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Guest Host Anna & Kore Interviews Elizabeth Clemants · The Trauma Therapist

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Trauma Therapist Podcast. My name is Gamiferson.
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. Hello.
0:15
Speaker 2: Everyone, We're delighted to be guest hosts for this Trauma
0:19
Speaker 2: Therapist podcast. We want to thank Guy for inviting us
0:23
Speaker 2: to take part in this series. I'm Anna White and
0:28
Speaker 2: I'm here with my professional partner, clinical psychologist, doctor Corey Glead.
0:33
Speaker 2: Corey and I started a mental health project four years ago.
0:37
Speaker 2: It's called the Type see Personality. And this is actually
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Speaker 2: the third time we've been on this particular podcast, the
0:45
Speaker 2: first time as guests and this is our second time
0:48
Speaker 2: as guest hosts.
0:51
Speaker 3: So for those listeners who don't know about the Type
0:53
Speaker 3: See project, Type CEE is a personality that is defined
0:57
Speaker 3: by an extreme need to please other people. Sorry, let
1:02
Speaker 3: me start that over because something okay. For those listeners
1:05
Speaker 3: who don't know about Type C, it's a personality defined
1:08
Speaker 3: by an extreme need to please other people, having extreme
1:12
Speaker 3: difficulty in feeling like you're worried about disappointing or letting
1:15
Speaker 3: other people down.
1:17
Speaker 4: Type sees avoid.
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Speaker 3: Conflict at all costs and often feel disconnected from their emotions.
1:23
Speaker 4: They suppress a lot.
1:25
Speaker 3: Usually there were some dark forces in childhood that created
1:28
Speaker 3: type se trace. Often it was from some form of emotional, physical,
1:32
Speaker 3: or sexual abuse. Something bad happened in some way that
1:35
Speaker 3: led type cs to believe that their needs didn't matter
1:38
Speaker 3: and don't matter, that they really are lesser than This
1:43
Speaker 3: could have been outright physical abuse. There was a lot
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Speaker 3: of ways that this can develop.
1:50
Speaker 2: So we've explored a lot of these type see roots
1:53
Speaker 2: on our own podcasts that today we're going to talk
1:57
Speaker 2: about sexual abuse and we are excited to have Elizabeth
2:01
Speaker 2: Clements as our guest. She is an expert on this topic.
2:07
Speaker 2: A little bit about Elizabeth. She wears a lot of
2:10
Speaker 2: different hats. She is a mediator, a conflict resolution trainer,
2:16
Speaker 2: and a shaman, which is how I was first introduced
2:19
Speaker 2: to her. Today, we're going to talk about an organization
2:22
Speaker 2: that she founded is called Hidden Water. It's a nonprofit
2:25
Speaker 2: and it uses a restorative justice model to work through
2:31
Speaker 2: child sexual abuse and the conflict that results in families.
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Speaker 3: So this is obviously a very heavy and difficult topic,
2:40
Speaker 3: but we really feel it's a very important one. So
2:42
Speaker 3: we just want to caution anyone who has been a
2:45
Speaker 3: victim of any childhood physical or sexual abuse that this
2:48
Speaker 3: episode could be a bit triggering, but we hope you'll
2:51
Speaker 3: stick around because we do think that it's very important. So,
2:54
Speaker 3: first and foremost, thank you so much Elizabeth for coming
2:58
Speaker 3: on the podcast together our guests. We are are very
3:03
Speaker 3: happy to have you here today. So we wanted to
3:05
Speaker 3: talk briefly. We wanted to just talk about about hidden water.
3:11
Speaker 3: What is it, how does it work, and what led
3:14
Speaker 3: you to found it?
3:17
Speaker 5: Yeah, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.
