Episode 9 - Nobody Understands You!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

You know, one of the things that's really tough when you experience attachment trauma in childhood is that you always feel like nobody quite understands you. And the problem is that so much of therapy and the field of psychology and all of that have been studied by people who are academics and who, frankly, really haven't experienced a lot of that, right? They may have had some hardships in their life, but the fact that they are successful, the fact that they've gone to the big colleges, the fact that, you know, they they have had access to all of these resources in order to uh accomplish what they've accomplished typically means that they have not experienced uh living in an abandoned house, right? They've not experienced uh growing up in a family that was broken apart by addiction and where neither parent was actively engaged in your life, right? They uh they they just haven't experienced a lot of those things, and they haven't experienced a lot of the very early uh traumas that oftentimes really affect the very clients that they work with. And so, you know, I mean, I it's not to say that everything in the field of psychology just doesn't get trauma, but you know, I I've been an I've been an addict who has uh a recovering addict, and I've been sober now for 42 years. And when I read articles or I talk to people who talk about addiction who have never experienced it, it's very clear that they really don't have a visceral understanding of what that experience is like. You know, they may have had a conversation with a lot of people and they've looked at the research and they've got a lot of data, but that is very different from being able to really understand and appreciate and resonate with what you've experienced. And as somebody who has experienced a lot of that attachment trauma as a kid, I'm one of the few who have gone on to uh, you know, to a career in psychology and um, you know, and have written books and done all of these things. Most people who have gone through what I have gone through end up just not achieving much because there's a real broken sense of self that comes from growing up in a home where you feel as though you do not matter, and where your parents just are not engaged in your life. There's a lot of conflict, addiction, um, you know, and and being shipped around to different family members and things like that, and a real disruption in your home life, and never really feeling like there's a sense of home there. And that affects you in a couple of different ways, you know. Uh one is that as you get as you start getting older, right, and get into adulthood, and you start meeting other people who grew up in, you know, families that may have had some stuff, right? I mean, everybody has a drunk uncle that makes a scene at, you know, at the at the Christmas party or whatever, right? I mean, there's always stuff going on. But at some level, there is at least some form of uh of connection. There is, even if it's imperfect, there is some presence of parenting, there is enough stability, and there is enough nurturing where most people come into adulthood uh with a fairly intact sense of self. And, you know, this really came out in high relief when I was taking a class on play therapy when I was in graduate school. And we went around the room and uh and all of the other students, all the other grad students uh were answering a question that was posed by the teacher, which was what did play look like in your family? And as soon as that question was posed, I was like, fuck. This is gonna be another example of how I am going to be the freak in the room because there wasn't play in my family. There just wasn't. It was ugly. And so people would go around and they would talk about how they would sing songs and do all of these things and have big meals and do all of these wonderful things together. And it just looked like, you know, one Hallmark uh family special after another, you know, another Norman Rockwell picturesque scene of a family getting together for a holiday and and how wonderful it was, and how much how much fun they all had together, even you know, if there were some challenges and you know, um, for the most part, you know, people really uh had great experiences and and I love that for them. I don't resent that at all. But then, you know, as we went around, it it came to me, and I'm like, we didn't we didn't have play. We didn't have play. If anything, there was a lot of mocking, there was a lot of criticizing, there was um, you know, trying to, you know, embarrass each other, humiliate each other. That's what that's what my experience was like. And you know, when I shared that, you could just about feel the oxygen come out of the room, right? And here are all these other people who are going to be psychologists, who are gonna be therapists, who were so uncomfortable with my reality that it's just like the whole room went silent. And this is one of the things that is just so can be so hard when you have actually grown up in a home that was not wonderful, that was not nurturing and loving and kind and fun, and where there was play and all of these kinds of things, you you end up kind of carrying this uh you know, kind of carrying this secret with you that if I really told people what it was like for me, they would get very uncomfortable and not know what to do and not know what to say. And now all of a sudden I again feel like the freak, right? And you know, the other problem is that because there isn't this kind of normal interaction between parents and kids growing up, there's not enough nurturing, support, and attention and presence of kind of caregivers and loved ones for whatever reason, right? I mean, it could be that there's a mental illness or a severe medical illness or somebody died, or I mean, it's it's not to blame the parents and say, ha ha ha, how much they suck as parents. It's not that at all. But it's really about recognizing the reality of what happens to a child's brain when there is inadequate nurturing of the from the adults around them. And it even is worse when the instead of nurturing what comes is shame, is criticizing, is blame, is woundedness, is physical, emotional or sexual abuse, uh, is harm, is is chaos. And when those kinds