Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Neglect is the story of nothing with Ruth Cohn, MFT, CST, BCN

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Neglect is the story of nothing with Ruth Cohn, MFT, CST, BCN · The Trauma Therapist

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Trauma Therapist podcast. My name is Gaming Person.
0:04
Speaker 1: I interview incredible people who've dedicated their lives to helping
0:07
Speaker 1: those who've been impacted by trauma. A big thank you
0:11
Speaker 1: to our sponsors and our guests who are supporting this show.
0:15
Speaker 1: Five four three two one folks, welcome back to the podcast.
0:20
Speaker 1: Very excited to have my guests, say Ruth Cohne. Ruth, welcome,
0:23
Speaker 1: thank you, awesome finally here. Ruth is a psychotherapist based
0:29
Speaker 1: in the San Francisco Bay Area who are specialized in
0:32
Speaker 1: working with survivors of trauma, neglect and their partners and
0:35
Speaker 1: families since nineteen eighty eight. Since that time, she's focused
0:38
Speaker 1: on childhood neglect trauma and developed neglect informed psychotherapy, an
0:43
Speaker 1: approach that integrates attachment theory with clinical practice. She's the
0:47
Speaker 1: author of Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect
0:51
Speaker 1: and Coming Home to Passion, along with numerous articles, podcasts,
0:54
Speaker 1: and educational resources on trauma and neglect. All right, Ruth, obviously,
0:59
Speaker 1: just a little bit about you before we get going.
1:01
Speaker 1: Share with our listeners where you're from originally and where
1:04
Speaker 1: you are currently.
1:05
Speaker 2: Okay. I was born in Carmel California, way back when
1:10
Speaker 2: it was an artists colony, not like the fancy town
1:13
Speaker 2: it is now. It was Steinbeck Country. And when I
1:18
Speaker 2: was two years old, we moved to New York City.
1:21
Speaker 2: So I went from Carmel, which is a little which
1:25
Speaker 2: was a little small artist town, to the big city
1:29
Speaker 2: in New York and we lived there until I was seven.
1:33
Speaker 2: Then we moved to the Midwest for a short amount
1:36
Speaker 2: of time, and then we landed back in the Bay
1:39
Speaker 2: Area where I mostly grew up. And it was a
1:41
Speaker 2: great time to grow up here in the Bay Area.
1:45
Speaker 2: It was the sixties.
1:48
Speaker 1: Before we start. I always want to say that I
1:53
Speaker 1: really first encountered you in a workshop you were doing
1:57
Speaker 1: through authentic presence there trauma was circle and what really
2:06
Speaker 1: kind of not just stood out to me about you,
2:09
Speaker 1: but I found so very powerful and inspiring was this
2:15
Speaker 1: incredible I don't know the right word for it. It's
2:20
Speaker 1: not just passion, but there's a an authenticity and a
2:25
Speaker 1: humanness that just cut through, and that seemed to me
2:31
Speaker 1: to be this kind of seering foundation of what you
2:36
Speaker 1: do and the work you do. Now that may be right.
2:39
Speaker 2: Or wrong, Oh it's absolutely right, guy. Thank you.
2:43
Speaker 1: You're welcome, but it was so it was so I
2:46
Speaker 1: could feel it and I loved it, and I was like,
2:50
Speaker 1: this woman has to be on my podcast. I want
2:53
Speaker 1: to reach out to her. So I really appreciate you
2:55
Speaker 1: being here.
2:56
Speaker 2: Well, thank you guy. And what you're saying is absolutely
2:59
Speaker 2: true because the passion and the emotion are intense about
3:04
Speaker 2: my work, and so much of my work comes out
3:08
Speaker 2: of my own experience, my own experience of trauma and
3:13
Speaker 2: neglect and being part of the intergenerational chain transmission of
3:20
Speaker 2: trauma and neglect, which is why, ever since the beginning,
3:26
Speaker 2: I've been passionate about prevention, breaking the chain of intergenerational
3:33
Speaker 2: transmission because it is insidious. So I'm really passionate because
3:41
Speaker 2: it is very personal and we have to stop this
3:45
Speaker 2: because it is a self perpetuating cycle and it starts, well,
3:51
Speaker 2: it starts in the I don't know where it starts.
