[SPEAKER_01]: flags don't look like red flags when they feel like home.

[SPEAKER_01]: My name is Andrea and this is Adult Child.

[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome back to adult child where we take a deep dive into the impact of growing up in a dysfunctional family.

[SPEAKER_01]: for any new listeners that have been turned this off yet.

[SPEAKER_01]: My name is Andrea.

[SPEAKER_01]: I am a total incomplete shit show.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm an adult child of an alcoholic family, and this is the podcast where we talk about what the hell to do when you realize that you're trying to discourage you up a whole hell of a lot more than you initially thought that it did.

[SPEAKER_01]: When you realize that you have complex trauma that you're suffering from complex PTSD, which came as quite a shock to me.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'd always know my childhood was less than ideal, but I had no damn clue.

[SPEAKER_01]: that what I experienced qualified as trauma.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm sure many of y'all had the same realization too.

[SPEAKER_01]: So welcome aboard this hot mess of a ship we curse here.

[SPEAKER_01]: You've been fucking warned.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm an acquired taste.

[SPEAKER_01]: You've been warned.

[SPEAKER_01]: So today folks, we are revisiting a gem of an episode.

[SPEAKER_01]: This episode is with Dr.

Ingrid Clayton.

[SPEAKER_01]: She is the author of many a book, including her memoir, believe in me and her [SPEAKER_01]: most recent or actually, it's not out yet.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's coming out next week.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's called, funny.

[SPEAKER_01]: Why the need to please make us lose ourselves and how to find our way back.

[SPEAKER_01]: So this episode is for anyone who has ever minimized their childhood and told themselves that it wasn't that bad for those [SPEAKER_01]: who grew up in alcoholism, or narcissistic abuse, or any form of dysfunction that left you doubting your own reality.

[SPEAKER_01]: We are diving into what it looks like to stop falling, how to stop carrying the family's shame as your own, and how to finally start believing in yourself when nobody else does.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, [SPEAKER_01]: With that, let's just get on with the damn show.

[SPEAKER_01]: But first, let's talk about why you, yes, you need to damn the join.

[SPEAKER_01]: Should show my online support community where we have a minimum of six weekly Zoom support groups where you can connect with other fellow shit shows who are doing the damn work to heal.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is an app.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is a support system at your fingertips in your back pocket available to you, twenty four seven.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is a support community.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's actually fun where we actually laugh.

[SPEAKER_01]: In addition to at times crying, if you're looking to feel seen heard and understood like never before, then look no further than the shit show.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is a relational trauma folks.

[SPEAKER_01]: We heal relational trauma through safe relationships.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is where you can do so for less than a damn dollar a day.

[SPEAKER_01]: So you, yes, you, yeah, you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm looking at you.

[SPEAKER_01]: The person that's been wanting to join forever.

[SPEAKER_01]: How about we do it today?

[SPEAKER_01]: See the link in the show notes or you can head to adultchallpacast.com so I should show next, give me a little follow on the Insta on the TikTok at adultchallpada last minute at least.

[SPEAKER_01]: Whatever the hell you do, please please please give me a damn five star rating on Apple on Spotify.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Love you all.

[SPEAKER_01]: Red.

[SPEAKER_01]: All right, y'all.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're in for a treat.

[SPEAKER_01]: You have not deemed yourself this, but I am going to deem you over cover and show.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we have Ingrid Clayton.

[SPEAKER_01]: She's a clinical psychologist.

[SPEAKER_01]: She's a trauma therapist.

[SPEAKER_01]: She's got a couple of books that we're going to talk about believing me that's your memoir.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're covering spirituality, which is kind of all about like spiritual bypassing, which I think is fascinating.

[SPEAKER_01]: So welcome.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for having me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I will take the title of recovering shit show.

[SPEAKER_00]: I will add it to my resume.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, absolutely.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think it sums it all up.

[SPEAKER_01]: I used to say former shit show, but I'm like, that's not it.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going for sure.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, here's my deal.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was reading.

[SPEAKER_01]: What in your memoir?

[SPEAKER_01]: What did it say?

[SPEAKER_01]: It was so good.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was like, there was it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Basically, you said something specifically like about nine years.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, in a couple books, it talks, I think in one of Melody Beaties books, and maybe in one of Tian Dayton's books, too.

[SPEAKER_01]: She talks about that seven to ten years is when all of sobriety is when all that shit comes to the surface.

[SPEAKER_01]: So for me, it was romantic relationships, shocking, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: And my bottom was I dated two alcoholics named Brian back to back in sobriety.

[SPEAKER_01]: So Brian number one, seven year sober, we dated for less than a month.

[SPEAKER_01]: He ghosted me.

[SPEAKER_01]: And my reaction was as if my husband of thirty years had just tragically died in a plane crash.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I became non-functioning.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the first aha was there's no way that the way that I'm feeling right now could actually be about this person.

[SPEAKER_01]: for less in a month.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then I was that this was a feeling that I felt often as a child.

[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.

[SPEAKER_01]: A couple months later, I go to a meeting and I hear a woman with over thirty years sober talk about the bottom that she hit at seven years where she came to charge with the true impact that her child had on her.

[SPEAKER_01]: And she mentioned the book an old child.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I went home and I read it.

[SPEAKER_01]: My mind was blown.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then I saw her the next week.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, thank you for your share.

[SPEAKER_01]: And she was like, it's great.

[SPEAKER_01]: I just want you to know that this is going to take you like many, many, many, many years to work through like, twenty eight.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, I don't fucking have years, ladies.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I just really hope that her childhood was like, way more fucked up than mine.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, I'll just read this book and I'll take a year off from dating and surely that'll be good.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: And number two, worst six months of my entire life, most painful six months of my entire life.

[SPEAKER_01]: That was at nine years sober.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's when I realized that [SPEAKER_01]: what I was dealing with was a lot, just as powerful, actually more powerful than my alcoholism.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's when I really understood that I was, what I was experiencing with trauma.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then that kind of led me on my journey.

[SPEAKER_01]: So the one question that I'd love to ask is like, was there a particular aha moment where you were like, holy shit, like my childhood impacted me way more than I thought it did?

[SPEAKER_00]: That's such a big question.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'll say I'd been someone who since my childhood actually knew that I was being deeply negatively impacted.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was the kind of kid who like talked to my friends and found the counselors at school and I was very verbal and articulate and I knew that things were [SPEAKER_00]: not like my friends' homes, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: That thing of like, I want to hang out at your house because you're doing normal family things.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so, a part of me always knew, and I think my story's been more of an unfolding over time, you know, because I think I had some magical thinking that, well, because I know that it was bad, I've been at move away, and I've been at [SPEAKER_00]: You know, Andrea, I'm going to get sober at twenty one.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: So boom, kick the alcoholism, quit smoking somewhere along the way after that.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I'm going to go back to school and I'm going to get me some degrees.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to just really stack the deck.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to move kind of far away.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and like I did all of these things, not necessarily with this idea that I was going to override or overcome or get better.

