Latest / System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation / Guest: Ken Benau, PhD

Transcript

Guest: Ken Benau, PhD · System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Over:
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the System Speak Podcast, a podcast about Dissociative Identity Disorder. If you are new to the podcast, we recommend starting at the beginning episodes and listen in order to hear our story and what we have learned through this endeavor. Current episodes may be more applicable to long time listeners and are likely to contain more advanced topics, emotional or other triggering content, and or reference earlier episodes that provide more context to what we are currently learning and experiencing. As always, please care for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you.
• 1:05
  Our guest this week is Ken Manao, PhD, who has been a licensed psychologist for thirty years with an independent practice in psychotherapy consulting and training currently in Kensington, California. Doctor. Bonow has a special interest in working with children, adolescents, and adults living with various learning differences, ADHD and high functioning autism, as well as depression and anxiety. Doctor. Bonau also works with survivors of relational or developmental trauma, all from an integrative approach to psychotherapy.
• 1:39
  His theoretical orientations include attachment and emotion focused, psychodynamic, experiential, somatic, and coherence therapy. Doctor. Bunau has a special interest in understanding and working with shame and pride in survivors of relational trauma and has written several articles and is currently working on a book with that theme. Welcome, Ken Benau.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: My name is Ken Benau. I'm a clinical psychologist in Kensington, California, which is near Berkeley, for those who know it. I'm a psychotherapist primarily, though I do some consultation and some workshops, trainings. And I write various articles mostly on the theme of shame, pride, and relational trauma. I work with adults.
• 2:33
  I work with some children and families, but these days, primarily adults. I have a special interest in working with adults with various learning differences. ADHD, high functioning autism used to be called Asperger's, and, you know, other folks with anxiety, depression, and as I said, early relational trauma. Oh, and I've been doing this a long time, almost about thirty years or so.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: Thank you for talking to us today.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Thank you for inviting me.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: So on the podcast, it's absolutely about trauma and dissociation, but what you're talking about specifically is relational trauma. You explain what you mean by relational trauma?
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, the short answer is it's trauma that is developed in relationship. It could include abuse of various kinds, physical, sexual, emotional abuse. It can include neglect and more severe neglect, you know, of basic needs, including emotional, psychological needs. But I also mean by neglect a failure to truly see, feel, know, recognize well, or I should say to be seen, known, felt, recognized by significant others, you know, caregivers, parents, etcetera.
• 4:02
  And the consequence of that is trauma. And for some people, it's not they don't know that they're survivors of trauma because some of what they experienced is what they didn't experience, meaning needs that went unmet. So they don't and sometimes it's also experienced you know, it could start in utero at a very young age. So often, folks who've experienced relational trauma don't know that they have survived relational trauma because they don't have memories of what didn't happen or what didn't happen before or what happened before they had consciousness, so to speak, or words.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: So one of the things that we've talked about on the podcast already is the concept of attunement and what you said earlier of your emotional needs being noticed and reflected and met. And you're saying even that that starts even at the very, very beginning before you're even born.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Yes. I believe so. You know, think about it this way. Let's say there's developing fetus, infant to be in the womb, and the parent consciously or unconsciously is neglecting the mother in this case, but also the father is neglecting the developing child in utero. And there's an all sorts of ways to neglect the child that it can include physical, emotional.
• 5:33
  You know? For example, we know parents sometimes talk to their in in utero child and relate to it consciously and unconsciously. And if you talk to don't talk to, don't recognize, don't attend to the the the mother's needs as well as the infant to be needs, and, of course, if it's more extreme, like if the mother was being physically abused or sexually abused, then that's gonna affect the developing fetus child to be, and that's traumatic. And then, of course, people who are born into families where they're not seen, felt, known, recognized, attended to, cared for at least and at worst also abused, well, there you have the development of relational trauma from before the you know, from conception on.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: So we're really broadening our understanding of what abuse is or what trauma is when we talk about relational trauma because it's not just a big incident that's out there or on the news or in a movie, but it's really this relationship being attended to or not.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And and that's why I say I I work with folks who they would never think of themselves as trauma survivors ever because they had no overt physical or sexual abuse or emotional abuse or no extreme neglect. These are folks who would come into my office and you would say, Why are they there? I mean, know why they're there. They don't necessarily know they're there because of trauma.
• 7:22
  They know they're there because they're unhappy, because they're depressed, because they're anxious, because they're getting angry at people they love, or they're getting angry with themselves. They're fit they're experiencing shame. Or they're going in the other direction. They're treating other people in a contemptuous or shaming way. So they're there because they know they have problems.
• 7:43
  Otherwise, you know, they wouldn't come to my office. People don't come to my office and say, I'm doing really well. How can I do better? Although, I wish they would. But they come because they're hurting, they're suffering, or the people they love are suffering, and the people they love are suffering saying, you need help because if you don't get help, I'm gonna leave you or whatever.
