Complex Trauma - Part 2/8 - Shame Identity

[Music] what I want to look at tonight is to me one of the most painful sad results of complex trauma and I see it in every person I deal with that is experienced complex trauma and it is this complex trauma and I'll show how the complex trauma shapes how I see myself it shapes what I believe to be true about myself it shapes my self-identity and it is not a pleasant picture that gets shape and that picture that we develop that self identity picture begins to affect almost everything we do negatively and that's what I want to focus on tonight and I just warn you up front is that this might stir up some painful stuff and I do it just so that you begin to make connections in your mind as to what has happened in you and that you're able to be honest with yourself and then hopefully with others about what you're really dealing with in your life and how you see yourself so let me start with this how do we get a sense of who we are the common question that I hear addicts ask and people from complex trauma is I've never known Who I am and I've always wondered Who am I and and how does a child get a sense of identity so there's questions that every child asks on a subconscious level and if you think about it you've asked them to so number one we all come into the world asking do I have any value do i matter to anybody do I make a difference in anybody's life do I have anything to offer to people around me do I have value that is a huge question all of us have the second one that is just as big is a my lovable am i somebody that people would desire a relationship with am i somebody that is considered desirable massive questions in the heart of every child what then happens in our lives that gives us the answers to those questions so there's a couple things number one as much as we may not realize that we are affected by our culture in answering those questions so as we look at Hollywood and culture advertising what it is doing constantly is telling us here is what makes the person valuable here is what makes a person lovable and desirable and so every child growing up in our culture is getting this presentation from culture which says if you want to be lovable you need a perfect body if you want to be lovable you have to have certain characteristics about how you behave about your money about your position about your possession all of those things are subconsciously and overtly sent to our children and to all of us about what the standard is to be lovable and valuable but beyond that we then interpret how people treat me as answers to those questions so if people treat me a certain way I go I guess I have value or I guess I'm lovable and then we pay attention to what people say to us and what they say to us also answers those questions so those three things begin to shape our self-identity now introduce complex trauma and this has the most profound effect on what shapes a child's identity because what a child is got going on in their mind when they're being abused or neglected or their needs aren't being met or they're being abandoned is they're saying this must be my fault I must have done something or I must be not good enough that is causing this treatment to be happening to me let me take that a little bit further to help you kind of get in your mind what begins to happen in a child's mind at a subconscious level a child might say because my dad is always too busy at work that must mean I do not matter instead of saying dad's got a problem the child says it means I don't have value or I must not be lovable and if dad is always watching the TV when you want to talk or he kind of half listens while he works you begin to get the message to you I must be a bit of a burden to my dad I must have something about me that causes me to be a burden where dad really it's a chore for him to give me attention I must be a bit of a pain do you get this what's happening there you're starting to interpret dad's responses to you as being the truth about who you are and it is all negative you go beyond that and you say as you get into your teen years nobody is my friend right now I don't have a boyfriend or I don't have a girlfriend so I guess that proves nobody loves me which therefore proves that I'm not lovable and you begin to interpret that and then if you get bullied or laughed at or made fun of about stuff then you're always starting to get the message I'm really dumb I'm really a pain I am NOT a good person to be around I must be incompetent if people roll their eyes when you talk if people laugh at you because they heard you wet your bed or that you stutter you all take all of those messages in and say man I am NOT a good person and then when people respond to you when you fail and it might be where you do something bad but it might be that you're just a child you wipe out on your bike or you spill your milk and how do people respond to you when you fail if they're laughing at you if they're criticizing you if they're getting angry at you if they're calling you stupid you'll never learn you can't do anything right you're interpreting all of that and you're taking it in and saying that must be the truth and so the picture that slowly develops from thousands and thousands of responses and verbal messages is I am not good enough I am NOT a valuable person because nobody wants to take time for me I am NOT a lovable person I am NOT a desirable person I feel less than and inferior to others I feel like I'm a burden and a pain and that becomes your internal picture and my bit my guess is that almost everybody here that those were the messages that you got and what whether you are honest with yourself about it or not if you stop and think about it you know that feeling it's there you've lived with it we call that kind of in technical terminology shame and I'm not talking about all you should be ashamed of yourself shame is that core