Latest / System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation / Unfawning, Part 2 of 3

Transcript

Unfawning, Part 2 of 3 · System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation

• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Welcome to System Speak, a podcast about Complex Trauma and Dissociation. It's our story, our learning, and the ideas we've been working with as they've unfolded over time. Earlier episodes give context for where we are now, and current episodes may engage more advanced material, harder content, or reference earlier conversations. A few things to remember as you listen. The podcast is education, reflection, and storytelling.
• 0:41
  It's not therapy, and listening doesn't create a relationship. Although I am a therapist, I am not in that role here, and nothing that I share is individualized clinical advice. Every system, every internal world, all of your own stories are all different and you take up your own shape. What we share about ours won't translate directly to yours. It isn't meant to.
• 1:06
  We're all different, and all of our stories matter. As always, take care of yourself during and after listening, and we are so glad you're here.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: After all of that we have finally made it to the actual fawning section which is what the whole topic of the other podcast is about or the episode. Okay So continuing that, here we go. This is brutal. I really almost got sick. I know I say that a lot, but it happens.
• 1:45
  Okay. So it starts out simple, and you're like, I got this. I know this. It's okay. Not so much as it turns out.
• 1:55
  So she introduces fun, and he's like, just explain it so we can talk about it. And he he said, fawning helps me make sense of what has been going on and why I have difficulty standing up against things that I know are messed up. So many things flashed through my head when he said that. But she points out that fight, flight, and freeze are instincts like we were talking about a minute ago or in the previous episode. Like, they are not choices.
• 2:30
  They are instincts. And she says fawning is specific to relational trauma. So in the CPTSD book, which I could also link to in the episode by Pete Walker. That's where he's the one who coined the term fawning. That's where it comes from.
• 2:49
  We talked about that, I think, a couple summers ago. But I never heard this put this way. She said other traumas like physical abuse, sexual abuse, those kinds of things have to do with surviving because I'm going to be eaten or beaten. So flight, English. Flight, fight, and freeze are in response to being eaten or beaten, like an instinctual threat to your survival, an instinctual response to a threat to your survival.
• 3:27
  But fawning happens because of relational trauma, which is not about being eaten or beaten. It is about I'm not allowed to be a whole person. That's when I started feeling queasy. Oh, so she talks about how Pete Walker, the author of this CPTSD book, came up with the term, and I had actually not heard this story before. Had you heard the story?
• 3:55
  I mean, I've read the book. Maybe I didn't read it well enough. Anyway, he apparently recognized fawning. He was watching a thing about wolves, and there and wolves go in packs, and there was a lone wolf that came upon a pack and he thought the wolf was going to fight them or that they would fight this wolf. But instead the wolf did what animal scientists call tend and befriend, where the wolf
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: basically fawned, but it's different. It's like, there's
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: a distinction, but, like, basically made friends with the pack because the pack is the community that is safe. So being friends with the community actually was protective. Mammals are supposed to be in community. So community protects us when the community is safe. But then right after he saw this, he stubbed his toe on the couch and then apologized to the couch.
• 5:12
  So I hear this story, and I'm, like, laughing because I'm like, oh, that's too real. Right? That's funny. No. Do you know what she says next?
• 5:22
  Like, I almost puked. I can't even. She said, fawning is. And like using the example of apologizing to the couch. Right?
• 5:35
  Fawning is. Fawning means I cease to exist. I prioritize you over me. I abandon myself. So by default, a reenactment in service of other, even if the other is a couch.
• 6:00
  I'm uncomfortable with that. So so other kinds of trauma is about being eaten or beaten, but relational trauma is I will demean you. I will dismiss you. I will ignore you until you remember that you don't exist. It's like blanket training, except I'm the object.
• 6:29
  Yeah. So for those who have not seen it, that's a reference again to shiny happy people, which is the story of my religious trauma. Like, I'm not in it, but that was the same stuff I grew up with. Right? And one of the things is called blanket training, where you put the baby on the blanket, offer them a toy, and then they are hit every time they reach for it.
