LONELINESS, Isolation are Common Signs of Trauma That Need HEALING

do you keep losing friends but you don't know why if you were abused or neglected in childhood I can almost guarantee you've had more than your share of ruined friendships that's what complex PTSD does at its heart it's an injury to your ability to connect with other people for several reasons it's super common for those of us who grew up with abuse and neglect to feel as adults that we are somehow not quite part of things do you have this or you feel like you're on the outside of groups kind of in it kind of not in it but never really part of it or you start as a full participant but then you pull away over time you uninclude yourself I've done this so many times and maybe you're resigned to the fact that groups are just not for you but belonging is important and it's a real need that all people have so you might be still trying and trying joining groups getting uncomfortable or feeling excluded and then dropping out again and maybe you think in each case that the problem is other people and sometimes that could be true but the Telltale sign that this could be a personal choice even when it doesn't feel like it is that you're almost always at about the same distance from the center and by that I mean every group has a center a leader or two who are at the very middle and then all around them are the people who put a lot of time and energy into the group and a little further out are the people who are involved and influential but not as much as the people near the center and so on now in my case I used to always like to settle at about 80 percent out from the center invited to the party but not responsible for making the Party happen and a lot of times I'd I'd start out motivated and thinking you know what this group is great I'm I finally found my people I want to be involved with this and then I'd move towards the very center of the group maybe take on a more active role maybe even a leadership role and then sooner or later probably sooner I would find some reason to pull back I might go to about 40 out of the circle first but eventually I'd bounce out of the group altogether so being part of something was and and in some areas of my life it still is really uncomfortable for me so why is that I used to think my trouble with groups was just one episode of bad luck after another the wrong co-workers the wrong moms group the wrong 12-step friends and I think I guess I'm just really different these people don't get me and I never saw that it was a consistent pattern until I had a lot of healing from dysregulation and I started to have some clarity and it makes sense because being in a group when you have the sensitivities of childhood PTSD can be too much people are triggering right and groups of people it's like a bunch of triggering people and the group dynamic that brings up all your pain about belonging and fitting in and all the times that that didn't happen so dealing with a lot of people can be like an assault on your senses and it gets really emotional it's like a high school experience that just never stops so childhood PTSD it's not the same thing as introversion but I suspect there are similarities in that being social with people can take more energy than it gives because you're just working so hard to act normal to deal with it all you know but the thing is when we need people we need them on a practical level and we need relationships if we're going to start healing the wounds of trauma which are largely relational wounds they affect your nervous system but they were caused by what happened between you and other people you know namely your parents so the healing needs to happen before you have social relationships but also it needs to happen within social relationships the little interactions is where you get to practice what you're learning and where you get nourished emotionally even though sometimes there's pain involved there's criticism and rejection and genuinely being different in a group where everyone else seems to feel connected but all that can get easier so like everyone else you need a sense of belonging so it's natural that you'd gravitate to groups but toward the outer edges at first it's a little more manageable you can be around people and be social a little bit but just keep one foot out the door in case you need to get the heck out of there it's okay to do that by the way healthy groups have roles and space for many kinds of people and it's okay not to participate fully for a while life would be great if you could keep going like this just soaking up the group belonging feeling not risking your emotions by getting too involved but the problem is that relationships that are all on the periphery of groups make it really hard to develop meaning in your life you need some friction you need some contact with people to develop social skills everyone needs this and staying on the periphery keeps contact shallow so you don't get that that's what we want at first is to be out here that's how we can keep from setting off old triggers but shall connections they take a toll the connectedness that you crave is more like a future fantasy and in the present you're still isolating and then what starts as a kind of delay in your development can become a full-on deficiency and next thing you know you're getting more isolated than ever that is how it happens by playing it safe you stay stuck you need to be taking some risks to grow your comfort zone a little wider a little wider there are these normal ups and downs involved in having friends and being part of groups if you're not continuously growing through experiencing the normal ups and downs of being in friendships and groups you risk not only not being included anymore but you can start to get like hard to include and what it is and this will sound harsh but avoiding people leads to self-centeredness not sharing yourself with other people it's an emergency protection measure but it's not a way to live your whole life the possibility of sharing yourself is all around you you can agree to bring something to a potluck dinner you can join a choir or take a quilting class or invite friends out for a hike when you show up for people in your life you grow less fragile and more flexible and more connected and more included and yes it's demanding to be included and isolation sounds so peaceful as an option but if you allow isolation to take root long term it will take over and your very worst traits will have this huge fertile empty space to take root people in isolation grow crabbier they get more self-centered they get more bitter they get more paranoid and then it gets harder to turn the ship like back towards connection again because you've gotten too eccentric too awkward I've called this turning weird on YouTube before and some people have complained that I was being unfair but I think it's fair I know that isolation definitely made me a weirder version of myself and I don't mean good weird have you ever felt this beginning to happen to you have you seen it in other people I mean I really noticed it in myself and other people in fact when lockdown was ending and I started being able to hang out with people again I was rough on the edges I talked too much I wouldn't know what to say I was a little angry a little edgy and gradually I kind of got my bearings again so take your alone time and then keep chipping away at Your Capacity to stay connected I know many of you watching this video are there right now wondering if any change is possible or worth it and I just want to tell you yes it is possible and yes it is worth it you just start with one small action you just show up so I teach a bunch of ways to do this in my connection boot camp that's a 30-day course that helps you keep taking positive actions each day and you develop new skills for having relationships you can explore that down in the description section there's a link down there if you want to check that out but for today take shower put on your coat go say hello to some people go back to a group you used to like pay a visit to a friend you've been neglecting sign up for you know a cleanup day at the beach or a blood drive or whatever Community get-togethers are just happening it doesn't have to be really exciting it just gets you out of the house so that you can show up and if you do one thing like this every other day in a couple of weeks you're going to find yourself included again the need to be included is not just a weakness it's Primal we're born into community and as much as we want to escape it sometimes and be independent we never can be not totally not really and evolutionary biologists will tell you it's a survival strategy so that you have warmth and food and protection from predators and so on but it's not just physical inclusion is just as important for the growth and development of your being your intellect your spirit because without inclusion in human relationships the blossoming of of your whole real self is arrested it can't fully happen fulfillment cannot come to you so being included and connected is also crucial for your physical health for your brain health it Wards off dementia it creates a support system of people who care about you and who can come to your Aid if you're broke or lonely or feeling like your life is falling apart you're not meant to go through all that alone you've probably done it before I have but let's just say right now that we should never have to go through life's hardships alone ever again healing can bring that connection back to you one-on-one relationships are one thing if you have childhood PTSD those can be just as hard as being part of a group you need both and I know it feels hard and that's because it is hard but keep trying keep participating the reward for that is that you get to be included and included is secretly really what we all want that's where we want to be one of the most misunderstood symptoms of childhood PTSD and I see this in almost everyone who was abused and neglected and I've seen it in myself especially before I recovered and it's that we seem to gravitate toward people who don't have their lives together and and we have the capacity to do this even when we do have our lives together except for that one thing that we're attracted to people who drag us down the people with whom you associate is a huge factor in how you turn out in life so why would anyone do this I wanted to share with you a comment that came in last week from someone named John and I just was like John really nailed it on this and I wanted to say more about it so what he wrote was um breakthrough this morning when you're a kid in a toxic family they steer you away from making good connections with decent people they don't want accountability as a kid you have magical thinking where you think your pain is visible you want to be saved but you're told that decent people are not to be associated with for fear their shitty parenting will be noticed that your own parents shitty parenting will be noticed you carry this into adulthood by not making connection with assertive people of High morals and then he said I hope this message helps someone else it helped me John hey I wanted to expand on this this is one of the great mysteries for me is like why do we do that I have a long history especially in romantic relationships being drawn towards destructive types or you know totally unavailable or self-destructive either way bringing my life down a lot and people would just be