Unknown Number: Trauma is Not an Excuse
If you’re reading this and you haven’t watched Unknown Number on Netflix, exit this screen, drop everything you’re doing, and watch this wild 90-minute documentary before reading further.
Okay, if you’re reading here, I’m assuming you know that the girl’s mom was the catfish. And that is wild. Didn’t see it coming at all. The thing that really got to me, though, was the mom’s explanation - some may say “excuse” - for why she did what she did. Namely, that as her daughter reached adolescence, her own childhood trauma resurfaced, which led to her catfishing her own daughter, her daughter’s boyfriend, and even his cousin and a subsequent girlfriend’s mom. Catfishing doesn’t even feel like a strong enough word for what she did, as she made sexually explicit comments to minors and told her own daughter to kill herself.
As a trauma therapist, I will be the first to acknowledge that for many parents who experienced trauma during their own childhoods, watching their children hit ages that were traumatic for them can be incredibly difficult. They may become flooded with traumatic memories, have a hard time differentiating between their child and younger versions of themselves, experience an increase in anxiety and protectiveness over their child, and notice an increase in distrust of others. Without therapy, this can create issues in the parent-child relationship and is overall very distressing. I have worked with many parents to disentangle their past trauma from their present day experiences as a parent, and the present day experiences of their children.
Unfortunately, there are so many parents out there who experienced childhood trauma and there are some that perpetuate cycles that leave their children traumatized too. What stood out to me about this mom was that it felt like she was using her trauma as an excuse for what she did, rather than truly taking accountability for the harm caused. Yes, she cried and stated that she wants to make repairs in order to have a relationship with her daughter again. But she then justifies her behavior by saying that “no one is perfect” and “everyone breaks the law sometimes” - as if her trauma means she’s not perfect and she simply broke the law because of it. By relying on the narrative that her own childhood trauma resurfacing impeded on her judgment, she is not asserting any agency over the years of texts she sent to people, which caused significant distress, including suicidal thoughts by her daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend.
One of the elements of trauma therapy that can be incredibly difficult is figuring out how trauma impacts behaviors while also acknowledging that it does not excuse them. Sometimes the clients I work with are the children of trauma survivors, so our work is about noticing compassion for their parents - who were likely doing the best they could given the circumstances - while also acknowledging the pain and dysfunction that had lasting effects. Sometimes, my work is with the parents who experienced trauma, who need to develop compassion for their younger selves for what happened to them while actively working on changing behaviors and responses to their children, spouses or loved ones in order to stop the cycles perpetuated on them by their own families of origin. This is incredibly hard, painful work, and obviously I am not the therapist of the mom in this documentary, so I have no idea how she has been processing everything that has happened to her, but she seems more caught up in her own narrative rather than processing the guilt needed to take full accountability for what she did.
My only hope is that people watch the documentary and walk away feeling shocked and confused, instead of feeling like trauma excuses bad behavior. We can empathize with her past and feel disgusted with her present actions. Hopefully she gets the help she needs in order to truly put her past behind her.
