Dear Carson:

First, I want to summarize what you shared a month ago, in your previous thread, together with what you shared in this thread, adding a few quotes: you are a very young gay man, an “emerging adult”. You live in a very conservative state and growing up, your family made anti-gay remarks around the dinner table. You mentioned “bizarre behavior” on the part of your father, and that you used to want to change him, focusing on changing him. You also mentioned feeling “very ashamed” in regard to your relationship with your mother.

As a child and onward, you hid your sexuality from yourself and from everyone else, best you were able. When you were first attracted to a boy, you repressed your attraction and feelings for him and “soon shut down”. As a result of all this and more, you suffered from “anxiety, poor self-esteem, and shame”, and you had thoughts about hurting the boy you were attracted to.

This year you came out to your family as a gay man, but that didn’t resolve your anxiety and “this internal battle”. You were angry and had thoughts about hurting your family. You checked yourself into a psychiatric hospital. In the hospital you felt “so angry”, and once again, had thoughts about hurting your family. Your psychiatrists advised you “to get some space” from your parents, but you ignored their advice. You later checked yourself t two more facilities.

I can see how difficult your life has been so far and I wish it wasn’t. I can see that the ongoing, long-term difficulties in the way your parents related to you (and perhaps to each other) created the shame and anger that you suffer from, and that these difficulties preceded and go beyond the topic of your sexual orientation.

You wrote: “I need to be open“. You started being open by sharing all that you shared in these two threads. If you want to be even more open, and if you feel safe enough and comfortable enough to do it here, on your thread, you can share more: about your disturbing experiences with your father, about your shame in regard to your mother, about what you meant by having been manipulative, about the traumatic events you referred to in this sentence: “This past year I exposed myself to traumatic events when I could have prevented it”, and whatever else you want to share, and in doing so, shine the light into the darkness.

anita

Dear Carson:

It is evening where I live, and I want to answer you when I feel more awake and focused, which would be tomorrow morning. I didn’t understand the part about your shame in regard to your mother, what you explained is too general. If you can, and if you want to- can you be more specific? Also, I didn’t understand what traumatized you about “Laughing at a tv show with other people” around you. Would you like to explain it to me?

I will be back to your thread whether you answer the above, or not, in about 13 hours from now.

anita

I would like add two cents about shame….

Much later in life I realized that I’d always had an unusual (intense and long-living, and misguided) sense of shame. I also wondered how others could carry on WITHOUT apparent shame after questionable or flat-out wrong/inappropriate behaviors. Especially when someone close to me didn’t exhibit shame, I carried their shame no differently than if I’d been “quilty” of the act/behavior. (E.g.: I once wouldn’t go in my front yard for a very long time b/c of the shame I carried for another person in my family who behaved inappropriately with a neighbor.) I absorbed (other’s) shame like a sponge.

It’s the nature of those suffering with addictions (sexual, substance, etc.) to slide the guilt, shame, anger, etc. onto others.

Anita brings up a very solid point about your father’s actions, and you need to realize them for what they were. For any multitude of reasons, the narrative got changed. You want to believe in the goodness of your parents, but by admitting they did what they did was unreasonable and hurtful doesn’t mean you still can’t love them and find some good in them. It’s not a mutually exclusive deal.

I, too, grew up with physical and sexual abuse from various people. I reached a point where I forgave one person in particular some years down the line when I realized that they were who they were and they likely did the best they could given their personality/issues, but finding that forgiveness meant I had to face the truth about them—and forgiving someone doesn’t dictate that they still aren’t responsible for their behavior, or that what they did is acceptable.

Forgiveness can come just by the passing of time or with very hard work over a long stretch of time. And forgiveness heals you. It. just. does.

All this said, you have a long, hard road ahead. It probably seems impossible right now that you’ll come to terms with all the many things with which you find yourself struggling. But you’ve taken some good steps. That’s how we all begin. Steps. And it took all these years for you to be where you now find yourself, so you know turning it around won’t happen overnight or easily–and might even get worse before it gets better–and that’s okay b/c you’ve started down the path of discovery and healing. On your own, you began this. That takes courage. Because you want it. You’ll get there. Give yourself a break and stop blaming yourself. Just work on taking one step at a time. It’s too daunting otherwise, yes?

Hugs.

Dear Carson:

You are welcome. “I have a few months at this center and then I am back home“- is there a way for you to not go home in a few months? It reads like living with your parents again, is not good for you.

(I will be back to the computer in about 10 hours from now).

anita