Yesterday I had the intake interview, which is actually a very long and comprehensive session, with the psi-specialist at the “gender affirming clinic” through my medical insurance.
It lasted almost an hour and a half and was, of course, very intense but overall also extremely helpful, supportive, informative, and comforting.
Among other important aspects, I received some fundamental affirmations. One was of my gender dysphoria. But the one that was even more important and enlightening yesterday was about a more general issue: trauma.
Recently, some very deep and old trauma from my childhood and/or youth has been resurfacing and seeping through layers of cobwebs or veils or walls that I don’t feel ready, yet, to wholly dismantle. But enough has made its way through to lead me to renew my request of total silence from my parents. I tried to explain this to my sister, with whom I would, instead, like to keep (and even deepen) an open dialogue. But from my sister I was met with an icy shower: “I’m not here to judge anyone, but you’re selfish, self-centered, and immature”, she replied.
Conflict, lack of understanding, and even hard judgement are not new with my sister. But I was hoping that my opening up with her would help her to soften up towards me — or, at least, stop judging me, start to try and listen, if not talk, to me. This incident on Tuesday upset me, but then I was able to let it go, temporarily.
During the psi-meeting yesterday, the specialist asked me about my PTSD. I had a hard time answering, partly because I didn’t want to start delving into deep/old stuff, and partly because having removed myself geographically from some of the most recents triggers has eliminated most of the symptoms for me, fortunately. So my answer was slow and vague, or uncertain. But the specialist’s reaction was lovely and while maybe being simple and obvious, to me it was relieving, enlightening, and wonderfully affirming. He said: “For all trauma, regardless of the details, the cause and the feelings of it — which on the other hand can also be the tool of healing and overcoming it — have to do with loss/lack of safety and loss/lack of control”.
In a moment, I saw it all. I saw why my old job was giving me PTSD. I saw that yes, I did endure years, decades of trickling trauma with some explosive episodes while growing up in my nuclear family as a child and teenager and young adult — until finally leaving my parents’. That yes, it was exactly a lack of safety and a lack of control that I felt, constantly, pervasively and with frequent but unpredictable explosions, while growing up. And that I then felt something similar in my latest job — that’s why it was giving me PTSD!
To see it all and to feel myself heard, acknowledged, to hear it affirmed: yes, that was trauma — that feels so good. It doesn’t undo the bad but it brings (me) some relief. And also some sense of empowerment.
In past therapies, I’ve been told and taught to see my parents’ hurtful behavior with me as “mistakes”, as in “they didn’t mean it, they were doing their best, and they loved you and love you regardless of their mistakes, which all parents make” blahblahblah. I guess that’s an important step — I think it was an important step or phase in my own therapeutic work. But it’s not sufficient. That doesn’t redeem my parents. That’s not enough. If you do something wrong and/or hurtful even with the best intentions, it’s not enough to say, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, it was a mistake, we all make mistakes, I was doing the best I could, I didn’t know better, and I love you anyway”. That’s a starter, for sure, but it’s not enough. If you’ve done something harmful, after acknowledging it and apologizing, then you have to ask the person who was harmed how you can make it up to them or how they want to move on and relate to you moving forward, especially when there’s a power unbalance like parent-child (or teacher-student/mentor-mentee/employer-employee) dynamics. When my sister writes to me “You’re asking a lot of them” (referring to the silence I’m requesting from my parents), doesn’t she realize how much they asked of me, for year and years, when I was a child, i.e. when I didn’t have the tools to handle what was shoved onto me???
Trauma doesn’t go away with pretty words or by sweeping it under the rug. Trauma gets healed by regaining a sense of safety and control. And if silence with my parents now is the only way I can feel — or regain, at least for now — a sense of safety and control that was taken away from me for so long and in such vulnerable years, then so be it.
The Little Prince and the Fox 