[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, that's what I was doing, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And now, you know, all these decades later, I can put that in the framework of trauma and look at it as a flight response, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like trauma response that flight sometimes is, you know, it's the animal in the woods and they feel like they're going to get attacked and they run.

[SPEAKER_00]: Flight is also sometimes.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to stay in perpetual motion.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to outrun this thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's my perfectionism.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's my excessive compulsive tendencies.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is my addiction, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: It just morphed into a million that that whack-a-mold game idea is basically [SPEAKER_00]: My life, if it's spring, symptoms brings up over here at, got it, you know.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think it's been over time, like in awakening, a reawakening.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my gosh, it affected me there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Wow, I had no idea it affected me here.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I think part of the truth of my story, too, is that a big piece of the dysfunction was narcissism and narcissistic abuse, which came with a lot of gas lighting, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So it was also, I was told repeatedly, you're the problem, you made it all up, none of that really happened.

[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't that bad.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think I like most children internalized that at least to some degree.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it was like I was split.

[SPEAKER_00]: A half of me knew better, you know, I'm not the bad guy.

[SPEAKER_00]: This was wrong and appropriate and unhealthy.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this other part of me was like, well, and quite frankly, I think the twelve steps helps me in this regard.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, let me just look at my side of the street and, you know, let me lean into forgiveness and spirituality and all these things and that's going to be enough to kind of repair these relationships and move forward move on let it go and I think I wrote that [SPEAKER_00]: So deeply into the ground until I just literally, my body was like, you can not do this one more day.

[SPEAKER_00]: You are carrying the entire burden for the entire system and it's run you into the ground.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like the final epiphany was like the last house on the block for me to go.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's nothing left for me to outrun.

[SPEAKER_00]: Do, right, what am I going to like get three more degrees?

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you know, there was just nowhere else to turn, except for inward.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why the memoirs called Believe in Me, because I had to go back and go way to second.

[SPEAKER_00]: What really happened first of all, own it, own the truth of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then I save this all the time.

[SPEAKER_00]: If we don't own our stories as traumatic, we cannot avail ourselves of the tools of trauma healing.

[SPEAKER_00]: So as long as I was minimizing, maybe it wasn't that bad.

[SPEAKER_00]: Other people had it so much worse.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can't, I'm not that wasn't really trauma, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: As long as I kept minimizing, I could never really heal.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because one of my healing from, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, so I honestly just think my body got so that it couldn't do it anymore.

[SPEAKER_01]: When you talk about that last house on the block moment, was what it triggered that?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's a few things.

[SPEAKER_00]: One is that after a string of only unhealthy relationships, my entire life, romantic relationships, I finally found myself after getting divorced to an active alcoholic and all of these things.

[SPEAKER_00]: I found myself in the healthiest relationship of my life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think from adding that contrast and that true sort of reciprocal healthy dynamic, it gave me some safety.

[SPEAKER_00]: It gave me a container to be able to look at some other things.

[SPEAKER_00]: I also had a child, which was a little bit like, oh boy, the stakes are so much higher now.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just about me.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's about my son.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then my stuck dad, who is the sort of main, you know, [SPEAKER_00]: Abuser at my life.

[SPEAKER_00]: He died.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I really believe, you know, for anyone who's like, why, you know, can I, couldn't I do this work sooner?

[SPEAKER_00]: What's wrong with me or I just couldn't see it, you know what?

[SPEAKER_00]: I am a practicing psychologist, trauma therapist, and I really honestly believe that I could not see my own [SPEAKER_00]: Truth and tell my body said, it's safe enough to do so.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it became safe enough to do so when that man was no longer.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was instant.

[SPEAKER_00]: I felt safer than I had maybe ever felt in my whole life and something changed.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I became available to myself in ways that I was not available when I was still guarding against [SPEAKER_00]: all of that hanging and is it going to happen again?

[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, he's still married to my mom very much in my life, even if it was at a distance.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I just say to folks, it takes what it takes, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not up to us.

[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't up to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've been working at it for so long.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you know, if there was a retreat sign me up, you know, like, how many trust at programs do I need to be?

[SPEAKER_00]: And like, I did all the things.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'd sat on a million therapists' couch as I told my story ten thousand times.

[SPEAKER_00]: And these were some of the building blocks that like had to finally be in place for me to like see it differently.

[SPEAKER_00]: See it.

[SPEAKER_01]: I can really relate to what you shared about.

[SPEAKER_01]: I too was aware that my childhood was like not great.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like my mom was an alcoholic.

[SPEAKER_01]: My parents fought a lot, but I became the identified patient in the scapegoat at a pretty young age.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so from like twelve to nineteen, that's I was the primary focus the family.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I got sent to treatment for the first time in eighth grade.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I was an only child.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so that worked and fixing the family.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like when I started drinking and using drugs and acted out, my mom stopped so much of my parents stopped fighting.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so I really was like the focus until I got hurt.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then it's been like a downward spiral for the both of them.

[SPEAKER_01]: But like I intellectually understood that it was not great.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I thought that because I could talk about it without getting upset, that meant it didn't really impact me.

[SPEAKER_01]: Wow, you know, being like a news reporter standing in front of a burning building and it's actually your house, you know, which is actually one of the, you know, most common signs of trauma is we're talking about it like this.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, that happened to me and I'm actually not here because I've left my body, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: But we think that it's like, oh, no, like it's, you know, it's so well processed.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, it's so unprocessed.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're so disconnected from your own self that you can report it.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's a perfect way to talk about it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I was also forced to talk about all that stuff too so much.

[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't that I was minimizing.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I was minimizing it, but like not from like I didn't know what I didn't know.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like I didn't know complex trauma was.

[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't know what that was.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's none of us did.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and so yeah, I just continue to be what I'm like my I've really started working on this stuff in twenty eighteen and I just continue to be blown away at all the places that it shows up, you know.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's fucking hard.

[SPEAKER_01]: So was your, and I want to go back to your childhood and talk about that song, but I don't know what your experience was like being in an AA and stuff, and it's nobody was able to point out like, hey, maybe you need to go get some extra help, you know?

[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody once ever said like, oh, I think that this is trauma and granted I was like, I got sober in the south, and I think it's a little bit different, you know?

[SPEAKER_01]: But it's that's like why now when I'm in a meeting and it's appropriate, I will share this stuff because yeah, you go through your childhood like in, you know, in your fourth and fifth step, but not just the degree that we actually need to and I just think that so many people that are suffering that have a lot of sobriety under their belt.

[SPEAKER_01]: who have no idea that's why.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think that my thinking about addiction and trauma, it has really changed so much over the years.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I just had twenty eight years sober in September.

[SPEAKER_00]: What's your date?

[SPEAKER_00]: September, seventeen.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm the thirteen side fifteen years.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can gradually.

