Recovering the Self: Healing from the Trauma of Toxic Socialization
It’s been a while since I posted anything here. It’s not because I haven’t been busy thinking about shit; it’s just, what was the point of this medium? What was the point of writing here? I experimented a bit, but couldn’t quite figure it out. However, after some self-reflection, I realized the point is what you make of it so I guess the real question was “What does this medium give me the opportunity to do?” It’s a good question. After thinking off-and-on about it for a few months, I think I’m just gonna use this platform to talk about myself and how I think and feel about things because — you know — expression is important and we should all find ways to express ourselves in healthy and creative ways. It seems a good use of this medium and, anyway, I certainly need the practice. As a male child raised in a single-parent working-class family and trained in the working (and later middle) class educational streams, my thoughts and feelings have been suppressed my entire life, almost from day one, in subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle ways. First, they were suppressed by my early childhood caregivers (my mom and my teachers) who thought that boys shouldn’t cry and who didn’t like what I thought and felt about things anyway. Later, they were suppressed by adults in my life, by friends, associates, co-workers, and even professional scholarly journals, like the Sociological Forum (I’ll talk about that more a bit later). Finally, they were unconsciously suppressed by myself, both as I internalized the social expectations and as I deliberately shut myself off to avoid feeling so much pain.
But, frankly, I’ve had enough of all that suppression. I don’t feel good about it. It makes my chest feel tight and I want to be myself again. I want to find out who I was before all those buckets of shit got dumped on my head and I shut down my emotional and cognitive responses. I want to feel again and I want to be able to say what I really think about things without fear of repression or reprisal. So that is what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna talk about my thoughts and feelings and see how it goes.
So how am I feeling right now?
Well, TBH, right now, I’m feeling a little trepidation because stepping out might expose me to zombie trolls, but I think I can handle them. I’m gonna try and stay focused and positive while at the same time remaining critical. Besides trepidation, I’m also feeling good about this. I feel like this is, if not “the” right thing to do, is at least a right thing to do. So, I’m gonna do it because it feels right. Just a heads up. I don’t particularly care if anybody reads this or gets any “value” out of it. I’m just doing it for myself. That’s all. It’s not for your consumption. It is for my healing and reconnection. If you like it, great. If you don’t, keep it to yourself because I don’t want to hear any spewed-out negative BS. There’s enough of that going around.
Until next time…