like why don't you just choose nice people and the secret truth was I'm not attracted to them they seem dumb to me or they seem two-dimensional rather than three-dimensional to me and I don't relate so I I thought it was that I was told sometimes by therapists um you just want to recreate your childhood like you know or or by new age people who are like um it's your karma you're just going to keep recreating the pain from the past until you work it out and so the people who hurt you are your teacher and none of that ever sat right with me none of it ever sat right what John said sits right I think that is what it is my parents had serious problems with especially around alcoholism and everything that goes with that and they weren't very present and the problems at home were quite visible to anybody who visited and so I when John wrote this I was just thinking back um the first time I ever had a boyfriend our first date was the Eighth Grade Prom and leading up to that prom for the months preceding that first there was all the anxiety with my friends will anybody ask us to go I was I was 13 and the prom when the problem happened I had just turned 14. would we get asked and you know what will we wear so my family was really poor what I would wear was a big worry and I remember so the prom was in May I think and in February that year I was visiting my dad and he he died actually the next year and so he was sick he had Lou Gehrig's Disease but I was visiting him and he was still like able to walk and talk a little bit and I told him about my worries about the prom dress and he was like I'm gonna get you a prom dress and my dad didn't have money either he had you know the problems that my parents had were just devastating to their lives and even though he was very talented and educated and had once done well he lived in a garage and we could when we came to town to visit him we couldn't stay with him and had to stay with relatives but I loved him and he loved me and all of the problems that he had are one thing but his love for me is definitely an asset that I have he just loved me unconditionally thought the world of me so he took me to the mall and I bought a prom dress that was a very beautiful cool tiered chiffon zigzag pattern in maroon and light blue and dark blue and it was kind of a disco dress right and I thought it was great I loved how it looked and and it had these little spaghetti straps and there's a picture there's a picture of me sitting on the sofa at his girlfriend's house wearing this dress and looking very very good and shy and I was still a little bit innocent back then I remember the dress was 45 and that was so much back then especially for him I think he lived on unemployment and then yeah that was that was a lot of money back then so it was this really special thing and he also paid for me to buy these wedgie high heels so I was since I was um not quite 14 to have high heels pantyhose the disco dress the whole thing I think I had on some blue eyeshadow you know I just this was like a really big deal for me the captain into Neil hair and when I got back to Arizona where I lived and where my friends were they were like nobody was going to wear stuff like that they were going to wear these little um kind of uh Holly Hobby Laura Ingalls dresses I was a Laura Ingalls fanatic as a kid and I didn't know these things were available well that ended up being another sixty dollars for a dress like that and I had this little white ruffled thing and it was it was very pretty had the shoes already but I had to buy a second dress and I babysat and got the money to buy this dress it was such a big deal well it was a week before the prom and nobody had asked me and I'm not totally sure why I would have been like not asked by anybody but I wasn't you know I I was I don't know okay enough pretty enough but I wasn't asked by anybody and it was a week away and I was desperate and it was you know at that time and place it was all up to the guys to do the asking in my English class I had had a little bit of talent for writing in mid mid-semester I was transferred into a journalism class that was really wonderful and exciting for me a lot of people were good writers there and it was stimulating and I was writing a cartoon and I I put out like a weekly cartoon it was called Dr lightning Dr lightning and I I loved being funny I was really into comedy my big dream in life was to be a comedian and I ended up being a comedian in earlier part of my career and now this is really life doesn't feel like comedy but it comes in handy being the crappy childhood fairy and I wrote this cartoon and through that class I met somebody else who loved comedy who was clever like that and liked my cartoon and I wanted him to ask me to this Eighth Grade Prom so I did what 13 year old girls do and I had I guess by then I was just 14 and I had her go to him on my behalf and say do you like Anna yes or no and I think she actually did it with a note with boxes and everything and he could check the box and he sent it back yes so she talked to him in person and said will you ask her she wants you to ask her and and he said he couldn't because he was really poor and his mom who was single a single mom couldn't afford to get him anything to wear so I sent her back my Emissary and said go tell him that's fine I don't care what he wears I would just like him to ask me so it was Friday the week before the Friday that was the actual thing and and I was going to my locker the bell rang it was time to go home and I was devastated like it wasn't going to happen she had already told him he had had several days to process this and then he was walking ahead of me and then all of a sudden he spun on his heel and then he came back and goes do you want to go to that thing with me and I said uh okay and then it was like oh my God oh my God so I had I had now sunk all this money into the dress and the horrible thing about having my first date was that his mother was going to drive him to my house and he was going to have to come to the door and possibly his mother and we were going to have to ride in the car with his mother but they were going to see where I lived and possibly come inside I became completely anxiously consumed with how I could possibly still have the date without letting them come to my house or see what's inside and I had this great friend named Debbie and we're still friends and she she came from a household that was somewhat similar and she helped me like strategize how are we going to make it really fast if they come in have them come really fast have them get out but I was so scared not of the date but of getting found out about the about the conditions of my homes so here's what my house was like when I was growing up it was piled high with junk there was rotten food all over the counter you couldn't eat anything um it was there there was little or no cleaning that ever happened and things weren't put away there was a giant hole knocked through the wall of the living room into the garage that at one point in the history of the family was going to be a doorway but had never been finished it was just raw bricks and the smell of garbage and dirty walls and what I was most afraid of is that my mother would make an appearance and she would show up really drunk I was almost willing to give up my date to get out of this so I worked it out I waited by the door I saw them pull up in the car I ran out the door I said bye and I just like said here let me in let me get in the car and I got in the car and nobody ever came in I was able to hide my whole history my whole life then we got there and there was this whole little March that you did you know marching together what was it called the Grand March or something at the beginning into the cafeteria you know where we had the dance and there was the theme song that we danced to which was Reasons by Earth Wind and Fire which I had practiced with Debbie a hundred times how to slow dance how are we gonna do this you know all of this was new to us and my date said I have a friend who's a grown-up who lives a couple blocks from here and he has pot weed do you want to go get high and I was like um yeah of course and I didn't I wanted to be at the dance gosh I put so much into this for months and that's what happened we went to some guy's apartment and smoked pot and um I hadn't done that before and it was weird and it was uncomfortable and I was um luckily it didn't do very much to me and then he gave us all beers and this other couple went with us and it was just this like devastating disappointment now unfortunately the story goes on that several months later like I did he did become my first boyfriend and then he broke up with me and it was uh just like one of the most heartbreaking things in my life I tried to hold on to that relationship despite all the crap and the crap fitting of the whole thing of me being a girl who was so excited and into this and just settling for going to some guy with a mustache and some crappy apartment you know who was I mean he had to be in his 20s what were the what were we even doing there and that's where I got that aversion that's where I got that aversion to decent guys thanks to Facebook I know I'm friends with men and women who I went to school with Junior High High School and what's interesting is they're really cool I like them and I feel much more comfortable with a variety of people um now that a lot of my trauma is healed and that identity as like the poor girl the girl who is not wanted or asked anywhere um who doesn't you know who takes the crappy jobs who doesn't deserve to have what she wants who suffers all the time and gets ulcers and smokes cigarettes trying to deal with the pain that identity has melted away now and I feel more comfortable with people but here's the truth John I still feel most comfortable with people like you I feel most comfortable with people who know what cptsd is people who understand the Oddball suffering that we have that's not really like what anybody expects who doesn't have what we have people who have Tender Hearts when I describe what my past was like and who get it themselves because I understand you it means the world to me that we have a tribe together where I belong and I I feel safe here and I hope you can too what I hear over and over again from the people who come and watch my videos is wow I just came to this Channel and it's the first time anybody's described what it's like to be me too me too you know when I started putting videos out there I didn't expect anything like this but we are a tribe and we do understand each other and some of us have gone on to great things and also struggle on struggle on the side with cptsd symptoms and we're all together working it out you don't have to date people who are not good to you you don't have to work for people who exploit you you don't have to stay stuck in the outward signs of trauma if you can begin to change and heal that identity inside that that's all you are that's what I think we're seeking the people where we don't feel judged and we feel safe and that can be really hard with people who are just just have it all together you know they just are put together every day they move forward they always have the right thing to say everybody likes them you know that brings up a lot of pain for me but that's where the daily practice comes in is I'm resentful at the people who look so nice and have it all together in my work life I've met some amazing people some like