Latest / Trauma Meets Recovery Podcast / Connect Instead of Correct: Healing Shame and Finding Joy | Andy Carlson

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Connect Instead of Correct: Healing Shame and Finding Joy | Andy Carlson · Trauma Meets Recovery Podcast

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Trauma Meets Recovery Podcast, where we share stories of resilience, recovery, and hope.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: Join us as we sit down with survivors, authors, and leading experts to discuss their experiences and insights, exploring the path towards healing and the power of the human spirit.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: And now here's your host, Dr.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: Mark McNear.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_02: Hi, and welcome to the Trauma Meets Recovery Podcast.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: I will be your host today, Dr.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_02: Mark McNear, and I am so grateful to have a friend of mine on.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: Andy.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: Andy, could you introduce yourself to our audience?
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Currently I'm a coach and a facilitator with Tim Fletcher's organization.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm also his co-host on the Time with Tim podcast.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I'm I'm in these positions because of, I guess, the journey that I've walked through.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: I do have a quick qualifiers.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm used to being on the other side of this.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh where I'm the one, I'm the one asking questions and I'm the one that gets to be curious and compassionate.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's it's always different for me to turn around and have the spotlight turned on me.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think part of that is in my background.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: I I was always such a good fawner.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: And while I've moved on a little bit from the fawning, uh it's it's one of those skills that uh has stayed with me and being able to be connected to other people and being able to, you know, be be the one being curious and compassionate and the the listener rather than the speaker.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I will say that it's it's still unfamiliar to me to be on the side where I get to be the one who speaks.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I am, as I said, I am really grateful to have you here with me today.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought that we had talked earlier about you sharing some of your story and also, you know, the journey and what that has entailed.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm just gonna open it up to you and have you share.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'll give you I'll give a few high-level pieces and feel free to to kind of jump in and ask me to go deeper anywhere you want.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I never know whether to go uh time timeline-wise or to pop around.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I think today I'll I'll go a little bit timeline-wise.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I grew up in in rural Minnesota.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'll say rural Reagan Republican Minnesota.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh both my parents were children of farmers, and they were extremely Christian.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, our our version of Christianity was one where the uh the gates to heaven were so small that you know maybe 2% of people would get in there, and we had to be perfect and extremely pure.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but also we we didn't use the word hate, but we essentially hated everybody else.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you were a real human being with real issues and real problems, um there was something dirty and disgusting and bad and gross about you.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so I learned that my body was bad, my behaviors were bad, my thoughts were bad, and there was this very like punishing God that was inside my brain all the time.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: And this was enforced through a lot of uh hitting by my father and my mom's religiosity that essentially like lifted my dad up to being this.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um I heard a narcissistic expert say once that some families are like a cult, it's a cult of one family.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: And we were essentially like this cult of one family.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: We were extremely antisocial, not a lot of contact with people, but also like just really despising people.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it was it was a weird thing to to grow up in.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so to have a home that was dangerous for me, if I sniffled, I might get yelled at or hit.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if I had my own opinion, I would definitely get yelled at or hit.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, my mom was extremely codependent, but you know, she was she was ready, she was the loving and caring and nurturing mom who was there for me when my knee was skinned or if I had the flu.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: But 99% of the time that I cried as a child was at the hands of my father.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: And in those times, like my mother essentially abandoned and neglected me by lifting him up or standing to the side and just having his word rule.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what I understand a little bit now is, you know, he had an extremely dysregulated nervous system, and my life triggered that, and him being triggered, it was easy to point a finger and to blame.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: And the way he vented and released was by uh essentially kind of taking taking it out of me.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Growing up in that, the only way I was validated was through purity and smartness and grades.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so I became uh by by age eight, uh, I learned to hide, and all I did was sit on the couch.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: I would sit and I'd read for four hours every night, three or four hours every night, because by making myself small and hiding, you know, it wouldn't trigger my father.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was able to escape into fantasy.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know that I was escaping into fantasy at the time.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I realized that, but it was a way to make myself small and to escape this home that I was unable to escape.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: And my my father, like so we were in a small town of 600 people, it was K through 12, and my dad was a teacher in the high school.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh he was also a bully in the school, and he would, of course, like bully kids who were, you know, quote unquote problem kids, but kids who are problem kids or people who are having trouble at their home, and now they come to school, and here's this teacher who, you know, is yelling at them, snarling at them, just kind of getting uh he he gets a lot of joy out of punishing people.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, when students who are 12, 13, 14, 18, they can't punish a teacher, and so I would go to school, and school wasn't a safe place for me because they would turn around and take their pain, their anger off on me.