3:21
Speaker 5: I found it. So I was running the community mediation
3:25
Speaker 5: center in Brooklyn and Manhattan, and we would get lots
3:28
Speaker 5: and lots of cases where you know, neighbor disputes or
3:32
Speaker 5: family disputes or you know, maybe even criminal disputes. Hous
3:36
Speaker 5: it certainly housing conflicts, and so often we would get
3:41
Speaker 5: to the bottom, you know, get into the conflict, the
3:43
Speaker 5: concrete part, and if you stayed in it long enough,
3:46
Speaker 5: you'd kind of come upon a child sexual abuse situation
3:50
Speaker 5: from maybe decades earlier. But that how that dynamic from
3:54
Speaker 5: way back having been unaddressed, was causing current day conflicts
3:59
Speaker 5: among the adults, and I realized, you know, sometimes we
4:04
Speaker 5: would have very direct conflicts about that, you know, foster
4:07
Speaker 5: mom and the kid against the mom who was harmed
4:10
Speaker 5: by the stepdad kind of thing. But a lot of
4:12
Speaker 5: times it was just housing disputes, you know, our you know,
4:17
Speaker 5: financial disputes or different types of things. And so that
4:22
Speaker 5: I realized this is not a great venue for discussing
4:25
Speaker 5: that in this mediation that's supposedly about this sort of
4:28
Speaker 5: concrete issue, but really all this stuff was underneath it,
4:34
Speaker 5: and a different concrete issue would just keep emerging, you know,
4:37
Speaker 5: because you're not really addressing the underneath. So that is
4:41
Speaker 5: what led me to look for a different process that
4:45
Speaker 5: would be able to actually directly address the child sexual
4:48
Speaker 5: abuse history, and oftentimes families have generations of that, and
4:53
Speaker 5: so I found Restorative Justice and started Hidden Water in
4:58
Speaker 5: you know, our first circles were in two thousand and six,
5:01
Speaker 5: and we started to see that, you know, I started
5:04
Speaker 5: to realize even in the mediation that like one person
5:06
Speaker 5: against the other is not a great way to address
5:09
Speaker 5: this because it's actually a systemic issue. Often you know,
5:13
Speaker 5: either in the family on the family level or in
5:15
Speaker 5: the community level, and you can't really address it, you know,
5:19
Speaker 5: just letting those concrete conflicts bubble to the surface. You
5:23
Speaker 5: have to really get under it, and you can't do
5:25
Speaker 5: it the way the court does it, like this person
5:27
Speaker 5: against that person, because you're not really getting to the
5:30
Speaker 5: impact that happens to all people, whether you're the offender
5:34
Speaker 5: or the victim. All the people that are sort of
5:37
Speaker 5: in the blast radius I sometimes say, are impacted, you know, indirectly,
5:42
Speaker 5: but impacted, and they also perpetuate the dynamic going forward.
5:48
Speaker 2: Are people willing to participate in this process? It seems
5:53
Speaker 2: like the victim, of course, would want to be able
5:56
Speaker 2: to address these issues, but the perpetrate or I would think,
6:01
Speaker 2: would have a really hard time coming to the table,
6:03
Speaker 2: and maybe the other people that enabled it. So can
6:05
Speaker 2: you just maybe talk a little bit about that and
6:08
Speaker 2: how you can get everybody involved?
6:11
Speaker 4: Right?
6:12
Speaker 5: So, we initially, or at least my idea initially was
6:14
Speaker 5: to bring the whole family together, but then we realized
6:17
Speaker 5: that so much work, internal work has to be done
6:21
Speaker 5: before you're even going to be able to have a
6:23
Speaker 5: conversation inside the family system. That that sort of next level,
6:26
Speaker 5: that's like the advanced glass, and so we set up
6:30
Speaker 5: circles for people who were harmed under the age of
6:33
Speaker 5: twenty five, people who cause harm to someone under the
6:36
Speaker 5: age of twenty five, the non offending caregivers or parents,
6:40
Speaker 5: and then the other people other loved ones, which are
6:43
Speaker 5: usually spouses, you know, who weren't around when it happened,
6:47
Speaker 5: but they're certainly in the blast radius. Now other siblings
6:51
Speaker 5: who may not have been harmed, or adult children who
6:53
Speaker 5: are being impacted by their parents not having dealt with us.
6:57
Speaker 5: So we have these four different groups do circles with
7:01
Speaker 5: them alone so that they get the support and they
7:04
Speaker 5: get the understanding and they can sort of explore how
7:08
Speaker 5: this event impacted them, you know. So a lot of
7:10
Speaker 5: times the non offending parents or other loved ones show
7:13
Speaker 5: up to say what can I do for the victim right?
7:16
Speaker 5: Or what can I do if my child calls harm?
7:20
Speaker 5: But it's really about how did it impact you? How
7:23
Speaker 5: is it impacting you today? Like how where are you
7:26
Speaker 5: being a negatively changed by this and how are you
7:32
Speaker 5: playing in in ways that are negatively impacting other people?