people who have accomplished great things and business and spirituality and recovery and so many parts of life when you're loved by people who relate to you you have a lot more capacity to be friends with the people who don't relate to that part of you and it's really good to be able to do that because that's where you know the world operates it's full of all kinds of people and it's a good way to be to be open-hearted and open-minded about them but to know who you are so what is it that makes those people who have it together feel uncomfortable for us and here's here's what's become clear to me it's shame it's shame I had Shame about the house I grew up in I continued to have Shame about the ways that my life was dysfunctional the ways that I could kind of keep it looking like everything's together on the outside but if you got to know me or saw what was actually going on you'd know that I was really dysfunctional in certain ways and that shame made it simply unsafe for me to get to know people who would recognize that I was screwing up I did not want to be seen for that and that's why I have such tremendous respect for the people who write letters like they're willing to be seen there's a little anonymity there but let me tell you when they write letters and they write in and people get in there like never make shaming comments to people who write in only support those people it benefits all of us to have a place where we can support each other including the mistakes we make including the things that should be obvious but they're not obvious when you have PTSD that's why we have each other so we get shame because yes we get shamed for things that weren't our fault stuff that you know the condition of the house we grew up in or behavior of the parents who raised us perhaps things like that but we also get ashamed of the stuff that we start to do it's the stuff that we do that is where that what I call earned shame there's like shame that just glues on to you and then there's this little bit of Shame that's because you don't feel good about something that you did right and that's okay there's nothing wrong with that I'm not telling you what you should feel ashamed about but just that when I didn't treat myself with respect or when I hurt other people I don't feel good about that and so there's a feeling of Shame so long as I'm holding it in and I'm not working it out and when you don't have healing for your cptsd how are you going to work out shame you need to be able to self-regulate you need to have love no matter where you are on that journey of working it out support and you need to have people who get it so I hope you find that here in this YouTube Community you can definitely find it in my Facebook Community for members come be a member there's always a link to that down below in the description section and courses but support from people who get it is essential to start breaking the cycle of Shame I'm the only one who's like this I don't know why I'm such an idiot that's what I used to think when you begin to solve those life problems that make you ashamed then your head comes up and then there's room to start making different movements different choices I hate that we're choices it's so judgy you know that's not a very good choice you just kind of move about your life because we're all guessing we're all improvising like I don't know what should I do next but it starts to get easier and wiser as you get Freer of the fear and resentment that holds you down that is the sort of chatter of complex PTSD that's what the daily practice technique I teach is designed to bring down so you have space for your better angels for your smarter wiser wisdom to come in and guide you towards a Next Step that makes good sense for you and then there's and then the shame is healed that's how it works less shame more confidence and you still get to have your deepest Affinity with the people who get it about you so I think that's pretty cool you've probably been aware for a long time that connection is really hard for you sometimes and this is a terrible way to go through life robbed of the most important things that make life happy love belonging people being there for you having a tribe and here's the thing if the connection wound is there it doesn't tend to get better by itself it needs to be healed and I'm calling you out that if friendships are not working out for you now is the time to change that it's so important for your life that you do this and I'm not talking about the friendships where you made a trauma-driven choice to pursue friendship with someone who was cold or cruel or hurtful to you I'm talking about the good friendships that may have been ruined by your past trauma and the way it made you see things and say things and do things that hurt the other person and I'm going to teach you here what that looks like and how you can heal that connection wound so that you can be your real self and develop better friendships that last that grow deeper over time so let's look at a few of the most common trauma-driven behaviors that hurt friendships right let's start with the first and most obvious one and the most destructive one and that is lashing out what's happening when you do that is negative emotions which are normal get oversized in your mind and they come bursting out without a filter how many times have you expressed yourself and then within a minute or two had the strange feeling that maybe your anger came out too strong it's the worst feeling and part of this behavior is just learned it could be what you witnessed growing up with parents who raged but lashing out also has to do with how your brain and nervous system handle negative experiences even little ones when you feel criticized or judged or treated unfairly or left out there can be this burst of brain activity there are studies where they've used an MRI to see what goes on in the brain for people who had you know what they called intensely stressful childhoods now when something stressful happens as adults what you'll see on the image is on the right front cortex where emotions happen boom it's off the charts activity and at the same time there's this reduced activity in the left front cortex where reasoning is supposed to be happening and that's pretty much what it feels like right people who don't have that trauma injury going on would have some activity on both sides they're analyzing it some they're feeling it some they're thinking well this hurts but let's put this in perspective I should ask some questions and pause a little bit here to find out why this is happening and see if I can make it a little better so that's healthy that's what that's a non-traumatized response and I just want to remind you that what you can do and this is what we're always learning here on this channel about how to heal your trauma response is you learn to pause your response and what you say and do so that you can be intentional in that moment and maybe follow the pattern laid out by people who don't have trauma where you think maybe I can make this a little better I will try to reason it out I'll ask questions so you can create your own guidelines for good ways of responding when something upsets you you don't have to stuff your feelings but you can choose your words and the timing of when you'll express yourself and it feels really artificial at first but there are so many reasons to practice this ability to pause and use conscious care when your triggers are active with PTSD you you get hurt by something a friend says and you know it's like a five alarm fire over here and you get a surge of emotion and your instinct is to fight it and to make it stop it feels like all of the emotion is being caused by the other person and it's urgent to make it stop but in reality your reaction which is getting this huge surge of intensity from your trauma wound is exaggerating reality so yes people do and say hurtful things and yes sometimes we are in denial and we do the opposite mistake but I'm talking about this one today with cptsd sometimes when something is this big your trauma makes it feel this big okay you're getting all the body signals adrenaline cortisol a feeling of being gut punched and even panicked and you're either going to go into fight flight Fawn or freeze mode and when you lash out that's what fight mode is and we all know how this feels to be on the receiving end it hurts it feels unreasonable and crazy making and you want to protect yourself and you end up cutting that person off and that may have been what other people have done to you so when you react like this you will get people pulling away from you and in a moment I'll teach you how to prevent that okay sometimes it's not overt anger that you're expressing it's you know negative emotions it's usually anger or feeling threatened but it's dressed up as you know concern as in I'm only saying this because I care about you or I'm just speaking my truth do you do that you say things that you think are just true or caring or clarifying statements but your words are loaded they're full of prickles and it's because even though cptsd stops you from seeing it in the moment your words are loaded with hurt and it's hurt directed at the other person and what is it it's the same criticism and judgment and feeling of Injustice that sets off your triggers too so before you even know what you're doing your brain is like you hurt me I'll hurt you right back and your cptsd brain thinks it's protected you but it's totally messing everything up so don't confuse lashing out with setting boundaries good boundaries well first of all they keep you out of situations where that you are resentful to be in in the first place and that's often why we lash out we didn't honor our own boundaries and now we feel defenseless your boundary is not to fight about your boundary but just to have it to know what it is to maybe say it and to step away if it comes to that and then instead of walking around exhausted and alienating people with conflict and drama you're fresh you're clear you feel good about yourself and how you handle things and you're ready for an actually good friendship and doesn't that sound nice another way that negative emotions come in and wreck your friendships is you abandon people this is the same thing where your cptsd brain is trying to protect you by shutting people out you know not speaking not responding to them giving them the cold shoulder all because the reaction in here is more than you can handle and it feels like they did it to you and maybe partly they did but cptsd is characterized by that intense emotional reaction to things that is out of proportion to what's going on and I know a bunch of you are going to say but so and so is a narcissist and they were abusive to me and I can't let them get away with it and no you shouldn't but I'm talking about friendships here people you want in your life so if you're feeling a little too much emptiness where friends should be in your life this could be one of the reasons but let's come back to drama because that's a friendship Ruiner all by itself sometimes your anger or defensiveness isn't directed at the friend in front of you it's directed at someone else and you're having a lot of drama about it you know I'm messed up about this thing and I'm telling you about it and your cptsd if it isn't healed yet it can be really hard to keep drama out of your life and just be stay calm about life's ups and downs because you know it just feels like trouble seems to find