[M22] I’ve attempted to remain no-contact with my abusive and narcissistic mom for a year now. I’ve had the time to define key components to my trauma. When you’re raised by a narcissistic parent who was abusive you never had the opportunity to develop a sense of self growing up. So, you have a trauma personality covering what your actual personality is. You may recognize that you’re strong and resilient and adaptable for what you’ve gone through, but it’s gonna take a while to truly feel and live in those truths because you have to program those beliefs in place of your old limiting beliefs.

That’s where positive self-affirmations come into play. I’ve done them on and off, but I still can’t help but feel that societally-programmed shame for partaking in a “feminine” activity. Of course, my perspective is objective, but it seems like growing up you see women tell young girls “they are this” and “they are that” and are encouraged to repeat it to themselves by others. it looks so easy for most women to receive external validation and being able to keep their internal validation. It’s like when I guy says something like “I am a man” you’ll have 20 people to their left and 50 people at their right, both men and women, all charging towards them to beat down that self-validation and give them every reason possible for why they’re not a man.

It’s like society is saying women are the only gender allowed to feel shame and accept their insecurities because they’re supporting positive affirmations to women, but men don’t get to use the transformative power of positive affirmations for some reason. Men have to hear their insecurities be triggered online in the form of self-improvement videos from bulky men screaming at the camera with veins in their neck and that’s somehow supposed to make them become better? Maybe I’m looking in the wrong places, but I just don’t see men encouraging other men to use positive affirmations the same way I do women. It doesn’t help that when I’ve searched for trauma therapists, there are no men but only women listed and they’re qualified to talk about men’s issues on top that. How are there only women qualified to talk about men’s issues aside from other men?