SIGNS YOU ARE TRAUMA MASKING: LIVING IN A TRANCE OF TRAUMA

I've done a lot of thinking over the years about how I stayed in the dark in the sort of Trance of my childhood and why even having a master's degree didn't help me see things for what they really were especially as they related to my marriage and to my mom many of you know I lost my dad at 23 and so that's a very complicated topic and by the way I am working on the fatherless video being fatherless but there's a bunch of stuff with that and I want to take my time because I have personal stuff there as many of you probably can guess and I also have a lot of ideas I want to share so I promise you I'm going to be doing that but I've been really working on my content and although I haven't not been consistent lately I promise you I will be once I get people in this house back to college and high school and I don't have the house to myself and it makes it difficult to create content when I'm not by myself they're actually at the beach right now so I'm crossing my fingers that I get a few minutes before my next client to make this video but I really wanted to talk about this because I've been sitting down and trying to figure out you know I can't be here if I'm not doing it in a way that feels like I'm being my authentic self and it's taking me a long time to become more and more comfortable here and so that it's going to be a work in progress but it's really important to me that that I know what my why is for why I'm showing up here and I can get lost and oh you're not following analytics and this and that and but the thing is I always want to come back to why I started which was that I wish that there had been and I had seen it someone to mirror back to me and explain to me and help encourage me and understand sort of the trauma that I was reenacting my entire adult life literally like I'm saying walking around in a trance like not knowing that's what I was doing so this video is sort of impromptu in the fact that I'm making it quickly but not impromptu in the way I've thought about it and I want to share with you through my own Journey which will hopefully be reflected in your story you'll find some things about how and why you might be literally walking around in sort of the darkness of your own story and not know it and and really be like living your childhood out over and over again so also I want to say that as I go through these what I think is helpful I'm going to make individual videos about these also on my Tick Tock and Instagram I'm trying to work on my Instagram game which has not been good to make content that is different for each platform that is not necessarily just reposting so I'm working on some ideas so that it makes it worthwhile for you to say okay on YouTube I get this long form content on Tick Tock I get this more real in the moment content and on you know Instagram I get this ideally what I would like to share remothering re-parenting um sort of more more direct trauma focused ways of just being aware of your life so I promise you come mid to late August I would I will hopefully hopefully be back on my game Sam talking fast like I do okay so here is how I think I walked around number one I think that from the time I left childhood until honestly my mid-40s I was still a child I was still naive I was still a child and as I've learned a lot about neurodivergence for example I do believe that part of the way my brain works is to be naive in that I don't assume people are doing all the bad things whether it's my parents my kids I just don't friends I don't see the world that way and sometimes that sort of going through life like this it it made me unable to see things and so I want to like lay that in here if it wasn't intentional and I'm not saying like oh I just see everybody in the good light I'm not saying that I'm just saying that even though I have every reason to think oh they're lying they're cheating I wish I had thought those things more in my marriage but I didn't I I wanted to trust I wanted to be cared for I wanted to be in a family and I think that really hurt me in that regard and so what I want to say to you is we might you might be staying a child because you're naive because you are so dying and seeking inside to feel whole and loved that the idea of lifting up the covers and seeing what's under them isn't your go-to is it natural for you and also maybe that I'm I'm guessing if I had let myself do that I would have had to face that if I did that I would have seen things I didn't want to see and knowing myself that would have forced me to do things because once I had the knowing and I could no longer deny it it gave me this strength and power to do what I knew I would do which was to be done let's say in my marriage so number one I want to acknowledge that you might have that too you may not but that there are parts of us even if there are just parts of us that are naive that aren't ready to see that are scared to see that that contributes to this often in reaction to your childhood where you don't want to be having the same childhood and so you're trying to create this adult life that on the surface is different and seems different but the fear of getting close to your childhood might keep you sort of in denial to be honest number two is that if you were unaware of your attachment now I don't want to say attachment is like this rigid thing but like the concept that the quality and type of caregiving that you received in childhood or did not receive or you know had a mix of can have a significant impact on who you choose why you stay or don't stay what you see and don't see so for example if I had understood that my parents fit the criteria for disorganized attachment which by the way when I learned about back in the 90s seemed to be this like very extreme only very mentally ill people would have had these childhoods like it didn't apply to me but spoiler alert it does apply to me because my parents were emotionally unsafe they were that exact example of the source of safety is also the source of fear and so I had very wide swings of anxious and avoid an attachment both from them and in myself in the way I showed up in relationships with friends I've