3:53
Speaker 2: It's chicken and egg, it's individual, and it's macro, and
3:59
Speaker 2: so we have to if we're serious about stopping trauma
4:03
Speaker 2: and neglect, we have to attend to the big picture
4:07
Speaker 2: and the personal. So you nailed it when you said
4:12
Speaker 2: that is really where my passion is.
4:16
Speaker 1: So how did all this begin for you this.
4:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, guy, you asked for it. Well, I am
4:24
Speaker 2: the and I'm Lately, in the last couple of years,
4:28
Speaker 2: I've been cautious about disclosing this. I'm the child of
4:33
Speaker 2: two Holocaust survivors, which does not inform my attitudes and
4:39
Speaker 2: my perspective on what's happening in the world today, except
4:43
Speaker 2: for that the suffering and my heartbreak is immense. I
4:49
Speaker 2: was the child of two Holocaust survivors. I was born
4:53
Speaker 2: in nineteen fifty five. The war ended in nineteen forty five,
4:58
Speaker 2: so my parents untreated, unrecovered, trauma was fresh. So I'm
5:05
Speaker 2: very familiar with the disregulations that come from trauma and
5:11
Speaker 2: neglect from the inside as well as seeing it on
5:17
Speaker 2: the outside. So that's how it all started, but not consciously.
5:23
Speaker 2: The way it started was I was raised in an
5:28
Speaker 2: atmosphere of victimization, because you know people who came out
5:33
Speaker 2: of that experience. And I should sidebar and say when
5:38
Speaker 2: we moved to New York, we lived in Manhattan in
5:43
Speaker 2: this apartment building, and everyone in the building had numbers
5:49
Speaker 2: on their arm, and so it was almost like living
5:52
Speaker 2: in a little transplanted concentration camp. And I kind of
5:57
Speaker 2: grew up thinking, well, everybody that history and in our family.
6:03
Speaker 2: My mother she used to sing to us. The first
6:07
Speaker 2: song I remember her singing was God laid down your
6:11
Speaker 2: sword and shield down by the riverside. She was a
6:15
Speaker 2: peace activist coming out of Nazi Germany, and so I
6:21
Speaker 2: was raised in that atmosphere. I remember my dad one
6:25
Speaker 2: of his first jobs, he went to bat advocating for
6:30
Speaker 2: the custodian who was African American, to get more money
6:35
Speaker 2: because he was underpaid and overworked. And so there was
6:40
Speaker 2: this general atmosphere of social justice that was in the
6:47
Speaker 2: air that I breathed. Similarly, my father was a perpetrator.
6:53
Speaker 2: My mother was as a dissociative person will be very
7:00
Speaker 2: neglectful because she had the dissociative tendency of a traumatized
7:06
Speaker 2: person who was unhealed. So I lived in this atmosphere.
7:12
Speaker 2: On one hand, passion about fixing the world, and on
7:17
Speaker 2: the other hand, this belief you can't trust anyone. Everyone's
7:23
Speaker 2: out to get you. They're going to turn it against
7:25
Speaker 2: you on a dime. So we're victims, but we're also
7:29
Speaker 2: the underdog, so we have to fight for the underdog.
7:33
Speaker 2: So that was the contradiction that I was born into.
7:38
Speaker 2: So as I grew up, and of course past forward
7:42
Speaker 2: to when I'm growing up in the Bay Area, and
7:45
Speaker 2: there's this milieu of changing the world, and we had
7:50
Speaker 2: sexual liberation and women's liberation and free love and sex, drugs,
7:57
Speaker 2: rock and roll, and we have the anti war move
8:00
Speaker 2: So of course my rebellion was such that I wasn't
8:04
Speaker 2: going to fight for the things that my parents fought for.
8:09
Speaker 2: So I became a far left wing activist. And long
8:15
Speaker 2: story short, very short, I got in pretty darn deep
8:20
Speaker 2: and I had a massive breakdown. So I was twenty,
8:26
Speaker 2: I was in my middle twenties, I basically fell apart.
8:30
Speaker 2: I had a history of almost lethal eating disorder. I
8:34
Speaker 2: had a history. By then, I was floridly alcoholic, and
8:39
Speaker 2: I was really messed up. And my best friend said
8:44
Speaker 2: to me, she said, you know, you need to go
8:47
Speaker 2: to therapy. And I said I do and she said yeah,
8:52
Speaker 2: and so she referred me to her therapist. Best thing
8:56
Speaker 2: that ever happened to me, because I stayed there for many, many,
9:01
Speaker 2: many years, and I didn't know how I was going
9:05
Speaker 2: to reconstruct a life. I didn't even know why it
9:10
Speaker 2: was worth living. I don't know what kept me going.