[SPEAKER_00]: And listen, don't get me wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: I am so grateful for my sobriety.

[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like it's foundational to me being able to do anything else.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, so, and the community that I've met and there's just been so many positives right along the way.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think, you know, even the mental health community, we just have so much more information now and the truth is, [SPEAKER_00]: away from this notion of the disease model.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I really see addiction at an extension of trauma, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's an oddies way.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think quite an intelligent way of trying to find some peace and connection or disconnect from the pain.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when it finds something that works, it's going to do it again and again.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so if you now place that back in this context of being asked to do a moral inventory, [SPEAKER_00]: I have a hard time with that today.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have a hard time with that today.

[SPEAKER_00]: I did not need a moral inventory.

[SPEAKER_00]: I needed some validation around the wounds that were deep and pervasive my whole life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think depending on where you live to your other point, right, in the country, or in the world, [SPEAKER_00]: who you happen to hear in a meeting, maybe sometimes you get these nuanced perspectives.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm thinking for a lot of folks, you know, and I heard it so often in early sobriety, and I was in New York, like a pretty progressive place with a lot of information.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they would say, well, you know, when it comes down to the fourth step, like someone abusing you is never your fault.

[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have a part in that, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: But it might say, but your part is that you're still holding on.

[SPEAKER_00]: Your part is that you're renting out space to people [SPEAKER_00]: You know, in your own head, carrying around, that's my part.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you know what?

[SPEAKER_00]: That is retraumatizing to folks.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is just again the body's way of protecting.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we don't have a conscious choice, I think.

[SPEAKER_00]: As maybe addicts in particular, we love this idea that we can figure it out.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's what we did with our drugs and alcohol like I'm a chemist.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to do a little of this and a little that I'm going to create this experience, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So we love this idea that I'm going to write it all down.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to figure it out.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to [SPEAKER_00]: You know, exercise that from my life, I'm gonna, and it's way more complicated than that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I maybe got a little off track there from the, we're asking me, but my thinking has definitely changed as it relates to addiction.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I see pretty much everything through the lens of trauma now because it's the one thing that allowed me to make sense to myself.

[SPEAKER_00]: And not have so much shame, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Cause that's the other thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's all honey.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're still carrying that around.

[SPEAKER_00]: That was so long ago, like maybe you should pray about it again.

[SPEAKER_00]: And again, maybe you should be of compulsive service.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: So here's my other big thing that I believe.

[SPEAKER_00]: come to understand that if we look at the founders of twelve step, it's ninety nine men one woman look at that from the lens of trauma chances are perhaps that most of these men were engaged in a chronic overactive fight response.

[SPEAKER_00]: For a fight response, you do want to encourage things like service.

[SPEAKER_00]: You do want to say that like anger is a luxury, maybe for normal men, like right, you'll be a luxury.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's right.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_00]: You'll be a yes.

[SPEAKER_00]: When you look at the other end of the fight response, and this is based on Pete Walker's work, who is with complex trauma.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's done a such a service with his work.

[SPEAKER_00]: The other end of the fight response is the fawn response, which basically is codependency, but I love the language of fawning more because it's rooted in trauma.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if you look at the fight response, and you say resentments are the number one offender, you know, anger isn't allowed, do a moral inventory, call somebody else, get outside of yourself, be of service.

[SPEAKER_00]: Those are useful suggestions.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you are living in a chronic fawn response, like I was for decades, [SPEAKER_00]: Those are all counter-indicated.

[SPEAKER_00]: Those are all things that kept me strong in a chronic, funny, codependent response.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so we just need so much more nuance and information.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think, and listen, like anything else.

[SPEAKER_00]: We continue to grow and learn, and we just need to adopt those new ideas.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think some people are in some people aren't, and it gets tricky.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I am speaking from personal experience, but also as a clinician and I think some of these things that have been handed down and down can do more harm than good.

[SPEAKER_01]: I agree.

[SPEAKER_01]: I agree.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, it's safe my life, you know.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, me too.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's the thing.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, but at the same time, I think that what you're saying about certain things being retraumatizing.

[SPEAKER_01]: So my understanding is like, I don't think I would have been able to like address and get to this stuff unless I had that sobriety under my belt.

[SPEAKER_01]: However, I think that there's other people who are unable to get any time under their belt because they're not addressing that.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it's like kind of a hard [SPEAKER_01]: think to to measure because I think that sometimes for me, I wasn't in a position to really start looking at this when I was in early sobriety, but then you have other people to where like I said, I unless it's addressed immediately or upfront or, you know, in early sobriety, they're not going to be able to get any time under their belt.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's right.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I've seen that all the time in my decades as a therapist that [SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's so independent, it's so individual.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like some people need that deep trauma scaffolding first and some people can't touch it until well well into sobriety.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm just saying, you know, there's no one size fits all and I think we get a little more breathing room, which I know is also scary because it's like [SPEAKER_00]: but these are the principles that save my life and you know what my best thinking got me here so I need to take the rule of the law and sort of do what's suggested and so it's a tricky conversation.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm curious for you and I've had this experience where my friends like in the program that I've gotten to the level of depth that makes them very uncomfortable.

[SPEAKER_01]: to a level of death.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I recently just had a friendship break up and she's been my one of my best friends for since I got sober, you know, and she kind of just like broke up with me out of nowhere, but I mean, the gist of it is like, you know, she feels like I strayed from AA.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: you know, and that's like the problem.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's, you know, it's painful and hurtful, but I just noticed how, you know, our journeys like we grow together, we grow apart.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I think that sometimes when we're touching, we're getting to a certain level of depth in our self or talking about certain topics, that can make other people feel real down uncomfortable.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, I've seen it happen.

[SPEAKER_00]: It happened early in my own very early sobriety.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was seeing a therapist.

[SPEAKER_00]: And AA was absolutely saving my life.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, you know, three subway rides down to a morning meeting at seven thirty in the morning.

[SPEAKER_00]: every single day and and I'm seeing this new therapist and she's I think you should read this book drama of the gifted child and I was like okay you know I'm a good student I'm compliant I'll go and read it and there was I don't even remember what it was but it was something that was a little like I interpreted it as anti twelve step and I was like I can't read this book [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: It felt threatening to the thing that was giving me the most safety at the time.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so that is just kind of how the body works, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's I'm going to hold on to the things that are really working for me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not going to create any more space for anything new until my body says that it is ready.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I have to honor that, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not even hierarchical necessarily.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like everybody is doing their own work in a different way, in a different pace.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're meant to look at different things at a different time, you know, and some people are here for a lifetime in summer for a season, you know?

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: So let's backtrack to your childhood.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: So how do you summarize your breed of dysfunction that you were exposed to?

[SPEAKER_00]: Deep alcoholism runs on both sides of my family.

[SPEAKER_00]: didn't stand the chance.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, hundred percent.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've wrote a scene in my book where I'm about eight years old, which is my son's age now, so particularly ring my heart.

