality of this situation.
That might sound sad, and I was for a while. I wanted to have a relationship in adulthood like my friends did. Someone I could turn to for support when I was sad and gush to about my partners. But life moves on; I found a way to be around my parents and I’m content. Like the opening quote says, I have learned to transform my pain. I will break the cycle. I will continue on this messy life, to make mistakes, to listen, and work to become better than I was.
That reflects my values.