you one way I've described it is having drama is like living in a house where there are no doors and windows but for some reason all this cold air and wind and branches and mud are getting in and there's you know people I don't know who they are they're over here on the sofa everything's a mess how did these people get in here why is it all messed up in here it feels like it just happened but it was you who had the doors and the windows closed it's coming from within so we all know what it feels like to be around somebody who's overwhelmed by their own drama you can't help them you can't reach them and they're usually way to loaded up with their own stuff to care about other people there's you know that's that's going to come with life when things get hard the thing to remember is that drama is the natural byproduct when a person is is you know out there living life and that's a good thing but thanks to being raised maybe in a dysfunctional family maybe not having such good red flag detectors drama sneaks in so when you're going through drama how are you going to not talk about it or have bad days it happens and this can be healed but just for the record some people who have left your life even though you wanted them to stay left because there was too much drama and the people who will stick around when drama is running high are usually other traumatized people who are maybe attracted to drama or who have so much of their own that they're not even listening to you anyway so either way it's not a good dynamic the next thing that ruins friendships and here's a different kind of symptom that pushes friends away and it's when you have too many rules for other people which is a control thing about you know what they can and can't say and do when they're around you and this is another thing that happens when you don't have a good understanding of what a boundary is like um I don't hang out with people who are drinking alcohol that's what that's some people's boundary for example so that is a boundary because it's you knowing what you need and deciding who you will and will not hang out with but if your boundaries confused or you don't have the power to communicate it well or you're with someone who wants a drink more than they want your company you may find yourself trying to control another person's drinking arguing with them about it trying to legislate the you know he said she said story of how you got there getting triggered which you know who are we kidding can happen to everyone with cptsd under stress it will often drag you into that argument trying to control someone else rather than just having a boundary and respecting it which means you either decide to accept the situation like okay fine drink I just changed my mind about you or you just say oh thanks you know I didn't realize we were going to a bar on I'm gonna head home talk to you later bye so you can decide later when you make that kind of exit if that's the kind of friendship you want to keep trying to have you can you don't have to but staying calm and collected in the moment without lashing out without shaming the other person just no drama no attempts to control now what you have coming towards you is information and perception you're like flowing water here you're peaceful you're flexible you're powerful and this leaves your choices about the future much more open now you may not like everything about your friends but there's often room to have your boundaries and let them be their wonderful selves that's what they want that's what everyone wants to be themselves so what can you do to contain your cptsd symptoms while your healing is still in progress and still open up your life to better and better friendships the first and best thing you can do is learn to calm your triggers From the Inside Out rather than trying to make other people protect you from getting triggered or being hard on people when you do get triggered because it's not your fault that you have cptsd but it's not their fault either the power to change things is actually right here in your own brain and emotions and thinking and that's where change is possible even if it's not instant or easy but you absolutely have the power in any moment any interaction to pause and soften down and listen and be attentive to what's going on so that your negative emotions you know can go over here and your friends feelings can be safe over here and if there's something you need to communicate or Express anger about or set a boundary around it can usually wait a minute or two or even a day because that little bit of time between Trigger and reaction is your friend it helps to keep your focus on the values and behaviors you're trying to hold for yourself or to grow into maybe it's kindness right maybe it's more a more accepting attitude maybe it's encouragement for other people and you know that little moment of time will sometimes allow you to realize you're not into this friendship you would like to step away and no you don't have to criticize them or judge them on your way out the door they get to be them you get to be you and even if being you means not being in that friendship that's okay now having cptsd can mean that on some days or for an hour here and there you might get very stuck in your negative emotions and thinking this is one big way that you might be pushing friends away so there's a time and a place to talk to friends about how you're feeling but there's a way that the intensity of cptsd can make you talk a little too much about it good friends need your time and attention too so force yourself if you have to to give them the floor sometimes everybody needs a safe way to express what's bothering them and a good way to do that before you start venting on another person is to funnel those negative thoughts out of your mind and onto paper maybe you Journal but I use a technique that's much more specific and effective for me to get the Lion's Share of negative emotions resolved not just recorded but resolved with just this little bit left that um that may be left to that I need to express to someone and that little bit is much more hearable for other people because I've taken most of the fear and resentment that isn't really attached to them but it feels like it but I get it on paper I I ask for it to be removed I rest in meditation this is the daily practice technique you hear me talk about all the time there's always a link to that down below by the way in the description section I get most of that fear and resentment resolved what's left that I need to talk to the person about they can hear about it when you have criticisms of other people you actually don't need to speak all of them and you don't have to run away but you may need to express yourself so ask yourself when you have the urge to criticize is this really necessary usually it's not you don't have to say I'm not going to a birthday dinner because I can't stand the way that you get stressed out before parties you can just say thanks I'm so sorry I'm not able to come but happy birthday I hope you have a great time right when you've hurt someone which is going to happen because you know we're human be quick to see it admit it do something about it don't wait don't make excuses don't tell your friend all the reasons why you couldn't help but be hurtful because you know whatever your past your problems just open your heart to them and own it and apologize good friends really appreciate it when you just say hey I'm sorry what I said was really hurtful I want to take it back and that kind of honesty and humility is something we all admire in other people and if you can do it your friend is much more likely to open their heart again to you dear Anna I have recently subscribed to your channel and have been watching one of your videos where you describe abandonment melange I'm definitely experiencing this feeling right now after something which happened to me yesterday abandonment melange is a phenomenon named by Pete Walker that people who are abandoned as kids sometimes get that feels like a very intense mix of Rage grief and panic when you feel when your abandonment trigger gets set off and it's more intense maybe than non-traumatized people and you kind of know it maybe if you get it you know what I'm talking about and you've kind of known for a long time that you take it harder than other people when somebody leaves you or even when you fear they're going to leave you actually you can get abandonment melange just from thinking that you want to leave so that's what this is about all right so Gene says I know the feeling is probably too intense for what the situation warrants but I feel lost and confused because every time I feel I've established a solid connection or friendship with someone it seems to blow up and evaporate the moment I express having any struggles problems or needs of my own my fairy pencil here I'm going to circle things I want to come back to I'm going to read through Gene's letter so we can just hear what the story is here and then I'll go back and talk about things I circled all right I've been happily married she says for the past 15 years before meeting my husband all my romantic relationships were either short-lived or quote casual I'm guilty of having been the cool girl in my friendships too always having a tendency to put the needs of my friends before my own then being punished or abandoned by these people when I dared to express any issues of my own as a result I tended not to suppress this side of myself and just basically crap fitted telling myself this was the price I had to pay to have friends and to be accepted in a social setting crap fitting that's a word that I made up for when we fit ourselves to crap we we get very good at it as kids to just you know what however unacceptably we're being treated or the Situation's bad we fit ourselves to it you can pass you can lose a lot of years of your life crap fitting instead of having something that's happy for you okay so Gene goes on I grew up with parents who were emotionally immature and would often tell me that I was too much have you been told that I really resonated with that Gene instead of instilling discipline or setting boundaries appropriate to raising children they would verbally lash out at me whenever I crossed the line fast forward to the present nearly a year ago my husband developed a sudden rapidly developing illness and we decided to move cities to get better access to medical treatment shortly before this I met a good looking gay guy at my gym who seemed incredibly cool and funny but also open to discussing his vulnerabilities we hung out a couple of times and talked about a lot of things and I felt like I had found that special connection he expressed dismay that I was moving away however we kept in touch mostly through messaging the communication gradually dropped off as the months went on but I just put this down to having separate and busy lives yesterday this guy posted a meme on social media about dealing with personal struggles and it resonated with me so much that I messaged him to tell him this he replied that he's going through some heavy stuff at the moment and lamented the general lack of support from people around him I told him I will be in town next week for work and he replied that he would love to catch up with me and then I did it I sent two further messages briefly telling him about the struggles around my husband's illness the treatment and people's lack of understanding about the condition kind of