• 6:58
  That's how the spirit of the baby is broken. That's gaslighting from what she said earlier, the offering and the withdrawing, that's narcissistic abuse. Right? So then relational trauma is like I have to be the object instead of the baby, and I no longer have a need to be reached for or connected to or aware that there needs to be any needs or wants at all. People who have listened to all of the podcasts will have heard this, like, five times now.
• 7:38
  Okay. But it's really completely changed my life of like, that's it. That's what we were talking about. That's what happened in college. That's what happened.
• 7:47
  Like the getting locked in your room thing is a thing that my entire childhood, like, I just watch a documentary about my life. I don't know how to explain what a big deal it has been to see this. Anyway, so religious trauma, in those examples, like in shiny happy people,
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: literally
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: training me to fawn more. I'm going to beat you until you fawn better. Ugh. That's really uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable minimizing a little bit, but it's still honest.
• 8:39
  It is uncomfortable. That's what Nathan said when I talked to him about it. He was like, they basically franchised abuse, or maybe that was in the show. I don't remember. Somebody said it.
• 8:49
  Literally, my parents literally took classes in how to beat me, to beat the spirit out of me. I said that out loud. Well, it's fine. It's fine. It's all just fine.
• 9:05
  So with other okay. So with flight and fight and freeze, Those are about being eaten or beaten like physical survival. And with tendon befriend like the wolf went to the community because we are mammals and the community is safe and a source of support and safety so that we go back into our frontal cortex and we're functioning well. We can think about what is happening to us. We know what we're feeling.
• 9:45
  We can express those feelings. We can tolerate those feelings and we can function in our lives. But with relational trauma, she said, it is the community or your caregivers specifically or in religious trauma, the group. Right? Oh, sorry.
• 10:07
  Okay. Literally having these visceral reactions. It is the community or the caregivers that are the danger. That is relational trauma. That you cannot turn.
• 10:25
  Oh, oh, it feels so this is dissociation, right? Like, it feels so simple to just say the words, but to tolerate and hold on to the words that you're saying is almost impossible. Relational trauma is simply when you cannot turn toward your caregiver for safety or comfort. So that's what brings to the next layer. So now we've moved from fawning 2.0 to like fawning three point o.
• 10:55
  Are you ready? Maybe that's what we can call them. The first episode can be fawning two point o. This episode can be fawning three point o. Oh my goodness.
• 11:06
  Because here's what she said. When that happens, what you just said, that we have to turn toward our caregiver for safety and comfort and provision and protection, but we cannot because that is the source of the danger, but we have to to survive, that creates what she called a perpetual trauma bond. Okay. So she would use the example of her stepdad and things that happen with her stepdad. But, basically, fawning is a trauma bonded relationship because you only get positive reinforcement when you get it right.
• 12:03
  When you fawn correctly, you finally get relationship, which then, like, basically feeds the cycle to make you better and better at fawning. You get fawning her and fawning her. So it's more, she said, that's what's so intoxicating. The experience feels powerful when light shines on me because I am so special. Nothing else is like it.
• 12:33
  That's why it's so intoxicating. There is attention contrasted to the deprivation without it. But also there is the magical thinking of I have more control, more agency, more power, but with fawning, it fuses me to being exploited. So the only way to actually get the connection and comfort and provision protection is to give yourself away. That's the cost.
• 13:09
  So, so that actually only gives an illusion of control and power and value because it's not actually real. So when we stay in the boxes, we feel safer, it feels more predictable, and we have a better chance of getting it right. And also that is giving ourselves away because we are living an illusion for what other people want rather than who we are. Oh. Oh.
• 13:55
  So okay. Okay. So she talks about how this is what ends up being reenactments, where we keep seeking out people who will care for us or offer us care, but it's not actually real and it still gets taken away over and over and over. So she gave the examples of being exploited in different ways, partners who aren't available, and therapists who don't actually help, that all of those are trauma bonds. That reenactments are a chronic fawning response.
