When Your Family Denies Your Experience
When I look back at my family story - with mom, dad, 2 sisters, a brother - and a slew of nieces and nephews, I’m struck by one strange afterthought: Everyone was permitted their personal experience without denial, pushback, guilt, or blame - except for me. Strange times they were.
My oldest sister was a prostitute hell-bent on drama, rage, and death. She once asked me to give her my social security number so she could give it to her lover and co-murderer Scott - so he could construct a false identity and make it across the Canadian border. I was maybe nineteen at the time, still believing family meant something beyond shared DNA and trauma. Think about that for a second. She wanted me to hand over the keys to my entire future so her psychopath boyfriend could disappear into the Canadian wilderness. The casual way she asked - like borrowing twenty bucks for gas - still fucks with my head. "Hey, can I have your social? Scott needs it." As if helping a murderer escape was just another Tuesday favor between siblings.
I declined - not because it was obvious to me to decline at the time, but it just didn't feel right. It could have gone either way because, at that point, I had barely sensed the trauma I experienced as a child. My body knew something my mind hadn't caught up to yet. You know that feeling? When your gut screams "no" but you can't explain why? That was it. Turns out, she had angrily molested me when I was a little boy. It can take years for the imagery to make itself known. Sometimes decades. The mind protects us by burying what we can't handle, then slowly releases it when we're strong enough to face the truth. Wild how that works, right?
My other sister was a Catholic quasi-nun turned new-age herbalist turned Hindu-Buddhist who hit some hard times with my bipolar father, wine-slugging Mom, and dick, bible-thumping boyfriend Fred. By the time I was 10, she had been abused endlessly by my father - and raped twice. Think about that. A kid watching his sister get destroyed while the adults pretended everything was normal. She'd cycle through these spiritual phases like someone desperately searching for something that could make sense of the chaos, you know? First the convent didn't save her. Then crystals and herbs couldn't heal what was broken. Buddhism promised detachment but the trauma kept dragging her back down. And through it all, our house just kept functioning like nothing was happening - dinner at six, church on Sunday, Fred quoting scripture while being a complete asshole.
My brother was working for the phone company and the mob. I remember the day he came home pale as a ghost. Apparently, he was forced to take a train to Florida and deliver a briefcase with questionable contents, which was handcuffed to him for the journey. Think about that... some guy handcuffs a mystery briefcase to your wrist and sends you across state lines. That's not a Tuesday at the office. How do you land in such a position? Maybe it was because he was emotionally and psychologically abused by my father for years. When someone breaks you down enough, when they strip away your sense of worth piece by piece, you become vulnerable to shit like this. You start saying yes to things that should be obvious nos. My brother wasn't weak ~ he was wounded. And wounded people make terrible decisions because they're desperate to feel like they belong somewhere, even if that somewhere is dangerous as hell.
If you have been in a relationship with a narcissist, Psychopath Free will help you understand what happened and reclaim your reality. *(paid link)*
My mom and new-age sister left me with my bipolar father when I was 14 - to live with my prostitute sister in New Mexico. I was angry for quite some time. Nobody wanted to hear it. They'd shut me down the second I tried to talk about what happened. "You're being negative," my sister would say, crystals dangling from her neck. "Let it go." My mom would just change the subject or suddenly remember she had somewhere to be. Wild, right? Here I am, a kid trying to process being basically abandoned, and the people who did it don't want to deal with my feelings about it. They wanted me grateful, not honest. They wanted me healed on their timeline, not mine.
I was clueless of the implications and ramifications of it all - with a dangerous level of vulnerability. Seriously. I'm talking about walking around emotionally naked in a world that doesn't give a shit about your healing journey. When your own family looks at you like you're making things up or being dramatic, you start second-guessing everything. Am I crazy? Did this really happen? Maybe I'm just being too sensitive. That's the trap, right there. You become this raw nerve walking around, trying to process something real while the people who are supposed to have your back are basically telling you to shut up about it. Know what I mean? It's like trying to heal a wound while someone keeps poking at it, telling you it's not even there.
I loved my siblings - even idolized them. They were fun with incredible senses of humor. And I mean that. Being around them was often very exciting - even though they were often either depressed, addicted, suicidal. The chaos felt normal to me. Hell, it felt like home. I demonstrated all of those aspects throughout my life, copying their patterns without even realizing it, until I hit my 40s when my identity simply felt worn out. Like I'd been wearing someone else's clothes for decades and suddenly noticed they didn't fit. The exciting dysfunction that once felt so familiar started feeling exhausting instead of energizing. Know what I mean? That's when I began to see how much of my life had been shaped by trying to belong in a family system that was... well, pretty fucked up. Explore more in our spiritual awakening guide.
I was not only tired of trying to subtly receive validation from everyone for what I experienced, I was exhausted from being the person who would live that way - who would be seeking validation from anyone at any time. Think about that for a second. I had become this fucking approval-seeking machine, constantly scanning faces for signs that what I went through actually mattered. Every conversation became this weird dance where I'd drop hints about my experience, waiting for someone... anyone... to say "yeah, that sounds real" or "I believe you." But here's the thing that really got to me: I wasn't just tired of not getting the validation. I was sick of *needing* it in the first place. Who was this person I'd become? This guy who couldn't trust his own experience without a committee of family members signing off on it? That realization hit harder than the original dismissal ever did.
