Latest / System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation / Unfawning, Part 1 of 3

Transcript

Unfawning, Part 1 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.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: Hello. We are sitting here with my broken ankle propped up. I have told that story because it's the only thing that got me to watch shiny happy people. Well, it landed me in bed, and then I was like, well, what else do I have to do? Yeah.
• 1:47
  Oh my goodness. And now I've watched it a second time because I watched it with you. I talked to the English teacher who says she has watched it four times because it is so epic and exactly what we were talking about and bizarre to see that on TV. Like, surreal, not just that they are telling our story, but that they are telling our story. That was my childhood, and those training centers were my college.
• 2:25
  So, like, episode one, there are four episodes in the documentary on Amazon. The first episode, like, explains about IBLF or what used to be IBLP. They changed the last letter to f as if that would make a difference. But, anyway, and then the second episode is basically my childhood. The third episode is basically my college years.
• 2:54
  And then the fourth episode talks about how these people are trying to take over government, and we're watching it unfold. It's really scary. It explains a lot, though, does it? Okay. So, anyway, on that bright note, we're gonna talk about someone else's controversy controversy for a hot minute.
• 3:16
  You have found a podcast that we're going to listen to. I will put the title and a link in the... Wait. What's it called? Show notes.
• 3:26
  Show notes. But it is called... What is it? The podcast called? And this particular episode is called...
• 3:35
  So that's why we're watch... I mean, listening to it because of the fawning. So, okay, you were trying to give me background about this guy, another documentary I have not yet finished watching, but it's about NXIVM. Is that how you say it? What's it called?
• 3:54
  So I don't even know about this yet, but other people know this. Like, it was in the news and stuff. It... I'm still processing that my entire childhood all the way through college was a cult. Like, my therapist has used the word programming, and I'm, like, still trying to just let that settle.
• 4:15
  So this is completely unrelated to that. It's just, you know, more happiness out in the world. Okay. So, anyway, so that's where this guy is from. But now he has a podcast that is, like, part philosophy, like, where he asks questions and then interviews people and talks to them about it.
• 4:36
  Is that right? Oh, goodness. Yeah. Okay. So that's what that podcast is.
• 4:41
  But the particular episode, like, that is not a podcast I've just followed, but this particular episode, you were like, hey. There's an episode about fawning. Oh, dear. Like, we need to hear it together like it's deep and helpful, or we need to hear it together like we're in couples therapy. Oh, dear.
• 5:01
  This is the... Okay. So this is the podcast episode that you were like, I wish we could just listen to it on the podcast like we did with Laura Brown. But we can't because it's not ours and copyright and all of that. So we are going to have to listen in chunks and then record in between and just piece it together as best we can.
• 5:26
  Okay. So I'll put links in the show notes, and then we'll talk about it after we listen. Buckle up. K. It is actually recording.
• 5:37
  Oh my goodness. She just jumps right in there. Okay. So a couple things. Let me find my notes.
• 5:45
  A couple things. So first of all, the lady doctor... I feel like I'm talking about doctor who, the lady doc. The the therapist that he's interviewing, but she talks about all kinds of uncomfortable things. Oh, it's a lot.
• 6:05
  So at Reader's Digest version, she had a stepfather who was a narcissist, but she did not know this growing up because children don't have language for that, and children don't have ways to express that much less understand what's happening. So she talks about how developmental trauma is now called complex trauma and that children are dependent on caregivers and internalized trauma is our own doing because everything is our fault, right? Because as a child the world revolves around us which means it must be causal. Yay shiny happy people! But then she explicitly points out scapegoating as a form of gaslighting, which took me a hot minute to process of, like, the whole point of scapegoating is that you're the problem for the family.
• 7:06
  Right? So so scapegoating goes all the way back to even in Jewish culture, like in the old laws, they would literally put the sins on a goat and then send the goat out away from the community. Like, it literally took it away. So they were literally, like, made clean by sending away this goat. Right?
