Dear Carson:

First, I want to summarize what you shared a month ago, in your previous thread, together with what you shared in this thread, adding a few quotes: you are a very young gay man, an “emerging adult”. You live in a very conservative state and growing up, your family made anti-gay remarks around the dinner table. You mentioned “bizarre behavior” on the part of your father, and that you used to want to change him, focusing on changing him. You also mentioned feeling “very ashamed” in regard to your relationship with your mother.

As a child and onward, you hid your sexuality from yourself and from everyone else, best you were able. When you were first attracted to a boy, you repressed your attraction and feelings for him and “soon shut down”. As a result of all this and more, you suffered from “anxiety, poor self-esteem, and shame”, and you had thoughts about hurting the boy you were attracted to.

This year you came out to your family as a gay man, but that didn’t resolve your anxiety and “this internal battle”. You were angry and had thoughts about hurting your family. You checked yourself into a psychiatric hospital. In the hospital you felt “so angry”, and once again, had thoughts about hurting your family. Your psychiatrists advised you “to get some space” from your parents, but you ignored their advice. You later checked yourself t two more facilities.

I can see how difficult your life has been so far and I wish it wasn’t. I can see that the ongoing, long-term difficulties in the way your parents related to you (and perhaps to each other) created the shame and anger that you suffer from, and that these difficulties preceded and go beyond the topic of your sexual orientation.

You wrote: “I need to be open“. You started being open by sharing all that you shared in these two threads. If you want to be even more open, and if you feel safe enough and comfortable enough to do it here, on your thread, you can share more: about your disturbing experiences with your father, about your shame in regard to your mother, about what you meant by having been manipulative, about the traumatic events you referred to in this sentence: “This past year I exposed myself to traumatic events when I could have prevented it”, and whatever else you want to share, and in doing so, shine the light into the darkness.

anita