[SPEAKER_00]: But my parents are smoking pot with their friends in the living room, and they have me and my younger brother join in the circle, and I'm holding a bomb in my tiny little eight-year-old hands, like watching it line up as I feel right.

[SPEAKER_00]: So wow.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was telling someone yesterday we were sort of talking about these themes and I was older than eight at the time, but my parents after they got divorced in my mom and stuff that were together.

[SPEAKER_00]: They had an Easter party and it was for their friends and the kids who were there all hid little bottles at the use around the backyard for the adults to find and Santa got a shot in a beer, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: He was over that milked cookies thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the alcoholism thing to me was like a parent from day one.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wrote my term paper in eighth grade some twelve years old.

[SPEAKER_00]: We could write about anything and I grew up in Colorado and friends are writing about skiing and snowboarding or maybe their favorite musician and read the title of my paper at twelve years old was alcoholism, the family disease.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: So so I was indeed.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, I'm going to figure this thing out.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know what's going on.

[SPEAKER_00]: I always knew where they hid the drugs.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes it was in those little cabinets above the refrigerator.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes it was behind their waterbed headboard deep in their closet.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just needed to know.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was hyper vigilant.

[SPEAKER_00]: Dracking all the time.

[SPEAKER_00]: When are they coming home from the bar?

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I hear the footsteps and hear the car coming down the gravel driveway.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're here, run to your rooms.

[SPEAKER_00]: You don't know what the mood is going to be calling the bar.

[SPEAKER_00]: The bartenders knew me and my brother and stepbrothers' voices.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, hey, you know, let me get your stepdad.

[SPEAKER_00]: What are you coming home?

[SPEAKER_00]: And so addiction, addiction, addiction, I always knew.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm curious.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was told that my mom was in alcoholic when I was seven.

[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.

[SPEAKER_01]: Two is like very aware of what alcoholism was in my dad.

[SPEAKER_01]: He really preentified me in the sense of like he would have me help him search the house for my mom's booze.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember being like nine years old and going into the liquor cabinet and taking a paint stick and like marking the levels of each bottle.

[SPEAKER_01]: was a secret from everybody else.

[SPEAKER_01]: So he only really talked to me about it.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm curious, like at twelve years old, how did you find out about the term alcoholism?

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't even know.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're starting to talk.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, I have no idea where I got that specific language at that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Is it was talked like they talked to me about it directly?

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I was.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it was very inappropriate, but it didn't sound like your family.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were like, you know, it didn't come from my parents, like, we're alcoholics and this might, you know, impact you in this way.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, they were not talking about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know where I got that language.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe really interesting.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'll let that percolate and the memory will come.

[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, so I always had that foundation and then, you know, my parents divorced like, [SPEAKER_00]: for a grade and immediately it seemed like they both had new partners and they both had new partners who were clearly the boss.

[SPEAKER_00]: So both of my parents, who was the boss in their relationship?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's hard for me to say for sure because I was so much younger but I've always sort of felt like my biological parents were kind of the same person.

[SPEAKER_00]: And were you happy when they got divorced?

[SPEAKER_00]: No, devastated, devastated.

[SPEAKER_00]: All of us were.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was like this sad thing sitting down my one biological brother and my parents, like when they were telling us we were all four just sobbing.

[SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't believe it's going to happen.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then just pretty quickly moved out with my mom and the man who became my stepdad who I knew because he used to be my dad's best friend.

[SPEAKER_00]: Of course.

[SPEAKER_00]: So then, because he's the controlling narcissistic, he starts pulling us further and further away from the separate brand from family, from friends, my mom's more isolated, we're more isolated, moved to the mountains, what felt like the middle of nowhere coming from Denver.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I just, it was like I literally saw my mom disappear.

[SPEAKER_00]: She was standing in his shadow.

[SPEAKER_00]: She wouldn't say anything.

[SPEAKER_00]: I swear unless she literally heard him say those words before, like that was her permission to go like, oh, no, this is how we feel about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, but you're my mom.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's not my parent.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like you're the, and she was just like lost herself, completely a hundred percent lost herself.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I didn't stay with my dad as much, but it had the same flavor, same feeling.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, his wife was the one who had the say, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And I just sort of felt like I lost them both.

[SPEAKER_00]: I lost them both.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I didn't understand.

[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't have the language for that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't, you know?

[SPEAKER_00]: And then my stepdad ended up what I now know was grooming me to be his [SPEAKER_00]: Next in mine girlfriend and he did it in a very covert way and so it was confusing right it's sort of that I'm doing and saying things but I'm not I'm doing them for these reasons and do you have any specific examples well you know I talk about in the book maybe I'm twelve years old and I'm sitting outside in our [SPEAKER_00]: hot tub by myself at night and he comes out and he gets in with me and he just starts blurring the lines and closing face between us and he's kind of joking with me which is a relief because a lot of the time he's an asshole or he's shutting me out right that sort of [SPEAKER_00]: classic trauma bonding intermittent reinforcement.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love you now.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hate you tomorrow kind of thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I was already in that cycle.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so getting a little bit of positive attention was such a relief.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, oh, thank God.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that was the beginning.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then he's, hey, why don't you come sit on my lap, but it felt like a very fatherly thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, hey, it's my olive branch, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like we've been going through some tough times.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was the way that he held me and then what he said was, I'm so glad we can be this close, like other girls would be more uptight.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, are you saying that this could be an appropriate and I started kind of pushing back on it to the degree that I could and.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was just that whole scene.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just my body clocked every second of that being as so wrong and deeply traumatizing, but I couldn't say that to him.

[SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't ask more direct questions because I might embarrass him and if I embarrass him, I'm really going to get in trouble.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, fast forward years later, my mom is with her dying father in Texas and [SPEAKER_00]: They're rarely at parks, so this is like a real moment in time.

[SPEAKER_00]: She never would go traveling by herself.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's really by an intensity.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the second that she leads, she comes back to my room and says, Hey, how'd you like to go to Las Vegas this weekend?

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's couched in this whole idea that I was like a budding singer.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he was a singer songwriter musician.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want to show you true entertainers.

[SPEAKER_00]: But don't tell your brothers about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, they think I'm going out of town on business and that you're going to be staying with a friend.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, but why is it a lie?

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, why can't I tell them?

[SPEAKER_00]: And so again, my body's [SPEAKER_00]: I think this is wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm terrified.

[SPEAKER_00]: But again, I'm also like, but he's not grounding me for a month at a time giving you the silent treatment for a month at a time.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's actually cherishing these things about me that I feel deserved to be cherished and loved and adored.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I went to Vegas with him.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was like the crux of what became this deep trauma that has stayed with me for decades since.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not because [SPEAKER_00]: He raped me or would me into sleeping with him.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was because of all of the gaslighting and that didn't really happen and you're making it all up in my mom saying, well, I believe that you believe those things happened, but I don't really believe that they did.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so when your body is going, this is wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: Something and everybody around you is saying, it's perfectly fine.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're the problem as a child, especially.