• 7:27
  Okay. So that's the Reader's Digest version of that story. But that's where the term comes from. And so that what... That's what happens in families where there's just, like, one bad child, and it's...
• 7:39
  Everything is their fault or one troublemaker child or the black sheep of the family. All the things that I am in my family is this. And she says that is gaslighting that it is the caregiver saying, I'm not the problem. You are the problem. Oh, I'm so uncomfortable with this.
• 8:03
  She talks about emotional abuse and manipulation, which not that she went into that in details yet, although I guess the whole thing is, so she has gone into detail on this. But I've already been thinking about these layers because of shiny happy people and even before that the leaving the fold book. So there we go. So, anyway, basically, grows up to be a therapist, and then her stepdad dies. And she talks about how she felt free and safe when her stepdad died.
• 8:36
  And I I can relate to this because my parents are dead. And there are all kinds of complicated grief that comes when you lose your parents. You still have your parents. My parents are dead, and I don't know that even now I can talk about that directly. Not my grief about them being gone, but I still don't feel like I have permission to speak to it.
• 9:08
  Not that I should need permission. And also, I know I'm never going to have permission. Right? That's part of being shiny, happy people. So there's that.
• 9:17
  But she says in her words that she couldn't see where she ended and he began until he died. And then she also said that after he died, she was possessed with this need to express herself, and she didn't know why. And I love that she described it in this way because it doesn't mean... Like, possession in a religious trauma sense can mean, like, all kinds things. And so it's kind of a triggery word, but I understand this feeling because my parents died.
• 9:53
  And what she's talking about is like need is so great. So what happens is you spend your whole life, and again, just my experience, her experience, what she's sharing, you spend your whole ex... Your whole life trying to not need, trying to not exist. And so this is where dissociation comes in, right? To pull that off, you have to dissociate because we do have needs because we're human, right?
• 10:23
  But then when your parents die and the rules change, all of a sudden that need is very big and overwhelming and loud because no one is silencing it. So the death of parents is like a whole different tangent, but she references it there. But then she's talking about how she began to write, and this also happened to me with the book, as there became more distance, like, with it on the page, whether that was for me, like, even just journaling and therapy. Like, that's one reason I'm pro journaling is not because, oh, this is the fun stuff to talk about, but because when you put it on the page, the page contains it in a different way than is possible when it's inside. And the page gives some distance where it is outside of you instead of inside of you in a way that makes it more tolerable even though the circumstances themselves have not changed.
• 11:34
  Combining what you just said with what this author is saying, there being a record of it also means you exist, and you can't be invisible anymore if there's a record. So even more than just not remembering. So she... So, anyway, as she begins writing this book, not realizing she's writing a book, which I can relate to that as well, she basically realizes that she herself has CPTSD, which she had never realized even though she's a therapist who is trauma informed and knows about CPTSD. Check all the boxes.
• 12:18
  High five. So much fun. But she said, as soon as we have accurate language for our experiences, and she gave example of, like, flight and fight and freeze and fawn, trauma and trauma bonding, trauma reenactment, like, then you can actually see accurately what has been happening to you and what your experiences have been instead of just recreating chaos or being stuck in thinking you are the problem, because we are not the problem. The trauma is the problem. Literally dissociating, not just from...
• 12:57
  This is why we talk about people with DID and OSDD and how it doesn't invalidate what you're experiencing because dissociation is not just amnesia. There's also the dissociation from my feelings. Oh, I don't know what my feelings are. I don't have any feelings. I can't experience any feelings Or retrograde amnesia where I do remember everything except for what just happened a hot minute ago.
• 13:26
  Or or this amnesia of, sure, I can tell you all the facts of my life. I don't have any gaps in my... I hear this all the time in the community. I know what happened. I don't have gaps in my memory, but they cannot hold onto the fact that those things that they remember are traumatic.
• 13:48
  Their dissociation, the amnesia, the peace they are forgetting is that what they have endured counts as trauma. Okay. I have to frame this a little bit. The children were all here last week, all the children. So many children.