9:14
Speaker 2: People sometimes ask me, how did you keep going? I
9:17
Speaker 2: don't know. It was do or die, and it took
9:22
Speaker 2: a long time before I actually got to the point
9:25
Speaker 2: where I wanted to keep living. But then when I did,
9:29
Speaker 2: I sort of thought, Wow, you know this stuff works.
9:34
Speaker 2: Maybe there is life after that life, you know, being
9:39
Speaker 2: a revolutionary hero, dying in a blaze of flames and
9:43
Speaker 2: glory and being dead, but being a martyr. That was
9:47
Speaker 2: my life plan, my death plan, I thought until I
9:52
Speaker 2: fell apart, and I didn't know any way to replace
9:56
Speaker 2: it with something else, until it occurred to me that
10:00
Speaker 2: maybe I couldn't change the whole world, but I could
10:03
Speaker 2: help people one or two, or a small number of
10:08
Speaker 2: people at a time. So that was when I went
10:11
Speaker 2: to psychology school. And in those days we were just
10:16
Speaker 2: starting to get somatics, and it was, at least in
10:23
Speaker 2: my world, it was the early days of somatic psychology.
10:28
Speaker 2: And I had this history with eating disorders and lots
10:31
Speaker 2: of compulsive activity and alcohol. So I was interested in
10:37
Speaker 2: the interface between the psyche and the body. So I
10:42
Speaker 2: went to school, I became I got my master's in
10:46
Speaker 2: psychology with a specialization in somatics, and this by now
10:52
Speaker 2: we're in the late nineteen eighties. We got the PTSD
10:57
Speaker 2: diagnosis in nineteen eighty. I had all this trauma in
11:01
Speaker 2: my background, and as Peter Levine says, most of us
11:06
Speaker 2: start our research with knee search. Well, so I was
11:12
Speaker 2: very interested in trauma, and uncharacteristically the Bay Area, which
11:19
Speaker 2: is usually at the forefront of a lot of things,
11:23
Speaker 2: there was nothing going on here about trauma. And in fact,
11:27
Speaker 2: I remember the first time I saw besil Vandercolk. It
11:32
Speaker 2: was in nineteen eighty eight, and it was at this
11:36
Speaker 2: little hospital in Berkeley, a Grand Rounds, and he was
11:40
Speaker 2: sitting on this panel, and he was this young guy
11:44
Speaker 2: with his tie too tight, and it looked like he
11:47
Speaker 2: was wet behind the ears, and he was looked like
11:50
Speaker 2: a little boy dressed up for church, really uncomfortable with
11:54
Speaker 2: this strong Dutch accent. But I heard him talk and
12:00
Speaker 2: then I just started following him. And from about nineteen
12:05
Speaker 2: eighty eight until the present, I've been following Bessel around
12:10
Speaker 2: and he became my north star. So I'm going to
12:14
Speaker 2: stop there because I think I've answered the question.
12:18
Speaker 1: So let me ask you something you said earlier on
12:21
Speaker 1: you had experienced eating disorders, alcoholism. Your friend was like,
12:28
Speaker 1: you need to go see therapy. Was there a sense
12:31
Speaker 1: for you personally that in the midst of all this
12:35
Speaker 1: that was going on for you, was there a sense
12:37
Speaker 1: that something is messed up or what's going on with me?
12:43
Speaker 1: I need to get some help. Had you ever thought
12:46
Speaker 1: maybe I need to see a therapist prior to that, you.
12:49
Speaker 2: Know, I can't even remember having cognition. I was so
12:57
Speaker 2: messed up. I didn't know if I really wanted to
13:01
Speaker 2: live anymore. And you know, when you read Janina's Fisher.
13:05
Speaker 2: Janina Fisher's work about parts, I had so many different parts,
13:11
Speaker 2: and I was trying so hard to be a revolutionary
13:15
Speaker 2: gorilla that I didn't really and of course individualism and
13:22
Speaker 2: all the stuff that's counter to far left theory. Thinking
13:28
Speaker 2: that I personally needed help, I didn't really think that way.
13:33
Speaker 2: I didn't really know if I wanted to keep living.
