I just posted this in another community – then discovered this one, and am posting here now, in hopes of someone understanding :]
Hey there, I’m 19M. I’d like to start this off by saying that English isn’t my first language. I live in a pretty terrible country.
I’m a student and go to university nearly daily, grades are good, all that.
I live with my parents. I have a decent relationship with them, more or less, except for one thing:
when I was a kid, I came out to them, and they put me through conversion therapy.
I don’t remember anything after that. I don’t even remember my childhood at all – I do not know what truly, really happened. My memories start after junior high.
I don’t actively feel bad about it, I like to think that I’ve gotten over it – but whenever I see like, happy families, or things related to like… loving parents, I involuntarily break down. And it’s weird, because my parents aren’t bad at all. I love my family! I think they’re great!
But deep down I know something happened and I don’t know what did, since I don’t remember. But something makes me have that reaction – I see parents praising their kids, or being proud of them, accepting them and I just totally break down, even though no concrete memories came up. Even though I’m on good terms with my parents.
Don’t know how to end this – but… thank you for reading, I needed to tell someone. On the chance anyone sees this – feel free to share your thoughts, I guess. I don’t have anyone to talk too
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Sending your child to conversion therapy is abuse and is not the sign of a loving family. The don’t love you, they just wanted you to be how they planned you to be.
I feel a similar way when I see families being kind and loving and supportive of one another. It makes no sense to me that a family can be good to each other, but it does happen.
I’m sorry you were abused. Nobody deserves that.
Conversion therapy is deeply, deeply traumatic and often terribly abusive. Mental, emotional, physical, even sexual abuse often occur.
Odds are that because these memories were suppressed, you experienced any amount of any of those things during your time in that place.
And you experienced it because your parents didn’t accept you as you were with open arms and loving hearts. It is entirely normal to be upset/jealous/hurt seeing other happy families because of that.