7:35
Speaker 5: So it's really about like that internal work. And then
7:37
Speaker 5: we find that if each person in a family, not
7:40
Speaker 5: each person. It could just be two people in a
7:42
Speaker 5: family system three for do this work. The system changes
7:47
Speaker 5: even if you don't put them all together. But I
7:50
Speaker 5: do want to say one thing about like, we don't
7:52
Speaker 5: use that word perpetrator. We say you know a person
7:54
Speaker 5: who calls harm in part because over fifty percent of
7:57
Speaker 5: people who cause harm caused it when they were also miners,
8:01
Speaker 5: and they do not only like two percent or three
8:04
Speaker 5: percent of the cases do those people grow up to
8:06
Speaker 5: harm sexually as adults.
8:08
Speaker 6: So there is a.
8:09
Speaker 5: Huge, huge, huge group of people who harmed as children
8:12
Speaker 5: are not at risk of harming in adulthood. They want
8:15
Speaker 5: and they're usually have harmed you know, their cousin or
8:18
Speaker 5: their sibling, somebody like that, and they are desperate to
8:22
Speaker 5: repair and they want they want any way to be
8:25
Speaker 5: able to repair, and they need to be supported because
8:30
Speaker 5: it's not an easy it's not an easy path to
8:32
Speaker 5: walk to figure out how to be accountable and make
8:37
Speaker 5: amends to somebody you love who probably loves you too,
8:41
Speaker 5: and so not that we you know, most of the
8:44
Speaker 5: people who come to Hidden.
8:45
Speaker 6: Water are the people who are harmed, that's for sure.
8:48
Speaker 5: But they that seems like a given to me because
8:51
Speaker 5: they always have to do their work or they're not
8:53
Speaker 5: going to make it, you know. But so often the
8:56
Speaker 5: rest of the people in the family system want a
8:59
Speaker 5: part anticipate, but there aren't a lot of places for
9:02
Speaker 5: them to know how to do that. And so we
9:04
Speaker 5: have two hundred people on our waiting list at every season,
9:09
Speaker 5: and so it's not an issue of like we can't
9:13
Speaker 5: give people to come to the table, we don't have
9:15
Speaker 5: enough resources to serve all the people that want to
9:18
Speaker 5: come to the table.
9:20
Speaker 4: Wow, this is just so amazing to hear you say.
9:22
Speaker 4: So the beginning of my career I actually did. I worked.
9:29
Speaker 3: With ADULTSOO childhood physical and sexual abuse, and then went
9:31
Speaker 3: on to work in New York City hospitals and predominantly
9:34
Speaker 3: a Medicaid population for fifteen years.
9:37
Speaker 4: And there's just a lot of trauma.
9:39
Speaker 3: And I think what you're talking about is so important
9:43
Speaker 3: because obviously the act of trauma is extremely you know,
9:50
Speaker 3: influential in a person's life, but it's also a family
9:56
Speaker 3: member who you may have wanted to talk to and
9:58
Speaker 3: did talk to, and how that experience was went went down.
10:03
Speaker 3: Basically that can almost make the trauma just as challenging
10:08
Speaker 3: because a lot of times things were brushed on the
10:10
Speaker 3: rug or family members didn't know how to respond, and
10:13
Speaker 3: that invalidating environment really exacerbates the traumatic response. And so
10:20
Speaker 3: I think that providing an environment where families are coming together,
10:27
Speaker 3: maybe not the person, what was the language you use?
10:31
Speaker 5: The person, the person who caused harm, the person aparts harm.
10:35
Speaker 3: You know, maybe they're not always, you know, depending on
10:37
Speaker 3: the situation, able or willing to be present. But I
10:41
Speaker 3: think there are so many family members who don't know
10:43
Speaker 3: the language, don't know what to say, don't really know,
10:46
Speaker 3: they feel guilty themselves and don't know how to support
10:50
Speaker 3: this other person. So you're you're, You've talked a lot
10:54
Speaker 3: about this, but I would actually just love to hear
10:56
Speaker 3: a little bit more specifics, like what does this look like?
11:00
Speaker 4: Is it virtual? Is it in person? Where are you?
11:03
Speaker 1: Like?
11:03
Speaker 4: What is this circle?
