Episode 11: The "good childhood" myth

You checked all the boxes. 

Not abused. Not neglected. 

Parents loved you. 

Good childhood: CHECK✅

So why do you still feel like this?

In this episode of Breaking the Cycle we talk about why the good childhood checklist is completely wrong, and what Dr. Gabor Maté says a genuinely healthy childhood actually requires. Because you don’t need a bad childhood to have wounds worth healing. You just need to have been human. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome back to Breaking the Cycle, the podcast about unpacking your roots and rewriting your story. I'm Vivian, your host, and I'm so glad you're here. Today we are talking about something that is going to give you permission you didn't even know you needed. We are talking about a concept or a theory called the good childhood myth. This is a theory from Gabor Mate, who is a world-renowned trauma expert physician. He is my biggest mentor. And this myth has meant so much to me because a lot of the people I interact with, I talk to, they say they had a quote-unquote good childhood. They had a roof over their head. They had parents that loved them. They had the things that they needed. They weren't physically abused. They weren't sexually abused. But they still are in conflicts in their life. They're having anxiety. Maybe they're bringing in emotionally distant partners, maybe even emotionally abusive partners, and they're not sure what is going on. So we're going to dive deep into this because most people decide whether they had a good childhood based on very specific checklists. They say, was I physically abused? No, check. Was I sexually abused? No, check. Was I neglected or left alone? No. Check. Did I have food, shelter, clothing? Yes, I did. Did I have parents that love me? Yes. Good childhood, case closed, move on. And then the same person, as I mentioned, that takes all of those boxes, they still find themselves as an adult with anxiety they can't explain. Depression that has no clear source. A pattern of people pleasing that exhausts them. Relationships that keep falling apart in the same way. A disconnection from themselves that they cannot name. Disconnection from their emotions, they can't really explain. And then the confusion that creates is real because this is something that they're like, okay, well, I had this quote unquote good childhood. So I'm not really sure why I am the way that I am. They say to themselves, oh, I had a quote-unquote good childhood. I had all those things that I mentioned, I didn't have the things that also, like I mentioned, so they they almost defend themselves and they belittle what actually happened to them. Because just because you weren't experienced or exposed to certain things doesn't necessarily mean you had a good childhood and then you could just dismiss it as that. Because if nothing bad happened, then why do I feel like this? It's this internal battle that you're dealing with. So this is what Gabor Mate would say to that. And as I mentioned, he's such a big mentor to me. He spent decades working with people struggling with addiction, chronic illness, and trauma. And what he found over and over again was that the root of most adult suffering was not a character flaw or a chemical imbalance. It was unexamined childhood. A childhood where the authentic self was not welcomed, where emotional safety was conditional, where the child learned very early to suppress who they actually were in order to stay connected to the people they needed the most. One of the things that Mate is most clear about is that trauma is not what happened to you. Trauma is what happens inside of you as a result of what happened to you. It is the disconnection from the self that occurs when the environment cannot hold who you actually are. And that is the definition that the checklist is completely saying it's wrong. So, in other words, as I said, trauma is not what happened to us, it's what happens inside of us as a response to what happens to us. It's that disconnection from our authenticity. So even if your parents were physically around, but they weren't emotionally attuned to you. So you had to shift and change yourself in order to get their attention. Maybe you had to be a good girl or a good boy in order for them to validate you, good grades, all the things. So you became and you adjusted to appease your parents so then they could give you that attention. So you disconnected from yourself. And again, just because your parents were physically around does not mean that they were emotionally attuned to you. And then we can get even deeper with parents who possibly cheated on their dad. The mom cheated on the dad with somebody else, the dad cheated on the mom with somebody else. There also could have been things like drinking. Uh, parents left for a really long time. And the child doesn't really look at this as something that interfered with their childhood. Because, again, they say I had a roof over my head, I had food to eat, I had the things that I quote unquote needed. I didn't have a bad childhood. I wasn't sexually abused. Okay, check, move on. A healthy childhood is not just the absence of neglect or abuse. That is the ground here, the floor, the base of what we're looking at. Because that is the bare minimum. What a genuinely healthy childhood actually requires is something much more specific and much more rare than most of us realize. It requires attunement. A parent who would not just see you, but feel you, who would sit with your emotions without shutting them down, fixing them, or making you feel like your feelings were a burden, who responded to you like a real person, not just about your behavior, not just about your achievements, not just about the version of you that was easy and agreeable and no trouble at all. It requires emotional safety. So, in other words, not when, not just when you're, again, quote unquote well-behaved or getting good grades or having some type of achievement, would your parents recognize you and give you attention? They're giving you attention all the time, whether you're having a temper tantrum and they're not telling you to calm down or get punished or um, why are you crying? They're not, they're not making you feel bad about the way that you're feeling. They're just seeing you and allowing you