13:36
Speaker 2: I didn't know if there was a life after this
13:40
Speaker 2: life plan that I had, and I knew that something
13:45
Speaker 2: was very wrong, and I didn't know what to do.
13:49
Speaker 2: And in those first days when I was so desperate,
13:53
Speaker 2: I was working as a waitress because I couldn't really
13:57
Speaker 2: do anything else, and I went when I started therapy,
14:02
Speaker 2: I went four times a week, four days a week.
14:07
Speaker 2: I went to therapy. What kept me going I don't know,
14:12
Speaker 2: except for that it seemed like do or die. There
14:16
Speaker 2: was nothing else to do, So did I think it? Did?
14:19
Speaker 2: I make a conscious decision that I needed help. I
14:23
Speaker 2: knew that I was right on the verge. I knew that,
14:28
Speaker 2: you know, starving almost to death wasn't a good thing.
14:33
Speaker 2: But the rest of the time I was driven and
14:36
Speaker 2: I had to do it. And I knew that drinking
14:39
Speaker 2: a court of bourbon every night by myself, which I
14:42
Speaker 2: did six ninety five old crow in those days, same
14:48
Speaker 2: size as I am now, I was drinking a court
14:51
Speaker 2: every night straight bourbon by myself. I knew there was
14:55
Speaker 2: something wrong with that, and my therapist had the wisdom
14:59
Speaker 2: to I know, I wouldn't have survived without it for
15:04
Speaker 2: a while, and after a certain point she knew that
15:08
Speaker 2: it was killing me, so she knew how long it
15:11
Speaker 2: was keeping me alive, and then she knew when it
15:14
Speaker 2: wasn't anymore. So then by then I was going to
15:18
Speaker 2: therapy four days a week when she got me to stop,
15:21
Speaker 2: and I was going to AA twice a day, and
15:26
Speaker 2: I was going to work as a waitress, and all
15:28
Speaker 2: my money went to the therapist. So that was my life.
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Speaker 1: Let's talk about how neglect became this focus for you when.
15:40
Speaker 2: How it's a favorite story of mine, and that is
15:45
Speaker 2: that by the early nineties, when the world was starting
15:50
Speaker 2: to deal with violence against women and children and sexual
15:54
Speaker 2: violence and sexual abuse and sexual assault, you know, sexuality
16:00
Speaker 2: starting to get talked about in terms of violence and exploitation,
16:05
Speaker 2: and so sexual abuse of women and children was coming
16:10
Speaker 2: out of the woodwork, and before I knew it, because
16:13
Speaker 2: I was very interested in that. Obviously because of my
16:17
Speaker 2: own story, my whole practice came to be filled with
16:23
Speaker 2: women with sexual abuse histories. And in those days, I
16:29
Speaker 2: mostly worked with women. A lot of them were straight women,
16:33
Speaker 2: a lot of them were partnered, and a lot of
16:35
Speaker 2: them were complaining about their partners, their male partners. In
16:41
Speaker 2: those days, I had a lot of straight people in
16:44
Speaker 2: my practice, and so I had this great idea, since
16:49
Speaker 2: the partners didn't get it, I would offer one day
16:53
Speaker 2: workshops for male partners of women who were sexually abused
16:58
Speaker 2: as children. Put out my little flyer. It's nineteen ninety eight.
17:02
Speaker 2: We didn't have internet, so I was I mean nineteen yeah,
17:07
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety eight. I made my paper flyer, I put
17:11
Speaker 2: a stamp on it, I put it in the mail.
17:13
Speaker 2: Things took a lot longer than I did get a
17:16
Speaker 2: good response, and I found myself in my office with
17:20
Speaker 2: eight men. Now you have to imagine little office, me
17:23
Speaker 2: and eight men. So these eight men came and sat
17:27
Speaker 2: in a circle like one does in a one day workshop.
17:32
Speaker 2: And as you'll do in a one day workshop, you
17:36
Speaker 2: go around the room and introduce yourself. And they were
17:39
Speaker 2: all really attractive, personable, accomplished, successful, very you know, nondescript,
17:50
Speaker 2: but you know, in a positive way. Men. And so
17:55
Speaker 2: I said, well, tell us about yourself. So, without exception,
18:01
Speaker 2: each of them answered the question by talking about their wife.