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so there was a lot of name-calling and bullying that I went to school.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, my my childhood environment was a place where there sadly no place was safe, and I really learned how to to freeze and to fawn, but also I really felt the only way I could ever gain love was by being perfect and by succeeding.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this I actually don't talk about my my middle life very often because my you know my my twenties and early 30s was me trying to be on this rocket ship of prestige and power and money and career.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it was a lot about external validation, but it was going to places where people would love me just by me being able to say, you know, how cool it was, how cool it was where I was, how cool it was what I was doing.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so I don't talk about it a lot because when it comes up, like today, people do fawn toward me often.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and so I want people to see me as a as a human being and not as not as these titles that I worked so hard to get.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I worked, I worked at the Fed in Washington, D.C.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: back when Alan Greenspan was there.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then from there I went on and got a JD MBA and I worked on Wall Street for a while.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: And again, like all of those were like I'd come home to Minnesota and friends would parade me around as that, you know, the cool New York lawyer, the cool New York investment banker, which, you know, really fed my ego, fed that need for validation, fed that need for love.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I uh I lost both of my grandfathers.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I graduated from business school into uh the financial crisis, went on to Wall Street uh during into leverage finance when the when the right when the market was crashing.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so working on Wall Street for that two years was kind of like a hellish place to be because everybody was freaking out at the time.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: And while I was there, uh I lost both of my grandfathers.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's there's a piece inside me that that felt this deep sense of disconnection from my family and a longing for my family.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so I made the choice to move back to Minnesota to be close to my family.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: And kind of there are there are pieces of me that, you know, a lot of my life you could see were run by complex trauma and extreme prestige sinking, seeking.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and I'd moderated a tiny bit, you know, through life experiences in those in those 15 years away.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so I was still, you know, very seeking, trying to be, you know, super networking, super known when I returned to Minnesota, but also connecting to my family.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_02: If I could if I could stop you just for one moment, Andy, I wanted to ask you, you use the phrase complex trauma, and I I just want to ask you if you would uh explain what you mean by that.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I think that that that phrase gets thrown around a lot, and I think it's a very valid, valid phrase, but I'm wondering what that means to you.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, complex trauma is uh to say the least, it's it's complex.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: And on a on a base level, you know, the the simplest explanation I'd give, I'll give two levels.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: One is there's that book by Bessar Vanderkock, uh, The Body Keeps the Score.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so events from our childhood are essentially like seared into our brain, seared into our nervous system, and we learn to react and respond a different way.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: That in childhood was a survival adaptation, but now may not be beneficial.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: It may not be adaptive anymore when it was adaptive in our childhood.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, I mentioned like freeze and fawn responses, and so me having freeze and fawn responses are examples of the complex trauma.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um the lack of my own self-esteem needing to have validation from others is the example of the result of complex trauma.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: The the obsessive-compulsive disorder, the anxiety are the examples of, you know, and the periods of depression are examples of complex trauma.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, on a on a broader scale, complex trauma happens when usually when a child is in an environment that they can't necessarily control or escape, where there's some form of abuse, abandonment, neglect, um, or a misordering of the world by, you know, for me, it was religious and cultural beliefs.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and these things get stored in the body and they they come out.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh most people, I would say, like you may a lot of things that people may call personality quirks.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh a lot of different personality quirks can sometimes be traced to these childhood events.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so I don't know, does is that is that a reasonable explanation I define it differently every time.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and I I I think that one of the things I was thinking as you were sharing your story was that idea, Andy, that it wasn't safe at home and it wasn't safe at school, you know, there wasn't safety there for you as a kid.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: You know, safety or security.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: And and part of that safety, you know, what I know now is that, you know, my my nervous system has been wired in a way that I am constantly hyper-vigilant.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I would say there's these three main parts of the nervous system, the ventral vagal, which is that when we have safety and connection and belonging, and then there's the sympathetic, which is healthy mobilization, but it can be the fight and the flight, and we can also be stuck in trauma patterns.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: This is where a lot of anxiety is.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's like a stuck flight pattern.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's the dorsal vagal, which is this shutdown and collapse.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so I can see in myself that most of my patterns have been this pretty extreme shutdown and collapse.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: There's been a lot of depression, a lot of hopelessness, um, a lot of freeze response.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's been masked by being a great fawner, uh, by when I'm around people, being around people is never safe.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so acting in this codependent, pleasing way where I'm more attuned to your nervous system and keeping your nervous system regulated so that I can be safe, because the environment I was in was never safe, and the way that I could have safety was either by collapsing or by taking care of my father, essentially, for the most part.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm wondering, you were you were talking about going back home, connecting, and and so what did that look like?
