[SPEAKER_01]: When being yourself feels dangerous, you learn to become whoever keeps you safe.

[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]: A hoi, my dear, shit shows for any new listeners, my name is Andrea.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a total incomplete shit show.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm an adult child of a dysfunctional family.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the chances are that you are as well.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you somehow found yourself here, if you've somehow stumbled on it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And this is where we talk about what the hell to do about that.

[SPEAKER_01]: We curse here, you've been warned.

[SPEAKER_01]: So today, we're diving deep with returning guests, therapist, fan-fave, someone who I have deemed the Queen of Fawning Miss Ingrid Clayton.

[SPEAKER_01]: So she's got a new book out.

[SPEAKER_01]: It came out about a month ago.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is called Fawning.

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

[SPEAKER_01]: I know many of y'all in the shit show have already read this.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've heard nothing but raving reviews.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've read it myself.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a banger.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so is this interview.

[SPEAKER_01]: So for anyone who may not be familiar with fawning, fawning is what CBTSD expert Pete Walker calls the fourth F.

So we have fight flight freeze and fawn.

[SPEAKER_01]: And this is what happens when neither fighting or flighting, fleeing are options.

[SPEAKER_01]: So your body learns to survive by appeasing the threat instead.

[SPEAKER_01]: And this response is the most viable option for us as kids.

[SPEAKER_01]: When you're dependent on the very people who are causing you harm being good, being helpful, trying to stay invisible can feel like the only way to stay safe.

[SPEAKER_01]: And in many respects, it is, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Because we can't fight, we can't flee.

[SPEAKER_01]: We got a fawn and we see this riddled all throughout the laundry list.

[SPEAKER_01]: The majority of the wondrous traits are fawn responses.

[SPEAKER_01]: We became approval seekers.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're frightened by angry people or any personal criticism.

[SPEAKER_01]: We have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility.

[SPEAKER_01]: We feel guilty standing up for ourselves.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so this interview is not your basic bitch combo on Fawning.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is a deep, raw look at how Fawning actually shows up in real life, in parenting, in sex, in friendships with yourself.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let's get on with the damn show.

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

[SPEAKER_01]: 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]: The holiday season is here, it is staring us right in the face and as we all know, this can be a very difficult time of the year, lots of triggers, lots of shit to navigate.

[SPEAKER_01]: So if you're looking for some additional support, you do not have to fare this holiday season alone.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can be amongst others who truly get it for less than a dollar a day.

[SPEAKER_01]: less than a dollar a day.

[SPEAKER_01]: That is quite the steal if you ask me.

[SPEAKER_01]: So you yes you, the person that's been wanting to join for forever, the person who right now in their head is thinking she's talking about me.

[SPEAKER_01]: I know she's talking about you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I am talking about you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, damn the join.

[SPEAKER_01]: See the link in the show notes or you can go to adultshodpodcast.com so I should show.

[SPEAKER_01]: Next, give me a little follow on Insta on TikTok.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can watch this interview on YouTube, YouTube.com slash Adadult ChildPod.

[SPEAKER_01]: And last but not least, whatever you do, please post this as a please, give me a damn five star rating on Apple on Spotify.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, love you all.

[SPEAKER_01]: She's back, author of now of two books, Ms.

Ingrid Clayton, who I'm deeming, the queen of a fawning.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I am wearing that crown, rather probably, thank you.

[SPEAKER_01]: So book comes out tomorrow.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_01]: And what I wanted to ask you was, and folks she already said nobody asked her this question before, so I'm just going to say that again.

[SPEAKER_01]: We were chatting before we started recording, and she said that I was asking her if she enjoys writing, and she said that, [SPEAKER_01]: through writing she's able to gain deeper insights into yourself.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I wanted to know what came up for you and writing this book.

[SPEAKER_01]: Were there any big ahas?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, and I think one of the biggest takeaways for me, you know, so my personal experience of needing to live in a chronic fun response was out of childhood trauma, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: So that's just my lived experience and then when I'm not, [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, which so I'll speak to some of the other contexts, which was really sort of profound for me to see when you when you sort of widen that lens or pull back and you look beyond just the family system, how many systems of power are so many of us living in a navigate A and a day out, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: So you look at communities, you look at religion, like, you know, culture and politics and all these things, [SPEAKER_02]: any marginalized community, any community that is disempowered or any community where you don't hold all the power is ripe for a fawn response.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so as I was looking at my experiences, you know, I'll be honest and I'll say even in terms of people of color or people in LGBTQ communities, which I do not identify in either case, I felt more of a connection to those marginalized [SPEAKER_02]: I could see the connective tissue in our experiences.

