This story really began when I was a little boy, barely able to walk. I enjoyed my early childhood years with two other siblings, and yet I often wondered what it was about my childhood that left me so traumatized as an adult. In retrospect, there are elements of my childhood that are seemingly benign, but which had lasting consequences for my physical and wellbeing as an adulthood.
As a helpless toddler with no understanding on how to make myself a happy human being, I was at the mercy of the choices my parents and other adults made for me, and on my behalf. Unfortunately for me and my brothers, my parents made many poor parental decision. The first one was giving birth to me and my brothers so close together in time. I distinctly remember feeling fits of rage and jealousy over my brothers, especially my little brother, for seemingly no reason. I always wanted what they wanted, I detested the things they did, and my blood boiled at their unwillingness to comply to every one of my demands while we played together. Until I took the time to explore these emotions and the memories that remain in my mind many years after-the-fact, I didn’t think to question how rage and anger came to be the first experience of my brothers. Now I see that I was competing for parental attention. In a village setting where most adult members of the community may have had shared responsibility for taking care of all toddlers, the strategy of popping out kids year after year may have worked. However, our family wasn't a village. We were individual family units where the adults had to disappear for most of the day because they had to work. Despite our family’s efforts to meet up with extended family for birthday parties or for the many yearly traditions, it still wasn’t enough to shield me or my brothers from trauma that was caused by this seemingly ordinary lifestyle
Much like the rest of the working world, and as such was the culture during that time, my parents were workaholics, often departing from home before I even woke up, and not coming home until my brothers and I were asleep. I remember spending many evenings with my brothers wondering around the house asking, “Where is mom and dad?” I’d go up to the cleaning lady, who was also our babysitter and I’d ask, “When will mom and dad be home?” To which they replied, “They’ll be home from work quicker if you behave yourself.” Of course, that was a total lie. Thirty-years later, I’ve had to process deeply repressed feelings of betrayal from the many seemingly benign lies which adults have given me over my upbringing in their attempts to get me to behave.
Eventually I started getting psychosomatic symptoms due to my parent’s perpetual absence. For me it was irritable bowel syndrome, intense pain in the stomach, and an inability to keep food down. When I asked my mom to recount those dreadful moments during my youth which lasted weeks, she said that she took me to many different doctors, all of which could not pinpoint the source of my discomforts. In desperate attempts, my mom took me to an indigenous elder that had knowledge of plant medicine. I can only remember the distinct smell of an oily herb which a mysterious wrinkly old lady rubbed on my belly as I sat on her leg. My mom said that she saw the elder go into her backyard to then return with a bunch of leaves in her hand. She was told to make tea out of it, and she made me drink this tea every two hours for the next few weeks. I don’t know whether it was the tea that cured me, or whether it was that my mom finally decided to stay home for a few days to make sure I was getting better.
At eight years old, my parents made the decision to migrate our family from Paraguay to Canada. I no longer had the loving resource of a large family community filled with many cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents. That was replaced by strangers, in whom I couldn’t communicate with during the first few years as my English proficiency was limited. Every two years for the next few years, they would move us around because they couldn’t make up their minds in terms of what sort of home they wanted to live in. I’ve gotten good at making new friends, but never good at maintaining long-term friendships until recently in my thirties.
I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen my parents share affection with each other. The other ninety-nine percent of their interaction was back-and-forth arguing regarding practically all matters. It was their default mode of communication. When I entered into a relationship with someone for the first time, my world completely changed. I was a dumbstruck by how my parents just couldn’t seem to get along despite being married for long. One would think they would have figured out how to resolve each other’s many relationship conflicts over time, but the fact is that they were so busy trying to stay alive (earning money) and taking care of us, that they had little energy devoted for their interpersonal problems. The reason for staying together? It was so that my siblings and I could remain within a secure household, financially speaking. Never mind our emotional wellbeing. They were not emotionally mature to see that staying together was doing us kids more damage than harm.
This book is a personal account of “going back in time” so to speak, to all of those moments where adults have lied to me, scolded me, and made a decisions for me that went against my wellbeing. There are hundreds of these moments during my upbringing which seem benign, corrective and appropriate to my parents and other adults from their perspective, but that from my child-like perspective, were actually damaging. For lack of a better term, I am “parenting” myself back to wellbeing. However, I dislike the use of the word parenting because parenting implies that there is a person, or rules or resources outside of me, from which I can make informed decisions for my own good. This parenting is a different kind of parenting, one where choices are not gathered from introjected beliefs about how we should be behaving or about the things that are good for us. Rather, its about attuning to my own body, repeatedly and persistently, and gathering empirical data from direct experience as a main resource for knowing what’s good for me and what’s not. If anything, its a kind of “Fuck You” to society, because it is more about advocating for my younger self, and about nourishing myself during those times in which I needed an adult to be there for me, and to validate my experience, rather having an adult which told me to pipe down because of their own fears of what others might say, or because they had other things to do in their adult world.
As damaging as my parents were to me and my brothers and the subsequent rage and hurt I’ve had to work through, I can simultaneously, and perhaps paradoxically, also acknowledge an innocence in their choices. After all, they’ve had the same sort of upbringing from their own parent’s and they’ve been carrying traumas of their own. Its unfortunate for me and brothers that they’ve chosen not to work through their own traumas before having us. However, I’m not here to berate my parents for the choices they’ve made. Its more about giving my little younger self a hug, and constantly reassure them that everything is going to be alright. When I took the time to explore my past, I saw a constant need to acknowledge my truth, and my lived experience. Not my parent’s truth, and what they thought was right for me. But my own truth. Doing so was, in many ways, the foundation for Emotional Self-Regulation. Its the reason I exposed my life into these words in hopes the reader can deeply understand what Emotional Self-regulation is all about.
Emotional Self-regulation is another term that neatly describes all of this work that this book carries you through. Its really a great unlearning. Its about seizing all introjected habits and beliefs which get us to do things that dysregulate us on a regular basis. Once self-loathing and self-bullying gets eradicated, more often than not, that’s all that needed, and that’s because we are naturally capable of loving and caring for one another and our selves. Love is hardwired into our DNA. Emotional self-regulation is actually the autonomous capacity to make ourselves happy. Its not like we aught to think about it much at all.
When all is said and done, I cannot be angry at parents anymore. Throughout the book, I explore the transition between being resentful at my parents, to being forgiving, and then to simply letting go of the need for them to be any particular way. I can never emphasize enough just how freeing it is to let everyone be just they way they are. It doesn’t matter what emotion, or how distant they are to me, or toxic or unfamiliar they may be. To let others be just the way the are, to let them feel negative emotions, even anger, or sadness, without any impulse to try to make them feel better, allows space for compassion to arise, from which then I can choose more loving actions. To see an innocence in everyone’s behavior fills my world with awe for that person. This cultivated attitude has allowed me to enjoy being with my parents in their remaining years. These attitudes are byproducts of being in a well regulated human body.
To my parents, I’d like to say thanks for trying your best. I’m filled with immense gratitude with how I was raised. You continue to inspire me even into your old age. This is also for my brother, who is a brand new husband and father of two. I pray for you and your family’s wellbeing, in hopes that you can show up better for your own kids and for the people around you. I’m very grateful for your wife, Stephanie, and for the family you have brought together and continue to nurture.
Lastly, to all my brothers and sisters, who may be finding yourself in a state of workaholism mild or intense. And to new or the soon to be new parents. This work is in, in my humble opinion, the most important work there is to be done. The world is a better place when you are the happiest, and your kids, most important of all, get to learn from your ability to maintain a sense of wellbeing.
Please enjoy yourselves.
-Guillermo