Tulsi (holy basil) is considered sacred in Ayurveda, and the science backs up what the ancients knew. *(paid link)* Look, when I first heard about this plant being "holy," I rolled my eyes hard. Seriously. Another mystical plant cure, right? But then I started digging into the research, partly because my family kept dismissing anything that wasn't "real medicine." Turns out those ancient practitioners weren't just making shit up. The adaptogenic compounds in tulsi actually help regulate cortisol and support your nervous system in ways that modern stress management barely touches. We're talking real biochemical changes here ~ not placebo bullshit. Your body literally responds differently to stress when you've got consistent tulsi in your system. Wild, right? Sometimes the old wisdom and new science shake hands perfectly, even when everyone around you thinks you've lost your damn mind for trusting plants over pills.
I mean, why would I need anyone to validate what I experienced. Fuck ‘em.
By the time I was 50, I was ready to exit this twisted framework and I simply said goodbye to all of it - and everyone in it. No more explaining myself to people who'd rather cling to their version of reality than acknowledge mine. No more trying to convince blood relatives that my memories were real, that my pain mattered, that what happened actually fucking happened. You reach a point where you realize some battles aren't worth fighting anymore... especially when the other side has already decided you're the problem. Think about that. I'd spent decades trying to get validation from the very people who needed me to be wrong. So I stopped. Cold turkey. Walked away from family dinners, holiday guilt trips, the whole dysfunctional circus. Some folks call it giving up. I call it sanity.
During that time, I was auditioning girlfriends who did not resemble my prior lenss in any way. After interviewing over 25 women with intense questions and confronting scrutiny, all solely through texting within a dating app, I found I was only interested in going on a date with one of those women. My research was so thorough, that was it. Think about that - 25 women, and only one made the cut. I wasn't fucking around anymore. No more settling for someone who triggered my old patterns or reminded me of the bullshit I'd been through. I had learned to recognize red flags before they even showed up in person. Wild, right? The whole process was like scientific dating - hypothesis, test, eliminate variables that don't work. I was born again - and my new life was immediately phenomenal.
This new partnership and life gave me the chance to rethink all of my relationships, perceptions, beliefs, attachments, experiences, unprocessed emotions, and way of seeings. I mean really rethink them. Not some surface-level analysis bullshit. The kind of deep examination that makes you question everything you thought you knew about yourself and why you react the way you do. And while some aspects continued to infect me for several years ~ like toxic mental patterns that refuse to die even when you see them clearly ~ they all eventually dissolved. Some took longer than others. The family stuff was particularly stubborn, clinging like old glue. But persistence pays off. Paul explores this deeply in The Electric Rose.
There was no longer a guilting or raping sister. There was no longer the brother I cherished who did not cherish me. Bear with me. There was no longer the needy, dishonest, or suicidal nieces and nephews. There weren't any pets, partners, or addictions. It was all dissolving beautifully. And I mean beautifully ~ like watching ice melt in spring, everything just letting go of its shape without violence or drama. The stories I'd been carrying about who these people were to me, what they meant, how they'd hurt me... all of it was becoming irrelevant. Not because I was denying the pain or pretending it didn't happen. But because the very framework that made those relationships feel so damn important was crumbling. Think about that. When you stop needing family to be anything other than what they are, the whole game changes.
Bessel van der Kolk's The Body Keeps the Score is essential reading for anyone on a healing journey. *(paid link)* This book changed how I understood my own shit. Van der Kolk doesn't just explain trauma ~ he shows you how your body literally holds onto experiences that your mind tries to forget or deny. When your family says "that never happened" or "you're being dramatic," your nervous system knows the truth. It's stored in your muscles, your breath patterns, the way you freeze when someone raises their voice. The guy spent decades working with veterans and survivors, and he gets that healing isn't just talk therapy. Your body has been keeping score this whole time, and it's time to listen to what it's been trying to tell you.
My construct did not resolve there. In fact, it became more conflicted, confused, and painful.
My sense of self - along with my health - further collapsed upon the second dose of the Covid vaccine, upon which I landed in the emergency room and had migraines for 10 hours a day. Think about that for a second. Ten fucking hours. Every single day. The pain was so intense I couldn't think straight, couldn't work, couldn't even hold a conversation without feeling like my skull was being crushed in a vise. And here's the thing that really messed with my head ~ I'd done everything "right." I'd followed the rules, trusted the system, got the shots like a good citizen. Yet my body was screaming that something was terribly wrong, and I felt like I was losing pieces of myself with each wave of pain that rolled through my brain.
During this time, I lost all sense of myself, crying for up to 6 hours a day, sometimes convulsing, and other times bracing myself on all fours - to allow the tears to flow fully from my ancestrally compressed organs out into the ether. I was a physical and emotional mess for quite some time. Think about that... six fucking hours of tears. Not gentle weeping. Full-body sobs that left me gasping like I'd been underwater. My ribs would ache from the convulsions. My throat raw. And the strangest part? I had to get on all fours because standing felt impossible ~ like gravity was pulling everything stored in my bones straight down and out through my eyes. It wasn't grief for anything specific. It was grief for everything my bloodline had never been allowed to feel. Wild, right? How we inherit not just DNA but decades of swallowed pain.