[SPEAKER_02]: So in a way, it really sort of brought in my sense of empathy and compassion in ways that were profound for me, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: It was sort of like it dropped me even deeper into the human condition and the human condition where I'm living amongst all these other humans who, in some way, you know, we have more similar experience than we may even realize.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's interesting because I guess it's all those other things are like trauma in a sense, but maybe not relational trauma, but I wonder if the fun response on a, I mean, it's always a nervous system thing.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like if one could, [SPEAKER_01]: develop that from experiencing trauma like later on in life and having not experienced that during their upbringing.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, so I say absolutely and for me, I think complex trauma or synonymous with relational trauma just depends on how you're defining relationship, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Your relationship to your environment is relational, your relationship to your community, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, oh my gosh, [SPEAKER_02]: I can't really be my whole self in order to belong.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's this double bind that exists typically with the fond response.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think it's also why many of us are primed and conditioned to be fonders, whether that's in our childhood or in the workplace, for instance, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: There's, there these perpetual, [SPEAKER_02]: hierarchies and the body just intuitively knows, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: It's almost in relationship, the relationship, in this case, is my relationship to the hierarchies in which I reside day in day out and my body knows where I exist in that pecking order and that if I am not at the top, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: So [SPEAKER_02]: We can say to someone like, well, just have a voice, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Just speak up for yourself or set boundaries.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, that is not available to me.

[SPEAKER_02]: There will be dire consequences if I do.

[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, and turn the phone response from stage left.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like the body knows that these other things are not available or would make it worse.

[SPEAKER_02]: you know, so I really think this understanding of the larger context that not only support fonding but quite frankly expect it was powerful for me to see.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's really interesting.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, really bronze the brush.

[SPEAKER_00]: Which is good for you.

[SPEAKER_00]: More readers.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's right.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's fantastic.

[SPEAKER_02]: But yes, from a publishing standpoint, I guess it's good.

[SPEAKER_01]: last time we talked about your journey of realizing how much your childhood impacted you and I want to kind of take that same question but from the lens of funny and I remember you sharing that you know for a long time you [SPEAKER_01]: You know, you thought that you were struggling with codependency, and then to eventually realize that this really was the fun trauma response.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so I'm curious what that journey of realizing that looked like.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's such a good question.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's hard to kind of pinpoint in a way, but I can say that over time, that distinction for me became very important, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: That I never quite saw my whole self reflected in the terminology of either codependency or people pleasing.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so the more that I have understood the fun response, explored it, unpacked in this way, [SPEAKER_02]: the more freedom I have found, the more I have made sense to myself, the more that I see how A, my body is hardwired for safety and survival.

[SPEAKER_02]: Fawning comes on without my conscious awareness, it's not a choice, it's a reflex, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: I make sense in other words, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think when we look historically at certainly the original definitions of codependency and, you know, people pleasing, [SPEAKER_02]: you're a problem and you're broken and you're a control freak and what's wrong with you like knock it off already.

[SPEAKER_02]: They're steeped in this a ton of shame and even the idea that we have a disease, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: So we are dysfunctional in other words.

[SPEAKER_02]: Fawning to me places these behaviors, [SPEAKER_02]: Not only back in our body, like I said, we're hard-wired for these instincts, but back into the environments in which we're navigating.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm not dysfunctional.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm responding in a very healthy and adaptive way to dysfunctional environments.

[SPEAKER_02]: So just if [SPEAKER_02]: The listener takes away that one point, you know, I think for most people, they can just feel the shame Sort of like running out of their body.

[SPEAKER_02]: It returns us to a sense of agency, which is what we've been seeking our whole lives anyway Right, I can finally belong to myself and feel proud of myself because I go I'm not This functional.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't have a disease.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not broken.

[SPEAKER_02]: I in fact [SPEAKER_02]: It's not a self-esteem problem, that's the other piece of it.

[SPEAKER_02]: I, in fact, love myself so much that my body intuitively was like threading this very fine needle of all these other responses aren't really available for me, but I'm not given up, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, it's this last-itch effort, almost to say, I'm going to continue to navigate this situation so that I can hopefully come away as unscathed as possible.

[SPEAKER_01]: Would you ever say that there are instances where people pleasing doesn't qualify as fawning?

[SPEAKER_02]: It's such a great question in the common one and I feel like maybe I'm going to get more information down the line because I go, oh, I didn't I didn't consider that, but today as I sit here, I cannot really think of an instance where I guess if you call people pleasing where you really are engaging in this like.

[SPEAKER_02]: conscious brown nosing sort of like maybe that is a little bit different.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's sort of you're doing it into where you're playing the game almost.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, but even that there's like a fine sort of, you know, line between these worlds where I think even with the fun response again, if you sort of know like I'm going into the lion's den, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's a tricky question.

[SPEAKER_02]: I haven't found a concrete example where I feel like, ah, this would be people pleasing without any fawn response attached to it.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think the fawn response tends to be the heartbeat of these behaviors.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think just thinking about it out loud.

[SPEAKER_01]: If it's true, people pleasing because I was thinking in the sense of like, I don't know, even like in a business transaction, but I think that that would be more people pleasing, more manipulation, masquerading as people pleasing.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right, interesting.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, I think maybe that's the reason that I haven't been able to sort of say, because when we talk about people pleasing, we're not necessarily talking about conscious manipulation, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: We're talking about really just propping other people up and sort of so, but to your point, I think yes, if you're if you're just talking about strictly conscious manipulation and you're doing it with a smile, that's different.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's different.