• 14:06
  They were all here. One of the things that we did while they were here is we finally watched the latest season of Doctor Who. Okay? So doctor who is in my mind because of that. Also, because my ankle throbs like the Tardis.
• 14:21
  It hurts so bad. Anyway, there is one of these episodes... Well, it comes up a couple times, but in the, like, older episodes of doctor who, there is one of the particular, like, monsters or whatever where you forget it when you see it. That's one of the things it causes. Right?
• 14:45
  So every time they see it, they try to mark on themselves, like, with a Sharpie to remind themselves they've seen it. So they're walking around with all these tally marks all over them, and they still can't remember that they've seen it. This is what is happening. This is what is happening. They're like, oh, my dissociation doesn't count because I can remember when I was a child.
• 15:05
  Yes. Can you remember that those things that happened to you were traumatic? That is part of it. Right? So she talks about that and she says, because your head and body speak a different language, your body is oriented to safety, and your head is oriented to what you think and feel about your experiences.
• 15:30
  But when you're not safe or you can't exist, then what you think and feel about it is irrelevant. And when you're not valued anyway, then there's no way to connect your head and body. Insula. It's the insula in the brain. So then she talks about when you are left out or treated like you don't exist or given the silent treatment, that that is abusive.
• 16:07
  And that because she literally did not exist in her home... So, like, she tells this story of actually reporting to DHS, like, the authorities. Like her school helped her hotline what was going on at home, but because there was not physical abuse she could document, it was basically dismissed. And so she didn't understand that what she was going through was abusive, even when she tried to ask for help with what was happening. And so she literally did not exist in her own home.
• 16:42
  And then as she grew up, began to not even exist in her own mind, really. Like, her own self was invisible to herself. Is dissociation. She also said a line that made me laugh because it made it... Me think of us, except in a good way.
• 17:01
  Hers was a scary way, but, like, I can think of a safer example to share. But she talked about how because she was so ignored and so left out and so demeaned and devalued and hated on basically. Right? Like the scapegoat, the bad sheep, the black sheep of the family, whatever. That later when her step dad also began grooming her basically for sexual abuse, but that in her case, happened later as she got older, all his wives had been very young and she would grow into being old enough to fit that pattern that his attention from the grooming then became, like she said, intoxicating.
• 17:55
  This is something, that is a line I need to take back to therapy because I feel that with you. That sounds really scary, right? But when life has been so hard for so long and I have been so overwhelmed and felt so alone in that, that when I am with you, what is hard is that, like, you walk into the room and it's like I'm drunk. Like, I don't mean from alcohol, but that word, like, the way she describes that of being intoxicating, like, I'm completely swept away. Completely swept away.
• 18:43
  I don't think... Again, I'm... It's not... It... It's a different context than what she was sharing, but that's how I understood that feeling that she was describing because of this.
• 18:53
  I do think, especially with my therapist that I'm still continuing to love. I continue to ask myself hard questions and think through so that I don't think I'm just being foolish. I don't think that it's in an unhealthy way, but I understand that feeling. And the reason it made me think of us, like, hey. I don't mean to be so tangled with it.
• 19:28
  What I'm trying to say is I think that's why I had these negative relationships before, not like, when I tried really hard with my first therapist to really fawning. So I am not excited to listen to this episode, but, like, that's why it couldn't work. But because things are completely intoxicating. But I can see why that is tricky for those of us while we are still doing the work developmentally to choose healthy places to experience that. And it also reminds me of what Christine Forner said at the conference about how other people just walk around with that all the time.
• 20:24
  Like that's what's intoxicating is literally that getting attention, not in a bad way, not inappropriate ways, but that because humans need care. Right. Right. That's what she's talking about here. Except that that can also be exploited by perpetrators.
• 20:43
  They hone in on it somehow. Okay. So then she points out that the difference from like my examples of learning to have healthier relationships When it's unhealthy or when there's grooming or when it's actually unsafe, then the attention feels good, but the secrecy feels bad. But when your brain and your body are on the same page, you know that you're safe. There's nothing wrong happening.