11:04
Speaker 3: Can you talk a little bit more about the details,
11:07
Speaker 3: like what would this look like?
11:10
Speaker 6: Yeah, so it hidden?
11:11
Speaker 5: Or do we have a twelve week We call it
11:14
Speaker 5: a season and the circle meets for an hour and
11:18
Speaker 5: a half once a week and it's all virtual, almost
11:20
Speaker 5: all virtual. Since COVID, we pushed everything online, partly because
11:26
Speaker 5: people who've been harmed might show up in New York
11:29
Speaker 5: City in person, but their family members are all over
11:32
Speaker 5: the world, you know, because it's very common to move
11:34
Speaker 5: away from a family when you have that kind of dysfunction,
11:37
Speaker 5: and so we've always had to be online. So it's
11:40
Speaker 5: pretty easy to be online, and there's you know, there's
11:44
Speaker 5: other benefits that we realize. So it's eight people who
11:47
Speaker 5: all identify with that experience, not people that know each other.
11:52
Speaker 5: And so, you know, let's just take non offending parents
11:55
Speaker 5: for example. They come to this circle, there's eight of them.
11:59
Speaker 6: They may be the.
12:00
Speaker 5: Parent of someone who was harmed, someone who cause harm,
12:03
Speaker 5: or both because of very common for a sibling to
12:05
Speaker 5: harm a sibling, and they sit with other parents who
12:10
Speaker 5: have that same circumstance and they're you know, what you
12:14
Speaker 5: said is absolutely right. I just want to go on
12:16
Speaker 5: a little tangent here, which is that so many adults
12:20
Speaker 5: look back and they say, I don't even care about
12:22
Speaker 5: the person who harm me, especially if they're outside of
12:24
Speaker 5: the family. It's like, I don't even care about that.
12:26
Speaker 5: I care that my mom believes me, or you know,
12:29
Speaker 5: something like that. And so the real harm over time,
12:33
Speaker 5: not the real harm, but this secondary harm over time
12:36
Speaker 5: is the way the family shows up and they and
12:40
Speaker 5: I used to feel very contemptuous about that, having coming
12:43
Speaker 5: from a five generations of child sectribues of my family,
12:46
Speaker 5: I used to feel like, why don't these parents show
12:48
Speaker 5: up like this? But actually, why would they know how
12:51
Speaker 5: to No one has ever taught anyone.
12:54
Speaker 4: On a societal level, on.
12:56
Speaker 5: A you know, school community level, on a family level,
12:59
Speaker 5: on a person a little no one has ever explained
13:02
Speaker 5: how to deal with this. So everyone just says, just
13:04
Speaker 5: don't talk about it, brush it under the rug.
13:06
Speaker 4: And tell people to forgive.
13:09
Speaker 5: And so these twelve week circles all have a curriculum
13:12
Speaker 5: and you go around three times, everyone gets to speak.
13:14
Speaker 5: There is no therapist, there is no social worker. There's
13:18
Speaker 5: just people who have that as a personal experience, and
13:21
Speaker 5: we've trained them to run the curriculum and we start
13:25
Speaker 5: to unpack whatever the issue is depends. You know, there's
13:29
Speaker 5: sort of common issues in each of the four groupings,
13:33
Speaker 5: and we just start to unpack. Like non offending parents
13:37
Speaker 5: are often saying, like, just tell me how to fix it,
13:39
Speaker 5: Just tell me what hoop to jump through. It's like
13:40
Speaker 5: that there is no hoop to jump through, and you
13:42
Speaker 5: can't fix it. But what can you do? You know,
13:45
Speaker 5: And so there's there's sort of that unpacking of your
13:50
Speaker 5: own personal experience until you sort of come to this
13:53
Speaker 5: place where you realize, oh, okay, I know what's my
13:55
Speaker 5: role and how I should show up, what's not my role,
13:57
Speaker 5: and how I shouldn't show up. And then they just
14:00
Speaker 5: go back into the family and start, you know, responding differently,
14:03
Speaker 5: and that makes a big difference. So I don't know
14:06
Speaker 5: if I answered your question, but there's eight people in
14:08
Speaker 5: a grouping for twelve weeks an hour and a half,
14:12
Speaker 5: and we had a curriculum, and that when we do
14:15
Speaker 5: that season twice a year, I would.