[SPEAKER_01]: I want you to explain how fawning is a hybrid nervous system response, and it's the only one, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it depends on the model that you're working in.

[SPEAKER_02]: So Peter Levine of somatic experiencing famously talked about the freeze response also as a hybrid.

[SPEAKER_02]: And you explained it this way, which I love, which is that one foot is on the gas, which is essentially fight flight energy.

[SPEAKER_02]: But one foot is on the break, right, which is this down regulation, frozen experience.

[SPEAKER_02]: So there's in the freeze response.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of activation, like you experience in fighter flight, but it's just that it's frozen.

[SPEAKER_02]: The break is containing it where you can't do anything with it.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's that deer in the headlights presentation, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: So that contains both [SPEAKER_02]: and hypo arousal at the same time.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, fawning is similar.

[SPEAKER_02]: We have one aspect that is were mobilized, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: There's the adrenaline, we're showing up, we're hyper vigilant, we're noticing, we're managing the moods in the states of those around us.

[SPEAKER_02]: But the hypo arousal is the part that disconnects from self, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: It's the reason that almost all the [SPEAKER_02]: some level of self abandonment, and ultimately this is because the body has to choose in this double bind, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Am I going to choose safety and survival?

[SPEAKER_02]: Or am I going to choose like, you know, access to my fullest highest self?

[SPEAKER_02]: The body will always choose safety and survival.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that's the current understanding in terms of it being a hybrid presentation, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: So you're not actively making it worse by fighting back or running, particularly you think about children, those options are not available to us.

[SPEAKER_02]: But you're also not going all the way towards what we call a submit or collapse response.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's what we see, particularly in the animal kingdom where the animal just plays dead.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's this last edge effort.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it's different from freeze.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's why I say it depends on the model that you're referring to because some people equate the two.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I actually like the differentiation that freeze.

[SPEAKER_02]: There is all of that adrenaline, you know, racing heartbeat going on.

[SPEAKER_02]: With Submit, it's a playing dead because there's no muscle tone.

[SPEAKER_02]: The body goes limp, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Different from a freeze response where there's this rigidity that deer and headlights.

[SPEAKER_02]: Submit is like literally you could be scooped up in the claws of the animal and the prey animal.

[SPEAKER_02]: The animal thinks it's dead, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: And hopefully it sets it down long enough that that little prey animal can kind of scamper away.

[SPEAKER_02]: But it's a completely numb.

[SPEAKER_02]: feeling.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so, fonding is kind of in the middle of those two polls.

[SPEAKER_02]: We're not fighting back.

[SPEAKER_02]: We're not running.

[SPEAKER_02]: We're not making it worse.

[SPEAKER_02]: We also have to show up day in and day out, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: So there's this hybrid presentation that looks different depending on the context, but tends to have both of these flavors happening at the same time.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm assuming that you heard about fonding when you read P Walkers book for the first time, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, actually I heard about it when I was writing my memoir and maybe even previous to that writing something for psychology today, I was not aware of Pete Walker's work and I was unpacking these same themes right sort of going on my own path like why aren't we talking about this experience I knew there was something there and so I was articulating it not what and when you mean that this experience what do you mean like this behaviors and having that not fall under the category of codependency or what.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, correct.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, I just, there was, I, particularly as it relates to sexual fonding, I think that that was being missed.

[SPEAKER_02]: There were just aspects that I was talking about writing about, and someone who read what I had written said, this reminds me of Pete Walker's work.

[SPEAKER_02]: Have you heard of him?

[SPEAKER_02]: And I said no.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so, of course, I ran and immediately saw myself reflected in fonding.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it was one of the major puzzle pieces that I got [SPEAKER_02]: writing my own story, so not just reclaiming what happened to me, validating it myself, not waiting for anyone else to validate it.

[SPEAKER_02]: But once I did that, once I could see that, yes, my experience was complex trauma, and this is where I lived for decades after the fact in this chronic fun response.

[SPEAKER_02]: coming online, whether I was safe or not, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: My body wasn't going to wait to find out.

[SPEAKER_02]: It changed my life, essentially.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it changed my clients' lives.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that's why this more deeper, specific dive on falling, because it's kind of, [SPEAKER_02]: Ben, the trauma response that's hiding in plain sight, it hasn't received nearly the attention that it deserves.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm thrilled to be able to sort of take the magnifying glass now.

[SPEAKER_02]: Both on my story, there are aspects of my story in there too, but I needed to broaden that and show a diverse set of experiences how fun and can look different, right, depending on who you are and the context that you're in.

[SPEAKER_01]: And well, it probably is the most [SPEAKER_01]: prevalent of the responses when we look at the laundry list traits of an adult child.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, right, those are all funny.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, this is probably the fun responses is what causes us the most pain, I would say, 95% of the time, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Wow, that's powerful what you're saying, and I would imagine that it's true, you know, the thing that saved us ultimately, the thing that helped us adapt and survive these environments becomes the thing that's keeping us stuck in small and in our own way.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: was this something that like, because you're talking about just, this was something that you were unpacking, was this an aspect about yourself that like you, you couldn't wrap your, your brain around, was this something that you felt like, I don't know, you were trying to work through for a long time and like you just couldn't figure out why you were the way you were.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think that's a big piece of it and let's be real.