always had that part and I want to keep making space for the possibility of things like autism and neurodivergence because I think that contributes to all these issues too but I didn't know what it was and so I couldn't see it and an acts of self-protection I would like be in something and then remove myself and I think that not knowing what your attachment patterns are can be very detrimental so number two is being unaware of the impact of your childhood especially as it relates to the quality of caregiving and to partner choosing the next one is I was unaware of how much anxiety I had in my body and the fact that you know obviously we weren't talking about the nervous system but that I lived in a constant state of panic in that everyone I loved was going to be removed right so when my ex-husband would travel in the early years I was so afraid he was going to the plane would crash you know I'd call me when you get there and and in some ways it's like when you finally think you're living and feel like you're having a good life especially when you didn't have a childhood like that you were so terrified of losing it but my anxiety not only of like loss and fear was also about not being in control and not you know being perfect and doing things right and getting into trouble all of which went back to that childhood and caregivers who were truly eggshell parents who forced me to become an expert in being hyper Vigilant so that hyper vigilance played out in my body and in my relationships it was everywhere but back then if you had said oh do you have anxiety I would have probably been like I worry some not understanding that that hyper vigilance kept me in a state of constant and chronic anxiety that I will probably have my whole life but which I now have so many better tools to use and can recognize but not knowing how that trauma of your childhood lives in your nervous system and your body can be so impactful once you understand it the next thing is I stayed in the trauma bond with my mother up until I was almost 50 years old and it was a trauma Bond and because it was the only love I ever knew that that's what I just thought I knew it was a little crazy and that she could be hurtful sometimes and then she could be so great and so helpful but I stayed stuck in that and I had this like desperate need to be close to her and yet did not want to be but my point is I stayed in a trauma Bond and so if you were in a trauma bond with a partner a parent whatever even one of your adult children whatever it is it makes it really hard to step outside yourself and know what's really happening in your life and to fully see it because all you're doing is reacting and trying to manage the trauma Bond the next thing is I sought out a partner now I did not know this that I wanted all I wanted was to be taken care of and I mean this and every sense of the word financially emotionally physically what I was seeking was what I did not have in childhood which is what most of us are doing and it was so much so that for for once I I mistook the things that felt like care for things that were really about control or things that were actually more narcissistic but they felt more strong and more stable and more confident as opposed to the like eggshell chaos so for example we didn't have a lot of like yelling and screaming in that situation for the most part really until the end of many many many many many years going on I guess year 12 when we split but the point was that I was seeking a partner to sort of to be that source of healing which we all are but I did not know that and if I had known that I'm allowed to seek a partner to want to take care of me that I also want to take care of them too but that there were these roots in the trauma of it that would make me blind seeing things I think that would have helped to have understood because also when I did do therapy during my marriage in those years when I finally went back finally went back to therapy it was really about my mom and then when I got divorced I didn't want to spend money that way which was frankly a huge mistake but I was too scared right there was too much scarcity going on and so I denied myself something that I frankly really would have at this stage I wish I could have benefited from but the point is that we were seeking to be rescued cared for and that is normal but when you don't understand why or how it can it can really make it like I said in the beginning unlikely for you to even want to see the parts that are not working and the parts that are really reenacting your childhood let's say in your marriage and so along those lines I chose a partner who had quite unhealthy Tendencies for me and so it was never going to last but I did not know that and so well I've tried to be really um respectful and mindful and I will continue to do so for my kids there was a significant event in my marriage and it was at the time it was not about infidelity though I think that was potentially an issue later that I didn't see in that being so naive but the point was something happened and I I probably will talk about it maybe in a book or something someday but it was so significant so traumatic and it turned the course of the marriage upside down and then it became impossible for me to go back and and not see what I had seen because there was so much trauma the next thing is that because I was wired to be a pleaser and a caretaker I thought I was being a good partner by being like a selfless mother a selfless partner not you know being angry trying to stuff on my feelings and being appropriate and asking for change and many of you know that if you are with a partner who has at a minimum tenancies or traits of narcissism covert or otherwise they might tell you oh I hear you I'm going to change but the change never comes and so because I was such a pleaser and compulsive caretaker and I had already had my Master's Degree in Psychology as an um marriage and family therapist my being appropriate meant that I never really fully was willing to put my foot down because I always wanted to do it right or I would justify and minimize my own feelings let alone the things that I knew deep inside were not acceptable we're not okay until