• 8:03
  So these people are often survivors of relational trauma. I have people I work with whose trauma, as much as one can know this and one can't know this for certain, whose trauma began in utero and throughout their childhood and into early adulthood. Now they have consciousness now of the trauma they experienced when they were very young, but they didn't before I saw them and again, but they were living with its effects.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: So so there's the whole continuum from people who have been through hard things to people who are high functioning and don't realize that what they've been through was hard to even people who may be carrying this around with them and not realize it because it was from when they were so, so young, even before they were born.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: Right. And the other reason and refers to what you mentioned in the introduction is dissociation. So something can be so horrific, so disturbing, so overwhelming. Basically, it has to be overwhelming for the mind and body or nervous system or all the above. But if they experience that and they experience it repeatedly, at some point, the mind and body can't take it anymore.
• 9:22
  And it has this process called dissociation, which you can think of as coming to the rescue, which basically it takes the person out of their mind and body. Now when it does it temporarily, we call that a dissociative episode or process. But if it's occurring repeatedly, there may be what's called structural dissociation, which if you will, is parts of self that are no longer, quote, unquote, remembered, but they're that doesn't mean they're not affecting or acting upon the person and their relationships. So so there's, if you will, the sort of acuter moment of dissociation, then there's over time the dissociates into parts, and the parts of the person maybe it might be quite available to consciousness. They know I have this part that does that acts more this way or feels more that way, and that another part of me that feels more that way, and a lot of us have that experience.
• 10:16
  And then, of course, it could be more to the point of lack of coconsciousness, meaning this part doesn't know about that part, at least not before the person perhaps works on this in therapy. So all sorts of things can be outside of awareness because of dissociation, which is a normal and natural response to overwhelm and particularly in in in relation to other people, caregivers, loved ones, etcetera.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: So some people with DID or who identify as plural or with other dissociative disorders may not remember their trauma or even have any documented trauma except that because of relational trauma, it's still trauma.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. And as I told you, I'm not an expert in DID, though I've worked with a few folks who would be close to that, but I am quite experienced in working with relational trauma. And so, you know, depending on the degree of dissociation, you know, folks only know sometimes their reactions. For example, I can think of someone who they're very high functioning, but every once in a while, they go into a state where they're kinda quote, unquote, out of it for a day or so. You know, maybe they're spacing out.
• 11:42
  They're not really spending time with other people. They're not aware of many feelings. They're kind of you know, people would say, I I was kinda out of it for a day or so. I I know other now and but what's happening is they're in a dissociative state. They don't know it.
• 11:55
  They just think, you know, how come once in a while I just kinda check out without wanting to check out? How come I feel like I'm not here when I am, but I'm not? Then other people will have a reaction. Like, they might find themselves getting really angry at someone they love and then maybe they do it repeatedly and maybe the loved one says, Stop it. I don't want to be treated that way.
• 12:16
  And if they love the other person, they don't want to treat them that way either, but yet it happens. And it happens because, if you will, dissociative parts, again, I'm not talking about DID, I'm talking about relational trauma, dissociative parts kind of show up and they know they're angry and they can even give themselves what I would call, how would I explain it, a kind of rational, quote unquote, or logical or, you know, conscious cognitive explanation for why they're angry. Well, I got angry because she did that. But it's way deeper than that. They don't know what's operating like all of us, they don't know what's operating under their awareness.
• 12:58
  So they might you might just see the surface reaction that is a consequence of dissociation. Person might go into what I call a shame state. The shame state is not just I feel embarrassed or ashamed, it kind of the feeling comes up and it goes away within a minute or two. Now I'm talking about a whole state of mind and body that the person may or may not be conscious of that affects them and affects their behavior. So they wonder, how come I'm so successful but I feel terrible?
• 13:31
  Or how come I'm so appreciated at work but at home I lose it with my spouse? And I never lose it at work but I lose it with my spouse. How can I do that? What's wrong with me? Or sometimes they drop into a state of self loathing, but I don't mean like they feel bad.
• 13:51
  I mean they're in a state and it's recurring just like a flashback. And when they're in this state, it feels like they have always been this way, past, present, and future. It's not gonna change. This is who I really am. No, doc.
• 14:07
  You don't get it. This is who I really am. Well, what about this and that? That's not who I really am. That's who people think I really am, but I'm not that.
• 14:15
  That's a shame state. That's what I would call a traumatic shame state. The short form is shame state.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: So I think this is really good timing for our listeners because we just did an interview with a physician who talked about epigenetic cellular changes in utero and early in life and how we carry that with us. And you're bringing the relational piece to that. And we've talked about attunement and misattunement and how that leads to shame. So tell me more about why shame and you even talk I've seen you write and speak about pride. How are the shame and pride important for psychotherapy with relational trauma?