[SPEAKER_02]: I wasn't just doing it on my own.

[SPEAKER_02]: I've sat on a lot of therapist couch over the years, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm now 51 years old.

[SPEAKER_02]: I dedicated my life essentially to trying to unpack some of these things.

[SPEAKER_02]: No one ever named my experiences as trauma or complex trauma.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's certainly no one put my responses in the context of trauma.

[SPEAKER_02]: And part of that is the fact that we're only just now.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, we didn't know some of these things even when I was in graduate school.

[SPEAKER_02]: But some of it is that I think even the mental health field now is not up to speed, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, as you know, complex PTSD still not in the DSM, like, [SPEAKER_02]: You know, all of these challenges that we face to kind of legitimize our experiences to give it concrete language and ways in, it's sort of, it's been a bit maddening and so yes, be everything I've done my whole life including.

[SPEAKER_02]: ultimately going to graduate school and getting three degrees in psychology and going to all these trauma trainings, all of it has ultimately been in service of, why do I still feel so stuck?

[SPEAKER_02]: Because I have earnestly tried, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like I read all those books.

[SPEAKER_02]: I did all the workshops.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know what I mean?

[SPEAKER_02]: How long am I going to have to sit here and meditate?

[SPEAKER_02]: When am I finally going to be relieved of [SPEAKER_02]: this feeling that I'm stuck that my relationships are not healthy.

[SPEAKER_02]: I know that there's more for me out there and yet I cannot access it.

[SPEAKER_02]: And this work is the work that has finally freed me.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's beautiful.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's so big.

[SPEAKER_01]: it is huge.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was really interesting for me to listen back to our first conversation just because of everything I've been through and learned since then and especially from like I just I've started doing parts work since then which I do want to get into parts work.

[SPEAKER_01]: But before we get into all that a couple of questions.

[SPEAKER_01]: So one of the things that you talked about was how [SPEAKER_01]: being more of yourself, like bringing out more of yourself versus for some people, it's about being less of yourself.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm curious if you could speak to that and if you have noticed any sort of patterns as far as what would cause one to go one way or the other.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and is it a typically like are you seeing people vacillate between both or do people tend to stick on one side of the spectrum?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'd say it's both because some people stay on one side of the spectrum.

[SPEAKER_02]: Some are in different contexts that elicit a different response.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so then it shifts.

[SPEAKER_02]: But ultimately what you're saying is, yes.

[SPEAKER_02]: So finding sometimes looks like an over-functioning.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that tends to originate from experiences of neglect or abandonment, right, maybe emotional and maturity or generational trauma.

[SPEAKER_02]: Basically, your needs were not being met.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so part of the response, then the adaptive response is to go, well, then I'm just going to do everything I can possibly do to meet all my own needs and maybe if I help you with yours to your eventually going to come online and we can kind of do this together.

[SPEAKER_02]: So there's this sense that like not only do I have to soak up all the shame and this dysfunction kind of like metabolize it through my own body because no one else is going to be doing their own work.

[SPEAKER_02]: but I also have to be responsible for all the things that everyone's emotional well-being, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: There is just this, like, I have to be bigger because you are essentially absent, okay?

[SPEAKER_02]: On the other end of that equation where we might sort of say we're under functioning or we're not bringing as much of ourselves.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's that feeling of, and I would say to the, I kind of call that first side of the spectrum is like the care taking side that over functioning tends to be synonymous with the care taking side this other side tends to be the appeasement side right so here we tend to lean on this when it feels like we're being attacked someone's moving in we are not safe there's overt abuse happening to us.

[SPEAKER_02]: And even as I'm doing this with my hand, there's this sort of closing in, I have to get smaller in order to survive it.

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh my god, your needs matter so much more than mine.

[SPEAKER_02]: I can't even hardly exist in this equation.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I have to remind you that I'm still a person and you like me, don't you?

[SPEAKER_02]: So in this case, [SPEAKER_02]: getting bigger or even right-sized, like occupying your full self and agency would feel threatening because you're moving against the source of the aggression, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: In other words, it's like you don't have an access to a healthy fight response of having a voice and taking up space and setting boundaries.

[SPEAKER_02]: The way to survive wasn't getting small.

[SPEAKER_02]: So getting bigger [SPEAKER_02]: or like I said, occupying your own God-given right to exist in the world feels terrifying.

[SPEAKER_02]: It feels like you become a bigger target.

[SPEAKER_00]: So fear of being seen.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's right.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, the fear of being seen.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, in both of these presentations, you go, well, gosh, they're so different.

[SPEAKER_02]: But ultimately, we're still managing the gap between who we are and what's happening in the environment.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's just whatever that environment necessitates is what the body is going to shape shift into.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Who do I need to be in order to navigate this situation?