• 14:39
  Reenactments just mean, who do you need me to be? I will stop being myself to be that. Both happen. Both happen. The closer you get to being accepted and approved, the further you are, the more space there is between who you really are and who you want to be and who you're trying to be for them.
• 15:16
  She said, so that leaves you and in trauma bond, it leaves you with the predicament of, even though I don't want it, I can't leave. What am I supposed to leave? Myself? It's the only way to be someone. It's the only way to exist is to be what someone else wants.
• 15:41
  She gave the example of starting to write about CPTSD and how she had all of this experience, all of this professional experience. So she knew it both personally and professionally, but it's only in the ICD. It's not in the DSM yet. And so when people started trying to question her, she went back into fawning and said, I abandoned myself and decades of personal experience that not only helped me to heal and my clients to heal, but I allowed other voices to become more important than mine. And I started to dismiss what I knew to be true and silenced myself from what I had to say.
• 16:31
  So the thing that came to me the thing that came to me of all examples, there's so many examples, but the example that came to me when I read that is I have actually recently received, just by coincidence, it's no different than any other month, but for whatever reason, I received probably a good handful, I don't even know about number, but a good handful of people in the last month who have complained about being kicked off the community. Not because they did anything wrong, but because from the beginning of the time of the community, it has been a thing that if you don't join the groups and are not active in the community, then it removes you automatically. This is really tricksy because I don't want people to feel hurt. I don't want people to feel rejected or abandoned. I don't want to cause harm.
• 17:40
  Right? And so it's really sensitive because ideally, I wanna be like, everyone in the community is welcome, participate in the way that you can. I wish I were wealthy enough to make it all free and accessible. Although we try really hard, like it's not that much, and lots of people have support or are sponsored. And so, like, we try really hard to make it accessible.
• 18:08
  And I wish, especially because I get DID where, oh, I lost a year or, oh, I lost some months. Right? So I understand that. I really do. And I wish also the system had a way to let people come back if they wanted without having to use a different email or something like there.
• 18:28
  I wish there were an easier way to do it. And also and also I have done this kind of thing a lot, both professionally and personally and in different situations. And I know that if I don't set that up, then the community will not be safe. Yeah. Like my knowledge and my experience informs me that if I don't keep it set to active users only and participating users only, that all kinds of creeper people come in and it destroys it because then it's not safe.
• 19:10
  And if it's not safe, there's no point in having a community. So when I hear these complaints of, how could you hurt me like this? I thought you were a safe person. Why'd you kick me off the community? Well, I didn't.
• 19:25
  First of all, it's an automatic process. Second of all, or maybe even that should be first, is that I'm really sorry it's distressing. I'm sorry it hurts you. I don't wanna hurt you. I'm not trying to exclude you.
• 19:37
  I'm not targeting you specifically, but it is an automated process that if you don't join groups and if you don't participate, then it knocks you out because it keeps it to active users for safety. And that is very clearly and repeatedly explained within the community. Yeah. And I've talked about it on the podcast. So it shouldn't be a surprise.
• 19:59
  But right now, because of all the online drama and all the sensitivity that is happening, which is fine, it's trauma. Right? It's so much trauma. Rather than having discussions with me or asking for help or reading the directions of how to rejoin the community or just talking to me about it, there's all this online drama of why are you kicking? Like like, it's me.
• 20:29
  Like, I don't even know that it happens. I'm sorry that it happens, and I understand that it's distressing, and I am happy to help. But I can't help if you don't talk to me. And it will happen again if you don't join groups and participate because this is not a Facebook group. Right.