reflecting the sentiment that he had expressed he stopped replying and left these messages unread following the advice of my late grandmother I never write anything to anybody that I would not feel comfortable seeing printed in the newspaper hence I'm confident I didn't write anything bad or crazy to this guy nonetheless I feel embarrassed and downright crushed by the cessation of communication truthfully I was so distraught yesterday I had to take medication this kind of thing happens to me so much and I cannot understand why people who are all over me one moment ghost me in the moment I basically tell them my life is not perfect I become highly triggered um especially when I express vulnerability to someone and it's not acknowledged recently I opened up to my mother about overcoming my mental health struggles she immediately responded by asking had I heard from my sister a further reaffirmation says Gene from my childhood that I'm just not important enough to care about only after yesterday's episode did it hit me that this guy who I had thought of as a friend never once asked me about my husband's condition the whole time I've moved away despite being aware of the situation we chatted and messaged about other stuff but it was always very lighthearted and harmless like movies and music or his problems at work just realized he never asked me about my work either I saw a therapist a couple years back who picked up on my Hiding my own needs and problems so as not to appear off-putting to others she made me realize that a healthy friendship entails a two-way exchange where both parties are allowed to have less than perfect lives my question to you is how do I go about cultivating healthy friendship Dynamics where this kind of exchange is welcome and support is given as well as received I'm scared that if anything happens to my husband my life is going to be horrible if I keep attracting these types of friendship Dynamics many thanks all right Gene I think I can help you so let's go through what you told me so you you get abandonment melange you feel abandoned by the uh this frequent ex or I don't know how frequent it is but it's happened again and again where you have a friend and they just ghost you and it always seems to happen when you express having any struggles problems or needs of your own I know what you're talking about I do know people where I've had that Dynamic with and it used to puzzle me too um you say I've been happily married for the past 15 years before meeting my husband relationships were short-lived or casual so I don't know what it means that you had that kind of relationship whether it was youth or another manifestation of this type of person who you end up being friends with but you have a happy marriage now so let's just call those past relationships water under the bridge and you used to be the cool girl and you do it with friends too cool girl is she's like hey I'm cool I don't need anything and it's usually used in a context of a sexual relationship where the the man doesn't want anything serious just wants sex whenever he wants it and cool girl is like that's cool that's cool but might be just dying inside thinking she has to act cool so we're not into being cool girl here tendency to put the needs of your friends before before your own and then you get quote you say punished or abandoned when you dare to express any issues of your own so you keep having that experience it's funny how whatever's in here will just keep being your experience out there right so your parents were emotionally immature that's an interesting choice of words and would often tell you that you were too much oh my gosh I've been told I'm too much too and I'm just the right amount I just wasn't in the right place in my life yet for me to stand here right now in my studio making a video talking to nobody but a camera you have to be kind of big you have a lot of you know going on here and so this part of my personality when I'm at the dinner table or meeting somebody new I have to turn it way down because it's totally Bulls people over it's too much so context context right but but you know we we have a personality that we were born with and all of our healing is about becoming our real selves learning where our our mistakes our tendency to make mistakes where that needs to be adjusted so that us being fully ourselves is also kind and considerate and reciprocal and all that good stuff so you're on the way here they wouldn't set boundaries or set discipline they would just lash out so it's this is interest thing too you kind of see that where you don't realize that you're Crossing some line with friends it's just except you say something and then they're out and you're confused about that you know they just stop calling you somehow you were too much so that's definitely the theme you're communicating to me you know you're baffled why do I seem like too much I was so careful to contain my personality all right so fast forward to the present um your husband's having a serious health thing wow that must be incredibly hard of course you need friends and then you move to this other City to get the better medical treatment and now you're alone and you try to maintain a friendship by chatting with the gay guy at the gym and he was funny and cool and he talked about his his vulnerabilities okay so there are his virtues he's funny he's cool he talks about his vulnerabilities what he doesn't seem to be good at is caring about you even enough to ask how your husband is doing I I know such people there are many of them not not most people are like that but you know it's self-centered it's also emotionally immature um and some people it's enough that they are fun friends that you hang out and do something fun and you don't talk about your problems like that can be a perfectly fine kind of relationship to have but you're going to the hardware store for milk here you're going to this person who really he says right out I'm going through heavy stuff I can't care about you right now and then he doesn't call you if you say that you're having a heavy thing and you are having a heavy thing and somebody has to be mature in a good place and receptive to being supportive of somebody who's going through something like that because it kind of out does whatever he's going through I don't know but yours is pretty big and so maybe he's in a narcissistic type where his problems always have to be the biggest or maybe he's just in it going through heavy stuff right now and he can't deal with somebody whose partner is very sick and who's having crisis you know it's okay that he feels that way but it's not the friend that you need and are looking for that's all so we can just you know we can like take off any like villainizing of him or these other friends they're not villains they're just not the right one and so you stayed in touch and you're blaming yourself you're like and then I did it I sent two text messages telling him about struggles around your husband's illness because and I'm going to say this is probably your cptsd if you didn't have the trauma when you were a kid and you had been totally emotionally raised by good sane parents you would be able to read the room and you know you'd be able to tell like you would have noticed a long time ago that he sort of Fades out when you talk about yourself he doesn't want to talk about you he wants to talk about him he's happy to have you around if you talk about him he doesn't want to carry any water for you that's all um I mean I don't think it's great but I I do like to emphasize that blaming other people is not really productive so you know all the focus is like okay what can you do what have you done what can you do because that's where your power to change the situation is so you told them about what you're going through and it was very similar to what he had said and then he just stopped even accepting your messages I tried I believe you you didn't say anything bad or crazy some relationships are the kind where you can talk about this stuff I've talked in some of my earlier videos I had a period between 2004 and 2008 when I was in and out of the hospital for 14 surgeries I was a single mom the whole situation was throwing my life into chaos financially emotionally socially and it was shocking how few of my friends would actually show up and help me you know there were a few people who came to the hospital once but mind you I was there 14 times for probably a cumulative four months or something so you know a few one-time visits were not enough and I I had whole weeks without visitors and I was surprised because I used to give a lot more energy than that to other people and some of the ones like I was a 12-step sponsor and um yeah they that's a lot of it's a lot of time that you share with another person it's not an it's not a commodity exchange you know you're not giving time in in demand for something back but I was just disappointed I was like sponsoring 12 people and only a few of them ever showed up to you know help me out I needed housework I needed my kids driven around I needed food sometimes I was doing better but when I was first out of the hospital or needed a ride home I just was like a pile of needs and I had such a hard time asking for it because I guess I knew on some level that they were going to let me down and then a few people show up and not only do they not let you down but they Amaze you and so I think sometimes when we're suffering and like what you're going through and what I'm going through one silver lining is that it forces you to have to reach out for help and if you're like me like you don't do that very much and so you don't have the fruit of finding the people who are actually there for you and so there it's never enough though um I have this documented in some of my other videos and courses but you know I just there were times when I just didn't have anybody and I was in such grief about it I I couldn't get better from all this surgery it kept falling apart because I couldn't rest and I was lifting my little kids and and I I was so sad and I was like why is my life so hard and other people aren't and a mentor said to me because you don't have a mom you don't have a sister you don't have a best friend and you don't have a partner and I was like ah there's the math right so your husband's in need right now you don't have enough support um for dealing with that so that's an important problem for you to tend to but you need the right people you need the right people and sometimes it takes time to cultivate those relationships but it can feel less like despair when you're on the path when you're working on cultivating those relationships and by writing this letter and sort of inviting some insight about it you are taking a huge step toward opening your mind and your healing process so you're good you're things are going to happen things are going to happen because you've done that so you said I get highly triggered when I express vulnerability to someone and it's not acknowledged so one thing about that just to see can we scan the Horizon for anything you might be doing to make it worse when we have a trigger um it's understandable that you have a trigger about that but it could be kind of uncomfortable for people your energy gets weird there's anger where it's kind of puzzling to people so that might be something is that when you express vulnerability or say something you might already have a little bit of tone that's kind of putting people on notice just