14:18
Speaker 3: Just be interested if it's not too challenging, just to
14:21
Speaker 3: briefly mention, like, are there overall topics that get addressed
14:27
Speaker 3: in the curriculum?
14:29
Speaker 4: You know? Is it almost like a table of contents?
14:31
Speaker 3: Is there are there some bigger, broader topics that you
14:34
Speaker 3: address during those weeks?
14:37
Speaker 5: Yeah, so I can give you like the quick overview
14:40
Speaker 5: of the first week we do you know, what we
14:42
Speaker 5: can call container building. You know, we're introducing ourselves, we're
14:45
Speaker 5: getting to know each other. The second week we talk
14:47
Speaker 5: about what are sort of our group norms and guidelines
14:51
Speaker 5: for how we want to interact with one another. And
14:54
Speaker 5: then I am in my book that I wrote, there's
14:56
Speaker 5: the pasty Healing from Harm, which is like the core
14:59
Speaker 5: curriculum for Hidden Water, and we explain the you know,
15:04
Speaker 5: the sort of we call it the Paths of Healing
15:06
Speaker 5: from Harm, and it's three phases, and we try to
15:10
Speaker 5: start to identify where we are, and you're on you know,
15:13
Speaker 5: it's not linear, of course, but it's it's sort of
15:15
Speaker 5: a grounding framework for sort of understanding what are these
15:20
Speaker 5: different phases that we kind of bounce around in and
15:23
Speaker 5: just accepting all three phases, but knowing that you're trying
15:26
Speaker 5: to move in this direction, not stay stuck in the
15:29
Speaker 5: first one. And then the rest of the weeks, each
15:32
Speaker 5: person takes a turn to talk for ten minutes about
15:37
Speaker 5: this one question we ask, which is what is the
15:40
Speaker 5: edge of your healing? And we realize that, like, you
15:43
Speaker 5: don't have to just regurgitate the harm story over and
15:46
Speaker 5: over again. You actually have to say, in what way
15:50
Speaker 5: today is that harm that happened to me or in
15:53
Speaker 5: my family or I cause impacting my life right now?
15:57
Speaker 5: And so you know, for some people that's addiction. For
15:59
Speaker 5: some people, that's people pleasing, caretaking, you know, dissociating, having
16:04
Speaker 5: conflict with everyone, not having conflict with anyone, you know,
16:08
Speaker 5: like all the ways in which those symptoms that grew
16:11
Speaker 5: out of the harm are playing out and disorienting your
16:14
Speaker 5: life right now. And so some people do want to
16:17
Speaker 5: tell the story, but that's not the question. The question
16:21
Speaker 5: is like, how do you see it in current day
16:25
Speaker 5: wreaking havoc on your life or on your relationships. And
16:29
Speaker 5: so then each person has a chance to take a
16:31
Speaker 5: week and kind of do a deeper dive into what
16:34
Speaker 5: that is for them. And we always say that like,
16:36
Speaker 5: you're not healing from talking, you're actually healing from listening.
16:40
Speaker 5: And so when somebody shows up to do what we
16:43
Speaker 5: called their share and you hear yourself in their share,
16:47
Speaker 5: that's when you start to feel less isolated, less alone.
16:50
Speaker 5: You realize things that might have taken you one hundred
16:53
Speaker 5: years in therapy to realize, but that person came up
16:56
Speaker 5: with it and you were like, oh, I would have
16:58
Speaker 5: never thought of that, But that's me too, you know.
17:00
Speaker 5: And so it seems that the group dynamic is what
17:05
Speaker 5: is healing, not, you know, because there's so much isolation
17:09
Speaker 5: in child sexual abuse, and so to hear yourself reflected
17:12
Speaker 5: in someone else's different story is very healing.
17:16
Speaker 7: Yeah, you mentioned forgiveness, and we've been writing a book
17:25
Speaker 7: about type SE and we did a little bit about forgiveness,
17:29
Speaker 7: and it's a kind of a complicated topic.
17:32
Speaker 2: So I'm very curious on like, how do you think
17:36
Speaker 2: about forgiveness when it comes to child sex abuse.
17:39
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm surprised I mentioned it because we always say
17:42
Speaker 5: in Hendwater's forgiveness is a swear word, you know, because
17:47
Speaker 5: it gets so weaponized by that other people in the family.