belief about my identity it's a core belief about Who I am in terms of value and being lovable and being worthwhile and shame is a negative belief that I'm not good enough and that I'm not lovable and that I am a burden and that core belief is what comes out of childhood trauma and that core belief what we're going to see begins to shape and affect everything you do how you cope how you relate to other people it is like this massive earthquake takes place and it just starts going out into all corners of your life now let me give you two things to think about in regards to this number one that core belief of shame is actually distortions you were given lies you were given stuff about you and how people treated you responded to you and what they said to you that isn't the truth about you but you believe the distortion so you need to understand that upfront but secondly I want you to understand how difficult and how deep this goes and how difficult it is to deal with I don't know if you've ever been into like the Red River Acts or Disney World where they have the house of mirrors with all the distorted mirrors and so let's say that you're 6 feet tall and you're very skinny okay and you walk into a house of mirrors and there's a mirror there that makes you look four feet tall and four feet wide okay and you look at that and you laugh and go wow that is amazing to be that way now just imagine this imagine you're 60 tall and skinny but you grow up in a home where there's only one mirror and that one mirror shows you to be 4 feet tall and 4 feet wide and that's the only near you're ever allowed to look at so every day when you wake up and throughout the day when you pass by that mirror what is reflected back to you is a kid who's four feet tall and 4 feet wide imagine that's every day what would happen when you got to be 18 and you moved away from home and you went into a home where there was an accurate mirror that showed you to be six feet tall and skinny you go there's something wrong with that mirror you wouldn't say wow that mirror I had grown up and screwed up you go no that mirror I had growing up was the truth that mirror there on that wall that says I'm six feet tall that's crazy you want to know what happens if people were to come to you if you've had this distorted mirror that gives you the message of shame that you're not good enough and somebody was to come to you and they were to say you are such a wonderful person what goes on in your head you go they're just saying that to be nice they don't really mean it well you just discounted it right or they go you go in your mind while they're saying that because they really don't know me if they knew me they wouldn't say that you see how the shame message is causing you to discount their thing or some of you would go wonder what they want they're working me that's why they're being nice here they've got a secret agenda and so you could not accept compliments from people why because your shame mirror said you do not deserve compliments you are not a good person you are not a lovable valuable person and so when somebody says that to you it's like that mirror that says you're six feet tall and skinny you go something's wrong with that mirror that's how big this issue is and that's how hard it is to deal with it so let's look at how we respond to shame after complex trauma creates the shame last week we said that with complex trauma the first priority is I never want to get hurt again the second priority that comes now with shame is I must hide Who I am because if other people see the real me which all these meet this these mirrors in my family have been giving to me if they see that person that's not lovable and not valuable they'll reject me and abandon me and they'll abused me as well so I have to hide and so priority two becomes hiding and you do a lot of different things in order to hide and and some you will do that I am NOT going to include on this list but let me give you some of the things that we do to hide that person that we are ashamed of and want nothing to do with first is we will go into isolation in isolation can be geographical and that is I'm not going to hang around people because if I hang around people they might see me and I can't risk that so I'm going to hide by being a turtle and I'm going to go away and not be around people then the second way of hiding is I'm going to hide behind walls and you might say I never hide because I'm a social person I love being around people and what I might would say to you if you have shame is you're probably hiding behind walls you're not going to let anybody get close you might be the life of the party you might talk to everybody and talk their leg off but nobody's getting close to you to see the real you and so for some people they use humor to do that that is a big thing and then the next thing that we do is that we wear masks we put on if we're with a certain group of people and they're all uppity up snooty types we act all uppity up snooty type if we're down with kind of people that are really rough and tumble then we're acting that way and we switch masse to fit in so that will get accepted but it's not the real us it's an act we get good at playing roles and some people actually become chameleons the chameleon is put it in a black environment it changes its colour to black put it in a green environment also it changes to green I will be whatever you want me to be just reject me and don't find out what I'm really like stop and think about kind of how that works what happens is it looks like it's working you're wearing these masks people seem to be accepting you people seem to like you but what's going on in your head well they're accepting me because I'm wearing a mask if they knew the real me they wouldn't accept me so what have you solved nothing but what have you actually done is not just that you haven't solved anything you've actually made it