18:07
Speaker 2: And I thought, isn't that interesting? I ask you about
18:12
Speaker 2: you and you answer by talking about someone else? What
18:19
Speaker 2: does that mean? And then they started describing their life
18:23
Speaker 2: with their spouse. And of course it wasn't the way
18:25
Speaker 2: I heard about it, because they were paying therapy bills,
18:29
Speaker 2: they were taking care of kids, The house was a mess,
18:33
Speaker 2: they were taking care of everything themselves. They all complained
18:37
Speaker 2: about clutter, and their partners were really Obviously the nature
18:44
Speaker 2: of trauma is to be fixated on the trauma. That's
18:48
Speaker 2: normal when you're in the throes. So there was no
18:52
Speaker 2: attention for them. There was no sex, And I thought,
18:56
Speaker 2: what kind of childhood would prepare a person for a
19:00
Speaker 2: relationship where they get so little back. So I became
19:05
Speaker 2: very curious. So of course, after they all responded that way,
19:10
Speaker 2: I said, well, tell us about you. And now this
19:14
Speaker 2: was where the neglect profile, as I've come to call it, began,
19:19
Speaker 2: because they were all the same. They sort of shrugged
19:23
Speaker 2: this signature shrug, and they said, well, nothing happened to me,
19:30
Speaker 2: and I thought, oh, they said, no, nothing happened to me.
19:35
Speaker 2: My parents stayed married, we had plenty of food, shelter, clothing,
19:40
Speaker 2: they paid for my education. Nothing happened to me, And
19:46
Speaker 2: I thought, hm, So I became very interested in this nothing.
19:53
Speaker 2: I wanted to know more about nothing. And so in
19:57
Speaker 2: the course of the day, we began to talk about
20:01
Speaker 2: their experience, which was actually not nothing, and they had
20:06
Speaker 2: a lot in common with each other, And by the
20:11
Speaker 2: end of the day they were really connecting with each
20:15
Speaker 2: other and the fact that they had a lot in common,
20:19
Speaker 2: which I became interested in. They felt kind of excited
20:23
Speaker 2: about connecting with each other because most of them, if
20:27
Speaker 2: not all of them, didn't really have any real attachments
20:32
Speaker 2: in their life, this vacuous relationship with their partner. So
20:37
Speaker 2: at the end of the day they asked me, could
20:40
Speaker 2: we have an ongoing group? And I said, okay, I
20:45
Speaker 2: never thought about that, and they said, and this was
20:50
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety eight. That group kept going, That group of
20:58
Speaker 2: eight men kept meeting. We finally ended the group in
21:03
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen.
21:06
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
21:08
Speaker 2: And I kept saying to them, I'm getting too old
21:11
Speaker 2: to work this late at night. We've got to begin
21:15
Speaker 2: to wind down. And they said, no, no, no, don't
21:17
Speaker 2: end the group. Don't end the group. And they said,
21:21
Speaker 2: we'll pay you more, we'll have shorter sessions, will come
21:24
Speaker 2: less up, and but don't end the group. So we
21:27
Speaker 2: kept going, and finally I had to end the group
21:31
Speaker 2: because I really was getting too tired. By now it's
21:35
Speaker 2: twenty twenty six and two of the men have passed.
21:39
Speaker 2: One of them was actually the same age as my dad.
21:41
Speaker 2: He was when he died. My dad died at nineteen
21:47
Speaker 2: in twenty nineteen, at the age of ninety four. This
21:51
Speaker 2: man died I think a year ago, so he lived
21:54
Speaker 2: a little longer than my dad, but he was my
21:57
Speaker 2: dad's age. He was a professor, and that became the
22:02
Speaker 2: living laboratory where I started studying about nothing, which became
22:09
Speaker 2: my whole model about neglect informed psychotherapy. So that's the
22:16
Speaker 2: long winded answer to your question.
22:20
Speaker 1: Wow. So when you say neglect is a story of nothing,
22:29
Speaker 1: but obviously there was something absolutely but for them it
22:34
Speaker 1: was registered or felt or experiences.
