trauma

Speaking Up Can Be Messy

The young woman behind the counter at Sunglass Hut did not deserve my wrath. Unfortunately, I only realized this days after I’d stalked out of the shiny store in a huff. At the time I told myself I was justified. I mean…I deserved respect, didn’t I? 

I posed some version of this question to my therapist, Carolyn, as I recounted the story a few days later. Arms crossed and urgency in my voice, I still felt resentful about this brief interaction at the mall. Carolyn cocked her head in that small way she had of letting me know my judgment was off. 

I was in my early twenties (still new to therapy and it’s jarring reality checks) and I carried a chip on my shoulder that sometimes got knocked off when I felt disrespected. It wasn’t always warranted, though. I know now that many of my perceived slights were stand-ins for actual affronts that occurred in my past. I cringe thinking about the shop clerks and salespeople who put up with my misplaced frustration and anger. Not to mention my ability to personalize corporate policies.

The Sunglass Hut confrontation started with an erroneous belief that I had the right to receive a replacement pair of sunglasses. The chain advertised a warranty from which I somehow got this impression. My shades, which I had purchased at full price on a young person’s budget, were in rough shape from frequent use and a general lack of care. Chalk it up to a shortage of life experience or an unrealistic sense of entitlement, but I walked into the store confident that they would honor my request for new glasses. 

My confidence turned to outrage when the self-assured employee looked over my glasses and asserted with a raise of her eyebrow, “I can’t replace these glasses. They look like they have been abused.”

“Abused?!” I asked. I felt my body temperature rising. It struck me hard, this word that felt so unnecessarily strong. Perhaps even accusatory. “They’re not abused,” I answered. My throat tightened. “I just used them normally. I can’t believe you’re not going to honor your own store’s policy!” I stood in front of her, trembling, and waited for her response.

“Sorry,” she said. “We can’t replace these.” She held the sunglasses out to me across the counter. I snatched them from her hand, turned on my heels, and marched out of the store. 

Back in Carolyn’s office, she listened to my righteous retelling and affirmed my general desire to speak up on my behalf. She also pointed out that in this instance, the shop worker was simply doing her job and following the store’s rules. My anger, she explained gently, was misplaced. The woman did not deserve the way I had treated her. It was hard to hear at first but she was right, of course. I did deserve to use my voice, that much was true. The problem was that I’d aimed my feelings at the wrong person, and for the wrong reasons. 

There has probably always been a mixture of a fighter and a people-pleaser in me. Before I’d been through serious therapy I had shaky self-esteem at best and the fighter side of me could sometimes be unkind. In those moments I said too much, too fiercely, with too little thought for the other person. I remember this with regret now. I also find room to forgive myself. As I often explain to my clients, when we begin to practice asserting the right to stand up and speak with conviction, our early efforts often come out messy. 

Growing up feeling stifled, silenced, shut down, and shamed, it takes a leap of faith and courage to override this influence and say your peace. For girls and women, there is an extra layer of social expectation that we “be nice,” stay quiet, and behave ourselves (whatever that means). Early attempts to buck our conditioning will likely come out clumsy and with too much force behind them. We might act like a bull in a china shop and that’s to be expected. The goal is to learn from our actions and take responsibility for them. There truly is no shame in making mistakes. 

In my effort to do some light fact-checking for this piece, I googled “Sunglass Hut Warranty” and read up on their policy. The website states, ”This warranty does not cover: scratches on lenses; damages caused by accident, abuse, neglect, shock, improper use or storage of the product; unauthorized modifications or repairs and normal wear and tear.” 

Huh. 

So it seems the store employee’s use of the term “abuse” was appropriate after all. She was simply naming a specific factor she was required to evaluate. Good for her that she chose not to sugar-coat her assessment for me. I suppose she could have been gentler about it, but that was not her responsibility. And I would be a hypocrite to expect that, given my own gloves-off approach. 