[SPEAKER_02]: And that's why it can shift depending on context.

[SPEAKER_01]: can falling show up, like even when we're not having an interaction with another person, does it show up just in our relationship with ourselves?

[SPEAKER_02]: You asked the best questions.

[SPEAKER_02]: You're just reminding me of my experience in our other conversation.

[SPEAKER_02]: They're so unique.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's so beautiful.

[SPEAKER_02]: I just wing in a baby.

[SPEAKER_02]: I know, but you're so embedded in the depth of the conversation.

[SPEAKER_02]: We're good.

[SPEAKER_02]: We're good.

[SPEAKER_02]: We're good.

[SPEAKER_02]: Deep here.

[SPEAKER_02]: I love it.

[SPEAKER_02]: So yes, it does show up because you go back to thinking about that hybrid presentation.

[SPEAKER_02]: If, okay, I'll say this.

[SPEAKER_02]: It shows up if you have an experience of a chronic fond response.

[SPEAKER_02]: which is probably what adult children tend to have.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's where the term originates, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: It's sort of like I'm still experiencing these things, these unmet needs, this residue from the past.

[SPEAKER_02]: So a chronic fond response, if we go back to that hybrid idea, one half of that means I'm disconnected from self.

[SPEAKER_02]: Do I even know what it feels like to have my own back, even when no one else is around?

[SPEAKER_02]: Do I have the sense of, [SPEAKER_02]: space and time and curiosity even in my own body to notice what am I actually experiencing?

[SPEAKER_02]: What do I actually feel?

[SPEAKER_02]: We are so habituated to the external environment or what other people might perceive us to be that we confuse [SPEAKER_02]: that external mirror as it were for our true self.

[SPEAKER_02]: Our self is this false identity that is reflected back to us from the environment, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: It's that maybe the only self we've ever known, it was never safe enough to build internal safety, to be the center of your own skin and your own life.

[SPEAKER_02]: and to branch out from there.

[SPEAKER_02]: Does that make sense?

[SPEAKER_02]: Mm-hmm.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so it sneaks into every aspect of your life.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let's talk about the sexual fawning.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, did you feel like that was something that you were, I know that you have personal experience, but was it something that was also showing up and working with clients and you felt like it wasn't getting the attention that it deserved or wasn't.

[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.

[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like sexual fawning was kind of couched in these other ways, maybe you could define it in the way that you would define it.

[SPEAKER_02]: Fawning is necessary when we are disempowered, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: You think about children, you think of systems of power.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I'll just use my personal experience.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm a child, I don't have any power in my home, and yet I'm being sexualized at the same time by my stepfather, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: So before I've had any sexual experience, even a first kiss, my body has a sense that, oh, the only power I actually have in the world resides [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, patriarchy supports this all kinds of systems support this.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's very common.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you could probably look at the me too movement and point to sexual funding all over the map.

[SPEAKER_02]: So the point being, now I go out in the world as I start to get older and I've inhabited myself as a sexual being.

[SPEAKER_02]: My body still remembers and knows that my essential currency in the world lies in my being.

[SPEAKER_02]: attractive or appealing or sexual to you.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it would have me flirting with people that I was not remotely interested in but sort of hoping to keep them at arms length at the same time.

[SPEAKER_02]: There were lots of boundary violations.

[SPEAKER_02]: Most of my sexual experience was mired in what is [SPEAKER_02]: very common in my client's experiences where we go, was I even experiencing pleasure?

[SPEAKER_02]: Do I even deserve pleasure?

[SPEAKER_02]: Because I'm completely oriented to what you're experiencing.

[SPEAKER_02]: Even even in terms of like, oh, I need to remember where their hand was on my body.

[SPEAKER_02]: So tomorrow I could go and put my own hand there and see what they felt when their hand was on my body.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, was that feeling good enough [SPEAKER_02]: oriented to the other person.

[SPEAKER_02]: I've heard so many stories on my couch.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, you know, the second that I almost open this gate for people that they're like ready to go.

[SPEAKER_02]: They're holding these things and they go with.

[SPEAKER_02]: They know what you're talking about, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, oh, maybe I was on my period, but I didn't want to like slow things down or have to run to the bathroom.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so I just didn't tell them about it and I had sex with a tampon in.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like there's just a million stories like that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right?

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like I don't want to bum you out.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't want to take care of myself and ask for protection because I'm not on birth control and so oh, but oh, I get it.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that doesn't really feel good for you.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so if it doesn't feel good for you.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, guess I'm going to put myself in harm's way, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: We don't do this intentionally, but the fun response is so wedded to sexuality in all of these way, where particularly if it comes from childhood, [SPEAKER_02]: You never had an opportunity to develop a natural healthy sort of sexual development.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was robbed from you, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: It gets robbed from us just like our generosity and our empathy and our care taking.

[SPEAKER_02]: All of these things are wonderful qualities to have, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: As is being a sexual person, we have bodies for a reason.

[SPEAKER_02]: But all of these things can be co-opted in the fawn response.