to have whatever expression that you're having. That is emotional attunement. That felt sense of being with that parent and them holding you, not just is the knowledge, but that felt sense that you could bring all of yourself into the room and be held. Your fear, your anger, your sadness, your big feelings, your inconvenient truths, and that the people who loved you could hold you all of that without withdrawing, without punishing, without making you responsible for managing or reacting to their own emotions, that requires your authenticity, being welcomed, not just tolerated, welcomed. The real you, not the edited version of you, not the version of you that learned which parts were acceptable and which parts needed to disappear. Most of us did not get all of that, not because our parents were monsters or aggressive or didn't love us, but because they were humans carrying their own unexamined wounds, their own inherited patterns, their own childhoods that nobody ever looked at either. And that absence of attunement, even in a home full of love, is its own wound, a quiet one, a subtle one, one that doesn't make the checklist at all, but one that leaves a mark just the same. Let me be specific, because I think this is where people finally begin to recognize themselves. Maybe mom was there physically, but she was always somewhere else emotionally. You could be in the same room and feel completely alone. Maybe dad worked hard, provided everything that you guys needed, loved you in his own way, but you never really knew him. And more importantly, he never really knew you. Maybe love in the house felt conditional on your grades, on your behavior, on how easy you were to be around, or whether you were having the right feelings in the right way and at the right time. Maybe certain emotions were simply not welcome. Anger was disrespectful, sadness was weakness, fear was something that you had to push through. And so you learned to manage your inner life before it had a chance to surface, to edit yourself, to perform fine, to whatever version that kept you connected to your parents. None of that is a good childhood. It's a functional one, but functional and healthy are not the same. And the gap between the two, that is where the anxiety lives. That is where the depression lives. That is where the people pleasing and the addiction and the relationships that keep repeating the same painful pattern all come from. Not from nothing, but from something. Something real. And that something that you experience deserves to be looked at, acknowledged, and recognized in this very moment. Here is why this matters so much. When you hold on to the good childhood myth and just closing the door on it as a way of saying, I don't have the right to look at this. Nothing bad ever happened to me. People had it worse. You're not being humble. You are abandoning yourself again and again and again in the same way you learn to abandon yourself as a child, the same way that you became what other people needed you to be in order to be acceptable, agreeable, loved, valued, looked at, adored. Because what that story really says is my pain is not legitimate. My experience does not count. I do not have permission to feel this. Giving yourself permission is not about blaming your parents. And it's also not about making yourself a victim. It is the most honest and the most courageous thing you can do for yourself. Because when you do this, you're going to acknowledge that you have been hiding a lot of parts of yourself that need compassion, curiosity, and be held in a way that has not been held before. This is what reparenting is all about. When you get to examine these parts of yourself, you're going to acknowledge that they're going to be holding a lot of sadness. Before I let you go, one question I want you to sit with this week. What has this podcast brought up for you? And I'm also going to say a follow-up on that because again, this is not about blaming your parents, because when you do that, you can feel this is a whole nother topic here. You can feel guilt around it because you acknowledge that your parents did the best that they could. But when you say that and you feel that, you're dismissing and denying your own lived experience. And again, if you've been denied and dismissed your your whole lived experience your whole life, this is a normal part of your system to do that. So we're gonna we're gonna push that aside, and I'm gonna give you a lot of grace, a lot of compassion today to just examine what it feels like underneath that. Not blaming your parents, but what does your personal lived experience as a child feel like? Was there pain there that you had to shape shift yourself in order to feel acceptable, loved? You became agreeable, you became the high achiever, you became all of these things, and you most probably still are those things in the hopes that you're going to get that love, that validation, that recognition. And what you don't realize is it's not just these, it's not just your parents that you're seeking that attention from now. Now it becomes all the relationships that you interact with, your partner, your work, you become the go-to person at work, you become the people pleaser in the family dynamics. All these are still, they are the versions of you that came about in that early family dynamic. And if you're just gonna say, oh, well, I had a quote unquote good childhood, you're really not examining your childhood the way that you should. So we're gonna wrap up and just say, again, I'm lifting the veil on that term. I had a good childhood. I don't know why I'm quote unquote, I don't know why I'm fucked up. Um, but we're lifting the veil on that. I'm giving you grace, I'm giving you permission to look what's underneath that. I'm gonna end it with that. If this episode resonated with you, if it hit places and spaces that made you question, think, ponder, even if it made you anxious, which it might have maybe maybe even made you uncomfortable, that's totally normal. Um giving you permission to just sit with it and get curious about it. If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love for you to leave me a five star review. And again, I thank you so much for being here, for listening to this episode. It means so much to me. And I will see you next time on the next episode.