I apologize if this is a duplicate for you. It didn’t publish correctly the first time.
PLEASE READ: Pat shares some suicide-related statistics in his first response that didn’t sink in when we were speaking and that I found confusing when I went to relisten and edit the episode. I’ve sought some clarity, but he’s a busy guy and I’ve not yet received answers to my questions. Once I get those, I’ll update these show notes. I didn’t want to continue to delay publishing this Q&A.
If you haven’t yet, you can listen to the main interview with Patrick Ryan here. Below are the questions submitted by the SMP online learning community that Pat answers in this segment of our conversation.
Pat brings his unique perspective of 40 years of cult mediation to this session. The main take-away for me was each of us have a unique situation; a unique relationship with our child and a unique dynamic in our home that requires a nuanced approach.
Pat talks about "getting to neutral". Can we talk about how vocabulary might impact that?
Yes, this is about names and pronouns, but also about words like "man", "woman", "gender", "cis" and so on. It can be hard to have a conversation when you lack a common vocabulary and every word feels contentious.
Would adopting my child's vocabulary be helpful or unhelpful, keeping in mind that I have complicated feelings about this too?
When I was 14, I was a member of a particular youth group. At the time, I was all in. I attended weekly meetings and activities, I had many friends, and I was happy there. I loved the feeling of belonging and certainty. But three years later, at the age of 17, I left the group. I had become disillusioned, partly because of the actions of some of the adult leaders, and partly because I could no longer accept all of the beliefs and teachings of the organization. In hindsight, the decision to leave set me on a path of exploration and growth that I am grateful for to this day.
I’ve thought about this experience many times over the past two years, since my young teen daughter announced a transgender identity. Since then, she has grown and matured and seems to be moving in a positive direction. But for now, she is still very attached to the trans identity and to what she imagines to be the LGBTQ “community”.
So here are my questions: In your experience, what role does disillusionment have in assisting young people to leave groups or abandon ideologies? What, if anything, can we as parents do to foster disillusionment in our trans-identified kids? How do we do that without triggering the backfire effect in our smart, independent, strong-willed (dare I say stubborn?) kids?
Have you worked with estranged families where contact has been lost between the parent and trans-identified children? Specifically families where the parents weren’t even given a chance. You say we’re in their heads, that they know what we think. Do you think sometimes kids cut off contact with families because it’s too threatening to this fragile worldview to engage with a parent they know will not support the “born in the wrong body” unfalsifiable narrative?
Does Pat have any advice for people who have recently left "groups" and for their loved ones? It seems to me that people who have recently left groups are at a higher risk of getting into another group as they try to fill the void. How do we work toward freedom rather than either apathy (caused by the loss of meaning associated with leaving) or getting pulled in somewhere else?
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