[SPEAKER_02]: this is the thing that's going to get me in your good graces, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: So of course sexuality's going to go right in that same vein.

[SPEAKER_01]: Did founding show up for you differently in romantic relationships compared to in friendships?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, and no.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, in the sense that [SPEAKER_02]: I am a monogamous person, and so the pressure, I think that that puts on like finding a partner and having them choose you back, even all the fairy tale idea around like being chosen and getting married.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like I tried so hard not to get swept up and all of that, but the truth is, I was a bit on a mission, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: It was like, no, no, no, no.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm gonna be okay when I achieve these external markers of being okay.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think my fawn response was a bit on overdrive in the romance department for that reason, but similarly, in terms of not having access to a full self, you know, that showed up in all of my relationships.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I do feel fortunate that I do have some long-term friendships in particular that feel like, you know, they've known me since the beginning of time.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't feel like maybe there was as much damage there.

[SPEAKER_02]: But anywhere you could fawn, I've probably experienced [SPEAKER_01]: Well, okay, that brings up my next question is, how does Fawning Show up in parenting?

[SPEAKER_02]: Girl, you are on fire.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so one of the things that coincided with my [SPEAKER_02]: losing my stepfather, which gave me more access to myself before I started writing my memoir about like a way to second.

[SPEAKER_02]: I feel safer on the planet now that he's gone.

[SPEAKER_02]: Let me go back and sort of revisit some of these things.

[SPEAKER_02]: What was happening alongside that is that I became a mom.

[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: And my son's very normal typical sort of tantrums like being a baby and then a toddler in the world were deeply triggering to me.

[SPEAKER_02]: So one of the things that we're guarding against in a chronic fawn responses, any conflict or upset at all.

[SPEAKER_02]: So his, like I said, normal, healthy upset, I didn't have a place to put it.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was not, it kind of blindsided me to be honest.

[SPEAKER_02]: Here I was a therapist and I'd always thought I'd be such a great mom and I was always the anti and showing up for other people's kids and doing crafts and all the things I was like, Mary Poppins, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: But here I am in my own life with my own child in my house and I'm like, [SPEAKER_02]: I felt not only overwhelmed, but there was a part of me that it's so gross to admit, so hard to admit.

[SPEAKER_02]: I resented his ability to have access to the full range of human emotion, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: There was this like really primitive part of me that was almost like, [SPEAKER_02]: It's my turn to be the adult and you should fawn for me, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: This was the feeling.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that's one way that it can come up in our parenting.

[SPEAKER_02]: And quite frankly, I think even a lot of parenting manuals can almost be teaching and fostering a fawn response under the guise of respect.

[SPEAKER_02]: right?

[SPEAKER_02]: You respect your elders, you know, we don't do this so much now, but those those notions of like children should be seen and not heard.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like there's a lot of that energy that can still be passed down and we're doing a disservice to our kids.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's that saying children cannot regulate emotions.

[SPEAKER_02]: They're not allowed to have.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the same is true for trauma survivors.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like we're literally learning to experience and feel and communicate about these feelings maybe for the first time, which is why repairing can be such an important part of a healing process.

[SPEAKER_02]: But the other way of finding can show up in parenting is just the like, with that, with the opposite end of the sector of, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, yeah, we're like a piezine or, yes, we don't have, you're not firm enough.

[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_02]: You're not giving the kid any sense of personal responsibility.

[SPEAKER_02]: You're going to sort of run circles around them and and clean up all the messes and in a way you're not giving them the opportunity to sort of [SPEAKER_02]: step into their capacity and to know how to not only feel their feelings, but like be a person in the world that has other relationships, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Because you're you're doing all the fixing and the caretaking and the appeasing for them.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it really cripples kids in a similar but different way.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm curious what were the what is addressing [SPEAKER_02]: Wow, I actually, it makes me think of a client that I talk about in the book, because she refers to her little fawners, which are the lots of little fawning parts that came online, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: So we've already explored how fawning can show up differently depending on the context in all these different ways.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I identify with this too, that I have different parts that fawn in different situations for different reasons.

[SPEAKER_02]: protective mechanism, right, that that's their, that's their role is like I'm going to keep being good safe, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to get out ahead of this thing, and I'm going to sort of find.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I love parts work generally for this, but specifically when we're looking at finding that.

[SPEAKER_02]: It creates a little bit of distance between you and the behavior or you and the experience.

[SPEAKER_02]: And now suddenly I can relate to it differently and bring more awareness, more conscious awareness, more compassion.

[SPEAKER_02]: I love the notion and internal family systems of unburdening the parts.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right, if a part really still feels like, no, no, no, I got a protecting grid.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's not gonna stop that behavior.

[SPEAKER_02]: which is also why some of the old stigmatizing and pathologizing terms.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's just, they don't meet us with that energy of going, oh my gosh, this part served such a vital purpose.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm going to honor that first and even think the part and say thank you so much.

[SPEAKER_02]: And do you see where I am in my life now?

[SPEAKER_02]: Do you see how old I am?

