FAIR AT HOME

When raised in a fair environment, children feel safe to be and express who they are.

Children are constantly trying to figure out their place. Do I matter (do I have and provide value)? Does anyone see me, hear me, love me, care for me? Solid parenting (not perfect, but good enough) means meeting a child’s social, emotional, and physical needs so they grow up and become who they are meant to be. When raised in an unfair environment—trauma, neglect, gaslighting—the authentic sense of self is sacrificed and an army of protective parts show up to save the soul.

Those protectors defend against that driving fear that indeed there is something inherently wrong with me. We grow up thinking that we are these protectors—that we are angry, depressed, anxious. We are not. We are the person before all the unfair stuff happened who can manage anger, anxiety and depression.

But why fairness? Isn’t it all just trauma?

I work with people who have experienced trauma, all sorts of trauma. I hadn’t made the link between trauma and unfairness until a few years ago. I was curious why the driver who sails down the open lane to cut in to the long line where us patient law-abiding drivers had been waiting to exit thought his behavior was no big deal. Was he or she entitled to not wait in line? Was someone having a heart attack? I noticed anger. Heck, I nearly got into a fender bender lest any jerk attempt to cut me off. Yikes, I’d succumbed to the anger of unfairness. I dug deeper.

Fairness has been encoded neurologically and physiologically in our species and others for a reason. It ensures survival and plays deeply into our advancement as a species. Indeed, fairness during the formative years impacts life-long mental health.

My clients describe horrible childhoods. Soon, a through-line emerged. I hear over and over:

“It was so unfair.”

“The unfairness of it all makes me so angry.”

“I just can’t process the depth of depression I feel over how unfairly I was treated.”

“I just want to make someone else feel the rage I feel inside over what happened.”

The list goes on. And on.

I felt like a spectator at Wimbledon as my head went back and forth. Is anyone else hearing this in their private practice? Out to dinner with friends? On the sidelines? Of course they are. So let’s talk about it.

My clients were stuck in a reactive, protective loop where only one identity resonated in their psyche: I’m not enough. Because of the unfair treatment, they believed a story about themselves that wasn’t true. They set up their fortress of defenses so others wouldn’t learn their hideous secret. They went into the world with their armor and acted upon their stories and, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, they taught people how to treat them (to disconnect from and reject them). Ultimately, the “not enough” mindset was reinforced.

I created a Cycle and we started filling it in so they could see how their injuries became their identity. This Cycle can be found on the website.

We are far bigger than the story we tell ourselves about who we are because of what happened to us as children. Far bigger.

The unfair stuff that happened happened. The anger, hurt, sadness and disconnecting, numbing, or rage-full behavior that lingers today does not have to happen.