[SPEAKER_00]: On some level, we will always make our selves at fault, because we need our caregivers to survive.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're one of the very few species who else raises children until their eighteen years old, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: We are hardwired for relationship and privileging our caregivers above all else, even if a part of us knows this is wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, again, that's.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let in me, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: It was just boom, even further concretized.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like a part of me knows it was you.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I know that that was wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm pretty sure you were parading me around as it grew from the other part of me as cult.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe he really wasn't.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he never called me as girlfriend.

[SPEAKER_00]: And a big part of what I ended up on covering and writing my memoir because I got like fearless and shameless about looking under every single rock and calling whomever I could think of.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I got so much information that little me needed, which is that this was a historical pattern that he had carried out many times before.

[SPEAKER_00]: that he did in fact refer to me as a girlfriend to a friend of his that we saw when we were in Vegas.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I never would have had any of this information if I didn't like really receive this calling to go on this deep down.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm old body was like, you need to reclaim your story in order to reclaim yourself.

[SPEAKER_00]: Redments of me, pieces of me, I just felt like they were everywhere and they belonged to everybody else, but me.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was like this giant puzzle I just had to put things back together in a way that was true and made sense.

[SPEAKER_00]: And with each piece, I could breathe into a whole south almost for the first time in my whole life.

[SPEAKER_01]: When was it that he passed away?

[SPEAKER_01]: Just over six years ago now, I think.

[SPEAKER_01]: Is your mother still living?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so how are things pinned out there?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's the hardest trickiest part of my whole experience that never, ever, I cannot say enough, never, ever to emphasize that it never, one time even as a tiny thought occurred to me that I would ever be estranged from anybody in my family.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'd never even heard of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was like, what are you talking about all those notions of, you know, families of is the one who has your back and blood is thicker than water.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this is your lot in life.

[SPEAKER_00]: You got to make the best of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, what happened through writing my story and starting to talk to literally everyone about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then I was like, I have to talk to my mom too.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we hadn't talked about any of this since maybe I was sixteen, seventeen years old when I [SPEAKER_00]: organized an intervention with social service, then where my families, I was actually sober.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, no, and my intervention made everything worse.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, shocking.

[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't helpful at all.

[SPEAKER_00]: It made it so bad, in fact, that I was racing for that kind of impact.

[SPEAKER_00]: Again, going, there was this part.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, why?

[SPEAKER_00]: these conversations again now like I got so burned I got so brutalized and yet I was like well I got to because the part of me wanted to salvage a relationship with my mom and maybe even have one with her for the first time ever I'm like well now he's dead he's not pulling the puppet strings anymore maybe I can get her back maybe [SPEAKER_00]: I had what I now feel as this toxic hope, this hope that maybe one day shall see, maybe one day shall release me, maybe one day shall validate me.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now he's gone.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now I've written pages and pages of a book and talked to everyone in our mutual likes and we all agree, Henry, and that this is real and it happened and it was horrific.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe now.

[SPEAKER_00]: And basically she was like, I can't do it.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's too painful.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna pray for you, you know, all of these sort of like, I'm some level.

[SPEAKER_00]: You go, oh, what sounds like maybe she's sort of going, you know, I love you.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I wanna have you in my life, but basically, yeah, that door is closed.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, okay, then the door is closing.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because to the extent that you still see me as a liar who made it all up, [SPEAKER_00]: is the extent that I am in harm's way by keeping you in my life, even as you're my mom.

[SPEAKER_00]: Even if I know that you're deeply traumatized and all of these things and I can have compassion for that, but I think my compassion and my empathy and my understanding outweighed my need to protect myself, my whole life.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to do, I'm going to help you do the work so that maybe.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm just like, no, I'm not waiting for anyone else to do their work to decide that I'm worth taking care of.

[SPEAKER_00]: And again, that is my son because I am a mother now.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if you're putting me in harm's way, but seeing me as the bad guy.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know, in a generationally, I know it's already steeped in my body and I'm having to work so hard every day to break cycles.

[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't even know lived in me and tell, oh, I uncovered another one and another one.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like the hardest work I will ever do.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just fiercely protecting it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Honestly, it's the biggest heartbreak on my mind.

[SPEAKER_00]: Actually, when I look at my son and I'm like, I will do anything to show up and be the parent that he needs me to be.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to do it like so flawed and he's still going to have stuff that he comes to me and his mom.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, like, you kind of suck that one up and I'm going to go, yeah, you know what?

[SPEAKER_00]: I totally did and I'm so [SPEAKER_00]: Sorry, and what else do you want to tell me about that, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm never going to be Berkeley, but I'm so fiercely committed to being the parent that he needs me to be not the chair that I dreamed of being that I hoped it was going to be like some version of fantasy that it just is not that the idea that after all this time, she's still just is not capable.

[SPEAKER_00]: It hurts.

[SPEAKER_00]: It hurts so that it is not what I wanted.

[SPEAKER_00]: My every intention was like, this is finally going to bring her around and you know what it did.

[SPEAKER_00]: It brought me around.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I honestly think that is it's like the cool and heartbreaking part of healing from childhood trauma.

[SPEAKER_00]: but also the blessing and the miracle is that we can do it.

[SPEAKER_00]: We don't have to wait for anyone to say, yes, I fucked up, yes, that was horrible.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like the healing is in our hands.

[SPEAKER_00]: And thank God for that.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's, I'm so grateful, even though it's this painful.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I go, you know what, Charity's thing I've ever done, hardest conversations I've ever had, I would do it all again in a heartbeat.

[SPEAKER_00]: Finally feeling like I belong to myself.

[SPEAKER_00]: I am not riddled with so much guilt and shame and anxiety and hyper vigilance.

[SPEAKER_00]: I still have my stuff.

[SPEAKER_00]: I still get triggered right?

[SPEAKER_00]: I get emotional flashbacks all of these things.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is not my every waking moment where I'm sitting there going [SPEAKER_00]: I've done all this work and I'm sober forever like once wrong with me, it's you know what?

[SPEAKER_00]: There is nothing wrong with me.

[SPEAKER_00]: There was never anything wrong with me.

[SPEAKER_00]: My body was doing exactly what our bodies are designed to do to protect us from such horrific things and then I got stuck there and I didn't know it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know that I was stuck in these chronic trauma responses just trying to protect myself now and now and I don't have to live in that bracing.