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_02: And at what point was there a light bulb that went off that said, you know, something's not right?
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's that's actually a great question because this is one of those long-term, kind of like long period confusions.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like I've felt my entire life.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I have a I have a brother, a sister, a mother, and a father.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but especially towards my my brother and my father, I've always had this sense of loss, this sense of longing, this like deep need for connecting, and also often like trying to, trying to connect, but in that connecting to be seen and heard as a human being.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like I wanted them to be my friends, uh, whereas like my family is this extremely controlled, extremely rigid, extremely shut down, uh, and fears connection.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so like I moved home because I felt this longing for connection.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought that loss of connection was because I lived on the East Coast.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: The crazy thing is I moved back to Minnesota to be close to my family, and that lack of connection was still there.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I tried to put myself in their orbit and their environment, but there was still this thing missing.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Something I didn't realize until like I went through Tim Fletcher's program.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, one of the most influential things I learned is we talk about levels of relationship.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so we talk about what an acquaintance looks like, uh, what acquaintance relationships are like, where that is in the stage of relationship, what casual friends are, what that looks like, what close friends are.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: And this is something like it was mind-blowing for me because it was like, I'm either like, my rule was if you want to be my friend, I have to be your friend.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: There's no, if you don't want to be my friend, I guess we're not friends.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like that was just like my decision matrix was a lack of agency based off of what others wanted.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but in going through this, is like in an acquaintance relationship, you're only allowed to talk about surface things.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: We can talk about the weather, we can talk about sports.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not allowed to talk about my feelings.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not allowed to talk about my problems.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we only see each other a certain amount of times.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so what was interesting is like learning about this in depth, uh what I've realized at that moment after this lifetime of longing.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like I was grieving and I was mourning, and I didn't even know it.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: I was mourning this loss of connection, but there's this inability to connect due to my entire family, to the structural lack of safety and lack of connection in the family.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so this helped me to see that my family, like we were actually acquaintances.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: We were actually less than acquaintances.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because when my we didn't get to it, but when my marriage fell apart, my family essentially ignored me.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um my my brother, neither my brother nor my father has ever mentioned the word divorce, uh, even though that's something that occurred over three years ago now.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's this a deep amount of shame, a deep amount of pain, but also this extreme fear and inability to connect.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so the the light bulb moment was understanding these levels of relationship, but seeing these people that I had been loyal to and longing for, and we use this word family, we we cultivated this image of family for the public.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: But the reality was like we're so disconnected that like people are unable to show that they care for another human being who is going through a through a hard time.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so yeah, it was it was really weird and awkward and painful now moving back to Minnesota and having almost less connection than when I was in New York.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because when I was in New York, they they loved me when I was an investment banker because you know my prestige, uh, what's it called when it it's not that it radiates off of me.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: There's like this secondary, they get to be proud of me because somebody who's so cool and so amazing, they can talk about how wonderful I am and they get the they get an afterglow from that.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah, not not being that amazing human, my family, you know, those are those are the only humans that my family values.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I was somebody that they no longer valued, but also didn't have the skill to to see or to talk to or to relate to or to connect to.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so I've gone through layers and multiple layers of grieving, actual grieving processes, processes, uh individually with you know, with my father, with my mother, with my brother, with my sister, to essentially grieve.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to find the way to word this.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: I two years ago I could word this really well.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: But there's this like, you know, when we're a child, we're born precious, valuable, and free, and we deserve a loving community, a supportive community.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so what we we grieve is what we end up grieving is this the loss of that loving community, that safe environment.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: A father who says, Good job, son, instead of, you know, why did you only get a 98%?
