Why should we talk about it? Can't we just sweep it under the carpet?

Four days ago, I wrote a blog post about how my parents physically abused me when I was very young and how my act of rebellion was to spite them by rejecting their culture. Writing that piece enabled me to figure out the cause and effect, why one thing led to another despite not being obviously connected. At first, I almost didn't want to post it because I feared the deluge of hate mail that would come the moment I confessed to being a "jiat-kentang banana" (ie. an Asian who favours Western culture over his own) - but instead, the messages of support kept coming, from others who said to me that they went through the same abuse as a child - they offered my empathy and kindness.

As a follow up, I want to discuss why it is important to talk about traumatic events that may have happened to us years ago, even decades ago. I used an analogy to illustrate this point to my reader Xiaobai, " I have an iPod and whenever I take it off, I would wind the wires up and then bung it in my pocket. Sometimes when I take the iPod out of my pocket, the wires would be all tangled up - what do I do then? Sometimes I take the time to untangle them - sometimes I think, as long as the wires can reach my ears, I can't be bothered to undo the knots. Then I end up sitting on the train, listening to my music with my head at a funny angle because the wires is so tangled up it is way too short. That's when I have to say to myself, be sensible. Stop the music for a moment, unplug it and untangle those wires."

Fresh from my pocket, plenty of knots...

"That's where you are at right now XiaoBai, you are sitting on the train, trying to listen to the music on the iPod with your head at a funny angle because your wires are oh so tangled up right now. The only way for you to untangle those wires is for you to figure out what caused those knots in the first place and then you can start to unravel them, one by one... it is a process that will take time but I want to be there for you and help you through this. All we can do is help each other now by talking about it, sharing our experiences, getting it off our chest (things we haven't even talked about or told anyone in decades)... then and only then, can we untangle that mess of knots in our heads. If you think the wires of my iPod earphones can get tangled up, imagine the mess in our heads left behind by years of shopping instead of dealing with our feelings."

So why are we adults talking about traumatic things that happened to us decades ago, during our childhood then? What is the point of all this I hear you ask? Well, let me first tell you what it is not about.

1. It is not about revenge.

Yes I want to talk about being physically abused as a child, no this is not because I want to name and shame my mother for the way she acted. What good would punishing her today do? Would it make me feel any better about what happened in the 1980s? No, it wouldn't. Actually, this process is about me coming to terms with the demons in my head who have been haunting me all these years, it is not about my mother. In fact, I don't even want to talk to her about it - she wouldn't know what to say or how to react. She wouldn't be able to say anything helpful or tactful on the issue - this is why I am talking instead to people who can offer me empathy, understanding and kindness.

2. It is not about forgiveness. 

I think that would is overrated. Forgiveness. It refers to something very specific and once you take it out of context, it becomes meaningless. We can only talk about forgiveness if one party is going to offer and apology and you offer forgiveness at the same time as you accept the apology. That's a totally different process - since I am not talking about the issue with my mother, it is not about me forgiving her since she is not directly involved.

3. It is not about "laissez tomber".

I have talked about the French term "laissez tomber" - literally, that translates to "let it drop/fall". It is the equivalent of saying, "it doesn't matter, forget it, let it go", so when something bad happens, say the waiter brings you chocolate ice cream instead of vanilla ice cream, you would use a phrase like that to indicate that it doesn't matter (hey, it's no big deal, I'll eat the ice cream, don't worry about it). It is simply unfair (and unrealistic) to expect victims of abuse to simply forget and move on without giving them the opportunity to deal with the matter in the first place.

4. It is not about the person who abused me.

We live in a culture where we want to seek justice when we are wronged - but in this case, we're not 'seeking justice'. This is all about us victims coming to terms with what has happened to us. We just need to look at the damage within ourselves, rather than the person who caused the damage in the first place. Imagine if a heavy brick fell on your foot and your toes are badly injured - what do you want the doctor to look at when you arrive at the hospital, screaming in pain? Do you want the doctor to look at your foot or the brick? Would smashing that guilty brick into many small pieces actually relieve the pain in your injured toes?

What is it about then? Remember my iPod headphones analogy above - it is simply about us "undoing the knots in the wires"... We are dealing with feelings that have been bubbling under the surface for years, even decades but we have never confronted. It is too easy, too convenient to dismiss or ignore traumatic events that occurred during our childhood - it's so long ago, I was so young, maybe I will forget eventually, it doesn't matter anymore, you may try to tell yourself. But such events have a big impact on us because they shaped the way we grew up and for better or for worse, it would have played a part to get you where you are today.

Let me tell you what this process is about and why it is cathartic and therapeutic.

How well do you know yourself?

1. It is about understanding ourselves.

If I asked you, "do you know your neighbour well?" That may seem like a perfectly normal question - but if I asked you, "do you know yourself well?" You may do a double take and stare at me in puzzlement. But how many of us have all these unresolved issues in our heads stemming from traumatic events in our childhood that we have managed to hide, avoid and suppress all these years? Even if we choose not to confront these feelings, these feelings will still affect the way we think, act, process information and deal with the world around us. Understanding who we are is an important process for personal growth because if we understand what motivates us, scares us, what inspires us, why we feel a certain way about some issues - then we can then make better informed decisions about how we make choices in life.