[SPEAKER_01]: I had dinner with my dad last week.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so they're both horrible alcoholics.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I've really started till death all in the past year or so to where like the tears are coming up, you know, for me, because in my family, it was like anger, numbness, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: There was never any sadness, you know, displayed.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I went to the US Open with my mom a couple weeks ago and, you know, I never, I'm at a point where, you know, if I can have good times with my mom, I'll take them, like, I'm prepared, like, if, you know, if something happens, like I have tools, I can, you know, [SPEAKER_01]: of it, you know, if I need to, you know, but we've gone a couple years in a row and it's been actually really lovely experience and I'll take any of those moments that I can like where we can actually have a nice time together because that's the thing that I think is kind of a challenge and fucked up as in my story is like my mom was like the most amazing mom except for what she was drinking and she was like a periodic.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, so it was like very sporadic, but she was not drinking like she I mean she was just the most amazing mom and she was an even into like my early sobriety in several years and it's been in the past.

[SPEAKER_01]: I know it probably started to really go downhill like around when I've had three years and then it's just been for the past twelve years.

[SPEAKER_01]: She's not the same person anymore.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, mentally she's changed so much just because of the the the disease like what what it's done to her brain.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think that sometimes it's like almost harder in a way to like two of once had something and no longer have it as opposed to like other people who their moms are always just awful.

[SPEAKER_01]: But it was not a good experience this year.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like it didn't it wasn't it didn't go well.

[SPEAKER_01]: I won't do it again.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's like sad and heartbreaking.

[SPEAKER_01]: But so I had a conversation with my dad last week.

[SPEAKER_01]: They live in like Tahoe during the summer.

[SPEAKER_01]: But he basically was like, you know, I try to stay out of it as much as like I was so involved for so long.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like now I really try to like, you know, I don't really know what's going on.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's then the way that I like to explain it is like, I also don't participate in the family denial either though.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I will like acknowledge the elephant in the room.

[SPEAKER_01]: I just won't try to carry the elephant out of the room.

[SPEAKER_01]: Basically, you know, he's just like, yeah, I mean, he's got his own issues, but his alcoholism is a lot less severe than hers.

[SPEAKER_01]: And he said this so many times before that he's, you know, we either need to go to therapy or go to divorce and I've heard that my whole entire life.

[SPEAKER_01]: But what he was explaining to me was very tragic and sad and heartbreaking.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I still, like, I was very numb in the conversation.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm still like, I still have emotions.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like it hasn't hit.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I'm very dissociated.

[SPEAKER_01]: conversation still.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm wondering like what your experience has been with that numbness and dissociation.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, as far as especially as it relates to kind of like these what you're sharing about with your mom.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you know, sometimes it can come up that their still is just this protective.

[SPEAKER_01]: I know it's my teenage or protecting my inner child, you know.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think a couple of things.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, honestly, as you were just talking therapist, me wanted to move into the chair and have us slow it down.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what do you notice in your body right now?

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to do that to you.

[SPEAKER_00]: But if I were your therapist, that is what we would do because that's where all of that lives, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's in the box.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's in the slowing and then you reference your inner teenager and I think you know internal family systems and parts work is so profoundly powerful for healing.

[SPEAKER_01]: I just started doing it with my therapist.

[SPEAKER_01]: I realize how important it is.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I just think because we're so complex, right, that there is this very rational, very adult part of you that understands and gets it, but there are other parts of you that are really literally stuck in different chronological ages with different coping skills, with different jobs, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: This we have like, protectors, the wounded hearts that are like, I'm out of here.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm never going to be seen again.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think isolating them in a way just that part of it is so healing and helpful because it reduces the shame and it allows me to go a little of course the teenager or of course the twelve-year-old or the eight-year-old [SPEAKER_00]: is devastated.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the rest of me can still be me like whole self, full self authentic stuff.

[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone, look at it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I can lean in to be present for that other part of me, which is essentially, I think, you know, I think it's interesting.

[SPEAKER_00]: I did not set out to write my memoir, the idea of like I'm in a red of memoir on childhood drama is like the worst idea, you know, like it would never come to me like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I was just struck.

[SPEAKER_00]: when he died, ages and pages of material in the middle of the night, like stories and essays and all these things.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then all my history of horrific romantic relationships.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, how does this all hang here?

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was a big jumble.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I couldn't quite make sense of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I think it's sort of amazing that now I can look back and see that I was using, not consciously, but I was using all of these amazing principles of trauma therapy.

[SPEAKER_00]: While I was sitting at my computer typing out my story, even like the act of typing is a form of bilateral stimulation, but we use from EMDR.

[SPEAKER_00]: The way that you write a scene, engaging your senses.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so you go back into a story and you go, what in it's smell like?

[SPEAKER_00]: What did I see?

[SPEAKER_00]: The language of the nervous system, which is what we have to attune to and trauma, is the senses, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And then I'm going back and I'm looking at these parts and it was years until I could do this, but I'm writing the scene of the eight-year-old in the twelve-year-old in the twenty-six-year-old in the thirty-year-old, but I'm finally seeing it through the lens of a trauma therapist.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm now being with those parts in this very different way.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I just think it's kind of amazing that this spontaneous thing happened that I wasn't in the driver's seat of and yet it was pulling from all of these principles that now the research shows us is so powerful like all these different modalities, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: The sensory work is also Peter Levine, somatic experiencing, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So pulling from all of these [SPEAKER_00]: principles that are so powerful and and I believe to what's what is universal about that because not everyone's going to go and and write a book about their story is my body knew what I needed more than I knew what I needed.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, I was being pulled sometimes feet grudgingly.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I would look to my husband and be like, this is pain porn.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is awful.

[SPEAKER_00]: This hurts so bad.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why am I doing this?

[SPEAKER_00]: And he'd go, huh?

[SPEAKER_00]: I know.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you're not going to finish it.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're done.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you can just, you know, hang up that pencil or whatever.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then the next day, I'd be like, back.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're like, I gotta keep going.

[SPEAKER_00]: I gotta keep going.

[SPEAKER_00]: There was something that needed to be.

[SPEAKER_00]: works through and I think there's different ways that can look for different people sometimes it's on a pottery wheel sometimes it's in their hiking boots out on a trail that to really be curious about those things that we feel called to that can bring us into our bodies that can engage us with [SPEAKER_00]: present time and the senses.

[SPEAKER_00]: And because there's something I believe so healing in those colleagues and those moments in those experiences, I believe the body knows what it needs.

[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes that's trauma therapy, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes that's getting our butt in a seat with someone who is not just trauma informed.

[SPEAKER_00]: My bias is I want someone who is trauma trained, who really has some skills and tools and theoretical framework.

[SPEAKER_00]: Again, I sat on a lot of couches with a lot of really well-meaning folks and I talked and talked my head off and I felt like I made he was getting somewhere and it was, you know, largely not so much so working with someone who can hold the space for you to go in.

[SPEAKER_00]: And say, hey, can we slow this down?

[SPEAKER_00]: What are you noticing in your body right now?

[SPEAKER_00]: Was you telling me about how hard it was with your mom this year?

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and really follow that trend.

[SPEAKER_01]: What was the initial somatic modality that you used when you really started diving into your own healing?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's interesting.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I first trained with somatic experiencing Peter Levine's works.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was just like, oh my gosh, this is mind blowing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I still love it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I incorporated it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then I did EMDR training.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, oh my gosh, this is amazing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And now I'm super interested in IFS.