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: Well, first of all, I think we all experience shame and pride whether or not we're conscious of it. Second of all, shame and pride always exist in relationship. Now you could say that about probably most emotions, but these are particularly in relationship. Now shame and pride are called self conscious emotions. Person experiences self consciousness, but the more accurate term is closer to self other consciousness or self other, self other.
• 15:27
  But by that, I mean, you always feel shame in relation to another person whether you're conscious of it or not. If I feel bad about myself, there's always lurking maybe outside of awareness, the other. The other who shamed you. Maybe shamed you when you were a child and no longer is alive, but they're kinda lurking in the dark or dissociated. You can't feel bad.
• 15:48
  You don't as I say to my clients, you did not come out of the womb feeling terrible about yourself. You don't come out of the womb, even if you had words, saying, I'm a horrible human being. And every time I say that to clients, they laugh because it's ridiculous. But, of course, the child can come out of the womb experiencing that. They don't have any words for it.
• 16:08
  But mostly they don't come out that way. Mostly they learn in relationship that there's something horribly wrong with them. That doesn't mean there is something horribly wrong with them. They learn that. And pride is also a self conscious or self other conscious emotion.
• 16:23
  It's always in relationships. So even if you're not aware of the other, they're there internally, if not literally externally. And by shame, I there's a differentiation between shame and guilt. Guilt is I did something bad that I regret. Shame is I if it has words, it's just I'm bad or I'm horrible or I'm hated or I loathe myself, but myself is my loathing is my total being.
• 16:51
  Okay. That's the difference between shame and guilt. And pride is many things. Pride can be quote unquote adaptive or healthy. That's you know, I'm really proud of myself because I really worked hard and I got an A in that test, and I really wanted an A and I wanted to do well, and I learned a lot, and I feel proud of myself.
• 17:11
  And, you know, we're an athlete that triumphs, and they raise their hand in triumph, and they say, I did it. And they're not saying I'm a better human being than someone else. That's what's called hubristic pride. That's maladaptive. People call that arrogant or maladaptive or malignant narcissism.
• 17:30
  That's pride, but that's, of course, not the pride. That's the pride most people think of when they think of pride. That's why many people don't like the term pride because it's that kind of pride. And then and then within shame, there aren't just these conscious, if you will, healthy shame. Oh, by the way, healthy shame is this.
• 17:51
  Healthy shame is you did something, I did something that's incongruent with my values, and I feel shame. But I don't feel like I'm a horrible human being. I feel like, oh, that's not me. That is not how I wanna be. So the focus is on the self rather than the other, which is in guilt.
• 18:12
  And since I don't wanna be that way, I do what's called self correct. So I call it self dash writing, r I g h t I n g, self writing shame. Well, that's not how I wanna be, and I do something to redeem myself, but internally, Guilt is I do something to redeem myself with a person I feel like I hurt. So that's that's what I call adaptive shame. Then there's the shame of I feel terrible about myself but conscious.
• 18:39
  And then there's dissociated shame, which is a part of myself is dissociated. That's the part that's shamed. Or my whole being is is dis is dissociated, if you will. It's the it's the shame of existence. And then pride has adaptive and maladaptive forms that are conscious.
• 18:57
  So the pride that is, you know, I did it. I worked hard and I did it. That's adaptive. That's quote, unquote healthy pride. The maladaptive form is hubristic.
• 19:07
  You know, it's basically arrogance and treating others with contempt. And we see this in what's called narcissistic personality disorder or the like. But then there's dissociative pride, which is this is aspects of self that others would say, wow, that's something to be proud of. And the person says, what are you talking about? So it's they're disconnected from it.
• 19:30
  They're dissociated from it. And you can be so dissociated from your whole being that you never experience pride, not consciously, and you never you might not even experience shame consciously. You just experience a self as not a self. It's like you're not there. You're even existing.
• 19:47
  You are, but you're not.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: I mean, not just denying the bad, but also denying the good.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. And we're talking about good as a human being. We're talking about the inherent goodness in all of us, as well as specific qualities that we should be proud of. The standard definition of pride, this is the conscious, not the dissociated pride, is mastery. You see this in babies that start to walk.
• 20:15
  And they don't say, I'm proud, but anyone who looks at them and say, Look at him or her. She is so proud of herself because she crawled or walked or stood up or ran or threw a ball or whatever. And we're not talking about, They won the Olympics. We're just talking about, stood up. As we all know, babies standing up is like, wow.
• 20:37
  I stood up. It's like a mini triumph, and I would call that pride or it's, you know, early forms of it.
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: What is that pride that we can dissociate from? Oh, Yeah. The hurt of feeling bad as well as feeling good.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: Yes. Exactly. So that those are examples of conscious pride that is experienced from the earliest age. You know, people have used to say pride and shame doesn't exist till two or three. No, it may not exist with words till two or three.