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like somebody who can only see you as a problem, as a burden, as a pain.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's interesting.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: I've I've in the three years of this healing journey I've been on, I've done a lot of grieving in different ways.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it's something I return to a lot.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: But like grieving for that loss of that connection and really being able to see it and name it, it's something where I now can accept them more for where they're at.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: And what I accept is that they're acquaintances, they're distant acquaintances, and they're distant acquaintances who don't necessarily have the capacity, they have a fear of connection, not a capacity for connection.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot less pain inside of me as I've grieved what I lost, but I can also now accept and recognize the truth of of what's there and and what exists.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_02: So powerful.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_02: So I I'm wondering what trauma has taught you.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and uh we don't choose our stories, but I think that we can choose what we do with our stories and and how we just deal with the life that we've been given.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm wondering what that looks like for you as far as what in your journey so far as you put it, you know, what trauma has taught you.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: Do we have another 23 hours?
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I I think 22 and a half, so I always I always ask people these questions and give them in the short period of time, but but like tell us a little bit of what that looks like for you.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, I'm I'm at the stage where I'm starting to feel fortunate because in healing trauma, one of the things that I say to my clients and people, and I've used a lot is, you know, our our pain is the path.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: And now when when I'm nervous or things aren't going my way, or I'm uncomfortable, or I'm you know, or a relationship is ending, or something is painful, uh, I've I've turned inward enough and I've faced it enough that I like it's like you you you begin to be able to taste the flavor of pain without shutting down or running away from it.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, life is this beautifully, I'm I'm looking above.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: View and I'm looking out the window right now.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: At like I'm in Minnesota and the trees are barren and and the sky is gray, and yet like I can see this beauty in my environment, my beauty in in what exists.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's been one of the things that I've started to discover is finding beauty in the small moments, beauty in all of my sensations.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm no longer, sorry, I've I have so many different directions I want to go with this.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I used to like one of one of the things that happens in trauma is we're stuck in situations that are unresolvable.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so we spend our life chasing comfort and seeking happiness.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: And that was definitely, you know, me and my career and trying to earn validation.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: That was something that I was doing.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: And the the crazy thing now is that it's my choice is in accepting discomfort.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: And in accepting that discomfort, I'm finding that joy comes to me more often.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm no longer seeking comfort or happiness, but I'm allowing discomfort and pain.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: And in that allowing discomfort and pain, I've developed this relationship with myself.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm developing, not developed, I'm still developing this relationship with myself where I'm learning to love myself and to love my environment and to love the people in my environment.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, like that that question is so broad.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I I think that there's like, you know, the word bittersweet has sweet in it.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I I think that it's like when we chase sweetness, we lose all flavor, but when we accept the bitter, we can also taste the sweet.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's a place where my life is is starting to come, is where I'm, you know, there's there's these bittersweet moments, but there's these beautiful moments.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of like ambiguity and uncertainty, and there's a lot less black and white.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: And there's also, you know, I'll I'll give I'll give you an example.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: So like I grew up being corrected all the time for, you know, again, breathing, being awake, making noise, walking too fast, and that like life was a constant correction.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so one of the areas I've been working on recently is like I have this almost like this cringe response.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like stored in my nervous system.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: I can't consciously control it.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's something I've hated, it's something I've been frustrated by, it's something I've rejected and pushed away.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: But when I hate it and I reject it and I push away, that just makes it continue and that makes it stronger.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so for the last, you know, for a while, what I'll say is connect instead of correct.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's this point where like I see the cringe, but then I dislike the cringe.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: I shouldn't have it because I should be healing or I shouldn't be cringing away from these certain things.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so like my brain is constantly trying to correct myself, which I had a lot of value in learning to do that as a childhood.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then now, like instead, it's like I'm learning to connect with that part that's correcting me.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm learning to connect with that part that's cringing.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it's allowing me to just be more steady and present in life.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_02: So so you're talking about like moving toward.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's there's a lot of these words that kind of come to the same.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like I use I use the word alignment, and sometimes I'll say welcoming, embracing, cherishing.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, sometimes they um I've I've like a high declining marginal utility.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so yet it's something I have, like my brain is smart enough to turn it into a wasteland.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so like the word accepting doesn't do a lot for me because I try to accept and trying to accept, I'm tensing, I'm not relaxing.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah, so moving toward, connect, embrace, welcome.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like they're all kind of, you know, different flavors of accepting.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so sometimes like I have to taste a different flavor to be able to get, you know, to to feel my liveness rather than cringing away from my liveness.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_02: So, Andy, um you had talked with me about kind of moving into or noticing a nif a different phase.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you want to use that word, but but I wonder if you could share with us what that looks like for you.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_02: Because I I, you know, I the the podcast is called Trauma Meets Recovery and it should be on.