worse because now you've got more insecurity because these people like me what happened did they see through my mask oh my goodness now you're getting anxiety you're starting to panic and that is what begins to happen next way that people hide is to create an image and this is tied in to the mass but it's for some people is that you will create in public a perfect family and I don't know if you were raised in this but you could all be swearing at to each other and hitting each other but then it was time to go to church or it's time to go out for a social thing and everybody had to get their dress in their best clothes on and every hair had to get licked into place and you got warned to be on your best behavior and you walked out and you're smiling at each other and hugging each other and acting like this perfect family and it's wow this is really a good family the minute you're back inside the house and the doors are shut all that's gone now here's what happens with a lot of people and this is a big issue of you're in recovery if you're very smart and very talented you're able to create an image of success quite easily and so you could be saying I am going to be the most successful kid because I'm going to use my brains and my abilities and you get a good job you can afford a nice house and a nice car and you start to get all the symbols of success in place and you act the part your good acting like you got your act together and then addiction takes you out or relationships break down and you start to go through a divorce and so what is going on there when you are creating an image it's not the real you it's a phony facade like a house of cards and what you're doing is I can't change the inside because I have so much damage I am not lovable I'm not valuable whatever I do so I will try to fix my problem by the external world I can't fix my internal world I will try to fix my external world and many of you have done that and you have pulled it off for a lot of years and then crash there's a in your armor and a house of cards come falling down and that's where I say to people that that can be when addiction is a blessing because it exposes the truth that you can no longer avoid and you can no longer just rebuild your house of cards now I want to add something what happens to a lot of addicts and recovery is I go into a treatment center and what you're thinking is please give me information so that I can maintain my image better so I can be more successful at maintaining my image and what I say to them no I won't give you information to do a better job on keeping your image in back you got to get honest about the shame oh I can't go there that's a scary scary place because the fear is if I admit that all of this is a facade and that I what I really believe about myself I might get laughed at I might get rejected I can't take that risk just give me more information and then there's a second thing that happens if you've gone into recovery trying to maintain an image at some point you're going to figure out it takes a lot of energy to maintain an image it takes a lot of work and you get tired and you want to know what a relapse is for some people it's a holiday from maintaining an image it's a taking a break from trying to be perfect and so that is again something that is a big deal for a lot of people that if you do not look at it and get honest about the shame your chances of long ongoing recovery are small the other thing that we do to hide is try to be perfect which is some of that image but what people don't realize is that the shame is still controlling them and so others are saying wow you're such a wonderful person but inside you're still beating yourself up and you're still critical and judging yourself harshly and it's just you got all kinds of negative tapes that play in your head over and over again others try to hide by behind being a people pleaser I'll just make everybody happy and that seems to work for a while but what happens is if you please everybody that usually means you can't say no to anybody and then what happens when you don't say no to people they start using you and then you get a resentment and then you get you feel smothered and all of that and then that blows up in your face some people say why put all this effort into image and being perfect and people-pleasing just don't bother trying anything just give everybody the finger and say screw you see you later I don't care that's the perfect way die some say why try any new thing why try to new a change I'm only going to fail anyways so why bother trying and so they kind of present arguments in their head that will just keep them stuck in this place of doing nothing and feeling like a failure and that is a big issue I think the important thing that you really have to get from this one of the necessary responses for shame is not just hiding from others but if you think about it you usually are trying to hide from yourself you're trying to create a disconnect so that you don't feel certain feeling and so you're disconnecting from yourself so I put it this way shame equals pain who wants to walk around feeling like a loser feeling unlovable feeling they have no value that they're a burden to everybody that's a pain and so that sets a person up for addiction because I need the first thing that medicates that pain great that's the answer and then the second thing that happens with shame is I don't like me and so the worst punishment for a person with shame is putting them in a room all by themselves with nothing to do because now you got to live in your own skin and so what happens when you have a lot of shame the minute you get into the car the radio goes on or you're texting when you shouldn't be and all of that kind of stuff and then you're on the phone and you get home the TV's on you're playing video games and if you have to sit there your legs just to bouncing because you can't you're