of things happen, um you know, people like me and many other people like me enter into adulthood with this sense of I don't know what normal is. I don't know what to trust. I don't have this intuitive sense, I this intuitive internal sense of like how human beings are supposed to act because I've never seen it. I've seen the chaos, I have seen addiction, I have seen uh, you know, I've seen a lot of uh conflict and um you know and abusive stuff and all of this other sort of thing. I mean, I've seen that, I know what that looks like, I know how to navigate in that world. But when you come and get into adulthood, it's like, ah, God, I want to get out of that world, but now I'm I want to enter into a world of being in a better place. But what makes it so hard is that there's there's like, I don't have any frame of reference to know what normal is, right? I don't like how do people act, how do normal people interact with each other? And so a lot of times we end up just having to guess at what normal is, and we end up like reading other people and trying to see how they interact and how they behave and try to approximate some of that behavior. And because there isn't oftentimes a very clearly defined framework of the self, we can become very influenced by our context. And so, in some situations, we may find ourselves acting in a certain way, you know, based on how people around us are acting. We may, you know, laugh at jokes we wouldn't necessarily laugh at in other places. We may do things or say things or kind of take on a persona in one situation that we may not in another. And then when we go into another situation, it can almost be like we are we're in an entirely, it's like we're in an entirely different space and and we we act in a very different way. And what is also an interesting phenomenon that if it for people who have never really experienced this kind of developmental or you know emotional attachment trauma as kids, if you haven't experienced it, one of the things that that will happen when you get into adulthood is that you can go into this place where it's called derealization, right? It's it's a form of dissociation that happens as a stress response in the brain that was that developed this coping mechanism for kind of detaching, for dissociating with uh intractable and inescapable distress when you were a child, right? And so you get into adulthood and you may all of a sudden find yourself in a situation and it's like, oh my God, everything seems like not real in some way, almost like I'm in a dream state. I can I can see myself acting and I can I can tell that I'm saying things and people are interacting with me, but there's it's almost like I'm not fully present. And when you share that with somebody, particularly like a therapist, they're like, oh my God, you're psychotic, you know, you're crazy. Um, there's something wrong with you, right? And uh, and you know, the the thing that is so frustrating about that again is like, you know, that is just what a normal brain does, right, when it is exposed to certain times of distress, right? In childhood, where we develop certain coping mechanisms for kind of dissociating from what is going on because it was so distressing for the brain. And when we get into adulthood, we can find ourselves sometimes in situations, particularly when they're new situations, like you're you're going to a particular class for a first time, or you know, you just joined a new group, um, or you moved into a new house, you got into went to a new community, or you're going out to dinner with some new people for the first time. A lot of times it's those brand new situations, those unfamiliar situations that will trigger kind of that derealization, where it's not like you're it's not like you're nuts, it's not like you're necessarily acting out. And oftentimes we feel like, oh my God, everybody can tell that I am just, I'm losing my shit here and I'm not present and I'm saying stupid stuff. And to the outside observer, we look fine. So chances are very good that even though you feel a little bit of that derealization doesn't necessarily mean that you're that you're acting weird or everybody can tell. Right. And, you know, I'm uh I am revealing a lot of this stuff that I struggle with because it is a common thing that a lot of people struggle with. And when I talk about uh when I when I talk about the effects of emotional trauma and uh you know, both from you know kind of our our PTSD kind of trauma, the big T trauma, but also the attachment trauma or what some people call the little T trauma, where instead of something happening to us, like in the PTSD, where we're attacked or assaulted or something scary happens, the little T trauma or that attachment trauma is more from a deprivation of getting what we need. It's kind of like if our body was deprived of nutrients growing up, it will affect how our body develops, right? And when we get into adulthood, we may have certain food sensitivities, we may have a shorter stature, we may have weaker muscles, we may have thinner bones. I mean, there's a number of things that could happen physically to our body if we're deprived of nutrients as a kid. And, you know, nobody would if people understood, like, oh yeah, well, they weren't fed, of course they're gonna have some of these things. And we don't necessarily judge that, that they're you know, smaller and things like that. In fact, we may have a little bit more empathy for them, you know, given, you know, kind of given their background. But and this this kind of happens with it in, you know, among therapists a lot, particularly if they've never had these kind of experiences, they get into, they get into their practice. And and I I, you know, as a before I got into the field, I mean, I had gone and seen a number of therapists and had been diagnosed with all kinds of stuff, and and none of them had any idea what was going on, really, because none of them had lived through the kinds of things that I lived through. So they didn't understand what that experience looks like or feels like. And so I think in in this, I I just decided to make this podcast kind of at the spur of the moment, and just literally threw on this jacket, came down, turned on the camera, and uh, and just started talking to share a bit about my experience and what the