17:50
Speaker 5: Like I've said, I'm sorry so many times. I was
17:53
Speaker 5: a kid too. Why can't you just forgive? Or God
17:56
Speaker 5: teaches us to forgive, or you know, like a lot
17:59
Speaker 5: of the people in the systems think if you could
18:01
Speaker 5: just forgive, we could all go back to normal, right,
18:04
Speaker 5: And so that's why we say forgiveness is a for word,
18:06
Speaker 5: because it's not really forgiveness. It's like we want you
18:11
Speaker 5: to stop talking about this so we can stop having.
18:14
Speaker 4: To worry about it kind of thing. But of course
18:17
Speaker 4: that's not how healing works.
18:18
Speaker 6: And so.
18:20
Speaker 5: You know, we we spend a fair amount of time
18:23
Speaker 5: in the other circles, not the not the one with
18:26
Speaker 5: the victims, but the other one's saying forgiveness is not
18:28
Speaker 5: the end goal, Like the person who is harmed, thriving
18:32
Speaker 5: in their life and the way they want is the
18:34
Speaker 5: end goal. And that may for some people be you know,
18:38
Speaker 5: reconciling with their siblings that harm them. It also may
18:42
Speaker 5: be like going to court and finally taking that stepfather,
18:46
Speaker 5: you know, to account in a legal system. It may
18:50
Speaker 5: be saying I'm never you know, I will not be
18:52
Speaker 5: going to family events with that uncle or that aunt
18:55
Speaker 5: or that grandparent.
18:57
Speaker 4: Uh, you know.
18:58
Speaker 5: So it's really about what do you What is the
19:00
Speaker 5: person who is harm need and how can the rest
19:02
Speaker 5: of the people support that so they can thrive. It's
19:05
Speaker 5: not really about forgiveness. And the other thing we always
19:08
Speaker 5: say about forgiveness is forgiveness finds you. It's you don't
19:11
Speaker 5: idea have to decide that you forgive. You could say, okay, fine,
19:14
Speaker 5: I forgive you, But if you're still feeling resentful, you're
19:17
Speaker 5: still getting triggered, and you're still feeling unseen, then you
19:21
Speaker 5: probably didn't even if you said so. So so often
19:25
Speaker 5: like I forgive you is okay, I agree, I won't
19:28
Speaker 5: talk about it again.
19:29
Speaker 4: But like true.
19:30
Speaker 5: Forgiveness is like letting it go and you know, and
19:34
Speaker 5: that can happen, but it's not the goal.
19:42
Speaker 4: Anna.
19:44
Speaker 8: I would love just to hear because we have this
19:47
Speaker 8: type see project how you how many complicated people pleasers
19:54
Speaker 8: you do run across in your circles?
19:57
Speaker 2: You know, we went out and interviewed a lot of
19:58
Speaker 2: people for our book and there was the theme of
20:00
Speaker 2: child sex abust with some of our interviewee. So it's
20:04
Speaker 2: it's definitely a contributor to this need to focus on
20:10
Speaker 2: everyone else other than yourself. So if you have, you know,
20:13
Speaker 2: anything that you want to you know, I guess say,
20:20
Speaker 2: when it comes to people pleasers, we'd love to hear it.
20:28
Speaker 4: Wait, Elizabeth, we cannot hear you. Did you press mute
20:33
Speaker 4: by accident?
20:40
Speaker 6: You can't hear me?
20:41
Speaker 9: So good now, okay, I'm sorry, let me Is there
20:49
Speaker 9: a better way to ask that question? I'm happy to
20:51
Speaker 9: do that again.
20:53
Speaker 4: Well, I think, I mean, I think the the main
20:55
Speaker 4: question is just oh now we can't hear you again?
21:08
Speaker 5: Can you hear me now?
21:09
Speaker 4: Yes?
21:09
Speaker 8: Yes?
21:11
Speaker 6: Okay, all right, sorry with that.
21:18
Speaker 3: Sorry, My question is really just uh, you know, obviously
21:22
Speaker 3: there can be so many different trauma responses. Particularly in
21:28
Speaker 3: the work that I did, we talked a lot about,
21:32
Speaker 3: you know, the aggressive and then the passive, Like oftentimes,
21:36
Speaker 3: you know, you want to protect yourself, how do you
21:38
Speaker 3: do that? You can become overly aggressive to protect yourself.
