When I was in my early teens, the combination of being trans without knowing, puberty, religion, and my family dynamic led me to develop what I now recognize as a dismissive attachment style in my adult relationships. I was taught that the feelings that I was experiencing were to be disregarded, and that the changes my body was going through were repulsive, and so I felt a constant intense shame. Expressing my feelings to my family usually led to mockery instead of validation, so I looked for ways to protect myself. The method I settled on was to conceal, to hide everything inside of me to the best degree that I could.
This manifested in different ways. I tried to be sneaky about things that I was curious about, like my confusion around what puberty was doing to me. I disappeared on library trips to look at anatomy books in secret. I covered the crack of my bedroom door so that no one could see my light on late at night, and read about sexual experiences online. I became master of the “minimize” shortcut, which is a bit of a metaphor in and of itself. Something seemed wrong to me about my experience of my body and my desires, but the only category I had to put those feelings in was that of my “sinful nature,” so that translated to concealment of my activities and deep religious guilt.
My dismissive attachment also manifested as a chilling effect in my self expression. I experienced paralyzing doubt because of the fear I had of mockery from my family, and so visual art and writing became an exercise in second-guessing. Showing vulnerability meant being told that my feelings were invalid or childish, or that because I was “gifted” that the alienation I was experiencing could not be relieved by anyone or anything around me until I was older and lived elsewhere. I suspected that I was a faker about something too (spoiler: not a boy), and so in my self-doubt I dismissed my need to access my emotions through art. I learned how to be funny in benign ways, through wordplay, juxtaposition and puns. I chose safe subjects for my image-making and received praise for it.
If I stayed in my room reading my books (usually horribly sexist science fiction from the 1970s) or lived inside of my computer (playing video games, learning to code, not feeling my body), I was “the good kid” that didn’t cause any trouble, and nobody bothered to look any deeper. I could feel self-contained and secure inside of my box. I still dream about living in that room sometimes. I recently dreamed that I was naked in there and could only find boy clothes to wear.
What developing these habits has led to in my adult life is a struggle to trust and be vulnerable with others in the ways that I need. I find myself trying to anticipate what other people will do in order to protect myself, and I have a tendency to withdraw or shut down instead of acknowledging my emotions. I can be excessively judgmental towards others because of the degree of criticism I’ve become accustomed to from the inner voice I cultivated. This also displays as a deep fear of rejection, that if I do anything slightly wrong at all and misread someone’s unvoiced intentions that my mistake will lead to humiliation.
A confluence of personal interactions and learning has recently brought this dismissive attachment style into light for me, and now that I understand myself better I’m realizing two things. First, I need to notice and communicate my own needs. By downplaying my needs like I’m still a helpless teenager, I’m setting myself up to be resentful when they aren’t met. Second, I need to trust the people around me to lovingly communicate their needs too, rather than try and get ahead of them. I’m not a mind reader, and trying to anticipate what other people need from me has increasingly become a road to hurt feelings.
Writing this blog continues to be an enormous exercise in vulnerability for me, but there’s long-form vulnerability like this, and short-form in daily interactions with others. Transition has given me a way back to the emotions that I repressed in myself to survive, but it hasn’t dismantled all of my defense mechanisms and trauma responses. I still need to name them and determine what’s useful and what gets discarded so that I can reintegrate all of the parts of myself again. I feel like this is the only way that I can grow my compassion for myself and others so that I can have meaningful and authentic relationships.