The Paradox of Safety

The TRANSformation Blog posts every Wednesday. On the 5th Wednesday of every month, we have a guest writer. Lisa Tensmeyer Hansen is the clinical director and founder of Flourish Therapy, a behavioral health clinic located in Provo, Utah, which she founded to meet the needs of LGBTQ+ individuals and their families. Her posts provide a more clinical look at how families navigate gender issues within conservative faith communities.

When M’s mom first came to see me, her major distress was around recent changes in M’s life. M had emerged from a few weeks of being withdrawn and uncommunicative to announce that M wanted to dress differently and to choose a new name. Because this was more communication than M had offered in weeks, mom wanted to know the best way to respond to this announcement. She set up an appointment with me.

M's father and grandparents were also reacting to the situation as it unfolded, and each had an opinion about the best way to respond. Mom shared that M had withdrawn again, mostly refusing all attempts to engage in questions or conversation about this issue.

As I had a chance to get to know several family members and their reactions to M’s situation, their different assumptions about what to do with M became clear. One adult in the family thought M was trying to get attention and the best way to respond would be to ignore it and focus on helping M improve behavior in the home. Another thought that M’s performance in school was the major issue and didn’t want anything to change M’s experience at school. Another adult in M’s life believed the situation was likely the result of association with some other kids who were apparently not good influences. Their recommendation was for M to stop communicating (virtually and in person) with these friends. As I heard from these adults in M’s life, it became clearer to me that this family was dealing with a safety misunderstanding, a safety paradox.

Every adult member of the family saw themselves as offering M a path to a safe and happy life. M experienced each of these adult reactions as making life less safe. While the adults were trying to encourage paths of greater safety for M, the irony was that M felt less and less safe with the adults in their life.

This is a paradox that all parents experience to some extent. The more we work to guide our children into paths of safety, the more frustrated they may feel at the restrictions. Curfews, rules around parties, and which friends and acquaintances are acceptable to ride with, for example, may strike young people as issues to argue and express frustration about, even though for parents, safety is the primary concern.

Identity Safety

After meeting with M, I saw M’s safety paradox from a new angle. The issue was one of identity. When the issue is one of identity, safety is experienced differently. Feeling unseen or invisible in identity can create a fundamental feeling of being unsafe, which then influences almost everything else in the young person’s life.

By trying to create more safety for our young people, we sometimes create less.

How people react to a young person’s “coming out” as a different identity than the one the family has experienced may increase the weight of safety issues. Adults who hear the identity information and then offer advice about what kind of life the young person should focus on living are engaging in behavior associated with poorer and less safe outcomes. Adults who hear the identity information and then communicate respect for what the young person is sharing, including a respect for supporting them in figuring things out are engaging in behavior associated with better outcomes.

In M’s situation, I encouraged family members to see M’s situation as expressing a fundamental issue of safety for M. They were supported in finding ways to show respect for M’s experience of safety within the family. Conversations with them focused on improving the safety in their relationship with M rather than focusing on M’s behaviors and the impact these would have on M’s future. By focusing on safety in the present relationship, the adults in M’s life were able to shift their conversations with M in ways that strengthened M in the family.

Safety around identity can be communicated in several ways. Key phrases/questions include: “What helps you feel more like yourself in our family? We may not get it right all the time, but we really want to support you in your best life.”

Young people are often more willing to tell us about other people they know who are (or are not) being supported in their identity. The stories they tell us often reveal their own safety concerns around identity issues. When we hear our young people tell us about someone else’s experience, it’s important to listen with the realization that we may be hearing a story about our own child’s feelings of safety.

For example, M told mom about a friend who wanted to run away because parents had grounded the friend from using a personal phone for several weeks. M’s mom was able to use this situation to explore M’s safety and identity issues rather than react to the situation as though it were primarily about the friend’s behavior. “Are you worried about your friend?” was a good opener. “What is it like for your friend, having the phone taken away?” “What is your friend most worried about?” These questions demonstrate interest and help M explore potential issues of safety.

Another example was when M told Dad that two of M’s friends were now a couple. Dad was able to use this moment to support M’s identity safety by asking “Are their families doing Ok with them?” demonstrating a concern for the friends’ safety issues, which reassured M that Dad cared about them too. Dad could have also asked something like, “Do they get along pretty well?” which would suggest a focus on issues other than raising any identity questions that might have otherwise come up first in dad’s mind.

Mom reported that she had difficulty using M’s requested name but that when she tried it once, M’s reaction was warmer and more connecting than mom had seen in months. Mom was encouraged to see this attempt on her part as creating greater identity safety for M.

As the family focused on understanding the dynamics of M’s experience in the home as primarily issues of identity safety, their helpful conversations increased. M became more resilient and more engaged in family conversations and activities and more open even with grandparents about M’s daily life.

Take-away: Identity safety is more fundamental than other kinds of safety within the family. By focusing first on identity safety, we can then create other kinds of safety for our children. By focusing on other kinds of safety before addressing identity safety, we create a fundamental lack of safety for our children.

The Paradox of Gender Categories

Categories make sense of our world. Toddlers point out a horse because it looks like other horses. Someone laughs when the child points out a cow and calls it a horse, and they tell the child about cows. The child recognizes a new category. A cow is not a horse.

Without categories, we have difficulty making sense of what we experience. We must categorize to learn. So, we categorize people. We recognize that old people and children are all people, but we learn quickly to categorize them as old, young, and in between. These are meaningful categories, even if they are not exact.

Identifying people as male or female is often a part of making sense of our early life experiences. We may make assumptions that enable us to identify people as boys, girls, and in between, and yet these are also not exact.

Relying on categories is helpful. . . until it isn’t. We are likely to leave important things out.

Almost everything that is a category is also related to something else that is transitional. As Wendy posted earlier in June, God created the day and the night, which we understand as categories, and yet the twilight and the dawn exist as transitions between them. The dry land and the water were created as separate categories, and yet marshlands and swamps are also essential ecosystems. Even though the Genesis scriptures tell us only about the binaries created, we get the message that God created everything that exists between those binaries and that these are also good.

Women and men exist, and so do transitional people. They are as much a part of the creation story as any other creation.

~ Lisa Tensmeyer Hansen