Expert: Eugenia Springer, Ph.D. - 3/7/2010

Question
Eugenia,

I've got a question about childhood trauma (a most common thing, I guess). Hope you can advise me in any way.

When I was little, my parents loved me very much and I had many friends everywhere I went. This changed when my father started a company which he ran all by himself and got REALLY stressed out and absent, including most part of the weekends (I was about 5 or 6y.o.). From that sheer stress, he became a physically violent, psychologically abusive authoritarian and chronically depressed person. His company thrived ok, but the family sank. My mother took all the responsibilities at home (me, my older sister and everything else), while still working on two jobs. She had no husband and we didn't have a father anymore - he was only a provider: he always brought all we needed in abundance (food, basic clothing, great schooling, etc), but not a penny in "extras" or anything to do with fun. He never gave us a hug and, for the matter, avoided looking at my face if it wasn't in a very aggressive manner.
Making a long (and not very positive) story short, he used to treat me VERY bad (not my mother, who was a very strong person and kind of 'controlled' him, and not my sister for most of the time because my mother protected her, because "a man can't hit a girl".

Well, the results of that is that I don't have urges or strong desires for women (not for men, also, but I can't say I feel straight). I like them (women), love to cuddle with them (and am highly successful at getting girls, when I feel like), but am not comfortable at all to have sex with any one of them, what really makes my life a not very happy one. I don't get out of hoe for almost anything, and that has been like that for the last 3 or 4 years. It's asy to get out, but I have no reasons to. I also can't keep myself at a job - it's much to painful for me - and I get defensive to the point of being violent if someone tries to boss me around. Also, I can't defend myself if someone picks a fight with me - I get "stuck" or I completely get out of control and "maniac". I had developed Depersonalization (a dissociative disorder), but found a halfway cure out of that all by myself. I was also bipolar to the point of almost "ending it all" a couple of times since I was about 12y.o. until my 20's, but I got over it and quit my medication (some four years ago) even though the doctors thought I should take it for the rest of my life. I have no more depression, thank God. Also, I had a very strong "Anorexia Nervosa" at aboutthe same age, and then bulimia, which I quite got over it also, but I'm still not comfortable with my belly.

So.. as one can see, I have had troubles, but got over almost all of them. The thing is that I know they are all rooted in my relationship with my father. I know, somehow, that it would all vanish away if I could, somehow, forgive him - but it doesn't make sense to forgive him if he doesn't accept what he has done (which he never has done and probably never will - he's completely closed to me) - I kind of feel, inside, that I deserved or that it should be like that. He is completely closed and distorted, as far as open conversation goes (never had a single one with him). And, sincerely, I don't even feel like getting close to him. I don't know what I want from him. "I'm sorry" wouldn't be enough for all those years of pain he caused me, I guess, but maybe acknowledging that he was wrong will make me see what's true and what's not.

No one wants to talk about it, in my family. It took me years of struggle to make my mother open up enough to tell me her view on the matter.

Now I recently read an article about a man who completely changed from inside out (even being homosexual and becoming straight) after a talk with his father:

"After 28 painful years of a damaged relationship with the one man whose love I craved and desired the most, my many years of wandering and numerous homosexual encounters came abruptly to an end.

It happened one morning in my parents' kitchen. My father and I did something we never really did before – we talked. We both dealt with the past, we vented, we questioned, we understood and we healed. And in an emotional embrace I'll never forget, we both did something else: We forgave. I have never been the same man since.

In a single moment of time, the doors to my painful childhood were slammed shut once and for all, never to be opened again. My homosexual needs and desires were gone and I was changed. Completely. (...) And in doing so, I found something I never could have imagined – the cure for homosexuality. Forgiveness."

THAT IS WHAT I WANT. I WANT NOTHING ELSE!

Can you help me do that? What is exactly that which I search? How can I get what I want by myself? My father won't change. He doesn't want to and he doesn't understand the damage he's done.

Sorting this thing out is all I need to be a happy, autonomous person.

Know that any advice you can give I am grateful beyound doubt.

Thank you in advance for any kind of advice.

Answer
Rafael,

I am wondering if any of us ever 'just grow up'.  It seems that 'growing up' is always the outcome of decisions we make about how we would allow various life events to affect us.  And one almost common factor most of us have to address, is how are we going to relate to the faults of our parents.

As you have realized, our perception of our own identity is intermeshed with how we believe our parents perceive us.

Sadly, many parents do not realize that family members, as much as they want to enjoy the material comforts of life, value the warm one on one relationship much more.

We are challenged as we grow up, to assume full responsibility for our own development; to become our own parents.  So if we did not like the values by which our parents ordered their lives, we adopt for our own living, a set of values that would fit more with how we wished our parents had lived.

You have your strength.  Your father has his.  He had his childhood experiences, influenced by his parents, whose outlook was influenced by their parents.

Parents, like you, are just human beings trying to make it.  Sure, you are affected by his neglect as you grew up.  What if now you are a man, you give him some of the kind of attention you wished he had given to you.  Parents are humans too.  They feel unloved; they feel unappreciated; they feel not good enough; and they try to survive, and find some balance in their living despite these self esteem issues.

People can give only what they have.  Your father did not withhold to deprive you; he could not give you a sense of being loved and appreciated, if he himself did not feel loved and appreciated.

Most parents have not done a perfect job at parenting.  They scored in some areas and apparently failed in other areas.  So, because of your dad's past experience, providing materially for his family was high up on his priority list; high on his value system.  He stressed himself out and therefore was unable to be a calm and caring provider.  But he set out to provide, and provide he did.

Now, you, because of the experiences you had, being fathered by a man of such disposition and a woman of another type of disposition, are experiencing your own challenges as you try to be the man who could be comfortable with himself.

What is the way ahead for you?  Is it forgiving your father?

It is difficult to find peace when you are holding on to resentment.  More important than forgiving your father, however, is forgiving yourself.  You are only upset with your father because you are not happy with yourself, and you blame this man who never learned what it is to be perfect, for your apparent inability to be perfectly comfortable and happy with yourself.

Childhood is over.  You are now responsible for the quality of man you are.  Perfect or imperfect, your dad has done his part.  Blaming does not help you to grow up. Examining your core values, and your self talk, and changing them to shape you into the type of man you want to be is what would help you.


I recommend for your reading, Dr. Thomas Harris' book (a classic), I'm Okay; You're Okay.  In this book he addresses the Parent, the Child, and the Adult, in us.  We would have some of the parent in our personality; we would retain some of the child, but in all this we must move ourselves in the direction of becoming adult -- independent thinking, well adjusted, emotionally balanced members of society.

Blessings.
ES