• 20:50
  It is not a social group. It is literally a therapeutic peer support group to practice being vulnerable and responsive, and you can't do those things if you don't participate. So it's intentionally set up that way, not set up to kick people off, but to be an active, interactive process. People who don't want that or can't yet participate or are not ready to do that safely or whatever their like, I can't fix what are their issues. But this is what it made me think of because I hear people say, oh, well, I got kicked out of the community.
• 21:35
  You didn't get kicked out. You just weren't you didn't finish joining or you didn't go through. And I'm happy to help you with that. But what it makes me wanna do is just shut it down of that takes too many spoons to just get yelled at all the time Right. To offer some help.
• 21:52
  Except that's not true. And the other thing it makes me wanna do as well, I should just open up to everyone. People have told me I'm sorry I'm on this tangent, but it's very much in my head, and it matters a lot to some people in the community. Right? Other thing people have said is you should just let people come and stay even if they're not active because then it's like an email list, and you can collect their email addresses and continue to market and like, that's not what I'm doing.
• 22:19
  I'm not doing it for that. I don't collect people's email addresses. I don't save them. Mhmm. I don't have access to them.
• 22:26
  Like, that's not what I'm doing. It has nothing to do with what the community is or represents. And so if I listen to these other voices, what I get is you're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong.
• 22:38
  You're doing it wrong. And it makes me want to just be like, okay, somebody else can do it, or okay, let's just shut it down, or okay, I'm sorry I had an idea. But all of that is apologizing to the couch. That's my point. There's a reason I do what I'm doing the way that I'm doing it.
• 22:57
  And outside of those safety issues, I am not like, oh, you have to do it in my way. In fact, the community is very different than what I had designed because people wanted different than what I was going to offer, and that's okay. That's meeting those needs in a way that's not about fawning, just about actual needs. But I will not compromise on safety. I just won't.
• 23:21
  And so I'm sorry that some people have been upset. People I understand that it's distressing, but no one's being targeted. And if they message me or if they just sign up again, it should work fine. Mhmm. But they have to go all the way into the groups.
• 23:36
  They cannot there's no lurking. There's no lurking. It doesn't work. So I just it for me, that's what I got in that moment. Like, all of that.
• 23:49
  I know that was a big tangent, but all of that happened in my brain really fast of I don't have to compromise safety. Mhmm. Not for myself when people have literally targeted me and my family and doxxed me and made threats to me, I don't have to expose the community to that. Like, I'm I'm not willing to compromise on safety. I'm just not.
• 24:12
  And what other people think of me because of that is not actually my problem. Woo hoo. Yeah. But it's hard. It's hard.
• 24:22
  Because also it's very public, right, because of the podcast. So, like, people can talk about me, and there's nothing I can do about it. But that doesn't mean people listen to me or know me or do the work of building a relationship with me, which is different than those who really have and then what beautiful friendships we've developed, which is community. That is what moves us from being a lone wolf to part of a pack, which is where healing happens and we function better. All of that's way easier to talk about than fawning and trauma bonds.
• 25:02
  Adjacent. Anyways, what the author said was my voice matters and my experience matters. That's why it clicked. Like, I don't need to change anything. There's lots of different communities, lots of different ways to connect with others.
• 25:19
  Go find your place. Go do you. That's totally fine. I'm not offended by that at all. I am not competing with anyone.
• 25:29
  But this community that is a part of me, I will protect as best as I can. And I will not compromise with safety. And my experience matters and my voice matters. I guess the last thing from this section that I wanna share that was just an interesting tidbit rather than as emotional was that she talked about that Pete Walker. And, again, did I just miss this in the book or have I dissociated from it?
• 26:01
  But she talked about how he says fight and fawn are actually on a continuum with each other, that you're either fighting against or fawning for. So what is the where is the health in that? If that's like is that like a seesaw or a teeter totter and healthy is in the middle where you can function within a system or following rules or something, but also have the boundaries to not lose who you are within that context. Like, I have my new job, but to keep my new job, I have to show up and do my work. But I also can be myself and love who I want in real life or wear what I want within that context or those fences.