• 21:07
  The primordial nonverbal form of it exists way sooner. So if it can exist way sooner in the healthy sense, it can exist way sooner in the, if you will, the maladaptive or dissociated sense. And I don't mean dissociation is maladaptive, it's an adaptation, but it can become something that's later problematic for the person in their life.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: What is your term of pro being pride? What does that mean, and
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: how is it supposed term I came up with, but, of course, the phenomena themself itself, I didn't come up with. It it's something that I believe all human beings possess or it's not possess is not the right word, experience. And they always experience it in relationship. Now I'm gonna give you the definition. It's gonna sound a little strange when I say it, and then maybe we can unpack it.
• 21:55
  So the definition I've come up with is the following. I delight in myself or in being myself, delighting in you, being yourself with me. So it's it's it's both intersubjective. It's between me and you. It's intrasubjective be within me, within you.
• 22:18
  And I use the word delight, and I don't mean that as happy. It's more close to joie de vivre or alive or enlivened within and between within myself and with another person. And and the reason I came up with the term pro being, pro, p r o, dash being, prying, is because if you look up the the word art I'm a I'm a former English major in college, and so I like words. And so I always look up the not just the definition of a word, but the word origin. I just find that really interesting.
• 22:59
  So I looked up the word origin of proud, and it was really interesting because it goes all the way back to the Latin I guess it's very old Latin. And the word at least they think it the word for proud was I guess would be said as prodess. I don't know how you would say it, but it would be p r o d e s s e. Now p r o d means for, f o r. And esse, well, I don't know what it means, but for me, it means essence or being.
• 23:36
  Well, I'm proud of what? I'm being me. I'm pro being pride. So it's not a feeling. Pro being pride is not a feeling.
• 23:46
  It's a state. You can think of it as the opposite of a traumatic shame state or of a traumatic pride state. It's the opposite of that. It's a conscious, alivened experience of self. It's like waking up in the morning and like, I am just happy to be me, or I'm just happy to be me with you, and you're just happy to be you with me.
• 24:09
  And no one is achieving anything. That's pro being pride. And it's a really important concept because it's not a concept alone, it's an experience. And for me, that's the goal of life. That's the goal of therapy.
• 24:24
  It's to experience pro being, you don't experience all the time, but as much as you can, that's what you're aiming for. And when I do work with survivors of relational trauma, I am my goal it doesn't we don't always get there. My goal is not only to help them experience relief from unbearable shame or unbearable, you know, hubristic pride, but to experience pro being, to experience it within themselves, with me, and with other people. And believe it or not, that's very achievable. It might take years to get there, but it's very achievable for all human beings.
• 25:02
  But it has to be, you know, you you don't just arrive at it overnight, especially if you're a survivor of relational trauma.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: So to do that, what are some of the prerequisite attitudes or principles or theoretical approach is when you're working with survivors of relational trauma?
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: Well, in many ways, it's the same principles that apply to working with trauma, period. So the first thing I have under what I call guiding concepts, principles, and attitudes that you need to work with trauma and pride in relational trauma and therapy and also dissociative disorders, the first is there's no one technique because if there was a technique, you're not treating the human being as a unique individual. So I can tell you all sorts of techniques that I use, but they're always done in the context of me with you and you with me as human beings. If anyone feels like I'm doing a technique on them, they're gonna either get angry or feel really bad about themselves because they'll feel like, how come I'm not responding to this technique? Well, they're not responding because it's a technique.
• 26:01
  They don't feel seen, known, felt, recognized as human beings. So the so the answer is techniques but no techniques. The other is something called functional coherence. I take this from approach called coherence therapy, but other therapies have it. And basically, functional coherence says, Is this shame or this, you know, whether let's call it maladaptive shame.
• 26:23
  This maladaptive shame or this maladaptive pride makes sense even if it doesn't make sense consciously. Meaning somewhere deep down, there's some coherent logic. It's always emotional logic to shame. For example, let's say you were raised by a parent who ignored you. They didn't physically abuse you, but they ignored you.
• 26:46
  You came home and they said, guess what mommy? Guess what daddy I did at school? And they said, not now. They might even say not not now, honey, but not now becomes never. They go to their room and this happens over and over and over again or maybe the parent uses drugs or alcohol.
• 27:05
  So they don't even say not now. They're just, it's always not now or often. So what does the child conclude? The child concludes, there must be something horribly wrong with me because I'm not loved. They don't think that.
• 27:17
  What they consciously come to feel is inadequate. Well, they're not inadequate. They're a human being. There's nothing wrong with them. I don't mean they don't do anything that people would say, oh, I shouldn't have done that.
• 27:30
  I mean, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with them. They they have their pro being. However, their conscious experiences make sense on the deepest level. You you were ignored repeatedly. Of course, you feel unlovable.
• 27:46
  How could you not? That's what I mean by functional coherence. The other attitudes include survival functions of shame and pride. Like, shame and pride exist in a tribe, in a group. You need them to be part of a group.