[SPEAKER_02]: Do you see the capacity that I have?

[SPEAKER_02]: Do you still want to do that job?

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, and sometimes the parts like, no, I want to go play.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then you can let it go and do that.

[SPEAKER_02]: But it creates more access.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think ownership.

[SPEAKER_02]: I love parts work for complex trauma generally, but for looking at finding specifically for sure.

[SPEAKER_01]: Was there any, did you have any protectors where because, you know, these parts are formed at such, you know, younger points in time, where we might think when we're like looking at it from our adult mind that we understand.

[SPEAKER_01]: What it thinks that it's doing, but not really because it's not something that would come to our to our conscious mind so I'm curious if there was anything there were like you were surprised at either like the role that it was playing or just some sort of a belief that maybe one of your parts had that was like a little I don't know like shocking or [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I can't come up with a specific example, but to your point, I think I'm always surprised.

[SPEAKER_02]: There is a very different experience between me, my adult self, and what my mind likes to tell me that it knows about a thing, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, I'm going to take your route, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to analyze it, and I'm going to break it down almost every time when I'm working from an [SPEAKER_02]: place, the wisdom of the body, the wisdom of these parts, boy, they are so much smarter than my conscious present tense mind and they have a lot to teach me.

[SPEAKER_02]: So this is one of the hardest things but one of the best things that when I see my clients kind of get out of their own way in this way of like I'm going to figure it out and I'm [SPEAKER_02]: Let's put that on the shelf and restore this deeper gut place wisdom, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: The gut being sort of your second brain.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's way smarter than the thing walking around on our shoulders.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: So when it comes to like a dressing fonding that we've talked about parts work and that being so important.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I would imagine and from reading in the book like [SPEAKER_01]: This has to be done on an unenervous system level.

[SPEAKER_01]: This isn't something where, okay, now I understand why I do this.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm going to be able to stop doing this.

[SPEAKER_01]: Correct.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think understanding takes us a fair amount of the way, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Understanding can diminish the shame, which oftentimes one of the biggest barriers to healing is the shame.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I think, you know, that sort of takes us halfway down the road.

[SPEAKER_02]: But yes, I think if you're looking to work with the therapist at the very minimum, they need to be trauma-informed.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I would say the preference is always that they are trauma-trained, and that means they have at least one, [SPEAKER_02]: a couple or several specific modalities for working with relational trauma and there are too many to name, you know, so I hesitate to go there.

[SPEAKER_02]: I only share the experience in the book from my practice, so it's related to internal family system, somatic experiencing and EMDR, but there are so many modalities out there, but it tends to be crucial to your point, right, [SPEAKER_02]: You can't fix an unconscious response with the conscious mind.

[SPEAKER_02]: It speaks two different languages.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: So how long have you been married to your husband?

[SPEAKER_01]: No?

[SPEAKER_01]: 11 years?

[SPEAKER_01]: 11 years.

[SPEAKER_01]: OK.

[SPEAKER_01]: When did you start your childhood trauma healing journey?

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it depends on when you don't like trauma.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I actually think what started me really on that was leaving my first marriage.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Because I had never broken up with anyone I had ever dated before before leaving my first marriage.

[SPEAKER_02]: I stayed and I hoped and I waited and that was helpful.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was chronic fun all over the place.

[SPEAKER_02]: But finding the ability to walk away from my first marriage that was not working to say, I'm finally gonna stop waiting for you to choose me back and I'm just gonna choose me was crucial.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think if I hadn't have done that, I would not have been available for someone like you and see who I'm married to now, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: So there was, it wasn't like nothing was happening before, but he and I were married.

[SPEAKER_02]: And like I said, we had our son Henry when really my, [SPEAKER_02]: world shattered and I found myself at this very table at three o'clock every morning pouring out my story over my memoir for years at a time you know and the amazing thing was is that every time god this is gonna make me emotional every time i would like shake my fist at the sky or be like what what am i doing this for this is like crazy making what i could not understand [SPEAKER_02]: Why this was happening?

[SPEAKER_02]: I certainly wasn't getting any supporter like couldn't find an agent or no one really cared about it I'm like then take this thing away from me this obsession.

[SPEAKER_02]: It just felt so crippling and my husband would hear me and Watch me shake my fist and hear me say I'm not gonna keep doing this and he would just love me and go Mm-hmm and then the next morning.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'd be like, okay I gotta keep going and he's like I know you do you know when you just trusted my process when I [SPEAKER_02]: was so in the weeds and I didn't know which way was up and I'm so grateful to him for that.

[SPEAKER_02]: And he even saw this funny book long before I could ever see it midway to my memoir.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's like, you're a writer, you know, and you're going to write another book and I was like, no, what would I write about, you know, you're out of your mind.

[SPEAKER_02]: And to be that scene and supported and loved by someone is like, beyond huge.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, are you an anxious to touch her or were you?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, I think I'm all of all of the patchman styles, right, depending, and I will be honest and say I never really connected with that language either.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's not like I think in attachment styles, but you could lay the attachment styles, probably directly over this, you know, looking at trauma responses and complex trauma.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's because, you know, it's we're talking about the same thing.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's just different.