• 26:53
  That's why I like to be under blankets, but I do not like to be on blankets. I think our picnics are okay because the objects, which in that case is the food, right, is on the blanket. It's healthy. It's not in a trauma response. Because we're are you sure we don't need to stop?
• 27:18
  Because we're masochists and addition to all of this pawning nonsense. Okay. So oh my goodness. The next bit is painful. She said, the truth is that the stories of what happened are bad.
• 27:49
  Bad things happened, but they pale in comparison to the symptoms I've been living with for decades. That what happened may or may not have been traumatic, but that the trauma is what happens inside of us. It's not just the event that is traumatic, which is one reason that we can't compare traumas because it's not about what happened on the outside. It's about the impact on the inside. She said it doesn't stop.
• 28:26
  It never like and with relational trauma specifically, she said, it doesn't stop. It never resolves. It feels like capital t truth. My brain starts seeing more and more evidence to make it more and more true. That's reenactment, recreating those original traumas.
• 28:49
  It gets stuck in time and becomes a belief system. So the next painful piece is that, like, in the story you were just sharing, when you start finding evidence and evidence, then we also start gaslighting ourselves that we are told over and over again that we are selfish, that we are the problem, and part of us starts to believe it. Maybe I should not take up space. Maybe I should not be on the podcast. And it's self gaslighting.
• 29:25
  Oh, we're getting to that part, I think. I think it's coming in the next episode. Fawning four point o. Oh my goodness. One last thing I wanna say about is that an insight I had that actually is really hard for me to say because I feel like I need to speak it as my truth.
• 29:45
  But again, I'm worried and anxious about causing offense or about saying the words poorly in English or miscommunicating or hurting people or causing harm. And also, what helped me with this section was understanding what has bothered me so much about the advocates who are being hateful and ugly as part of advocating. I do not mean all advocating is bad. I'm actually pro advocating. But in some of the online drama or in some cases of people like this rage response that people have had that I have said since before healing together this year.
• 30:41
  I have said I'm really uncomfortable with it. Why? Why? Why? And I've tried to explain it away, even talking with people in interviews, I'm like, Oh, maybe because I didn't want to identify with the perpetrator.
• 30:52
  Maybe it's because of this. Like, I'm trying really hard to see the value in that because I do believe in advocating. I do believe in lived experience. I do believe our voice matters and our experience matters. Semicolon, however, comma.
• 31:12
  What this episode clicked into place for me is that the advocates who are only advocating through fighting and through rage and through being hateful and ugly, that's still a fight response. It's still a trauma response. My inner experience and wisdom for myself is accurate and I need to listen to it. I don't have to abandon my self warnings about it in order to belong with them. I can support them as people without joining their trauma response because for me, not judging anyone else, for me that would be trauma bonding.
• 32:05
  And it would still be a trauma response. And that is not a healthy frontal cortex response. It is not a safe and social connected response for me. It would absolutely be fawning, which is the piece I did catch on to that I am in the middle of this religious trauma stuff in therapy and that to join one more group would just transfer that for me. It's just not the time or place.
• 32:35
  So I am only talking specifically about my experience and my issues. I'm not judging anyone else or their motivations or their responses or what it's like for them. I'm just saying for me, it would not be a healthy space. And I cannot step into that right now. I am not in a place or a space to do that in a healthy way.
• 32:55
  And so in that, I have to choose me and choose my own health and my own healing so that as I do respond, it comes from a healthier place and a better place of being congruent with my mind and my body and who I want to be, not just what I'm reacting against. Does that make sense? This is a lot. And you guys, it's about to get worse. Oh Oh my goodness.
• 33:34
  This is epic. This conversation will be continued on the next episode. Please bring shrimp tacos. Thank you so much for listening to us and for all of your support for the podcast, our books, and them being donated to survivors and the community. It means so much to us as we try to create something that's never been done before, not like this.
• 34:13
  Connection brings healing, and healing brings hope.