21:41
Speaker 3: You can become overly passive to protect yourself. And obviously
21:45
Speaker 3: there's a lot of connections between that and the types
21:47
Speaker 3: of personality, right, I mean, the types of personality really
21:50
Speaker 3: is coping mechanism for staying safer later on, and just
21:57
Speaker 3: wondering do you see that frequently in your circles and
22:02
Speaker 3: also do you specifically address that in any way? Like
22:07
Speaker 3: you know, obviously addiction is a behavior that could.
22:10
Speaker 4: Come out of it's a trauma response.
22:14
Speaker 3: What are you know, if you have any thoughts or
22:16
Speaker 3: words of wisdom or sort of guidance for you know,
22:18
Speaker 3: things that you've learned or helped people with over the
22:21
Speaker 3: years when they are struggling with that passive what other
22:24
Speaker 3: people's needs first to.
22:26
Speaker 4: The extreme version, right, Yeah, I mean.
22:30
Speaker 6: We could have a whole nother podcast about just that.
22:33
Speaker 5: But I mean I was going to say too that, Yeah,
22:35
Speaker 5: I agree with you that there you know, the the
22:38
Speaker 5: through three phases of.
22:39
Speaker 6: The path, the healing from harm. The first one is coping.
22:43
Speaker 5: And you know, initially after harm we say denied to flect, minimized, justify,
22:47
Speaker 5: blame the victim, defend the offender.
22:49
Speaker 4: That's sort of like.
22:50
Speaker 5: Those initial But then what happens if you stay stuck
22:53
Speaker 5: in that phase, Then the long term symptoms start to
22:56
Speaker 5: come online. And we divide those up into physical, emotion,
23:00
Speaker 5: relational adulting, and addiction. And I would agree with you
23:06
Speaker 5: when it comes to relational you're either going to be
23:09
Speaker 5: aggressive or you're going to be passive.
23:12
Speaker 6: And for people who have caught who have been harmed,
23:15
Speaker 6: they often come up against this one fundamental question, which is,
23:19
Speaker 6: let's say if you were harmed in your family, or
23:21
Speaker 6: even if you weren't harmed in your family, depending on
23:23
Speaker 6: how your family is dealing with your harm, You're either
23:27
Speaker 6: going to want to stay in the family, in which
23:30
Speaker 6: case you almost have to become a people pleaser. You
23:33
Speaker 6: have to set you have to get good at setting
23:35
Speaker 6: your needs aside and prioritizing other people. Or the other
23:41
Speaker 6: choice is leave the family system, you know, reject them
23:44
Speaker 6: in some way, uh, and then try to do your
23:47
Speaker 6: healing work outside of that. You know, that layer of
23:51
Speaker 6: sort of dysfunction, but you might just recreate it in
23:54
Speaker 6: a different place too, because then you get into a
23:57
Speaker 6: relationship and you have your own family or et cetera,
24:00
Speaker 6: and now you feel also like you have to people
24:02
Speaker 6: please and keep it together or you'll be have to
24:04
Speaker 6: abandon that system.
24:06
Speaker 5: So people pleasing, you know, is very very very common here.
24:12
Speaker 5: I would say that, you know, it's it's part of
24:16
Speaker 5: the trauma too, though, you know, it's like some you know,
24:19
Speaker 5: you're trying to take care of everyone, and then you
24:22
Speaker 5: come up against something and.
24:23
Speaker 4: You explode, like nobody cares about me. I'm totally alone.
24:28
Speaker 6: Nobody thinks about me? What about me? You know? And
24:31
Speaker 6: and so.
24:31
Speaker 5: There's this sort of vacillating between feeling so alone, which
24:36
Speaker 5: is one of the fundamental core problems in child sexual bees,
24:40
Speaker 5: or I have to play along or I will be abandoned,
24:45
Speaker 5: you know. And so if those are your choices, and
24:47
Speaker 5: those are your choices often if your family isn't doing
24:49
Speaker 5: the work, those are your choices, and I don't you know,
24:53
Speaker 5: they're both bad in some ways, and you know, and
24:57
Speaker 5: it's not so conscious as I'm making it sound obvious,
25:00
Speaker 5: like people are doing it unconsciously, but if you really
25:03
Speaker 5: think about when we get down into our circles, we
25:06
Speaker 5: often see that pattern that and this is why we
25:11
Speaker 5: think about the family system as the as the thing
25:15
Speaker 5: that needs to be healed, not the individual, because if
25:17
Speaker 5: the family system doesn't heal, then the one who is
25:20
Speaker 5: harmed is up against this. Yeah no, I mean I
25:25
Speaker 5: think that the types of personality is all woven in
25:28
Speaker 5: the whole thing.