It must be said that the weight of the word “abuse” is not lost on me here. I realize, of course, that the mistreatment and abuse I survived in childhood was at the root of my misguided anger. Carolyn helped me see this. With empathy, support, and the trust she earned during our years together, she led me to explore the effects of my traumatic experiences with understanding and self-compassion. Through this work, my deep-seated shame began to lift and the unresolved anger gradually lessened. 

I still get mad sometimes, of course. Despite its bad rap, anger is a useful emotion. It helps us recognize threats and drives us toward useful action. When we begin to speak up and express our thoughts and emotions more fully, some of us start by getting angry at, and fighting, the wrong people. That’s human nature and nothing to be ashamed about. It’s also our job to recognize the problem and consciously direct our anger at real threats instead of perceived ones. With patience, practice, and (ideally) support to work through the very real reasons behind our emotions, we get better at knowing the difference. 

It took me a while and the journey was winding and messy. But today I feel far more comfortable advocating for myself, my loved ones, and my beliefs with confidence and compassion. I have learned how to stop paying the hurt forward. Instead, I know how to speak up productively, with the right people, and at the right time. I also take better care of my sunglasses. 

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Making Change from Inside

My advanced copy of CHOSEN: A Memoir of Stolen Boyhood arrived on my front stoop on a recent Friday afternoon. By Sunday morning I had read all 318 pages. I’d also filled the back of the book with tightly-packed, handwritten notes in an effort to capture the thoughts and emotions that bubbled up as I read Stephen Mills’ poignant account of surviving sexual abuse as a young teenager.

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Scapegoats are the Strong Ones

Being stuck in the role of the scapegoat is a lonely experience. Your place in the group never really feels secure. You live with a constant sense of being blamed and shamed–even if you can’t point out exactly how, or why it happens. You have probably been told that your feelings are wrong so many times you‘re not sure which end is up or whether you can trust your own instincts. But still, in your gut you know things are not right. 

That’s why you chose to speak up in the first place: to bring issues out in the open and hopefully address them together. Sadly, it’s also why you’ve been cast as the scapegoat by those who are hell-bent on denying difficult truths and maintaining the current power structure. As the scapegoat, you are subject to ostracism, victim-blaming, scolding, and shaming. And for some, a campaign of lies and half-truths weaken their perceived credibility both in and outside of the group. It is a painful way to live. 

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It’s Never Too Late

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

-Mary Oliver, The Summer Day

I love Mary’s question at the end of this poem. It comforts me and haunts me, reminding me both to slow down and speed up. To drink in the beauty and wonder of the fields and sky, while also striving to reach my goals. This is my everyday dilemma, the push and pull of being alive, aware, and driven.

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Dylan Farrow Waited a Long Time to Be Heard

[Originally published as a Huffington Post blog piece in April 2014.]

When the newest issue of New York Magazine arrived in my mailbox last week, it didn’t take long for me to flip to the back page and peruse the “Approval Matrix,” their weekly ranking of timely facts and intriguing news tidbits. I usually find it a fun read, but not this time. In the quadrant, which assigned this high-profile story the status of “despicable,” was a photograph of Woody Allen holding a young Dylan Farrow and the words: “The crosscurrents of accusations from the Farrow-Allen households.”

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A Perfect Shame

Perfectionism is a familiar affliction for survivors. 

So many of us strive to achieve top grades and performance reviews, to dress just right for every occasion, and master the social skills that help us appear naturally confident. All the while, we’re scared to death of letting the mask slip to reveal our secret: the shame we carry as a byproduct of sexual abuse or assault. 

At its root, perfectionism is often an unconscious attempt to cover up shame. 

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Fear, Loss, & the Grocery Store

The following is adapted from a bonus Truth & Consequences podcast episode recorded during the Covid-19 quarantine. I post it here because it addresses retraumatization and the resurfacing of past trauma and loss.  

If you have a few extra minutes this week, I’d like to share a story and some thoughts with you in the hopes that you’ll find it useful. It’s a story about going to the grocery store. Something that used to be an annoyingly frequent chore, at least to me, but has now become a whole different experience for a lot of us…of course, that’s IF you’re actually still venturing out to buy food in person.

Because our world has changed.

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