possibly I'm not accusing you just like ask yourself is that it and you might not be able to stop doing that right now because you still have a trigger but that's what my program is all about you learn to calm these triggers and then they come out just neutral and they don't have that charge that feels like an accusation because two people they have a nervous system you have a nervous system and no matter no matter how much you're acting like the cool girl and being like no it's fine that I pay attention to all your problems and needs and you run away that's no it's cool right if you do that but your energy can't lie they can feel you they can feel you and they can feel that you're angry and that you are you need something from them and sometimes being that you didn't get your needs met as a kid that need can be a little outsized so again I don't know if that's true for you but it's something to ask yourself it's it's a way that people with cptsd can kind of be part of this dance of getting treated this way okay recently you opened up to your mother about overcoming your mental health struggles okay I understand the impulse but I just want to say yeah you get what you pay for right if your mom is the person who treated you that way chances are high she cannot hear this and that's just been a lot of our experience she can't hear it um but you tried it's worth a try it's worth a try but if I had been there at your side while you did that I would have said prepare yourself it's probably not going to go well and if it doesn't just don't even worry you're all you're doing is running an experiment like is today a day when she can maybe hear it ah no still no okay cool you don't have to be cool girl but you just have to be realistic sometimes like mothers are supposed to care but she can't and it's sad but she can't so again it's going to the hardware store for milk um so but this was interesting what you said she when you when you said hey I overcame my mental health struggles she immediately started asking if you had heard from your sister she dodged that one hearing about your mental health that you ever had mental health struggles probably reminds her at least on an unconscious level that she didn't treat you well as a kid and it's not surprising that you would have struggles oh hey change the subject how's your sister so that doesn't surprise me but I know what it's like and it's just like such a colossal and obvious Dodge of of you opening your heart and I'm sorry you know that does feel bad but it's time to adjust your expectations you have such a mother um and so here's what's interesting you said she did that and you put in bold face a further reaffirmation from my childhood that I am just not important enough to care about all right I'm going to stop you right there no that's not what it is I think you're telling me what your fear is you know fear it just goes to show I'm not important and I hear that that's how your emotional being hears it but no it's a reaffirmation that she is emotionally damaged and not able to pay attention to another person's needs and needed to change the subject either either on purpose or unconsciously or basically is just so freaking out of it that she doesn't even know that you don't you're not supposed to do that that that's rude yeah you have you have a mother who's incompetent at uh hearing sensitive things and responding appropriately in the end that's what it is so it reaffirms nothing about you it says nothing about you there's nothing wrong with you for having this wound from how you were treated that's what that's to be expected it's normal and you're actually you know you're working on it so you're fine there's no reaffirmation that you're not important enough to care about you're totally important and you need to be cared about you have a husband now so you know that's somebody who cares about you your mom probably is never going to care for you more than she does right now and it'll you know it'll be superficial she can't hear you um I don't know anything about her but I just know she couldn't respond to you in that moment and it was really sounds like it's it's never really better than that so you a therapist validated for you yeah this is uh you you hide your own needs and problems to not be off-putting so you really seem to have internalized this idea that you're too much and if you did you're so much like me and so many women that I'm close to where we're just like yes we're too much and what is too much we're very vibrant emotionally often intellectually we have a lot to say like you know I'm not always received well when I have opinions or when I have a lot of exuberance or enthusiasm it feels like a lot to people I'm at a point where my emotional needs are basically met by me and I have a husband and I have sons who are caring you know I'm reasonably cared for enough that any anybody else if they're uncaring towards me it doesn't destroy me I think it's rude I might not like them it hurts my feelings but it doesn't destroy me anymore I have a defense there and I know a lot of people are listening and they just don't have that person who gives them a little buffer who cares about them even when other people don't and so all of us that's our job is to learn to connect enough to have people who do care and should we need help they will be there for us and part of how we do that is by being there for them and it's a tricky dance isn't it because you don't want to be a doormat you've been sitting there listening to like this this gym guys problems all this time so here's another thing just to ask yourself I don't know that this is what you did but this is one thing that a person sometimes does which is when you tend to take care of other people's needs and they don't reciprocate it can be this kind of negative toxic pattern of trying to do a trade with them that they never consented to you're just like hey I'm cool girl I'm your friend we're just friends um oh that's so sad that you have that problem and then you you demonstrate all this empathy for them but on some level you're trying to make a trade with them like I tell you what I'll go over the top and care for you will you do it for me but it's not spoken and it's you only hung out with them a couple times so you know it's like this is a little bit like dating like two dates you don't really get to have big expectations of somebody all that is is a way to get to know somebody and some people do like open up intimacy friendship closeness with others by talking about their problems right so this guy did that but that was yeah it just wasn't what you hoped so I would say women friends you know people who have some similarity to you like it's okay to have a a male friend and a gay male friend is safe for your marriage and everything but but women um it's really important to be friends with women especially when you had a crap mom and I speak from experience I had a long time when it was hard for me to do that and it's so much better now and there's an important thing that you know people who are similar they can give each other you know they can have that understanding together um so that said everybody's got to find friendship where they can everybody's a little unique not everybody fits the mold you know I used to think it was I'm just I'm just not like woman-like and I fit in better with guys but I think a lot of that was it was cptsd it was cptsd making it very triggering for me to be around women and especially the way they have ease around each other it's hard then I'm like why do they have ease I don't know what to say I don't know the right thing to say and the less fear and resentment I have you know I use this technique the daily practice I teach it in a free course it's always down below in the description section it's on my website crappy childhood fairy free course you take that free course and I will send an email to you inviting you with a welcome you get a welcome email and it says do you want to join me in my free calls and I do the calls twice a month and people come on live and ask me questions we use the techniques and then I take questions but using that technique the reason I devote so much time to sharing that with the world is because it saved my life and it helped me just move a lot of like just fearful resentful thoughts I don't know where they go I don't know how they connect I don't know what causes what I don't have to know I just have to get them on paper and out ask for them to be removed rest in meditation and I just find that my mind has room for new things new development new feelings new relationships I'm not so in the grip of things that have hurt me in the past and you know how they do that they just sort of like Riot on top of your head you know and squish you down and it's all you can you know it just it attracts your focus and every time your feelings get hurt you're like see that thing that thing and I hear that going on for you it's normal but the more you get free of that the more you can begin to have a new experience and isn't that what we all want we want newness we want the opportunity to have a life defined by who we really are and not by what they did to us so what do we do about this so how can you change the pattern Gene this is what I want to suggest to you think of these friendships a little like dating where you're not gonna just rush in and be best friends and tell each other your problems your problems are not the main thing about you even though right now it is kind of the main thing about you that you're going through this crisis with your husband but you were a whole person with a whole life and a whole story and a whole set of ears and a whole heart to share and so gradually I'm going to say like six times hang out with somebody before you get into problems of your own right just six times to hang out hang out have light conversations ask questions tell things about yourself but not the heavy stuff yet all right that's that's the secret is just to allow a friendship to sort of take root get a feel for it sometimes you hang out three times and you just realize we don't have anything in common or you hang out for a few times you're just like I don't like this person I don't like what they just did how they treated the waiter or whatever it was and so you're going just a little at a at a time think of it like an egg carton put one egg in at a time you know one egg in at a time you don't just take the whole thing and go so just gradually test the relationship and see and you can begin to introduce things that are on your mind not crises yet but just kind of be very conscious and just see how they respond to that and don't go in and caretake them emotionally around the problems they say you know you can nod honestly when I talk about my problems I find it very hard when people get in there and try to fix it for me and go oh my God that's so hard because what you're saying is and they try to reframe it and I know they're just being kind but I don't like having my stuff reframed mostly I like if I if I tell a friend I'm having a hard time with this I I I cut my teeth emotionally in Al-Anon years you know and there's a custom there that you just let people say what they're saying you don't comment on it you don't go Pat them on the back or anything you just let people say what they're saying even when they're sad after the meeting you can go up and go I heard what you said and that sounds really hard and here's my number you can do that but you don't do it in