[SPEAKER_00]: I also think the research that's coming out of psychedelic assisted psychotherapy is [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's undeniable.

[SPEAKER_00]: We can't sort of turn away from that and look at some of the powerful things that are happening there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Again, because it's stored in the body in our conscious mind is saying, no, I will not go there.

[SPEAKER_00]: And some of that was somebody with substance abuse issues.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think we have to be super mindful and careful.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think if your intention is ever like, well, to one end down, I'm going to go do Ayahuasca in Peru and it makes me nervous, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think it also makes me nervous as the idea of just like doing it yourself a DIY situation.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I think if you're really doing it in the right set and sending with the right intention and support.

[SPEAKER_00]: That it's really grounded again and someone who is trauma trained and then I think again we can't sort of turn away from some of the results that are happening there for people that are ill to buy every single modality.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's like everything else.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think there's one panacea.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's all nervous system dependent.

[SPEAKER_00]: We all have a very different relationship to our stories, our experience, our truth, the access to that, to our feelings to our bodies.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I find that I just want to keep availing myself of, you know, maybe I'm still an addict in that way.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a freedom junkie.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just like, I want more access to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want more conscious choice.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want more availability, again, to be the kind of parent that I want to be for my son.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so if something seems like it's going to help me get there, I'm going to be open to it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: And a couple of things.

[SPEAKER_01]: So there are some different modalities that people can partake in.

[SPEAKER_01]: What do you think the best way is for someone to navigate that as far as which route to take?

[SPEAKER_00]: I think you need to be talking to a professional.

[SPEAKER_00]: In my opinion, you know, a lot of people reach out to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: Are you taking clients?

[SPEAKER_00]: You're taking clients.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not, but I always give the same suggestion.

[SPEAKER_00]: which is I think psychology today is you're looking for a traditional psychotherapist is a great resource.

[SPEAKER_00]: I would look for people that have experience with complex trauma that have specific trauma trainings for the people that have experienced that deep emotional abuse or narcissistic abuse.

[SPEAKER_00]: I would ask that therapist, do you have training or information?

[SPEAKER_00]: Are you well versed in this because the people that aren't?

[SPEAKER_00]: can end up going oh they're just doing their best and can you give them a break in it's you know what we're talking about deeply abusive people that have zero intention of changing no capacity for empathy it's it's a different rulebook you're not just looking to go oh we'll just have compassion it's no have boundaries have real boundaries it's allowed [SPEAKER_00]: And so make the phone calls, make several appointments with several different people if it's available to you, really trust your body in that process.

[SPEAKER_00]: What felt right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Why?

[SPEAKER_00]: And then engage in the conversations as it's always a process, you know, to the point of the woman who scared you have to death by saying, this is gonna take a long time.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's a process that it's an ongoing path we're never done.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so there's no rush.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not, I need to go do eight EMDR sessions and, you know, [SPEAKER_00]: A ketamine treatment and with a dose of somatic experiencing.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just be in your body, be in your life, go take a walk, orient with your senses to your surroundings.

[SPEAKER_00]: Notice what you see.

[SPEAKER_00]: Honestly, these are the building blocks.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm in the most foundational things.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think [SPEAKER_00]: Through all my social media, I see click on my links.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have a link to a DIY sort of trauma toolbox that has a whole list of things that you can be doing in your life that I believe are so nourishing for your nervous system to be in present day because trauma is the past as though it's happening now, it's happening now and so these ways of orienting to the present moment.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's all of it and it's be [SPEAKER_00]: intentional and trust the process and it's not a race.

[SPEAKER_00]: And don't do it alone, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the other key for I go listen, yes, I was sitting at my kitchen table riding this thing for five years and I was doing it without any support.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because at that point, I was like, therapists have kind of burned me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like I haven't been well served there and I wasn't well served because they weren't trauma therapists.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what they know about complex trauma now, we didn't know at all when I got sober.

[SPEAKER_00]: We didn't know really that this much when I was finishing graduate school and all these things that were just better informed now.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so a veil yourself of the information, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's my whole mission on all my social media, my Instagram and all these things that's I've tried to bring [SPEAKER_00]: more real information to folks in a way that's accessible because sometimes those trauma textbooks and those things, it's like, I can hardly read it sometimes.

[SPEAKER_00]: I totally dissociate.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, I'm out of my body.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to get this.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so find ways to get more information.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of downsides to social media, but this is one of the huge upsides to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is that [SPEAKER_00]: There are amazing professionals.

[SPEAKER_00]: You've had a ton of them on your podcast that are giving away so much good information for free.

[SPEAKER_02]: I know.

[SPEAKER_00]: What you and I would have done with that in our own childhoods, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: It's no shit.

[SPEAKER_01]: I want to talk with you briefly about fonding.

[SPEAKER_01]: So can you talk about what how has working through that looked like for you and what ways do you find yourself still struggling with it?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's so huge.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's so I didn't know that I was stuck in a chronic spawning trauma response.

[SPEAKER_00]: What did that look like for you?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, a lot of it was privileging my mom's wounding over what my own needs, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because I learned it so early on, I'm going to figure out what you need and try not to certainly be a burden to you.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to like, [SPEAKER_00]: wrap my every choice around what I think you need in the hopes that my needs are finally going to be met.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I just have this thought.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it's, you know, one of the things that really blocks people is, you know, the fear of talking about my childhood is betraying my family and that, you know, it's funny.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, that's a hundred percent.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's funny.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think the other reason I like the language of finding so much is because to me and maybe this is because I kind of grew up in AA and codependency language comes out of the addiction world and it almost seemed like that while you're either an addict or you're a codependent and if I identify the addict, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm definitely, I belong everywhere, but I think there was this kind of a vibe of like those total pendants, those alinans, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, I don't want to be that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Don't be a dormant, get some self-esteem, and all felt like a choice.

[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, there's this part of me going, well, I don't want to dormat, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm not that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so my defense against all of that.

[SPEAKER_00]: kind of blocked me from seeing how I was engaging in those very same behaviors.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when I got to Pete Walker's work, and he's telling me why from a trauma perspective, the body will always privilege safety and connection above all else.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was the family I was born into.

[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't have a lot of wiggle room in terms of finding safety and connection and how brilliant.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is where I link this whole notion of, and I just take care of yourself and lock yourself into some affirmations.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know what?

[SPEAKER_00]: My body was so brilliant that even as a young child, it figured out how to receive even a monocom of safety and connection.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then guess what?

[SPEAKER_00]: That's my blueprint because we don't learn by [SPEAKER_00]: theories, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, of course, I want to be x, y and z.

We are experiential learners.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are experiential learners.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's all I learned.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know how to keep myself safe in the context of active addiction, liars of users, manipulators, state, goding me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to take the blame.