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: It should say after that and continue and continue and continue because it's not like they meet and then it's done.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's like they meet and then the process begins.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I've been feeling weird a lot lately.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: And and that that feeling weird is just my nervous system and my brain reacting in a different way.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that weirdness is the unfamiliarity.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, part of the difficulty of complex trauma is like, you know, we'll have repetition compulsion.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: We like what's familiar.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: Our body moves towards what's familiar, and unfamiliar feels dangerous.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so the last several months, like 2025 as a whole, but the last several months have felt really weird for me.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, my like I've had lifelong general anxiety and social anxiety.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's something that, like, in back in May, like I felt it kind of like I could feel it decrease.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like there were situations, like I was on the way to us, like to Tim and I recording a podcast.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: I had to be in a different situation.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: There was traffic in my way.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I got to the place that the building wasn't open.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and I got in there, and then the the podcasting software wasn't working.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: And all three of those things are things that would have caused me to be like, oh my gosh, like a lot of anxiety, a lot of fear, like I'm gonna piss people off.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: And the weird thing, it was the weird thing was like like I noticed that these are places that my body would have spiked, that my anxiety would have spiked, and I could feel like a tinge of it, and it would like go away, and I like remained calm and steady and grounded in my body.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's weird for me too, because like I'm somebody who I've like dissociated most of my life, and I've been out of my body most of my life.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so I could like feel, you know, whereas months before I felt anxiety, here I was feeling a hit of anxiety within the capacity of being able to adapt, to being able to trust myself, to being able to trust and knowing that I would be okay.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so instead of being an hour early, I was five minutes early, and then you know, the the podcast went off and everything was okay.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um more recently, uh like I've I've worked a lot, like we focus a lot on shame.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: And something that for me that hadn't been fully made clear is like I've done a lot of work recently on what I'd call like humiliation trauma.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: And shame is more the sense of like I am bad.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a bad person, I don't have value.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas that humiliation trauma, it feels more like a sense of exposure.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like the way I describe it is, you know, you're a kid, you're riding your bike, you fall down, and you just skin your entire elbow or your entire knee.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's kind of how my consciousness feels a lot when people are looking at me, when people might be judging me, when people might be, you know, when I'm putting myself in a public position in a vulnerable way, that it could be used against me in some way.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so I feel this like deep sense of exposure.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so over the last two months, I did a lot, I've done a lot of grief work, but I've also really kind of tried to hone in on focusing on humiliation trauma as different from shame.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: And like a couple of other things with that humiliation is that, you know, like again, growing up extremely Catholic, like I had to go to confession.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: There was this like really angry God who was inside my head and he could see all your thoughts.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: So imagine, you know, imagine being a 12-year-old boy going through puberty and and there's this purity hating God who's judging every, you know, everything that comes across your eyesight, every thought that you have.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that's something that's stayed with me my entire life.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so I, in my family and in the system, like there's like no internal boundary, no right to be unseen.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: There's a little bit of irony in a paradox because here I'm on a podcast talking about you know vulnerable and open things.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: And part of the key of that is it's like retaking back the agency to have that choice of what it is I say rather than needing to confess all of my thoughts, needing to confess all my sins, and like believing that you can see everything written on my face that's inside me.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so like I've done a lot of work of like regaining, I'd say, an opaqueness that you don't need to know me or all of me, and the me I tell you is the me I can choose to tell you.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but it's also bringing that authority back into myself because the other was who got to decide whether I was good, rather whether I was worthwhile.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, as I said, like friends chose me, I couldn't choose friends, and so um you, the other, was always my authority.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like bringing that authority back, bringing choice back, but also working with that exposure in a way.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's something that's like deeply changed, and it's like yeah, there's uh the way I'd say it's it's I feel weird and I feel uncomfortable.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's because I feel unfamiliar a lot because I can walk into situations and I'm like, I'm not the same person I was three months ago.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm definitely not the person I was a year ago.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm definitely not the person I was ten years ago.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that that feels unfamiliar, but there's also something you know that it's there's more of this embodiment, more of this groundedness, uh, you know, instead of being dissociated, like there's this ability to be present in this body and be okay in this body with whatever emotions and feelings are coming up.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I have to tell you, I have a really short-term memory.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so you asked a question, and at this point I've forgotten.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: I want to ask you if I answered your question or not.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you need to go back.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_02: You did you did more.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_02: And it I I was just thinking that I really, Andy, really appreciate your vulnerability and just being genuine.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I think that uh one thing I was reflecting on when you were talking about, you know, carrying so much anxiety, and and you know some of my story, and and that I've carried a lot of anxiety, and and for me, when I'm not anxious, I feel uncomfortable.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_02: You know, so it's that whole idea of retraining the nervous system and the body and getting the body on board with what really is happening today and not being back here.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_02: I want to ask you uh one final question in closing, and that is what gets Andy up in the morning?