22:36
Speaker 2: Now that's right, and I'll tell you how that happens,
22:40
Speaker 2: because this is where my real fascination and passion for
22:45
Speaker 2: neuroscience comes in. And I'm not recommending Alan Shore to
22:51
Speaker 2: your audience because he's really hard to read and he's
22:54
Speaker 2: really hard to listen to. One of the things I
22:57
Speaker 2: pride myself in because he's so brilliant, is I read
23:01
Speaker 2: his stuff one hundred times and then I translated into
23:06
Speaker 2: terms that I can teach so that people understand what
23:12
Speaker 2: he's saying because it's so profound and what sure helped
23:16
Speaker 2: me understanding in Daniel Siegel came out around the same time,
23:22
Speaker 2: teaching similar things. Attachment neuroscience that the infant brain develops
23:28
Speaker 2: in resonance with the primary caregiver brain, and I use
23:33
Speaker 2: the term mother for shorthand because most of us the
23:37
Speaker 2: primary caregiver, if we're lucky, is the mother, since we
23:41
Speaker 2: grow in the mother's body. So the brain develops in
23:45
Speaker 2: resonance with the mother's brain through right hemisphere to right hemisphere,
23:52
Speaker 2: largely through the gaze, and the infant experiences the attachment
24:01
Speaker 2: to the mother. And this is not metaphor, this is literal,
24:05
Speaker 2: and this is true with all our mammal cousins. And
24:09
Speaker 2: that is the mother is survival. The mother is food, warmth,
24:16
Speaker 2: protection from predators, shelter, and mother is of course the
24:21
Speaker 2: source of regulation, which is another whole category of development.
24:26
Speaker 2: So the infant experiences the mother as survival. So what
24:33
Speaker 2: happens when the mother withdraws. The mother is inconsistent, The
24:40
Speaker 2: mother is dissociated, not really there, not resonating. The mother
24:45
Speaker 2: is simply absent. The mother abandons, and that infant resonates
24:53
Speaker 2: to nothing. So there and of course, an infant does
25:00
Speaker 2: not have cognition, An infant does not have narrative. An
25:05
Speaker 2: infant only has sensation, emotion, somatic experience, a little bit
25:14
Speaker 2: of visual, a little bit of audio O factory. It's
25:20
Speaker 2: all sensory, somatic, emotional, But no narrative, so they remember
25:29
Speaker 2: with the cognitive part of the brain nothing except their
25:35
Speaker 2: body and their emotion. Has this traumatic experience because what
25:42
Speaker 2: we all know in your audience is all trauma. People,
25:46
Speaker 2: then the definition of trauma is overwhelming experience, which means
25:53
Speaker 2: the stimulus is greater than what the organism is designed
25:58
Speaker 2: to process in its customary way. So the experience of
26:04
Speaker 2: the mother not there, of nothing is in fact overwhelming.
26:11
Speaker 2: And Frank Corrigan aptly calls it attachment shock, because it
26:18
Speaker 2: is a shock when that other is not there. So
26:24
Speaker 2: the memory is this vast emptiness, this universe of nothing,
26:34
Speaker 2: and this solitude and despair. And of course the brain
26:40
Speaker 2: isn't resonating or isn't resonating much. And I'm a practitioner
26:46
Speaker 2: of Noro feedback, and I learned about how the brain
26:49
Speaker 2: frequencies come online, and if the brain is understimulated, that
26:55
Speaker 2: means it fires too slow, so you get these attention deficits,
27:02
Speaker 2: which it's counterintuitive to understand that the brain of an
27:08
Speaker 2: ADD or an ADHD person is underfiring. It's firing too slow.
27:13
Speaker 2: I always thought they were hyper active, which they are
27:17
Speaker 2: in many ways, but the brain is underfiring so you've
27:22
Speaker 2: got this slow firing brain. And that's where a lot
27:27
Speaker 2: of our neglect survivors come in with diagnoses of add
27:32
Speaker 2: or ADHD because it's not understood why their brain is
27:38
Speaker 2: firing slow, but it is, and they think, oh, that's
27:42
Speaker 2: the problem because nothing happened as far as they know
27:47
Speaker 2: until we start to study nothing. So nothing is the
27:54
Speaker 2: world of missing experiences. So that's what my work is
27:59
Speaker 2: all about. And guy, when one last thing, when you
28:03
Speaker 2: introduced my books, I have won, Well it's not out yet,
28:07
Speaker 2: it's impress I wrote a work book about neglect inform
28:12
Speaker 2: psychotherapy because I can't keep up with the need for
28:16
Speaker 2: training and people want to learn how to do this work.
28:20
Speaker 2: So I wrote a workbook that people could use in
28:23
Speaker 2: the interim while I get my trainings online because and
28:29
Speaker 2: I don't mean online literally, but I get my trainings
28:32
Speaker 2: set up. Some of them are online, so that people
28:37
Speaker 2: can start learning and practicing neglect in form psycotherapy because
28:42
Speaker 2: it is this vast world of trauma. It is not
28:46
Speaker 2: small T. This is big T trauma. So I'm going
28:51
Speaker 2: to hold there, guy.