[SPEAKER_00]: So in a way, I didn't have a chance but to go out and find people that fit this model because not because I had a bad picker and what's wrong with me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was doing it because that's where my body felt the safest.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because it was my only relationship to safety, all my tools and my skills were forged in that environment.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know who's quote this is, but I used it in the book that red flags don't look like red flags when they feel like home.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I did it all over and over and I'm knowing that I'm doing it over and I'm like, [SPEAKER_00]: Telling my therapist, why I can't I have a healthy relationship to save my life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And now I know why because I was reenacting my trauma, which was me being stuck in a chronic fixing pleasing.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'll take all the responsibility.

[SPEAKER_00]: Don't worry.

[SPEAKER_00]: I got it response.

[SPEAKER_00]: And in order for me to start to heal that, like I really have, I had to look at boundaries like we talked about the biggest boundaries that I've had to send of all, which was my relationship with my mom.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it's an every facet of our lives, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's sort of this reflexive thing, our trauma responses aren't conscious.

[SPEAKER_00]: We just do it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I will still to this day go into like, oh, you know, oh, you seem like you're in a bad mood, whoever this person is.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's my fault.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I need to fix it.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and then I have to notice that when I can and take some deep breaths and orient to present time and place and maybe put my hand on my heart, which is a powerful [SPEAKER_00]: stance of self compassion.

[SPEAKER_00]: It releases oxytocin bias for us.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I can take some deep breaths and be like, I don't have to do that today.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can be present to whoever which part is activated inside of me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I can take care of that part and do it differently.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so some days, I can do that really well.

[SPEAKER_00]: And some days, those tools are not available to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then I really have to double down with self compassion and just go, yeah, it's always going to be [SPEAKER_00]: It's always gonna be a process.

[SPEAKER_00]: For me, just talking about these things too and sharing my own experience on places like Instagram, it's also reduced the shame where I just can laugh at it and be like, oh, of course I did that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Of course I did it again and again.

[SPEAKER_00]: And here's what works sometimes.

[SPEAKER_00]: And here's a framework that's interesting to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And oh, I did it again.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a process, but one that I'm engaged in.

[SPEAKER_01]: When was the last time that you experienced a pretty intense emotional flashback?

[SPEAKER_00]: That's a good question.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not super recently, but maybe about a year or so before that, I know I was talking about it more regularly on social media because I was going through some stuff historically.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have had that feeling that I'm going to get in trouble.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm getting trouble, you know, I'm forty nine years old, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like who am I getting trouble with?

[SPEAKER_00]: But it was this deep, not only am I going to get in trouble, but it's going to be bad.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's going to be, I mean, I guess similar from my childhood, it's like you're not allowed.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're not allowed anything.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're hunkered down in the middle of nowhere in the mountains.

[SPEAKER_00]: No phone calls, no friendship.

[SPEAKER_00]: We don't even look at you in your own home.

[SPEAKER_00]: You don't exist, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So anything that feels like if I can avoid that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I think we used to have this idea was slash facts that they were like we see in the movies.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like a vet who is at a fourth, the July parade and it's suddenly back in wartime, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: But really, it's any little fragment and sometimes it's a known fragment sense memory and sometimes it's not.

[SPEAKER_00]: So in other words, sometimes I can pinpoint it and be like, oh, yeah, that person was maybe expressing some frustration with me and it triggered something in me or [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it was a smell or who knows, but sometimes I can't place it.

[SPEAKER_00]: It just feels real.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, and my whole body is guarding against, what do I need to do?

[SPEAKER_00]: How do I get out of this?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's this deep rumination and obsession about like running over the thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And now when that captures me eventually, I can see it for what it is and start to kind of like, come back into present time.

[SPEAKER_00]: And do some of these other things like I've already shared just really offering compassion and orienting, but it feels so real when you're in it.

[SPEAKER_00]: It just feels real and there is no time.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and that language of the emotional flashback is also peat walkers.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so grateful for that.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, because again, I just felt stupid.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'll be honest.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'll be like, I know I'm not consciously going to get in trouble.

[SPEAKER_00]: But when I was flooded with that feeling and it felt so real and I felt so childlike and I had no resources and I mean, that powerlessness.

[SPEAKER_00]: is devastating.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so then to have the shame on top of it, well, you should know better.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like why, you know, consciously, you know, you're not going to get in trouble.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a conscious thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: My body is being completely triggered back to a state that was terrifying.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it thinks it's happening again.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's such an interesting place to witness it, you know.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm going to die because this person, I know I'm not going to die because this person didn't text me back.

[SPEAKER_01]: After thirty minutes, but I'm like pretty fucking sure I'm going to die.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_01]: It feels that bad.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's the most miserable experience ever.

[SPEAKER_01]: But God, yeah, I just remember the first time that I was able to kind of have that witnessing experience of it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it makes it worse, but almost better at the same time.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's like, yeah, because it's not a quick fix.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not like I can go, oh, this was an emotional flashback.

[SPEAKER_00]: I feel so much.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like a slow night.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's actual tissue one little threaded a time I can start to kind of like disconnect from and be like, okay, I'm eventually back.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm going to put links to all of your shit in the show notes, your books.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, the memory is wonderful.

[SPEAKER_01]: What else do you want to promote or what do you do in working on?

[SPEAKER_01]: What do you want the folks to know?

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think we're having the most fun as the social media stuff now.

[SPEAKER_00]: And particularly after the book came out, a lot of people were like, well, what are you going to do now?

[SPEAKER_00]: And subscriptions are workshops and all these things that I think a lot of other people are doing really well.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I didn't necessarily feel called into that space.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the thing that kept occurring to me was really blending these different parts of me that's been such a big piece of my healing.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, I'm not just a survivor or an addict or a clinician or an expert or a trauma therapist or a mom like I'm all of these things all in one place and the ability to be that without shame has been so healing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so for me to be a survivor and a therapist and kind of a nut job just like [SPEAKER_00]: being super playful and childlike and having fun is the space that I wanted to continue to grow.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I started this variety show on YouTube called Stand Up Therapy.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've only had one episode.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm working on the second one.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just filmed a cooking show.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my god, it's so fun.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I just went and met Dr.

ramen here at her studio space and I brought us chef hats and made us eight brands that say we make the recipe so you don't have to.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we're making a trauma bond smoothie and it's I don't know.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is what I want to do.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want to make these concepts really accessible.

[SPEAKER_00]: Funny and fun.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we don't feel so alone.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love the performance aspect and like I said laughing at things that.

[SPEAKER_00]: have honestly brought me so much pain and now that I know what it is and have the language and can be a little bit softer around it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just want to help other people be softer around it and so this is what I'm doing now.

[SPEAKER_00]: We'll see where that goes but I'm having fun with it for sure.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's awesome.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, thank you so much.

[SPEAKER_01]: This has been really awesome.

[SPEAKER_03]: So slow now.