• 28:03
  If you are kicked out of the group psychologically or physically, you're gonna experience shame or maybe a reaction like rage. Like I said, shame and pride develop in the first year of life. We talked about that. There's traumatic shame and pride states, and it's experienced bodily sometimes in the form of somatic or emotional memory. The way to work with this is always treating the person with interest and respect through what I call radical inquiry, radical empathy, radical acceptance, radical reflection.
• 28:36
  This basically means I am really interested in knowing you and helping you know yourself. You have to work with what's called intra relational and inter relational resourcing. This is traumatic material we're working with. You do not go deep down without there being adequate resources. Resources just mean something that helps you cope with the feelings and experiences and memories that are gonna come up.
• 29:00
  And you have to have ones within internally. There's different resources that can be developed or that are there and and accessed. And also in the relationship, meaning with me and then in relationship with other people in your life. There there needs to be an understanding of multiplicity. This could be conscious multiplicity.
• 29:18
  I'm aware of this part and that part. It could be dissociated multiplicity. You need to understand there's a relationship between shame and pride and dissociation, particularly of the traumatic type, and we already discussed a little bit about that relationship. And there's different parts of self that are associated with shame and pride. Like, there's always, in shame, a part that is, if you will, fighting another part of the self.
• 29:47
  Like, maybe it's fighting the part that's called attach or attachment, right? Seeking closeness, and then the person shames themselves every time they seek closeness, consciously or otherwise. Let's see. And there's something called memory reconsolidation. If you read a book called Unlocking the Emotional Brain by the authors Ecker, Haldi, and Tysik, you'll read all about this, but basically this is the experiential juxtaposition of an old belief, often unconscious, like there must be something horribly wrong with me, I'm not lovable, and a new experience of self, which is wait a minute, yeah, I am, but not as a thought, as an experience.
• 30:29
  And if you experientially juxtapose this, literally have the experience of both coexisting at the same time, but they both can't be true. I can't be a horrible human being and just a really decent, loving, and lovable human being at the same time, but you can if these experiences of self have been dissociated. But if you bring them to consciousness at the same time, you have what's called memory reconsolidation, which is like updating of the emotional brain automatically, and it always moves in the direction of evolution, not in the direction of return to the suffering. And that's part of all work with trauma, and of course, it's part of the work with traumatic shame or pride states. Those are some of the principles that guide my work.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: What are some of the ways to work with maladaptive shame specifically?
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: Well, there's several. What I like to do is help people observe their behavior. That can include actual actions, thoughts, feelings, memories, images, and little by little help them see that what they're experiencing is a shame. There are various forms of it. So maybe they're being perfectionistic, but it's driven by shame.
• 31:42
  Why would you be perfectionistic if you're basically okay? You might work hard and wanna do really well and master something, but perfectionism is something else. So I wanna help them understand where shame is lurking, which is the same thing we do in dissociation. We wanna help the person know, you know that thing you do or that place you space out or the time you did x and you wondered why did I do x? Well, shame's lurking there.
• 32:07
  Okay? So I wanna name shame. I wanna name it in a way that's not overwhelming to them. Sometimes the naming is helpful because when you say the word shame, it's way better than I'm a horrible human being and all that goes with it. So you name it, you wanna be able to step back from it, observe it, reflect on it, understand its origins, understand how it affects your behavior, and little by little come to a different relationship with yourself, meaning notice the times you're not in shame and notice what that's like and notice how could you be this and that too and notice, oh, that's a shame state.
• 32:42
  That's not actually what I thought it was, which is who I really am. So these are some ways that you work with it. And of course, I'm always working to access pro pride. So anytime pro being pride shows up in my room, meaning my office, I try to gently or sometimes quite directly bring the person's attention to it, because basically this is them coming alive as themselves with me and feeling their liveness with my aliveness together. And this is very powerful stuff and the most powerful antidote to shame or let's call it maladaptive pride.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: What are some ways to work with that, the maladaptive pride?
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: Well, it's really some of the same ways. You first you know, let's say you have a person who's quite narcissistic and they're challenging to work with for me, just to be honest, but let's be and the reason they're challenging is because they they often will shame me, consciously or otherwise. But I don't necessarily mean they try to shame me. Sometimes they quite consciously try to shame me, but more often, they're not aware of shaming me, but it's having that effect. And obviously, not just on me.
• 33:54
  I may be sensitive to being shamed, but other people too. And I wanna help them see that that's driven by something. Again, you don't come out of the womb treating people with contempt. So I try to help them understand what drives it. I have tried to help them understand how it protects them or historically has protected them.
• 34:13
  Of course, I try to help them see without shaming them that it's problematic, that it's pushing people away when they're actually wanting to be close or it's bringing them too close when they want some distance. And so I help them try to look at it and I name it with them, but I name it again without shaming them. So I am very careful to the best of my ability in the words I choose, not because I was an English major, that's probably part of it, but because I don't wanna shame anyone and I don't wanna instigate, you know, if you will, malignant or maladaptive narcissism. I might, and then we work with that, just like I might shame them and we work with that, but I don't wanna do it intentionally. So I try to speak with language that is never pathologizing to the best of my ability, always respectful, always interested.