the middle of people talking and at first it felt very weird to me but you actually can just let people talk and give them your full attention and show them with your face that that you care you don't have to rush in and fix it and definitely you want to stay away from trying to create any sort of tit-for-tat like I tell you what I'm going to give you a whole bunch of like empathy but you owe me really just get to know somebody and see if see what they're like and see if they really are somebody that you want to share things with or that you want to give a whole bunch of emotional energy to now because you have this kind of like trauma imprint where and and I think you had said you know that you attract this kind of person did you say that I don't know you may not have but that's often our perception we just go I don't know where these people find me but they do they're actually there's a whole mix of people around you just like everybody it's not magic it's who you resonate with you know you're used to it from your mom you have the capacity to pay attention to people who are self-centered and they love that believe me because they're so self-centered like they can't get everybody to do that so when they find somebody like you they're not being devious they're not intentionally hurting you but they're just like they love to have people dote on their problems and they're not interested in giving it back that's that's how they roll you will crap fit to that so there you are now you have a friendship with a person like that somebody who didn't have your trauma would probably just like be like oh you know hi Jim guy and then not have a friendship because they would sense the shallowness of somebody who talks about themselves but shows no curiosity and does not even respond when you say well I'm moving away because my husband has a serious medical thing like any any friend who is emotionally intact is going to go oh my gosh what's going on is he going to be okay Where Are You Gonna live you know like any friends would do that the guy at the gym you'd only hung out a couple times so it's not even really on him to be that he hasn't let you down he's just revealing who he is and what he's interested in right now and it's not what you hoped so he's off the hook you're off the hook and now you get to practice through getting to know people in your new city by you know one little hangout at a time one conversation at a time hold back on the heavy stories if they're throwing heavy stories out there at you you can say things affirmative like oh yeah that must be hard I I have experienced stuff like that but don't don't go into it yet you're gonna you're gonna be measured in your approach to sharing yourself and see what happens Often by the time you've hung out six times you're gonna have a feel for this kind of thing you'll have a feel for whether they are a reciprocal person you can absolutely shift your pattern and change this but it's just time to bring your awareness into it and just keep paying attention to the interactions and for this it helps if you if if the first ones are not super long like don't not a big day outing or something a cup of coffee a little walk you know a a short thing so that you have a conversation and it's okay that some friends are not are for our deep stuff they're just people we take walks with that's okay you can do that I think you're going to do well though I think you're going to recover because where your attention is right now is right where it needs to be to start opening your mind I like what you're doing everybody does things sometimes that they know create problems and that get in the way of the good things they're trying to do in their lives and I call these self-defeating behaviors things like losing your temper at work or flaking out on people who count on you or overeating or staying in a bad relationship that's grinding you down there are just a few examples of self-defeating behaviors now if you never did these things your life would be better but the reason you do them anyway is usually because of an emotion I talk about this in my healing childhood PTSD course how there's a trigger an outside event that sets off a very strong emotion and the emotion unleashes the behavior that you don't want to do so trigger emotion self-defeating Behavior now triggers are going to happen a lot of people try to make triggers go away but the triggers are caused by you know the world it's other people it could be a loud noise it could be that someone criticized you or rejected you or ignored you it could be that you felt embarrassed about something anything could be a trigger but the trouble is you can't really control whether triggers happen they happen they're outside of you if you only focus on triggers at the beginning of the sequence that leads to your own self-defeating behaviors down the line you're just running around spending all your time trying to make other people comply with what you want so you know that's where you get people who are like don't talk about that around me don't ever be late with me you can you can't really control other people like this you can ask we you know we talk about this you can ask people but you can't really make the world stop triggering you if you have triggers it's going to happen if you try to control people they'll push you away and then your triggers get worse right so it's not a good way to control your own behaviors is trying to control other people and whether they trigger you instead you'll have a much better time focusing on your emotional response to triggers if you recognize when you're going into one of the emotions that I call the big three the ones that put you on a slippery slope towards self-defeating behaviors then you buy yourself some time to actually prevent the behavior that tends to follow or you can minimize it at least maybe it's smaller maybe it's less often so you focus on the big three emotions all right so what are the big three they are feeling overwhelmed feeling lonely and feeling fearful now everyone feels these feelings sometimes but if you've done something you regret chances are you were feeling overwhelmed lonely or fearful now you're probably wondering about anger and yes it's definitely there but I see it as a secondary emotion that rides in on the other core emotions of feeling overwhelmed or alone or scared and I'll talk about that in a minute so strong negative emotions are initiated by a trigger and they result in a behavior something happens the feeling floods you and you feel you know maybe numb like you flew out of your body or you feel a big rush of adrenaline and your heart's pounding or you get hit with a sudden Rush of emotion and this can be scary because you know on some level you're about to self-sabotage but it's really hard to do anything about it at that point because the strength of the emotion and the need to express it just feel like too too big to stop have you ever had that happen there's a trigger and a huge negative emotion Wells up and then you say or do something that hurts your relationships this is a terrible cycle very simple really that allows past trauma to turn into ongoing struggles in your life trigger emotion Behavior trigger emotion behavior let's go back to those three Troublesome emotions feeling overwhelmed feeling alone and feeling fearful all right so everybody has them in non-traumatized people the feelings go up and then they gradually come back down so the feelings can be processed and if there's some action that needs to be taken they can take time to figure out what that's going to be they calm down then they can take sensible action right but with childhood PTSD these feelings of fear and loneliness and overwhelm can just go through the roof and they keep Rising have you had that happen and this is part of what's called emotional dysregulation if you have this it's not your fault but the problems it causes are now yours to deal with so emotional dysregulation can be like drowning like like having the air sucked out of you and it can lead to those secondary emotional reactions like rage and panic and it can be hard to to bring the emotions back to an acceptable size a size that doesn't terrify people around you and cause you to get fired right that extra strong factor in your emotions is because your nervous system is having a stress response and with cptsd you might call it like a overreactive stress response a dysregulated response to stress so if you take a brain scan of someone who's calm and mentally regulated you'll see lines flowing together in you know kind of a parallel fashion from different parts of the brain but when you're triggered and your brain becomes dysregulated those lines they start going in a zaggy pattern and similarly the variability of your heart rate you know which goes like this it goes out of sync with your breathing which normally Rises and falls with your heart rate but they go out of sync and that's what it feels like when you're panicky you know getting discombobulated you overreact to something stressful and can't seem to get a grip on the reaction your mind is all over the place your emotions go higher and higher until they feel unbearable and this is when very bad things can happen because you might feel this sense that things are dire that's what your nervous system is telling you well now it has to happen now it's urgent you have to yell you have to feel like you're you know doing something about the problem or else you're gonna explode or you have to beg the person who's leaving you please don't leave because it feels like you will die trauma is coloring your perception here isn't it when you're feeling this overwhelmed and this terrified or this alone your negative impulses kick in to temporarily feel like a fix so there are three negative impulses that set off self-defeating behavior and they connect roughly to the negative emotions that we just talked about that get triggered in childhood PTSD so overwhelm will tend to go into the urge to escape and aloneness becomes an Impulse to cling to hold on and fearfulness becomes an Impulse to control so Escape cling control if you're like most people you probably have one of these that's your dominant impulse when you're under stress but most of us have all three in some measure Escape cling control and this is tough because the behaviors that get triggered by these impulses are where eighty percent of the damage from childhood PTSD take place it's not all from what happened to us in the past it's not from the triggers or the feeling we're experiencing per se but it's from our Behavior right now in response to that and the impulses that drive us into that behavior and this is not easy to face I know that it feels safer sometimes to focus on what happened you know what other people did how sick they were and compared to facing our own self-defeating behaviors talking about other people and the past and feelings it's that's you know that's kind of like a comfort zone you know it's out here but your own actions is where it totally matters now what will you do to either hurt your life or change your life for the better a lot of people with childhood PTSD instinctively know this is the big question but we lack insight about you know what exactly is the problem and for you to develop good discernment about that um you know what's the problem what needs to happen to change it you will need a safe way to look at what even is a self-defeating Behavior okay so no pressure to change anything