lived experience is of somebody who has experienced some of that attachment trauma and developmental trauma. And to say that a lot of the things that you experience on a day-to-day basis, you don't need to uh you don't need to feel bad about. You don't need to pathologize, right? Just because you go through periods where things seem derail, right? Or they don't seem derail. There's the derealization, right? Where things just don't feel like you're kind of here. Um, or you know, they're just certain, you just get a wave of panic, or you get just this sense of urgency, like you just have to get up and go, or you know, any number of these just kind of emotional things where you just feel like I must be nuts. I mean, I'm there must be something broken with my brain. How come nobody else around me seems to struggle with that? How come other people can sit in a class and just sit there fine and pay attention and you know, and and do their work and seem content hanging out with their friends and all of that when all of that stuff is very, very difficult for me. And it's not out of a sense of I don't want to. I mean, I would love to be able to just sit still and sit through class, pay attention, hang out with people and kind of do normal things. But there sometimes seems to be something going on with my nervous system and my brain and my emotions that make it very, very difficult to do that. And those difficulties were adaptive mechanisms that helped you survive, that helped your brain stay intact when you were experiencing either deprivation or some very scary stuff growing up. And it doesn't mean that you're nuts, it doesn't mean that you're crazy. And unfortunately, when you go to a lot of therapists who don't really have that visceral understanding of that, and you talk about how, you know, you're kind of dissociating, right? Then all of a sudden it's like, oh, oh my God, you know, let's look at the DSM, let's find out what mental illness you have. And it's like, you know, that's that dissociation is not necessarily a sign that there is anything broken in your brain, right? It means that there's very likely some history of emotional deprivation or some scary events that happened in the past that are being triggered right now, right? And just remaining present with that without scaring it, without judging that, is very, very important. And I have just found that unless somebody has experienced some of those things themselves and has some understanding of what those experiences are like, that I oftentimes feel very pathologized, very judged. And I end up walking away feeling broken and that there's something like wrong with me. Even if they're well-intentioned, you know, a lot of you know, a lot of trauma-informed people, you know, have you know, have learned some things about trauma and kind of on a cons conceptual level, they they understand, you know, how the nervous system can be affected and what kinds of things might be triggering, and and some techniques uh may be helpful in getting people to reground in their body, you know, find a new sense of safety, um, you know, kind of downregulate, you know, the the kind of the panic response or that fight or flight response in the brain. Um do things that will help heal the sense of self and all of that. And so they they have kind of a, you know, many of them go through a lot of go through some training and they learn some skills and things like that. And and I'm I don't want to say that there's no value in that, but there is something very healing about being able to talk to somebody who can say, I know exactly what you're talking about because I have felt that. And what I can tell you is that that does not mean that you have a broken brain, right? It doesn't mean that you're bad, sick, or wrong, or not sick. Right. You may feel crazy, right? And we may joke that, you know, uh are you going to your crazy space? Right. Meaning that some of the some of the shit's getting triggered. But it doesn't mean that that there's anything wrong with you. It may feel like there's something wrong with you, but there is not anything wrong with you. And one last thing that I will just say, well, two, two more things that that I just want to say about this whole stream of consciousness conversation that I'm about to put up on YouTube. Um is that uh uh you can't fix this by yourself. It would be so great if I could just stand in front of a mirror and you know say I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me, and you're a lovable person, and you're so awesome, and all of that. And while it feels good in the moment to say those kinds of things, that is insufficient to counteract the effect of years of emotional deprivation or emotional fear or panic or woundedness, right? Um and the only way that we can really heal ourselves is through relationships. Our woundedness occurred through the context of relationships. It was those attachment relationships that we had with our parents and the caregivers around us that were either disrupted or damaged or were the conduit through which we were either harmed or deprived, right? And so in adulthood, um, we need to establish some of those emotional bonds, some of those attachment bonds with others so that we can re-experience um being loved, feeling safe, being nurtured, being cared for, because it's those experiences within that relationship bond that will really have an impact on our own healing. Just reading a book will not do much. In fact, I oftentimes, you know, I oftentimes joke, I don't mean this to be mean, right, at all. And it's gonna sound that way, but you can almost measure how how much somebody is struggling by how many self-help books they have on the shelf, right? Because they, you know, they and and I've been guilty too. Uh, you know, I'm not casting stones here, right? It's like, God, if I can just find the answer, if if there's just something that somebody can say that would go, oh, that makes so much sense, and now I feel better, um, then man, all of this stuff would have been healed a long time ago, and we wouldn't be sitting with a crisis of uh of mental health in our nation right now. But the reality is that just knowing stuff doesn't help, right? We need to make that emotional connection with a safe and healthy person in order for our own sense of self to be nurtured