I couldn't anymore the next thing was I kept my mom in my life so we were in the trauma Bond and she served a role we could have other people like our parents our friends that can supplement the wounds of our relationships and so I had the toxicity with her I had the things in my marriage I had lots of kids and moving and redoing homes and just constant distractions and so that kept me in it so distractions and other people can serve to prop up and make you feel like the things you feel aren't as bad as you think they are right because there's in space or you're getting enough needs met things like that and that goes along with what I put in my notes like always be kind you know I was like I never wanted to be my eggshell parents and so I went above and beyond to be good to be kind I'm not saying I always was of course but it was it was not acceptable in my mind to throw a fit and put my foot down and not be kind and that meant that I actually took too much and did not set the right kinds of boundaries for myself and raising my daughter with you know three sons and a daughter I always said like I wanted her to be able to throw a fit and know how to get what she wanted not to be you know using the words like oh spoiled or a brat but to know that her voice mattered that she could be angry in a safe way and it could be okay because in my home anger was dangerous and unsafe and I avoided anger at all costs and it did not serve me because I would go around every emotion but anger until I couldn't anymore the next thing was you can often lose your power and identity in your relationships and so because I wanted to be the best mommy and the caretaker and the Homemaker and the food maker I lost Kim and I tell clients all the time I knew I was as a mother I sort of knew I was as a wife but I did not know who I was as Kim and I do think that for us those of us who stay home no matter how you identify you have to kind of set identity to the side in part because in in being home every day it's hard to hold on to that part of yourself so trying to do other things would have been good for me whether it was like a reading group or you know therapy or whatever but it takes so much to be a Hands-On parent and I was the primary parent at all times because he traveled a lot like a lot because he wasn't really there no you know every day gone 12 hours plus it was just too much so giving myself some Grace that I really didn't have especially with my kids be my kids being so young there wasn't a lot of space for that but what I'm saying for you is that losing your identity if you have childhood trauma makes it really easy to get stuck in that Loop of reenacting the only roles that you knew which are survival roles in childhood and they often don't align with your empowered growing developing sense of self they kind of serve each other in that way um I was a perfectionist I normalized self-blame in my mind I normalized you know being highly critical of myself I use that don't make mistakes lens to keep myself in line to be good to be perfect to be kind and it didn't serve the parts of me that should have said this is not okay or you're allowed to be mad about this you're allowed to get angry about this right it was like just make everything perfect look perfect be perfect ACT perfect blame yourself you take the hit on everything and it will all be okay and I Justified so many things that I didn't want to see that I thought were okay and someone I just didn't know better you know everybody that I knew that made a good at Living worked a lot of hours so for example so I Justified yes he works but then I looked around at my friends whose husbands were making even more and they were still home more so it's like in my mind I had a mom who worked a lot in childhood I knew that it took a lot of hard work and effort to do well so I wasn't demanding that the problem was I wasn't demanding much at all because why I didn't believe I deserved it that's just the truth deep inside I would have told you I thought that but my actions didn't reflect that so I held in a lot of resentment right a lot of anger got suppressed and stuffed a lot of feelings a lot of sadness a lot of wounding and so then I distracted myself to avoid those feelings like I'm saying with having a child we would relocate find a house do the redo the house have a kid I mean just went on and on and on and that kept me from really seeing what was going on so look at how you might be using distractions like I said earlier and they're real life things you can't say your spouse loses a job you have to relocate as an intentional distraction but if it happens again and again and again it does become a distraction I never considered that the sadness I felt when we were engaged the sort of sort of low-grade Depression had anything to do with my marriage I would have told you it was oh he works too much oh I'm tired oh whatever I had no idea back then that I had autoimmune disease but the point is that I found so many ways to like never let myself consider that maybe the source that was my role and his role together were what was happening and causing so much difficulty for me why I was deeply unhappy but didn't know it and would like I said once again denied it because I didn't even know it in myself only now I can look back and be like oh yeah that's that was really a part of what was being reflected and how you were acting how you were feeling but you weren't letting yourself see it so I had learned from my childhood as most of you have to justify bad behavior because Mommy loves me but she yells at me Daddy rages at me but he still loves me right we have been indoctrinated to accept bad behavior and to always believe the source of it is ourselves so all of this goes back to me not being able to see signs to blaming myself to you know criticizing myself to being afraid I think deep inside of what it would mean and this video is going to go longer than I wanted to and so the point was all of that kept at me in this cycle until this moment literal moment in our marriage when everything flipped upside down and that is when the fantasy began to unravel and I began to see what was going on but the point is that I should make