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_02: What are your passions?
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, right now I'm I'm dog sitting.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: So what gets me up in the morning is this hundred-pound Munsterlander licking my face, telling me that he loves me and that it's like food and walk time.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm gonna answer this in in two ways.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, one is my the the dating profile way.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like I like nature.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: I like walking outside and being outside and and connecting to the outdoors and and especially like floating in the Pacific Ocean uh when I can.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um but also you know, a lot of my role right now, so you know, I facilitate and I coach.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um and what I get to be is I get to be curious and compassionate to others.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like my entire life, the world I grew up in was like upside down and inside out, and it never made any sense.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so a lot of my life, I like I was always reading brain books and psychology books and sociology books, trying to understand how like people worked, but like just never understanding because my nervous system was wired in this way, but like also my family, like with gaslighting and the craziness that it that I grew up in.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so what gets me up in the morning is like I I do I've done a lot of like reparenting, and my reparenting it always ends, you know.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: So every time that I feel a quote unquote negative emotion, I recognize that it's a part of my limbic brain.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then I also recognize that it's a survival adaptation and that it's something that most likely came from childhood.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: And when I can recognize this as a survival adaptation, I'm able to give myself compassion, myself compassion and curiosity in this way.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the most beautiful thing that's been coming out of my healing journey is like this reparenting, is what I consider.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's like the the escalator towards unconditional love.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: But it's also this, you know, I may like I'm gonna make something up here.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, oh, men with glasses, like, you know, I have negative reaction, you know, I'm triggered by, you know, and so now I feel upset.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's there's this thing with you, so I'm looking at you, and maybe there's something that's triggered inside of me.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so when I have like a negative reaction to somebody else, I also recognize that as a part of myself, and I also go through this parts work, and then I've by doing that full process, I'm able to give myself that curiosity and compassion.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: But now that changes my relationship to you as well.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so my entire life is it's about loving myself in a way, but as a side effect of that, I love you as well.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, because if there's anything about you that I don't love, uh, I'm able to see something in me that that feels pain or is triggered or traumatized.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I can when I can nurture that and when I can love that.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'll I'm giving so long answers for such long answers to everything you ask.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: But I think the thing that's really getting me up is like, you know, just to be able to connect with people.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like I talk about my family's lack of capacity for connecting.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's one of those things where I have the right to say that because I lived it.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: I was also that human who didn't know how to connect, had a deep fear around connecting, did the wrong things around connecting.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so every day, like I have a lot of joy just in seeing a human being and finding the the fullness and being with the fullness of that human being.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that's like, you know, your your warts, your vulnerability, your glasses, your whatever.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so it's really it's like connecting with myself, but also connecting with with other people and being able to experience the fullness of this human reality.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: There's something really beautiful in that.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_02: Sitting and listening, the word that I would say that I that I'm holding right now that is want to share as we close, is that whole idea of richness.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_02: So I want to thank you for this time, and I want to ask if if people want to connect or see some of what you're doing, where would you direct them?
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, people can mostly find me through Tim Fletcher's work at timfletcher.ca.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um or I'm the the co-host with the Time with Tim podcast, and I have a beautiful opportunity to connect with people there.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm doing a I'm interviewing somebody about grief tomorrow, so it's gonna be a lovely, uh, a lovely journey.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um and if anybody wants to reach out to me personally, I'm at andycarlson at outlook.com.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't really have my own social media or anything at this point.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: Andy, thank you for this time.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for having me, Mark.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for joining us on the Trauma Meets Recovery Podcast.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: If today's conversation spoke to you, we would love for you to like, subscribe, or share the episode with someone to learn more or connect with us.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: Visit our website at trauma meets recovery.com.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: Until next time, be gentle and kind to yourself.