antsy you can't live with yourself and so you need constant distraction because living in your own skin is terrible existence okay that's how we the first thing their second priority is to hide now what we do from there is this nobody wants to walk around feeling like they don't have any value there's something in us that is driven to I want to feel valuable I want to feel that I have importance so we begin to try and create things that give us a sense of feeling important and everybody's different in what they do but give you some of the things that people do to try to deal with their shame and try to feel value if you were born to be one of those people that just naturally has a very beautiful face and a very beautiful body you probably if you're a girl you probably in school had a lot of guys asking you for dates a lot of guys drooling over you and and then you're looking around and saying nobody else is getting this kind of attention huh I'm pretty hot wow that just makes me feel valuable so now what has happened in your mind is my value does not come from Who I am or my character my value comes from my body and my look and so now what do you have an obsession about I have to maintain this body and then when you get 40 and 50 you're having major crises because it's getting harder to do all the nips and tucks and maintain the body the thing that gave you value is disappearing but you see how that works some go while I might not have as hot a body as miss hottie over there but I can get more guys to sleep with me than she can and I'm better in bed and so I'm going to use my promiscuity my ability in bed to start keeping track that I've got more people that I've slept with and I am hotter in bed that's my value and if you grow with that and all of a sudden you come into recovery and you go I think I need to change a lot of my sexual behavior that's a crisis because now you're going well then what will give me value because that was the source of my value huge issue some you just get the money and the possessions and you use that to give you a sense of value or your position your career that becomes what gives you a sense of value and that if that's the case for you that's why retirement is a huge crisis for somebody because now they're not working and that's what gave them value and so now who are they they weren't a human being before they were a human doing and now that they're not doing they don't have a sense of value a big issue some people get into religion and they're going to be the best person in that religion and they'll get their value from that others are say you know I can't compete in any of those arenas I don't stand a chance but man I can be bad so I'm going to be the baddest of the bad and that will give me my sense of value but you on what happens when you go down that road of finding value it seems to be working but it always leaves you having to prove yourself every time a new person moves into the school that's good looking all this on your I got to prove that I'm hotter than them and you got all of that and so you got insecurities start to happen jealousy all of those things it does not properly solve the value issue it does not properly solve the same problem the next thing that some people do to try and get a sense of value is to go into relationships but the problem is is that shame always messes up those relationships so let me we're going to save this to go into detail in a couple weeks but let me just mention it very briefly a person in shame the worst thing to be is alone because if I'm all alone without being in a relationship well that seems to prove I'm not lovable nobody wants to be with me and so therefore the goal becomes I always have to be in a relationship and some of you understand that and if a relationship starting to fall apart you won't end it till you got another one ready to go so you can move from one to the other and so that becomes a very important thing I have to be in relationship that proves and confirms I'm desirable and I'm lovable others what happens because of the shame is I long for intimacy I'm scared of intimacy if I take this wall down and I let them in to start to know me I'm pretty sure they're going to abandon me and so you want to have an intimate relationship but you're afraid to you live with a fear that they're going to leave you and so that fear of abandonment causes you all kinds of games that you play in order to try and stop that or test them and then it causes all kinds of jealousy because what you're thinking is once they find out what I'm really like they're going to find somebody else because bottom line you feel you're not much of a catch where I like to put it this way you feel like you're chopped liver and so who's going to go to a store and want chopped liver so you put all kinds of sugar and good stuff overtop of it so they won't see the liver part and you're pretty sure once they get through that and see the liver they're out of there and so then what happens is anybody that comes along that looks like maybe they're a steak you're going to all my I'm done they're leaving me so jealousy kicks in and now you're trying to control them so they don't leave you for that steak and and it gets really messy and it begins to break the relationship down the other thing that happens is when you have shame you always end up feeling inferior and so your thinking is if I could just feel superior then that would be the answer to my shame and so most relationships of people with shame are people who are always inferior superior somebody's always trying to be better than the other and you want to know something you cannot have a healthy intimate relationship if those are the dynamics and we'll look at that in more detail so the sad result of all of the shame is it messes up relationship but what is interesting I still don't know that we have a perfect way of explaining it but a shame person always