• 35:06
  I say to my clients, let's get curious about that. Well, if they just, you know, attacked me and I say to them internally, I'm not liking it. It's very upsetting. But outwardly, I try to kind of regather gather myself and I say, wow. That's interesting.
• 35:22
  Let's get curious about what just happened. Well, curious is just I'm taking interest. No one's being shamed. I didn't I might say, ouch, at some point. I might say, are you aware that you had an effect on me there?
• 35:38
  And it left me feeling really small. Now I'm not assuming you wanted me to feel small unless you tell me, yeah, I did, but you had that effect. Can we look at what just happened? Can we get curious about that? And here's the big word, together.
• 35:52
  I'm not leaving you out in the cold. I'm saying together, we're gonna look at that. And I make that quite explicit as much as possible.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: With working with maladaptive shame and maladaptive pride, how do you facilitate them, the patient or the client, having access to being or the probing pride?
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: Well, even with someone who's experiencing significant dissociation, I believe probing pride is always there. Now, they may not be conscious of it. Let me just think of an example. Let's say I work with someone and it could be a child or an adult, and let's say that they experience what's called ADHD, and by the way, I don't like diagnoses other than to kind of have a shorthand because diagnoses tend to be pathologizing just by using the word disorder at the end of ADHD. You know, it's not something people are particularly proud of.
• 36:49
  So but you know, we'll call it this ADHD, and let's say the person is doing these things that go with ADHD, like they're not paying attention or they're not organized, they're impulsive or they're hyperactive and they're getting trouble in school or at work, etcetera, etcetera. But let's say as they're telling me about all these problems, without them knowing it, they're showing me they have a sense of humor or they're showing me they're athletic or and I mean they're like just that's who they are. They're athletic. They got a sense of humor. Or they're showing me I'm thinking of one person and they're frankly brilliant intellectually, and they have this really scientific mind.
• 37:30
  I'm talking from a young age. And I'm like, I delight in it. When it shows up in my room, I'm like, Okay, I know we were talking about that terrible thing, but what you just said was hilarious. Or and I I won't necessarily say the words. I might just be laughing with them.
• 37:46
  Or I might say, woah, woah, woah. Stop it. Stop for a moment. They're like, what? Am I in trouble?
• 37:51
  And like, no. No. No. No. Have an amazing mind.
• 37:57
  Now, and and then I said, what do you mean? Well, are you aware that you just described in some detail the features of that bug that you noticed on the ground? Like, do you know that not everyone does that? Now this is not a technique. This is not an act.
• 38:15
  If I do this as a technique, it's not it's not I have to be in a state of pro being. I have to be delighting in being myself, delighting in them being them selves with me. So if I say, woah, that's that look at that. And I might not always say, woah, that's amazing. I might just say, did you notice?
• 38:37
  And then I help them notice that that's their aliveness, their beingness, their true selves, call it whatever you want, coming through. And I want them to experience my delighting in that just like you want the baby who comes out of the womb having the mother and father or mother and mother and father and father say without words, Oh my God, there's my baby. He or she is perfect. Now they're not perfect perfect, but they are perfect in the minds and hearts of the parent. That's pro being.
• 39:12
  That's pro being from the moment of birth. So I'm just all I'm just, like, on a pro being search. Now at this point, I'm I I I realized years after years of think of doing this, I realized I this is what I'm always seeking to discover with the person I'm working with. Because if they can discover that and really contact that, that's their that's their beingness. That's them.
• 39:39
  Well, you can never when you're contacting pro being, you can never feel terrible about yourself or another human being. Not when you're in that state. It's just not possible. It's not about superiority or inferiority. It's always about, wow.
• 39:53
  That's that's me. And I'd like to share me with you. And would you share you with me? And that's without words, you just do it.
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: I did get a few questions. Do you want to spend a few minutes with a few questions?
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: Okay. The first question is, this is a difficult subject. Sometimes people with a trauma history will harm others later in life and then feel intense shame about these acts. What do you suggest is helpful as a clinician for these people to accept responsibility for their acts while helping them recover from their own trauma?
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: Okay, this actually that's a great question. And the short answer is I want to help them move from shame to guilt and then from guilt to repair. Okay, so let's imagine someone who has a rage response and screams and yells at their child and even hits them, maybe even abuses them, Okay? But they don't feel good about it. They feel horrible about it.
• 40:59
  And maybe they withdraw and don't talk to the child for weeks. The child thinks, wow. First they hit me, then they abandoned me. So the child thinks there's something horribly wrong with them. Well, it's much more complicated.
• 41:15
  First of all, there's nothing wrong with the child, even if they didn't pick up their shoes. They just need to learn I'm picking up their shoes. So the person who's in a traumatic, now they go from a rage state to a shame state. Okay, so the first thing I wanna do is I want a little, you know, of course I'm gonna convey, you know, obviously you don't wanna end up hurting your child, and they almost always say, Of course, I'm a horrible human being. I wanna do that.