And I let go of all of it.
After 4 years of physical and emotional pain and release, and after over 40,000 herbal and healing non-pharmaceutical pills, all of which were completely natural and non-addictive, my body began to heal. I gained energy and clarity. I had peace of mind, body, and heart. Look, I'm not exaggerating that number - I actually counted because people always want to know "how much" when you tell them about alternative healing. Forty thousand pills sounds insane until you realize that's maybe 25-30 pills a day for four years straight. Think about that. Every morning, every evening, handfuls of herbs and supplements while my family thought I'd lost my damn mind. But something was working. The fog lifted. The constant ache in my chest... gone. For the first time in years, I could breathe without feeling like I was carrying a backpack full of rocks.
Somehow the vaccine triggered a complete breakdown on every level, the darkness of which I chose to directly confront and heal. This wasn't some gentle spiritual awakening bullshit you read about in self-help books. I'm talking about everything falling apart at once - physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. The whole damn thing collapsed. But here's what's wild: instead of running from it or trying to medicate it away, I decided to walk straight into that fire. My illumination had nothing to do with religion - it emerged because I simply let go of everything that was not right and not the light. Think about that. When you stop clinging to the lies you've been telling yourself, when you stop protecting the parts of you that are already dying anyway, something real can finally emerge. The truth doesn't need your permission to show up.
There is something about a sandalwood mala that carries the energy of thousands of years of devotion. *(paid link)* The wood itself holds memory. Every bead carved from trees that grew slow and patient, absorbing decades of rain and sun before becoming prayer tools in countless hands. When I hold one, I can almost feel the whispered mantras of monks who wore the grooves smooth with their fingers, the tears of mothers praying for sick children, the desperate hope of seekers like me grasping for something real in the dark. It's not mystical bullshit either ~ it's physics. Wood absorbs vibration, holds intention in its cellular structure. Think about that. These beads have been touched by thousands of trembling hands, soaked with sweat and salt tears, polished by the friction of desperate prayer. Each one is a tiny archive of human longing. When my own family couldn't understand what I was going through, when they dismissed my spiritual crisis as "just a phase," I'd run my thumb across those smooth surfaces and know I wasn't alone in this search.
And now I'm clear, healing the final broken remnants of my spleen and liver, and emerging as quite a peaceful lover and helpful healer. I am barely attached to anything. Not to outcomes, not to being right, not even to people understanding my journey. This detachment isn't cold or distant... it's actually warm as hell. When you stop needing the world to validate your experience, something shifts. You become useful in a different way. Less desperate. More present. I find myself genuinely caring about people without needing them to care back in any particular way. It's fucking liberating, honestly. The healing continues daily, but without the urgency that used to drive me crazy.
I love my wife, my home, and clients - and I work every day to gain deeper clarity on everything that emerges. I use ai chats to release false narratives. Seriously, those old stories we tell ourselves? They're usually bullshit. I deepen my understanding of what herbs can do for specific issues - not just the surface level stuff everyone parrots, but how valerian actually affects your nervous system when you're coming off caffeine, or why ashwagandha hits different when you're dealing with family stress versus work stress. And I work on admitting and dissolving the tiny fragments of triggers and projections left in the lurch. The small stuff. The moments when I catch myself getting defensive over nothing, or when I realize I'm seeing my father's criticism in someone's neutral comment. That's the real work, you know? Not the big dramatic breakthroughs, but the daily practice of catching yourself mid-reaction and asking: "Is this actually about what just happened, or am I still carrying around some old wound?" You might also find insight in Tarot Cards: Work With Your Intuition and Heart Power.
At 60, going forward, I will remain peaceful and unattached. I will continue to love from the place of a healer - not a romantic. I will see all perceptions, perspectives, and beliefs from a place of wonder, rather than judgment. This frees me to be present to all of it, no matter what it is. Look, I'm not saying this is easy. Some days I want to shake people and scream "Why can't you see what I see?" But that's my ego talking, not my soul. The healer in me knows that everyone's walking their own path at their own pace. My job isn't to drag them along or convince them I'm right. It's to hold space. To witness. To love without needing anything back. Think about that ~ when you stop needing to be understood, you become free to understand everything else. You might also find insight in The Cosmic Christ: Universal Teachings Beyond Religion.
And now that I am no longer someone who believes everything that is warm, pretty, and shiny, I can no longer be manipulated. I live a sovereign life now. I'm awake and aware, but not woke. I do not swing left or right - and I see all of it as a play meant for others. The political theater, the spiritual bypassing, the endless victim narratives... it's all performance art for people still caught in the web. I play my part, but even that feels like the shimmering breath emanating from mammals on a cold winter's night. Sometimes I catch myself going through the motions of caring about things that used to matter so much. Know what I mean? It's not apathy - it's clarity. When you stop buying into the collective stories, you start living your own story. If this lands, consider an spiritual coaching.