drawing by me
If you want to hear about my life, the ways in which I have changed (mostly for the better, I think), and how God has helped me survive this life, then you’ve come to the right place. The following is part of my life story. Without further ado, here is my life story through about junior high.
Let’s start with my parents. We will call them Juan and Anne. Though both my parents loved all of us kids (me and my two younger brothers), they each had their own things they were dealing with while trying to raise us. My dad grew up in a household in which parents yelled a lot, and where emotions made a man weak. My mom’s mom died when she was 12, leaving my mom feeling responsible for her younger siblings at times, both physically and emotionally. Though both my parents wanted what was best for us, I can see how what they thought was best might have been skewed by their own experiences.
The most important thing that my parents didn’t have in their homes is strong Christian leaders teaching them the qualities of God. They didn’t have someone teaching them how perfectly loving God is, and modeling that love to them. They didn’t have someone teaching them that God is the perfect parent, even if it doesn’t look like what we’ve experienced from our earthly parents. Both parents had come to know God by the time I was born, but they weren’t deep in relationship with God, and they weren’t sure what it looked like to have a marriage or to be parents with God at the center of it all.
My parents drew from their previous knowledge, and from their new knowledge of the Bible, to try to parent us. This looked like my dad being the fun dad, wanting to teach us how to play sports. He wanted to coach us and play catch in the yard with us. But when it came to emotions, he didn’t want to acknowledge their existence. For example, my dad is very competitive, as are my brothers and I. However, if we cried because we lost a game, my dad would say “stop being a cry baby,” or “suck it up.” Yet my dad would lose a game and become angry, yelling and seeming to not know what to do with his emotions.
My mom, on the other hand, wanted us to share all of our emotions with her. However, she would judge our emotions as good or bad, and would sometimes minimize our emotions. She would try to reason with me why I didn’t need to be or didn’t have the right to be upset. There were also times that I really needed someone to talk to, but didn’t feel like I had anyone to turn to. My dad would dismiss my feelings, and my mom would explain why they weren’t correct. My mom so desperately wanted that emotional connection with my brothers and I, but the older I got, the harder it was for me to give her that emotional intimacy.
Through these moments of hurt, I learned to push my feelings down so far that I didn’t even know what I was feeling. I closed the door to feeling, because if feeling would get me hurt, then not feeling would protect me, right? However, what happens when an event that overwhelms the emotions occurs? Something like a traumatic event? I’ll get to that later, but in short, it doesn’t make dealing with emotions “better” or “easier.”
I want to note some good memories, too, as not all my childhood memories were bad. I remember fishing with my family at my grandpa’s pond and at a nearby lake. I remember having this sense of peace and joy as we hung out by the lake and just waited on a fish to bite, each hoping we would catch the biggest one. I remember climbing trees and digging holes in the backyard with my brothers. Other times, I would bake some cookies with my mom in the kitchen. These were some of the other memories of my childhood.
All of these experiences – both good and bad – led to a disorganized attachment style with my parents. There are three other styles of attachment: secure, anxious-ambivalent, and avoidant. The attachment style you first learn is the one you tend to stick with for the rest of your life in all of your relationships – unless you have earned secure attachment (Kolber 58).
The disorganized style of attachment is characterizedby fearing being used and hurt, even though there is a desire for connection. Other characteristics include: being emotionally dysregulated, experiencing feelings in relationships that remind you of the fear experienced as a child, and feeling as though you are inviting people in and pushing them out at the same time (Kolber 57). This disorganized style of attachment does not seem to be the most healthy, does it? Good, because it’s not. The secure attachment style is what I would call the healthy one. But more on attachment styles and how that has played a role in my life in the next post. Bye for now!
Resources:
Kolber, Aundi. Try Softer. Tyndale, 2020.