• 41:45
  And I say, Well, okay. Let's see if together we can discover, get curious about how that happened. Well, I lost it. Well, yeah, you lost it, but you weren't losing it an hour before. Well, I guess not.
• 41:58
  And the kid was the same fun and annoying child before. Yeah, I guess so. Well, then you lost it, meaning you lost yourself and you lost your contact with him or her. And you didn't do it on purpose because I can tell you, here, I'm gonna tell you something, see if you can do it. Lose it right now in my office.
• 42:19
  They laugh. You can't will this. Okay, so then would it be fair to say that you were not in control? I'm not just in your behavior, that there's something that kinda took over. Well, I guess so.
• 42:32
  I mean, I don't know. But, well, did you say, now I will, you know, beat my child? Or did you just find yourself beating your child? I guess I kind of found myself beating him. I feel horrible.
• 42:43
  Of course you feel horrible. It's not the way you wanna be with your child, is it? No. So that's their conscious conscience. So then I work with their shame state, which is underlying their rage state, usually.
• 42:54
  Or I work with their shame state, which is underlying their state of withdrawal and abandonment. And I help them see the connection. And at some point, they'll say to me, But I feel terrible. I said, well, is that guilt or shame? What do you mean?
• 43:12
  Well, is that terrible like I really regret hurting them or I'm a horrible human being? Well, we've worked in this a long time, doc. I'm not I feel a little shame, but mostly I'm feeling like I regret hurting them. Okay. Then I say, well, in all religious traditions, there's something called repair.
• 43:32
  What does that mean? Well, you hurt them. What are you gonna do to make it right? Well, they're no longer alive. Well, who else can you help in their honor?
• 43:43
  Well, they are alive, but, you know, I did this twenty years ago. Well, have you talked to them in twenty years? Well, not much. Would you like to? Well, they probably hate me.
• 43:55
  Maybe, maybe. But maybe that's a part of you hating you. Maybe there's a way you can reach out. Look, if you reach out and they don't respond, but you reach out and say, I love you and I know I hurt you, and they don't respond. They got the message, even if they're not wanting to talk with you already.
• 44:12
  And though that's moving from shame or shame state to guilt. Guilt is always, I did something that hurt someone, intentionally or otherwise, and I regret it now. And I need to make a repair, a reparation, to the best of my ability.
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: Oh, thank you.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: You're welcome.
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: Do you have time for one more?
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Sure. Go for it. Like, I have time for, let's say, you know, ten minutes max.
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: Okay. So the next question is, what about the shame associated with being the unharmed alter or the unharmed sibling or not having big t trauma like other people? And then the shame that goes with it that you feel bad because you're actually functioning instead of getting them help.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: Yes. Okay. So they they used to call that survival survival guilt. Right? Let's say you're a soldier and you lived.
• 45:19
  I worked with a soldier. He was a sweet, sweet man. And the poor man had He was a Vietnam Vet. The poor man had suffered terribly for twenty years or however many years post Vietnam. He was just a lovely man, and he was a religious man, and I think he was even a I don't know.
• 45:39
  He had religious pursuits, and he was kind, and he felt there was something horribly wrong with him. Now, used to call that survival guilt, which it could be, but I would call it survivor shame. It would be good if it was guilt because maybe this person would do something in the world for veterans, I'm just giving an example, or for his members in his church, because he can't make up for the fact that they died when he was there. So a child who's witness to abuse of the other child, because in many families, there's the quote unquote identified patient, the one who gets it, gets the physical abuse, gets the emotional abuse, gets the sexual abuse, and the other child maybe doesn't. Well, how come I didn't stop it?
• 46:30
  Well, that's the adult looking back at the child. That's not the child. The child wants to stop it. Of course they do. No child wants to see anyone abuse, Even if that other child annoys you, like maybe it's a sibling that bothers you, you don't want them beaten.
• 46:46
  And even if you're really mad, you don't really want them beaten. So you're a witness to the crime, the relational crime, and of course, not just once. And so you feel helpless and powerless, and you translate the helpless and powerlessness to shame unconsciously for many reasons. One is what you said, you're witness to something bad, why didn't you do anything? The other reason is if you say to yourself, consciously or otherwise, I'm a horrible human being, well, maybe I cannot be a horrible human being and now I have power, rather than feeling powerless.
• 47:22
  So it's an unconscious way to try to regain a sense of agency where previously you didn't have it. So like any other trauma that you now are an adult, you wanna help the person truly see, not in an intellectual way, You were five. You were 10. Do you know how big 10 year olds are? How tall is your father or mother when you were 10?
• 47:46
  And they'd look and they say, I don't know. Like, Well, 10 is about this height and an adult is about this height. And how much did you weigh? I don't know. Well, how about fifty pounds?
