I think my Mom and Dad both had levels of emotional immaturity, because of abuse and trauma they suffered as children. Mom’s was almost otherwordly. Dad’s was so ordinary and American that people still suffer the same things and think it’s normal. They both grew up around people who didn’t conceptualize mental health, and stigmatized anyone who got it.
They became adults who didn’t know how to deal with their feelings in a lot of ways. They traumatized and retraumatized each other in some of my earliest childhood memories. And they did the same to the kids. There was so much love and caring, and kindness, but then would come a fight, blood-curdling screams, the insults, the abuse, and as the youngest I had no idea what caused it, and assumed it was my fault more than once.
Children depend on their parents for emotional regulation. A child gets overwhelmed with feelings, and doesn’t know what to do. Their adult caregivers, emotionally mature, help model emotional regulation, and even give regulation to the child in their care. The child cries. The parent comforts. The child calms.
Parents stuck in a loop of a child who can’t stop crying can feel stuck, nervous, guilty, and it’s not them, it’s the situation, and they’re doing their best, but it hurts when teeth push through gums the first time and there’s no getting around it. When you’re four months old and have accidentally pushed yourself to stay awake, and desperately want sleep, you cry out for help but there’s no help, no matter what the parent does, other than instincts and guesswork that a cuddle and a lulaby might be it, and if you’re lucky, it’s the cure.
But what happens if the parent themselves gets disregulated and overwhelmed from trauma? They grow up themselves without that regulation, and become emotionally immature, don’t understand what’s happening, and do their best to cope. And they can’t lend that regulation to a child who may be unintentionally pressing on their own deepest wounds.
My Dad self-medicated with alcohol, lashing out, and forms of quiet narcissism, to help his ego feel soothed, stuck in so many subtle ways as a child himself. There were times when he could emotionally help, but he got overwhelmed by other people’s big feelings. Including me.
My Mom would disassociate, through television, getting lost in thoughts, lashing out, blaming, so many things that I can see clearly now, all symptoms and strategies of her doing the best she could to cope with a stolen childhood, that left a part of her there.
My grandma Doris once humiliated Mom’s personal excitement about presents and cute toys by glibly saying, “Christmas is for kids,” without seeming to grasp that Mom hadn’t really had a child’s Christmas since her Mom was taken away by soldiers. Grandma Doris was kind, sweet, and so caring, but she would have these cruel, judgemental moments sometimes that show a glimpse into the kind of passive-aggressive coldness that could lead my Dad feeling unprotected from a Dad named Fred who abandoned and belittled him, and a stepdad named Lee who loved him, hit him, and himself drank to self-regulate.
And then there’s me. A kid with big feelings and emotions, who would get disregulated in a big way often. And I learned early on that my big feelings disregulated my parents. My big feelings were a problem. My big feelings were a nuisance. My big feelings were bad.
These lessons are ones that I’ve let go. I’ve learned since then. And now they’re my responsibility. As they always were.
And for whatever reason today, right now, as I’m laying in bed in pain again, after all these years.
I understand.