and to grow and to develop, right? And that is that is a really, really critical piece. The last thing that I want to say is that there's a myth out there that we can get over things that happened in our past, right? And I I hate that that phrase because you know when people when people say, my God, man, just get over it, uh there's a there's a bit of a judgment there and a lack of understanding about how attachment injuries are different from other forms of feeling hurt and things like that, right? I mean, if somebody betrays your friend, like a friend when you're a kid, betrays your trust, steals your bike, tells everybody that you're dumb, right? I mean, in the moment you'll be like, oh, that was fucked up, and now my, you know, I don't have a bike and you might feel really bad. But two years later, you won't even remember that, right? I mean, you'll have so moved on, you'll have a new bike, that person will be out of your life, you'll have made new friends, and that just will not continue to affect you. But an attachment injury, a wounded part of our self-concept that occurs through the conduit of attachment bonds as a kid, those do not heal over time. They do not heal on their own. And so we can be 50 years old, 60 years old, 70 years old, and still like, I can't believe my dad didn't get me a pony or get me a puppy or took away my goldfish or whatever, right? And people look at you like, dude, that was 50 years ago, that was 20 years ago, whatever, let it go. Because they don't understand that certain types of wounds to the soul do not just clear out on their own. We have to heal them, we have to process through them while in relation with another human being where there's that kind of emotional connection. Because this is just the way that the circuits of the brain work, right? That when we are injured through the conduit in the context of a of an attachment relationship, that healing has to occur in adulthood within an attachment relationship. Because then kind of the the circuits of the brain, the parts of the brain that were activated and hurt now can be uh can be addressed. And uh, and it's not that we always kind of can just get over uh or um totally eliminate all of our emotional reactivity and our triggers and our sensitivities and our fears and things like that, no matter how much therapy we can we do. And I know that sucks, but it's just the reality because when we a lot of these things that happen in childhood where our sense of self is affected, right? When we go through uh when we go through adolescence, there is a tremendous amount of wiring, rewiring that goes on in the brain during adolescence. One of the reasons why in adolescence, it's like there's a total personality shift, right? The nice little sweet kid that we once were now is like, you know, shut up, mom, you don't know anything, and going out and doing all kinds of crazy things and impulsive things and getting involved in, you know, with people who we wouldn't otherwise hang out with. And we do all of those things because it what's going on in the brain is that there's a ton of rewiring that's going on. And many of those coping mechanisms that we developed from childhood on how we show up uh how we show up in the world and where we understand our place in the world and our sense of value, our sense of safety, our sense of agency, you know, our sense of belonging, all of you know, those kinds of things then kind of get they get imprinted, they kind of get hardwired in our in our brain as we go through adolescence. And then when we go into adulthood, that's when we you know we kind of start carrying that stuff. And so even if you do a lot of work, and and I've done a ton of work, of healing work on my own to you know, to kind of get over stuff that I experienced as a kid, right? And um, and despite that, there are still times when I can feel certain things get triggered. And I mean, now I recognize that, yeah, that's that's happening. And and it no longer, you know, the the kind of the feelings of, you know, I'm I'm unsafe or I'm panicky, I can't trust anybody, or um, you know, or nobody likes me, or I'm completely alone. I mean, any of those kinds of things that start to pop up now, they no longer flood me. They no longer knock me out of the driver's seat in my own life. Uh, and I just recognize that these are just remnants, um, these are kind of ghosts from the past that were were kind of hardwired in my brain and adolescence. And some of those things still um uh uh are with me, even though they no longer dictate how I experience the world. I'm just aware that sometimes some of these wounded parts may come up. And so I think the bottom line that I'm really trying to get to here is that um you may feel as though nobody really understands you. You may feel like a freak, you may feel like you have a broken brain, or that you're unlovable, or that if people really knew who you were, they wouldn't like you. And I want to tell you that I 100% at a deep visceral level understand what you're feeling because I have felt it too. And I want to, I just want to say that just because you feel like a freak doesn't mean that it's true. Just because you feel like you are broken and nobody likes you, or nobody loves you, or you'll always be a failure, or whatever it is, uh, even though it feels true, doesn't mean it is true. That a lot of those voices that kind of pop up from our woundedness of our past can be very powerful and can seem very convincing, right? But I just want to tell you that you are okay, you are fine, and just take the next little right step and find some good people to connect with, people who you can just share your experiences and just be open and vulnerable, and no matter what kind of crazy shit comes out of your mouth, that they won't necessarily judge it, and that you won't judge it, but rather you will see it coming from um some woundedness of your past, whether that be injury or deprivation, and you can just see it in that context, right? That these are just these are just things that came from my experience in the past. And finding those people is extremely important if you are living with uh some of the fallout or some of the effects of childhood emotional trauma, because that is going to be your path uh into the future and uh to uh to create a better life for yourself.