• 21:18
  There's nothing that's bad. There's nothing deceptive or secretive or sneaky. Right? That makes sense. That makes sense.
• 21:27
  Right. So, so when it's an unsafe or unhealthy relationship, those things come up and in an unhealthy or unsafe relationship, you also can't talk about those things. Like that's part of what happened with my first therapist is I tried to talk about this and this and that. And it was like, that's when it was like, she was dissociating and I was seeing clearly. But because we couldn't get on the same page, like, it was like this externally instead of internally, and that's why it didn't work.
• 21:59
  But when you are safe and healthy and in good relationships, not only are your mind and body on the same page, but with the relationship that happens externally as well. We can talk about things. When she talked about... So going back to the author and she was talking about how one of the patterns of narcissistic abuse is this offering of something that you want and then the pulling of it away and then lying about that to trick you into wanting it, which then they basically... These are my words, not hers.
• 22:42
  But then that is basically used to later blame you for consenting for what happened, except that is not consent. That is so much of my life. I can't even tell you, and that is not consent. Wow. Wow.
• 23:02
  Yes. Exactly. I wrote that. Then it's your fault for what happens. Like in shiny, happy people, it's a trap.
• 23:09
  And the religious trauma that I grew up with or that's in shiny, happy people, that is like, it's your fault because of the clothes you wore. It's your fault because you weren't righteous enough. It's your fault because you weren't good enough. It's your fault because you didn't ask the right person for help because that's gossip and slander, and you're not allowed to do that. And she said asking for help is just being dramatic.
• 23:36
  So my truth... Not in real life, but that's what you're told. So my truth makes more problems. So my truth is never validated. And what is validated is, oh, it is true that I'm the problem.
• 23:53
  That makes me wanna puke. I have one more piece. She talks about the fight response getting snuffed out, and that reminded me also of shiny, happy people and the blanket training, which totally was a thing.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: It made me think of
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: the blanket training. It made me think of the beatings and the spankings that were literally to break your spirit, not just to punish you. So, like, they don't stop until you're quiet. Like, you are hurt until you are quiet and at any age, right? And the getting locked up, I was shocked that they talked about that in Shiny Happy People.
• 24:48
  That's part of what happened to me in college and I've shared about that already. But to see, no. Other people went through this too. This whole time, I thought I was the only one that... Like, this little group of the two girls that have been on the podcast with me, that this was just us, and it just happened to me.
• 25:08
  It was not until shiny, happy people that I even realized everyone else was going through the same thing I was. So she talked about that fight response getting snuffed out. And so because fight does not work, our body, which she keeps pointing out, again, it's neurological, right? Like, it's not a behavior problem. Our brain is literally doing what it does to survive.
• 25:33
  It's not even a choice, a neurobiological response. And when fight does not work, we go to the next thing. Our body goes to the next thing, which is freeze. But the freezing shows up in our dissociation. We stop telling our truth, hide it even from ourselves.
• 25:56
  So again, the dissociate... We're not just dissociating. Some of us sometimes dissociate from our memories. So that would be amnesia, but also there's dissociating from what we think about it. There's dissociating from what we feel about it, and there's dissociating from the fact that it is trauma.
• 26:18
  So we stop telling our truth, hide it even from ourselves, and then that's why fawning kicks in, which is what this whole thing is gonna be about even though this is, like, already been a whole episode. So this will be a multiparter, much like ourselves. But after we dissociate, then the fawning happens because we have to go along with their narratives that explain away our distress. That it is in part... This is the part that blew me away.
• 26:51
  I don't know if I can even say it out loud. It is actually the fawning that in part keeps the dissociation in place. We cannot... Part of undissociating, which is not the same as associating. It's actually a different thing.
• 27:11
  But undissociating is not actually about remembering. This is what's hard. Remembering is hard enough, and that is part for those who have amnesia, the remembering is hard enough. That's a thing too. It's part of healing.