25:30
Speaker 2: Yeah.
25:30
Speaker 8: Well, Lizabeth, I wish we could talk all day.
25:33
Speaker 6: I me too.
25:35
Speaker 4: I think we have to round.
25:36
Speaker 2: We have a we have a hard stop with with timing.
25:40
Speaker 4: So we just want to really thank you. But also.
25:45
Speaker 2: Where can people find you if people are interested in
25:48
Speaker 2: learning more about this maybe our listeners would love to
25:52
Speaker 2: hear it. Just your you know, your website if you're
25:54
Speaker 2: on Instagram that company.
25:56
Speaker 6: Yeah, so uh.
25:59
Speaker 5: Hidden Water is a free resource, although we certainly you know,
26:03
Speaker 5: appreciate donations because we don't have any formal funding.
26:06
Speaker 6: We're running the whole thing.
26:07
Speaker 5: It's we always say, the community, you know, healing itself,
26:11
Speaker 5: and so it's really people inside the Hidden Water, but
26:14
Speaker 5: you know outside, we have circles. Our website is www.
26:20
Speaker 5: Hidden Watercircles dot org. And in July and in January,
26:27
Speaker 5: you can sign up for circles. Sometimes you have to
26:30
Speaker 5: be on the waiting list for a whole season though,
26:32
Speaker 5: before you're going to actually get a spot, so please
26:34
Speaker 5: be aware of that.
26:35
Speaker 6: But we're you know.
26:36
Speaker 5: You're welcome. And then I do want to just plug
26:40
Speaker 5: my book called Healing Together, a Family Guide to Healing
26:45
Speaker 5: from Sexual Harm. And I wrote this book for the
26:49
Speaker 5: other three groups, you know. You know that so often
26:52
Speaker 5: the person who is harmed and what is up against
26:56
Speaker 5: their family system and they're having to do their own
26:58
Speaker 5: work and till they put people in the family how
27:01
Speaker 5: to behave, And so the book is really for those
27:04
Speaker 5: other people in the family to be able to read
27:06
Speaker 5: what the person who was harmed is going through, what
27:09
Speaker 5: the different people in the different positions in the family
27:12
Speaker 5: are going through, and how can you think about this
27:15
Speaker 5: differently so that you can be a value add as
27:18
Speaker 5: opposed to neutral or you know, taking away from or
27:23
Speaker 5: causing inadvertent harm by behaving in ways. So you can
27:26
Speaker 5: find that book on my website Elizabeth Clemens dot com
27:30
Speaker 5: or Planning Change dot com.
27:32
Speaker 6: And that book.
27:34
Speaker 5: Is so often sent to the people in the family,
27:37
Speaker 5: you know, because it's a really nice way to orient
27:40
Speaker 5: yourself about how you're thinking in a way that's actually
27:44
Speaker 5: causing more harm. Thank you for having me. I really
27:48
Speaker 5: appreciate all your great work, both of you.
27:51
Speaker 3: Well, I just I think this conversation is so important
27:55
Speaker 3: for so many people. And I think that your family
27:58
Speaker 3: work is crucial because, as I said, it is obviously
28:03
Speaker 3: the traumatic experience is traumatizing, but how the family deals
28:08
Speaker 3: with it at that moment and moving forward is such
28:11
Speaker 3: a huge component of the trauma response. And I think
28:15
Speaker 3: creating opportunities to help the family because they don't know
28:20
Speaker 3: what to do.
28:20
Speaker 4: As you said, your very good point.
28:22
Speaker 3: These are people lacking in skills because this is not
28:26
Speaker 3: a vocabulary or emotional regulation that techniques that they have.
28:35
Speaker 3: And I think your book is very important, So we
28:38
Speaker 3: really hope people will go check it out. We hope
28:40
Speaker 3: people will check out our website, the Types of Personality
28:43
Speaker 3: dot com and listen to the podcast. So thank you
28:48
Speaker 3: so much for everyone being here today, Thank you for
28:50
Speaker 3: having me to you