this into two videos it's going to go too long because I want to talk about what I have done and what I think you can do to help work through this but the fact that all those things were keeping me in this trance the childhood little self the little self I had developed to survive had grown up and she was walking around her adult life living the same way except she thought it was different because nobody was screaming and yelling she seemed to have Independence and autonomy she had her own lovely home she could make her own decisions but the emotional Parts the relational parts of my life even though they looked different on the outside they were just the same I was lonely I felt and literally lonely like physically lonely emotionally lonely I felt unseen and unheard I was justifying things that were not justifiable in my fear of losing finally what I thought was caretaking I exhausted myself depleted myself and didn't let myself like I said in the beginning look under the covers because that was too scary and so if you found yourself doing all these things oftentimes what you're doing is you're just living a different version of your child's life in your adult life and it can be a deep reason why you are so unhappy but on the surface it seems like I have no reason to be right I check the boxes had a beautiful home beautiful children they were relatively healthy my daughter was sick a lot but she wasn't you know living in hospitals every day with a with a devastating disease or illness um I had I had all the things and deep inside I was really just another traumatized child really acting at her trauma in in every relationship including the one with myself I think with my kids it was the only place as a mommy I was showing up differently and really intentional about that whether it was reading parenting books or trying to respond in certain ways or not yell and scream the that relationship I feel like wasn't so reenacting of trauma but every other part of my life was and so I just wanted to share that because once I ended my marriage for example that forced me to snap out of the trance I could not stay on that hamster wheel of the trauma because it required me to let go of all of the things I thought were rescuing me from the trauma of childhood they were just reenactments and they really were it was like being in a Darkness being blind being in a trance where I couldn't see it and then as I've begun as I began I should say to heal I couldn't unsee it and I'm still like thinking of things I didn't see all these years later um and then of course there was trauma in being a single mother with four young children and basically full custody but all of that has helped me get to where I can be here now and that's why I'm here now because there's so much want to share with you um and you can take this hopefully and apply it in your own sense in life uh to help you understand that oftentimes we just can't see things until you know something changes and that we're doing our best we really are but until we start to become aware of all of these things it's really hard to begin to change because like I'm saying I would have thought things were good enough they weren't but it took a life event to show me that they they couldn't even be the same anymore they couldn't even be lived that way anymore I couldn't show up that way anymore even if I tried I couldn't keep masking the broken child that's really it the wounded child I had learned to mask and not only speaking of neurodivergence but we learned to mask every part of that child but if we are not working on our healing and understanding we're just masking the pain and showing up like a costume of this adult healed version that we can get to I know I don't believe we can be fully healed like oh your trauma's over you're never gonna feel that again that anyone's saying that to you they're selling you something but I really do believe that a lot of changing how you show up how you see yourself how you deal with your body your nervous system your relationships that once I got out of the trauma Bond began to self-advocate had to fight for myself it was a terrible way to have the mask come off but it did come off and um so anyway I wanted to share that because I think that it's important for you to know that you know you're not alone and that if you're like oh my God I'm I'm the mask is fully on right now that's okay it's one step at a time you don't want to rip it all off either because that can be catastrophic in terms of how you deal with it and the impacts on your life but to little by little begin to see and to heal is incredibly powerful and for me honestly what I do believe is that the source of all of this came from the survival things and requirements I needed to survive my childhood and I think that's true for most of us and that includes the beautiful Parts the strong Parts the fierce independent Parts but it would have been nice to have known you know ideally I could never have known all of these things of course but had I known maybe if you know they'll give you some spaces in which you can become you know aware seek support seek treatment whatever it is that you might need make changes in your life whatever those look like so I'll make a part two we'll talk about what it takes to heal these things and I will be back soon I'm going to Taylor Swift tomorrow um I can't wait so anyway um I will love to you know probably talk about that maybe not but either way um have a good day I'm sorry I'm just rambling right now but have a good day stay safe and I will see you soon I promise the fatherless video and the healing video will be coming soon okay take care bye [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Dr. Kim Sage, Licensed Psychologist

Views: 78,095

Keywords: masking, cptsd, eggshell parenting, narcissistic relationships, narcissistic mother, narcissistic father, narcissistic ex, complex ptsd, walking on eggshells, eggshell parent, dr kim sage, borderline mother, bpd mom, emotionally immature parents, inner child, wounded inner, reenactment, boundaries, finding yourself, healing cptsd

Id: oyu8501JoZk

Length: 26min 58sec (1618 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 09 2023