• 47:56
  How much do think your dad or mother weighed? I don't know, one hundred and eighty. Who was stronger? Who was louder? Who was scarier?
• 48:07
  Now this is not something you do in the first session. This may be after quite some time that little by little, the person comes to experience, not just know intellectually, oh my god, I was hurt by being a witness. Did I get it worse or better? I don't know. How do you define worse?
• 48:27
  The fact that I wasn't beaten, but I was witness to beatings, and therefore somatically, I felt as though I was beaten even though I wasn't physically beaten. You know, in the emotional brain, pain is pain. In the emotional brain, physical pain and emotional brain, the same area of the brain were very close. Well, whose pain is worse? It doesn't matter whose pain is worse.
• 48:53
  You didn't get off easy. You were witnessed. Yeah, but I didn't get beaten. You kinda did, even if you didn't. And so I helped them see over time, obviously, that their helplessness and their powerlessness and the shame that followed was a natural consequence of love, of wishing their father or mother didn't do that and wishing wishing that didn't happen to their sibling.
• 49:19
  That's love. It's a natural consequence of love.
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: So I would I would extend that to people with DID would be the same thing in a very similar way that some part of you had to keep functioning to get you out of there. And so maybe part of that pro being pride would be acknowledging how you were able to do that to help the system as a whole.
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. So everything I just said can be, worked with intra relationally. And intra relationally is how you work with DID, and again, I'm not an expert in DID, but everything I just said relationally, meaning between me and you, can be worked with between you and you, meaning you and a part of you, and of course, in relation to different parts. Oh, that's the part of you that sought closeness, and that's the part of you that got angry, and that's the part of you that withdrew, and all were adaptive responses to what you were experiencing directly or by witness.
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: And then the last question that we have time for says, if our mother shamed us for years about our choices that we made in life, we really want to break that cycle with our own kids, but those words keep propping up and creeping up constantly, especially when we're making choices or doing parenting interactions. How do we discern between what is her stuff and what is self shame? And how do we either bring that to a halt or break that cycle of shame and judgment?
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: I'm laughing because that's, like, an amazing interesting and complex question, and I am gonna do it incredible injustice because I would need to sit down with that person and say, Let's talk about that. But a short answer. The first thing is this person is already demonstrating awareness that some of what they're thinking and feeling toward themselves or toward their child feels kind of alien. And how do they know that? Well, they have this feeling like, I don't like how I just behaved, or I don't like what I just thought, or I don't like what I just felt.
• 51:41
  It's already kind of alien. Now, is that alien because it's a part of self that developed in relation to a neglectful or abusive parent or shaming parent, or is that because you have internalized, because we all do it, the parent? How could we not? We love them. We love them, so we take them in unconsciously.
• 52:02
  So little by little, we wanna help them step back and say, Okay, what would be the tone of voice that goes with that? It's some contemptuous voice. And I say, well, do you talk that way? Well, sometimes I lose it with my kid. You have a day to day.
• 52:13
  Do you talk that way? No. Well, did you experience anyone talking to you that way? Well, yeah, my mother or my father. So let's just imagine for a moment that's your mother or father talking that you internalize because all children do that.
• 52:28
  Does that sound like a possibility? Now, this is not in one session, but over time, they begin to do what I talked about, which is I talked about in the attitudes that there has to be, or maybe I didn't talk about it, but I now can talk about it, there has to be some distance between, if you will, the part of me that's that's shaming me and the part of me that's not, or the part of me that's shaming my child and the part of me that's not. If I can begin to observe that from a place of mindfulness, of wise self, wise mind, whatever you wanna call it, I can begin to discern, is that me or not me? Remember, not me is a dissociated state. If I can discern it's not me, I can learn where that came from and not just intellectually, and I can learn to have relationship with what was previously not me.
• 53:16
  Now that takes a lot of work. That is not overnight. I've worked with clients for years, and we're still chipping away at aspects of shame. They get better over time, but it's aspects that still lurk. And the other way I do it is I keep trying to find the pro being pride so they can bring that as a resource, to look at the part of them that is talking that way to themselves or to their child or whatever.
• 53:44
  But just appreciate that the person who wrote that question has already done some work. They're working really hard. So let them know, I appreciate that, even if I've never met them, and keep it up. Don't give up. Because even if your child has already left home, it is not too late.
• 54:04
  I know it feels too late. You can't go back in time, but you can go forward in time. It is not too late to find a way to try to make some repair. Even if the child doesn't want it, you can try. And so that's after awareness.
• 54:17
  So don't give up, keep at it.
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for talking to us today.
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for inviting me. I enjoyed being with you and hopefully your listeners.
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: Thank you for listening. Your support of the podcast, the workbooks, and the community means so much to us as we try to create something together that's never been done before, not like this. Connection brings healing, and you can join us on the community at www.systemsbeat.com. We'll see you there.