• 27:33
  But un dissociating is not actually about remembering. Un Undissociating is about seeing clearly. So sometimes seeing clearly is about remembering. Sometimes seeing clearly is knowing what you think about what you remember. Sometimes seeing clearly is about knowing what you feel about what you remember.
• 28:01
  And sometimes seeing clearly is about responding to what you remember. I would say that's how many layers it took to stay safe with what we were going through. Like, every time it didn't work, we had to try again. So think about a child learning to walk, how many times they fall down before they're able to walk. How many times did we try to exist in an acceptable approved way before we were invisible enough to be approved.
• 28:42
  So how many times, not just them, like the... In this example, the remembering is about how many times we got shut down and told we had to be invisible in some way. But the dissociating is how many walls did we have to put up to keep ourselves from appearing invisible so that their narrative could be true that we were invisible. So every time we had to put up a wall to stop ourselves from being visible, that's how many layers there are. How many opinions did you have to turn off?
• 29:22
  How many feelings did you have to turn off? How many times did you have to turn off those same opinions? You could have one opinion about one tiny moment in your family, but maybe you had to turn it off 11 times or 1,100 times. Maybe you learned to turn off sad, which is one feeling, but maybe you had to turn off sad 18,000 times. Maybe you felt alone, but to be alone means you exist.
• 30:00
  So you had to deny your own aloneness how many times? That's how many layers that onion has. I know. Right? It makes me sick.
• 30:14
  It's awful. It's so hard. Feeling hopeless is technically progress because it means you exist. It's not pleasant, though, and I don't mean to diminish that or minimize that at all, but it is progress because it means you're starting to exist. What is different is that of all of those times you had to shut those different things out, not all of those things are shirts because some of those aspects are actually classic, like, self states, like a state in an experience and an emotional response to that experience or a capacity on different things.
• 31:11
  So sometimes those overlap a little bit. So it's kind of like how we talk about with EMDR when it's done safely and dissociation informed that it can be exponential, like, as your brain starts to put pieces together. So maybe you did have to turn off, I don't know, anger. Maybe you had to turn off anger 18,000 times. But each time you learn how to let it come back up and tolerate it and let it pass is easier the next time you have to.
• 31:49
  So it starts to become exponential. So, basically, she was like, you have to become a robot in a toxic system. That's the only way we learn safety and reality. With... But also to think about it in a safe way, if we can think about uncomfortable things safely, I guess that's tolerating.
• 32:16
  Right? Tolerating the hard. So really what that means is that goes back to fawning, which we're about to listen to and talk about, is that that's why people who are really good fawners are over functioners because that's that robot piece, not not robot like fake or unreal or like a machine, but in a I am still functioning despite also being human with thoughts and feelings. When thoughts and feelings are stripped from you, a robot is what's left, which is why it's really frustrating to us and others who lived experience when survivors get stereotyped as more significant DID is lower functioning. Sometimes that's true, but most of the time, CPTSD and OSDD or DID, those people generally are over functioners because of fawning.
• 33:21
  That's exactly what fawning is. Cease to exist and go do this. Stop being who you are. Stop being a person. Have no opinions, thoughts, or feelings, and go function in this role that I say you are.
• 33:38
  Like, that's how shirts are created. So then the guy who's interviewing her, he's the guy from what the bleep do I know, which I did not connect that piece. So... Okay. So, anyway, he points out that these dynamics are similar to what he experienced in the cult that he escaped, the NXIVM drama.
• 34:02
  So he says, if you had complete sense of yourself, you would know these things are messed up, and you would say stop and leave, but you can't because trauma. And so she points out, again, children cannot articulate that it's too dangerous to create a problem by confronting it. So we dissociate not just the memory, but the fact that there's a problem at all. I'm so excited to hear more. Oh my goodness.
• 34:35
  Okay. Okay. Okay. This conversation will be continued in the next episode. 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.
• 35:08
  It means so much to us as we try to create something that's never been done before, not like this. Connection brings healing,
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: and healing brings hope.