right the second as you watch this video but I'm going to share with you my list of common self-defeating behaviors there are you know plenty you don't even you don't have to take notes on this I will give you a link at the end of this video for a PDF that you can download and use at your own pace and take notes on you know and see how you're doing with your self-defeating behaviors so here are some common self-defeating behaviors for people with childhood PTSD number one is black and white thinking traumatized people are often attracted to extreme views and groups and authority figures now maybe you are outraged about current events and I'm sure you have your reasons but if it's consuming you it could be a self-defeating Behavior you might be arguing with people about your opinions and it gets too heated and it's damaging relationships it's damaging your reputation or you might find yourself tangled up with mentors or friends who dominate you there's that extreme like out of proportion power Dynamic maybe you're the dominant person maybe you're putting people into hard categories of these people good those people bad and you're cutting off contact with people outside the people you consider good those would be examples of black and white thinking number two is neglect of your body now money could be why you have just one pair of beat up sneakers I've been I've been I've had just one pair of sneakers before one coat one pair of sneakers rainy season always wet big holes in them I didn't have a lot of money at that time that was money but you might have also not been taking care of yourself that's another reason why you might be kind of disheveled in tatters maybe you haven't been to the dentist in years for a lot of people with childhood PTSD you know it's a little more than just being poor you're suppressed or diminished in the clothes you wear you're suppressed or diminished in your ability to do just basic hygiene or to exercise something traumatized people do is avoid doctors and preventive care sometimes things have to get really bad before you deal with it and sometimes for some people it's too late at that point right number three self-defeating behavior is addictive use of food and this includes everything from carrying a lot of extra weight to eating disorders to you know having a love affair with sweets and high carbohydrate foods that make you feel exhausted because you ate them these foods can feel really calming for a moment when you're dysregulated but in the long run they make you more dysregulated so if it gets to the point that it's making you sick or brain fogged or exhausted it's a self-defeating Behavior okay number four is the addictive use of media and entertainment it seems like almost everyone has this problem now watching too much TV or browsing the internet or playing games so much that you're not getting enough sleep or you're losing your daily routine or your job or face-to-face connection with people or it's eating up your funds that is a self-defeating behavior number five is dishonesty and this includes things like exaggerating hiding important personal truths or preferences lying stealing cheating on your significant other tax evasion any kind of illegal activity all right number six is work problems and in that category I would put staying stuck in a job you hate not working when you could work and should work over working or having more than your share of conflicts with employers and co-workers things like suing or getting sued or acting in a way that makes co-workers feel scared of you or humiliated all right that's not uncommon with childhood PTSD number seven self-defeating Behavior blame and this includes having a hard time seeing your own role in problems it's victim thinking it's bitterness it's casually saying things about other people that hurt their reputation which is slander it's also called calumny that's when you say things with the express purpose of harming someone's reputation it's very wrong believing that all your problems are because of you know racism or because of sexism or foreigners or one or another political party or economic system a lot of people who think they are above all of this and have the answers are having a trauma reaction that's you know they're like literally thinking they're above others up and above and they're quick to call out other people's shortcomings and declare the solution you know we have to do more to make people change the way I think they should be and that kind of thing when they often have glaring problems of Their Own all right number eight is numbing with substances like alcohol or drugs how much is too much you are going to have to be the judge of that but if it's interfering with your energy level your focus your relationships your finances is probably too much okay number nine is irritability maybe you get angry sometimes for no reason or you get into arguments more than your share if you get road rage you yell at the TV I have a relative who wants shot a gun at the TV ruined the TV by shooting it was so mad about something yeah um you might see comments online that are so hostile it's just you know it's raging or customer service calls do you ever get triggered by those where you're getting the run around or you're even losing your temperate people face to face in the extreme this can include like a total rage attack that's like you know life-threatening it can lead to violence number 10 is an attraction to troubled partners and Friends people who were abused or neglected as children are are often attracted to people they feel more comfortable with people who were themselves traumatized including people who have high levels of drama and addictions and conflict and serious legal and financial problems all right it's a self-defeating Behavior glom onto that number 11 unfulfilling romantic life now maybe you avoid dating anyone at all even though you haven't made a decision to end that part of your life or you stay in bad relationships where there's no trust or no love you may be telling yourself you do this to avoid getting hurt but it borders into a form of romantic anorexia have you heard of that social sexual emotional romantic anorexia and avoidance of those things that brings me to number 12 which is the abuse of your sexuality and this can include an overly sexualized appearance or being inappropriately seductive as a result of your upbringing you may even have a distorted sense of the messages that you're sending with your behavior and poorly developed boundaries that is so common maybe you have affairs that would badly hurt other people if they knew or you generally feel humiliated by how you're treated and you keep seeking out that person anyway you know as if you can set it right somehow if you could make contact or get them to hear you or you feel ashamed of your own behavior and you can't stop it that's a self-defeating Behavior number 13 is fantasy and I know you know that that fantasy is considered like a positive thing but it can also be a self-defeating behavior and that includes romantic Obsession including limerence that's obsessing on someone who can't be with you or you know who's rejected you or maybe isn't even in your life but it's gotten to the point that you're not living your life or connecting with people because you're very attached to this idea of somebody else maybe searching online you know for possible signs that they feel the same way about you fantasy can also be about money and Career Success where the fantasy is so consuming that it takes the place of any actual work or action steps that would help you get where you want to be and in the extreme it can go so far as stalking or delusional thinking number 14 is avoidance and this symptom is so common among people who were traumatized as kids it can be overt when a person avoids connecting with people um or or accepting responsibility or participating in groups but it can also take the form of covert avoidance I made that word up and it's for when a person appears to be you know that you might be married you might go to a job and hang out with everybody you go to parties but you never really connect with people and there's there's like a big gap in terms of accountability and commitment to them so that's covert avoidance and then this is kind of where avoidance takes the form of social sexual and emotional anorexia all right deading while financial hardship can fall on anyone and can and has and financial stability isn't always guaranteed debt can become a self-defeating behavior when you're living beyond your means to pay for a place to live and transportation and clothes and Recreation trauma can interfere with your ability to consistently earn a living or to accurately gauge like how big a threat is it if I spend down the available money I have this month like like literally there are brain changes for people who are traumatized that make it hard to assess the risks that that brings on so you get this gambling like behavior and in some of its worst forms debting can turn into a gambling addiction or an unsustainable get rich quick mentality and it can lead to foreclosure and bankruptcy and ultimately homelessness number 16 is a habit of repeating traumatic patterns and clinicians call this repetition compulsion where you find yourself in a relationship with a partner or some friends who have similar dysfunctional behaviors to your parents now I don't believe this is done intentionally I don't think you're trying to recreate your childhood but people with cptsd can develop a blind spot around red flags and others it you know when I've done it I've sort of experienced it it's sort of like going blank and then marching right into the problem it's not like a decision to have that problem it's not conscious and you cannot deny that we so often end up with people with problems that match the problems of our parents so even when the signs are there that someone you've allowed into your life is creating trouble you may have a hard time setting up a boundary and you'll experience this as a feeling of disappointment and surprise that oh my gosh once again you're with someone who's sick and unavailable or dangerous or what have you whatever your pattern is and it can make you vulnerable to emotional hurt and physical and financial and social harm right you don't want troubled people in your life like that you're trying to go somewhere good so people who hurt you you can consider them always a setback to your healing okay so these are the main self-defeating behaviors if you're ready to change it helps to get acquainted with the list identify maybe one problem you'd like to work on don't try to do a million things at once maybe don't even try to do two things at once just one and then find support to take positive actions toward changing it one way you can do that is to learn to calm your triggered emotional reactions that push you toward the behavior you're changing to do that I try this try my free daily practice course I talk about all the time I know the link is always in the description section below my videos and on my website too and if you register for the courses you'll get an email from me inviting you to live Zoom calls where we use the techniques together and I answer your questions so maybe you'll try it and I will see you on a call very soon thank you [Music]

Channel: Crappy Childhood Fairy

Views: 229,300

Keywords:

Id: ZHwQt6AIDck

Length: 94min 11sec (5651 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 23 2023