The Process of Recovery

feel good. I always question letting my emotions out because of my dad. He hated emotions

and got angry even at my mom for expressing them. I see the guy telling my story and all he

wants is care and support. He wants some affirmation. Showing my emotions has always been

difficult for me.

One time in elementary school I got beat up. I came home and climbed a tree to cry there.

My mom was having tea with her sister. She saw me and left me there crying alone. My

mom was dangerous so I wouldn’t go to her but I wanted someone to come to me. I wanted

someone

to understand my pain. There is still conflict inside about showing emotions and conflict with

liking this guy who is telling others about his pain.

What I learned growing up about being a man is that I need to always be in control of

myself. Men are like the lone ranger, cowboys don’t cry. Men solve all their own problems.

Things seem to be changing for me on some of that and there is less competition and more

cooperation. Our culture is becoming more open to men sharing emotion but then others still

criticize that and say men are become feminized as a result of these changes. So how do we

maintain our masculinity and still become emotionally more open? What bugged me about the

movie, “tree of life” was that the grace side and the ultimate answer had no grit, no guts, no

meat….Like there was nothing for me as a man there. I think men need to be more rounded

and not necessarily lose their toughness. Men need to just expand a bit and grow some

emotional balls. I like the character Rooster Cogburn who cared himself to exhaustion

carrying Mattie Ross to safety in the movie “True Grit”.

My story tells me that to be a man means I need to have love for my kids. Loving my

kids is more important for me than my own comfort. For me loving my kids means showing

more patience and finding the reason behind the problem as opposed to flying off the handle.

It takes strength to be patient and care. Being a man means that I look for and provide

opportunities for communication. That means that I am willing to talk about whatever needs to

be talked about and that I initiate time and space to talk to my kids. Talking to them is doing

something and while I do it I need to be patient, share my feelings, ask questions, and keep

open. That kind of communication and being in relationships like that is an important part of

being a man. This applies to me in two ways; it applies to me as a father and applies to me as a

son. This kind of openness is a way of being with my kids and with the younger parts of me.

DANNY

The Injury

I grew up as a young boy feeling chronically anxious. In some ways I was an unsure

weakling with many limitations. I was scared of other boys beating me up, scared that other

boys were going to see me doing something and publically shame me for it afterwards. I was

scared of getting rejected by girls. One time I remember being scared that an ongoing fog was

actually poisonous smog that was now covering the earth. So much fear was inside of me and

constantly projected onto my experience of others and the world. Trying to deal with all this

fear made collapse into depression. I was so scared I didn’t know what I needed, and I didn’t

have confidence in myself. But because I never remembered anything else than being scared

and depressed, I just assumed it was the way I was.

I remember missing and idolizing my father throughout my childhood. He spent 7 days

a week working making sure that we would not experience the poverty that he grew up in and

was ashamed by. After work, he spent lots of time with friends drinking beer, unwinding, and

having fun. To me, my dad was so cool, a real man. Into cars and drinking beer, he was a

happy drinker, he was so much fun. I tried to imitate my dad and be a man the way he was. I

was trying to fit that mode of being a man but I was so anxious I couldn’t.

I was also really scared of my dad- really scared of him. My mom was pretty soft so

my dad was by default the enforcer. My dad had a nick name and he was called the “The

Whip”.

One time I bit my sister on the arm, my dad bit me for it. When I demolished my sister’s toy,

he took my favourite toy and me out to the driveway, and drove over it; crushing it in his

truck while I watched. Not a lot of sensitivity in the way he went about discipline. I

remember doing something bad and my mom was upset with me and she said, “Just wait

until your father gets

home – you are going to get it!” I remember being so scared, coiling up into a ball on my

bed and sobbing in fear of what he was going to do to me. The objective content of what

was done does not seem huge to me now, yet the fear in me was so strong that I often felt

threatened and unsafe.

I had a paradoxical fear and idealization of my father. I grew up wanting to be my dad

– I wanted to work in his mechanic's shop and be just like him. As a teenager I imitated him

sometimes as he was my model for masculinity. In my early twenties, I noticed how taking on

this role was not a fit for me, how I was living a life that wasn’t really me. I started getting

interested in critical social analysis – looking at exploitation and oppression through class,

gender, and race. As I dropped the role of imitating him, I started to project anger at my father.

Now I started interpreting him as an exploitative capitalist who was cruel in many ways. As a

young man I moved across the county to get away from him. Apparently I needed space to try

to define myself.

I was away for about 3 years focusing on social activism. I was in a relationship at the

time and did not realize how deeply dependent I was on her. After about 3 years, she broke up

with me and my life seemed shattered. I went into a crashing crisis. Everything had built up

inside and boom it came crashing down. I was pushed to look inside and see how much I was

hurting and my life is not a fit for who I am. No more could I prevent self-reflection and be

centered on the world at large. Inside I had to acknowledge that I was hurting, that I had just

contributed to the downfall of our relationship, and that I needed to work on myself inside and

relationally. I sought out help following period of deep depression. I eventually decided to

become a counsellor. I would find out what was helping me to heal and grow and then share

this with others. This all felt very meaningful to me. On that journey I realized how much I

had been

trying to be like my dad but because it wasn’t working it became a “fuck you” “I am not going

to be like you”. But both are not a fit and both came out of pain. This led me to a crashing point

that became the opportunity for a turning point.

The Process of Recovery

Eventually I got into a Master's program in Counselling Psychology. One day in a

class a teacher asked the class if anyone had a memory that they wanted to work on in a group