28:53
Speaker 1: So this as we kind of wind down here, but
28:57
Speaker 1: how does this neglect, this nothingness show up always different
29:05
Speaker 1: for everyone. But you have these eight guys who presented similarly.
29:12
Speaker 1: How does it show up? How might it show up
29:14
Speaker 1: in someone's life, inter personally, et cetera.
29:17
Speaker 2: Okay, great question, guy, and I have developed what I
29:21
Speaker 2: call the neglect profile, which I can't go through the
29:24
Speaker 2: whole thing now, but I'll name two aspects to it.
29:28
Speaker 2: Because what you understand is the trauma vortex is in
29:35
Speaker 2: attachment and the threat, the lethal threat, is in the
29:42
Speaker 2: fact that the needed other was gone. So the most
29:49
Speaker 2: adaptive thing that a person can do when their life
29:54
Speaker 2: is endangered by the loss of the attachment is become
29:59
Speaker 2: furroz self reliant. So self reliant is the most obvious
30:07
Speaker 2: characteristic that you will see, and which is why a
30:13
Speaker 2: lot of them do not show up in therapy because
30:16
Speaker 2: they don't want to need us, They don't want to
30:22
Speaker 2: need any other person, so they come in. If they
30:27
Speaker 2: come in and right off the bat, they will be rejecting.
30:32
Speaker 2: Often they will be insulting and critical and really ambivalent,
30:39
Speaker 2: kind of a know it all type, because they're so
30:42
Speaker 2: used to doing it all themselves, which is why relationship
30:47
Speaker 2: is a mind field for them, and often they have
30:50
Speaker 2: none or they can't sustain them sexuality, I have a
30:53
Speaker 2: hole a whole My first book was about the sexual relationship,
30:59
Speaker 2: and that was in twenty ten, but I now have
31:02
Speaker 2: a whole course on neglect and form sex therapy, because
31:07
Speaker 2: that is such a complicated area, given that you can
31:11
Speaker 2: do it all yourself with most things, but with sexuality,
31:16
Speaker 2: it's not the same. Now that we've got AI and
31:20
Speaker 2: the Internet, it's becoming more possible to do it without it,
31:25
Speaker 2: without the threat of attachment trauma. And that worries me
31:30
Speaker 2: because people are starting to really attach to AI in
31:33
Speaker 2: ways that are kind of alarming. But so to answer
31:38
Speaker 2: your question, some of the first things that I notice
31:42
Speaker 2: are self reliance, which makes them really difficult clients a
31:48
Speaker 2: lot of the time. And I have so much to
31:51
Speaker 2: I could talk about this all day. Obviously another one
31:55
Speaker 2: and a lot of people really grab onto this because
31:59
Speaker 2: it really fits. And this is what I call the
32:02
Speaker 2: three p's of neglect, And the three p's correspond to
32:08
Speaker 2: this underfiring brain, the brain that fires too slow, so
32:14
Speaker 2: particularly in the interpersonal they have a very hard time initiating,
32:21
Speaker 2: they have a very hard time following through, and they
32:25
Speaker 2: have a very hard time completing tasks. Specifically in the interpersonal.
32:31
Speaker 2: The three p's are passivity, procrastination, and paralysis. And many
32:39
Speaker 2: of them when I name these things or their loved
32:43
Speaker 2: ones here it and they go, oh my god, and
32:45
Speaker 2: they really grab onto that one that one resonates with
32:49
Speaker 2: a lot of people. But I have a whole profile
32:53
Speaker 2: about some of the most the most noticeable. One last
32:58
Speaker 2: thing I'll say, be because this is pertinent to us,
33:02
Speaker 2: is that one of the ways that the survivor of
33:07
Speaker 2: neglect finds a safe way to connect or attach, and
33:14
Speaker 2: I certainly did this with my own mother, is by
33:18
Speaker 2: taking care of the other. I learned that if I
33:23
Speaker 2: took care of my mother and kind of managed her,
33:27
Speaker 2: that I could keep her anxiety low enough that maybe
33:31
Speaker 2: I wouldn't get hurt, or maybe she would even be
33:34
Speaker 2: a little nicer to me. So caregiving became a survival
33:40
Speaker 2: mechanism for me, and many of our neglect survivors discover
33:47
Speaker 2: caregiving as a survival mechanism, and they wind up like
33:52
Speaker 2: you and me, in a caregiving profession. And then they
33:57
Speaker 2: come to me after these workshops with these big eyes
34:00
Speaker 2: and they say, oh my God, that's me, and they're shocked,
34:06
Speaker 2: and they say, no one ever got it before. I
34:09
Speaker 2: never understood that, And now the dots are connecting. So
34:14
Speaker 2: many of us are children of neglect. But because it's invisible.
