Whenever I imagine childhood trauma my mind suggests that it should be one or two huge events that permanently damage the brain. It isn’t always like that. As a depressive, constantly suffering from suicidal thoughts, I’ve seen my fair share of therapists. The consensus, if two out of five can be called a consensus, is that I have daddy issues stemming from childhood trauma. My father didn’t beat me. I remember him slapping my face once and it was an event that is impossible to forget. He also admits to slapping my leg when I was young, but I don’t remember. My father is a good man. A man of integrity and compassion who I look up to. In spite of mental health care workers I am 99.99% sure I wasn’t sexually abused as a child and convinced that 0.01% of doubt was placed there by therapy. So I have often wondered, why am I such a fuck up?
I realised last week, after seeing it directed towards someone else, that it probably stems from the cumulative effect of excessive criticism. I constantly doubt myself. I second guess every decision I make. I expect people to leave. I believe I am unlovable and am amazed when anyone wants to spend more than a few hours with me.
I am sure my father believes he is offering valuable guidance when he micro-manages the family. Yet he’s telling me that nothing I do can ever live up to his high standards. And it isn’t just me he feels personally responsible for. He is the head of a family in the traditional sense, and while he is loving and benevolent he cannot resist the temptation to explain how he would have done things differently, made different decisions.
Both of his daughters and my mother suffer from self-esteem issues. My elder daughter cannot feel comfortable in my childhood home, and all I have witnessed reinforces my belief that someone can care for and guide others too much. We need room to make our own decisions, to fail and learn from our mistakes. To ask for help rather than having it forced upon us. Too much liquid in the washing up! Folding a wet umbrella! Water wasted from too many or too long showers! Too many sheets of toilet paper used, too noisy, too aggressive...
I look at my own parenting style and hope I am not making the same mistakes with my youngest. She hates it when I offer her unsought for guidance, and now I see why. The temptation is to use your own experience to help the ones you love. But without balance that becomes suffocating. I need to relearn how to parent. I need to back off, back down, even when or especially when I think I am right. I don’t want my daughter to doubt herself or feel she is unlovable when she grows up.
Now I see why, or at least think I do (that self-doubt rarely wavers), I hope I can give myself space to trust my decisions, to love myself, to believe I am good enough rather than seeking validation from others. Parents beware – you might think you are protecting your children from the world, but you cannot protect them from themselves or your effect on them.
I love my father. I am sure that growing up in a world that holds on to traditional values of fatherhood has made him afraid of letting go. I have no answer to this dilemma to offer other than self-awareness and as it has taken me almost fifty years to achieve any measure of self-awareness, the process, I know, is not a quick fix.
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