2. It is about making sense of the past.

Childhood trauma is a very difficult issue to deal with because our personal memories are recorded when we were immature, young children who didn't have the benefit of our adult minds. So how memories are always seen through this child-like filter and taking a fresh look at those events from an adult perspective can help explain so many things. This can offer us clarity on what happened, re-examined with our adult understanding of the world and help us come to terms with the past. You know how police sometimes re-open unsolved "cold cases" from the 1970s and 1980s and use new technology to examine the old evidence? Well, we're pretty much doing the same thing here.

Can you make sense of your memories? Are you thinking clearly?

I was often brutally beaten by my mother when I was a child. In my child-like mind then, I thought it was because I was very naughty and a bad person, thus that was why I deserved the punishments. My adult mind has a different opinion: it was not about me, it was about my mother. The world does not revolve around me - gosh this seems like common sense to us adults but children often believe that the world does revolve around them.  I was unable to see things from my mother's perspective when I was a young child, but now I can. She was in ill-health and worked long hours in a stressful job. My father wasn't a particularly supportive or expressive husband and thus under all of those circumstances, my mother developed serious anger management issues and countless psychological problems (she was physically abused herself when she was little.) I also realized that my mother was not evil or cruel per se to have abused me, but she was unwell, fragile and awfully messed up. Gosh she needed help then, but she didn't get it.

As an adult, I am able to review what happened not just from my mother's perspective but also from an adult's perspective rather than solely relying on my memory of how I felt at that time. By revisiting and reviewing what happen all these years later, I felt compassion for my mother, I felt sorry for my mother. None of this excused the way she physically abused me, but I could see why she made all those foolish, terrible mistakes. In fact, under these circumstances, it was amazing the number of things she actually did get right and how she ploughed on through all those years without totally having a mental breakdown.

I have so many conflicting emotions on the issue.

Please note that this new understanding and insight may or may not lead to forgiveness - that is a personal choice and I am not going to go there. I am quite content to simply be able to explain why she made those mistakes because for years, I didn't understand why or how she could act in such an abusive manner towards her own children.

In the case of my reader XiaoBai, she had a mother who was abusive and unreasonable. Her mother treated XiaoBai's brother much better - now I cannot begin to explain why her mother behaved that way nor would I ever suggest that XiaoBai should forgive her mother. Clearly her mother is unrepentant, so any gesture of unilateral forgiveness on XiaoBai's part is meaningless. But what XiaoBai can do at least, is to try to understand why her mother acted like the way she did - armed with the maturity of an adult and mother herself today, XiaoBai is in a much better position to make sense of the past now for it must have been bewildering for her as a child to make sense of the abuse. Gaining new insight into an old situation is the best she can do for herself now, for these insights will bring her to the next step.

3. It is about identifying the damage and starting the healing.

You know, we adults are very good at hiding our pain and hurt. I know this as a sportsman (I am a gymnast and diver - but this applies to all sports) - my gymnastics coaches hated  gymnasts who couldn't 吃苦 - literally "eat bitter". It is a Chinese phrase which refers to putting up with hardship. Growing up in that environment made me very good at hiding any kind of physical pain, the coaches would praise boys who were obviously in pain but never complained. I competed in the 1993 SEA Games with a fracture in my fibula bone on my left leg and I was in a lot of pain, but was conditioned not to even mention it. (I had a 4th place finish, not bad competing on a broken leg.) Ignoring the pain doesn't make the injury go away, I kept on punishing my left leg so much until I needed major surgery on that knee joint in 1995.

Imagine all those knots in our heads stemming from traumatic episodes in our childhoods - how many of us are ignoring them? How is that different from what I did to my left leg when I ignored that fracture? When has anyone ever solved a problem by ignoring it? In finally addressing these issues stemming from childhood abuse and trauma, we can finally take a honest look at what some of the damages are and start dealing with them. Once we have identified the damage, then we can let the healing begin.

There are so many feelings that we have suppressed all these years - abuse can lead to so many feelings from insecurity to anxiety to guilt to anger. If we do not address those feelings, they will only haunt us and fester in our heads for the rest of our lives. It is time to face the demons in our heads and undo the knots, one by one.

4. It is about helping each other and offering peer support.

There is a certain comfort in knowing that there is someone out there who understands the same pain and frustration I feel, who went through the same thing - finally someone understands me and I can talk about this to them! After years of talking to people who either don't really understand what physical abuse is like or just want me to move on and forget it without dealing with this, finally, I am in a position where I can get the peer support I have craved for all these years. It is also very empowering for me to know that I am in a position to offer comfort, empathy, understanding and kindness to someone else who is in the same position.

I think there is something beautiful about human nature when strangers who don't know each other come together and help each other like that - and both parties emerge from the experience feeling so good about that encounter. That is simply beautiful and I want to be a part of that, to make the world a better place.

I would like to thank each and everyone of my readers who wrote in and offered me their support, empathy and kindness. You guys have been wonderful to me, thank you so much for being a part of this discussion. Please leave a comment below and let's keep the discussion going. Big hugs to you all.