seems to attract other shame people some people will say to me all the time why do I always attract losers then they're beautiful people in many ways but it's because their shame and a person with shame is an antenna is out there that says oh I can smell another person with shame and I know the dynamics for how that those relationship work and then before you know it you're in a relationship that starts out like it's the most wonderful relationship in the world because you both have got masks on and as soon as those masks are coming off then the real person comes out it's World War 3 and it's not a pretty sight okay let me end with this how do you begin to heal from shame it's one thing to understand it to analyze the problem but where do you go to start to change that my hope for everybody here if you grew up with a distorted mirror that said you're four feet tall four feet wide is that some day you can look at an accurate mirror that says you're six feet tall and thin and say that's the truth I believe it but that is a journey to get there and so let me just say this there's a couple basics I'm not going to expand on it I'm just going to give them to you quickly but number one hang around healthier people who will be more accurate mirrors that will reflect to you and the more accurate picture about your value and how lovable you are here's why I emphasize that what happens for many people in recovery is they're afraid to make new relationships with people so they go back to old friends or they go back to unhealthy family you want to know what going back to unhealthy family is it's going back to a distorted mirror so you could be in treatment I've seen this happen over and over where you're starting to feel better about yourself you're starting to heal from your shame and you go home to visit family and mum raises an eyebrow and makes a comment and all of a sudden you feel like that person has no value and is a pain and a burden and not good enough it all comes rushing back and so you need to begin to think about putting up boundaries with people who aren't healthy mirrors in your life and I just add that for many people the spiritual relationship is an important piece in healing at this level of starting to get the proper messages about Who I am the next thing is you have to start on a journey that says ok I received a whole lot of distorted messages some of them might had a little bit of truth about Who I am but much of it was lies and I need to begin to sort out what is the lie that I was told about me what are the tapes that play in my head that say I'll never amount to anything I need to identify the lies in there and begin to replace it with the truth and that is a journey and it is a slow but steady progress type of journey the next thing is maintain a clear conscience why not happen when you're feeling really good about yourself and you're starting to say I like me a little bit and then you do something that you really hurt somebody else and your conscience is eating you up it brings all the shame feelings back so you need to keep doing that stuff that keeps that conscience clear and you're dealing with the damage that you've done in the lives of others and then there's value in serving because as you begin to help in various ways you begin to learn where you have value you begin to learn I'm really good at helping people in that way I'm terrible in this way but you begin learn where your strengths are and then the next thing that I think is absolutely essential is you need to talk about your shame stuff with people who are safe people who will accept you the fear is if I talk about this these people are going to make fun of me they're going to judge me they're not going to want anything to do with me you want to what usually happens though when you get honest about how you really feel people appreciate it people say now I want to be your friend because you're real and I want that kind of a friendship that's scary territory don't just go up to somebody and say Kim said I need to start talking about it so sit down I'm going to barf all over you for the next two hours probably not why go gradual okay so the final thing is be patient with yourself when you receive if you think about it probably millions of Shame messages growing up you don't undo all of that in a day you don't undo it in a week it is a journey and you might have made a whole bunch of healing and really really grown and ten years from now you walk into a situation and something about that trigger something from your childhood that brings stuff back and you want to say oh I haven't learned a thing no you've learned lots you just now have a new thing that has come up that you can grow and heal a little bit more in let me end with this if what I've said tonight has caused you to realize something maybe there's a lot of pain happening inside please be honest with somebody about how you're feeling and possibly some of you are hearing this and there's one voice in this year saying that that's the truth and there's another voice saying I don't want to go there I don't want to go there let's whistle a tune so I don't have to listen I hope you can get on us it might feel like you're dying when you get honest about this but actually it's the path to actually beginning to feel alive let's just pray father such a important but painful difficult topic with so much damage comes out of it and I just pray it help each person tonight where they're at amen

Channel: Tim Fletcher

Views: 98,075

Keywords: rehab, addiction centre, online counseling, findingfreedommedia, Shame, ptsd, findingfreedom, Abandonment, Parental Neglect, CPTSD, mental health professional, Narcissism, Parental Abuse, mental health, Complex Trauma, Codependency, addiction, addiction center, Codependent Relationship Patterns, Relationships, counselor

Id: tfr-jBjQ9Wk

Length: 37min 59sec (2279 seconds)

Published: Wed May 17 2017