34:21
Speaker 2: We were invisible in our family, We've been invisible in
34:26
Speaker 2: this in the mental health field and certainly in the world.
34:30
Speaker 2: We think nothing happened to us. So we're used to
34:36
Speaker 2: just going invisible, unseen and helping other people. And I
34:42
Speaker 2: find in many professions that are helping, whether it's tech
34:46
Speaker 2: support or customer service, or you know, medical or psychotherapy,
34:51
Speaker 2: some of the many ways that we help, but we're
34:55
Speaker 2: kind of behind the scenes. That's another clue. It's many
35:00
Speaker 2: of us and why it's so important. We have to
35:06
Speaker 2: do our own work. We must.
35:09
Speaker 1: So it seems like it's such an easy way to
35:12
Speaker 1: disguise because as a caregiver, you're kind of this in
35:19
Speaker 1: a sense, Uh, someone with you have a very important job, right,
35:25
Speaker 1: you have a lot of knowledge in certain situations.
35:28
Speaker 2: That's right. Look you looked at as the person, right.
35:32
Speaker 2: And in transference, this is the neglect experience. In transference,
35:38
Speaker 2: there is no me. If we do our job well,
35:43
Speaker 2: we don't intrude into the field in ways they're where
35:47
Speaker 2: they're actually you know, dealing with our or subjectivity per se.
35:54
Speaker 2: I mean it depends what your model is for psychotherapy,
35:57
Speaker 2: but in effect, the neglect experiences there is no me,
36:03
Speaker 2: and so in many of these caregiving fields, if we
36:07
Speaker 2: do our job well, there is.
36:10
Speaker 1: No me, Ruth. Okay, how do people learn more about you?
36:16
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously there's so much more to talk about.
36:18
Speaker 1: I have to love to have you back. Please, Well,
36:21
Speaker 1: you're welcome anytime.
36:23
Speaker 2: Just let me know a guy, I'll be back. I'm
36:25
Speaker 2: always happy to trry you.
36:27
Speaker 1: How do people learn more about you? What's the best way?
36:29
Speaker 2: Okay? I have a website Ruth cohenemft dot com. There's
36:34
Speaker 2: lots of free stuff on the website. I've got I
36:38
Speaker 2: put out a blog every other week. I have a
36:40
Speaker 2: YouTube channel. I put out a video every other week
36:44
Speaker 2: and the YouTube YouTube is called all about Nothing Ruth Cone.
36:50
Speaker 2: And I've got my books. I'm I now have two
36:54
Speaker 2: courses that are posted on the website. Those are not free.
36:58
Speaker 2: One of them is through Onto Way, which are lovely people,
37:02
Speaker 2: and they're actually translating my work into other languages, which
37:07
Speaker 2: are the French version is Impress. We've got an Italian
37:12
Speaker 2: in Russian and Spanish and German are in the works,
37:16
Speaker 2: and so the courses. The Quantum Way is doing my
37:22
Speaker 2: neglected and Formed Psychotherapy introductory course in English and French,
37:27
Speaker 2: and also Therapy Wisdom has a course. Those are posted
37:31
Speaker 2: on my website and there's lots of free stuff, so
37:35
Speaker 2: please help yourselves. I'm delighted to share, and I'm committed
37:40
Speaker 2: to giving away a certain amount of free content every week.
37:45
Speaker 1: Awesome. We'll have those linked up here at the show
37:47
Speaker 1: page the Trauma Therapist Podcast dot com. Ruth an honor
37:52
Speaker 1: having you on here and it was great, great talking.
37:55
Speaker 2: Thank you guy, and thank you for your persistence. We
37:58
Speaker 2: had one false start together, but we made it this
38:02
Speaker 2: time very well. Thank you. It was a pleasure. Okay,
38:05
Speaker 2: bye everyone, Thank you,