[SPEAKER_01]: words.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was just curious about like what your experience was in in dating him like in those earlier days.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I guess you had this, yeah, like you realized you had a broken picker, which you realized eventually was trauma, but what did that like, what did that look like?

[SPEAKER_01]: Was [SPEAKER_01]: Was a different thing.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was very different, which is what made it so confusing.

[SPEAKER_02]: I knew that I wanted something radically different, but I had no blueprint for it, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: And so whereas pretty much every relationship prior to meeting him had that like crazy chemistry, that's off the bat, the feeling, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: I did not have that with the answer.

[SPEAKER_02]: I had one of the [SPEAKER_02]: is interesting smart like it was just all there but it because it didn't have that.

[SPEAKER_02]: fiery sort of like, yeah, views that was slowly burning down.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, well, maybe we're just meant to be friends, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Because I just truly did not know what it felt like to be in a healthy reciprocal relationship.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then, of course, I started to overanalyze.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, well, wait a second.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, trying to find things wrong with him?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, he clearly, he must not be right for me.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I found the things that I found.

[SPEAKER_02]: Fortunately, I turned to this amazing friend in mentor at the time.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, I don't know.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think I'm doing it all over again.

[SPEAKER_02]: And he said, Ingrid, you were always trying to make the wrong person right, and now you're trying to write person wrong.

[SPEAKER_02]: And when he said it, my body just knew that it was true.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it's almost like in that moment, I let go of, [SPEAKER_02]: trying to figure it out and I allowed myself to be in this relationship with him and to experience something brand new and it was just this funny thing where it still felt like it was just so easy to this day, the easiest relationship.

[SPEAKER_02]: of my life.

[SPEAKER_02]: I've never questioned it.

[SPEAKER_02]: I've never questioned either of our loyalty or commitment.

[SPEAKER_02]: We've never lied to one another.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, the foundation is just rock rock solid.

[SPEAKER_02]: I trust it so completely.

[SPEAKER_02]: But at first, it just felt like that thing that I would tell clients, like, well, do you just, do you want to see him again?

[SPEAKER_02]: You know?

[SPEAKER_02]: And it was like, yeah, I can't wait to see him again.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so I just trusted that, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: And it built from there.

[SPEAKER_02]: How is Fawning showed up in your [SPEAKER_02]: You know, that's another great question.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think because I had never felt so safe.

[SPEAKER_02]: He gets a lot of the the crispy underbelly that I wouldn't allow anyone else to experience, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: So if it's not safe for me to be a whole person in the world, but I have all of this like, uh, churning stuff, guess who gets me underbelly.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love it.

[SPEAKER_02]: So the good news is that he's the kindest person I know, but he also doesn't take any shit.

[SPEAKER_02]: And he has a way of reflecting back to me [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know either nitpicking him and sort of tearing him apart or when I'm being, I don't know when I'm bringing stuff to him that isn't his, he has this way of making me see it and almost laugh at the absurdity, and then we can both sort of be together and how ridiculous it all is.

[SPEAKER_02]: I hope that that's changing over time, that the more that I can be more of myself in all the places, the less I have to dump on him at home.

[SPEAKER_02]: Do you know what I mean?

[SPEAKER_02]: He certainly deserves that, and I'm committed to that ongoing work, but I think that that's changed over time.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, um, so I wanted to follow up.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'll go a little bit deeper on a few of the things that we touched upon in your first interview.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I wanted to talk about you going no contact with your mom.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that on a conscious level, we can understand that our parents inability to take accountability or have a willingness to do the work.

[SPEAKER_01]: like has nothing to do with us, not being good enough or level enough, obviously like there's younger parts of us though that, you know, probably think that it does have to do with that.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so I was curious if you could touch upon that and what the, what did grieving that look like for you?

[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, [SPEAKER_02]: In the years and years of writing my memoir, I was hyper-focused on my stepdad and my mom was still kind of getting a free pass, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: It was easier to see him for the abuser that he was, but I had a real hard time owning the depth of her neglect.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, and this is what was so interesting about writing to, and maybe we talked about this before, as I was finishing what I, at that point, knew was going to be a memoir on my experience.

[SPEAKER_02]: I kept having to look at my story through the reader's eyes, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: And through the reader's eyes, it's like, hmm, mom is missing, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: But it was only for the sake of the reader, quite frankly, it was not because I was finally ready.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was like, oh my god, this story is not finished.

[SPEAKER_02]: I have to look at this and having to look at it was the most devastating experience of my life to finally feel and metabolize.

[SPEAKER_02]: and feel the shattering of what had always been true, but that I had continued to kind of rise above it and dress it up and make it something else to finally own that was so brutal.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it dropped me into what was a very real, [SPEAKER_02]: need to have no contact because contact would have meant that I was still in harm's way, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's almost like I was carrying all this wounding and I never really knew it.

[SPEAKER_02]: But now that I do and I see that I'm essentially this gaping world with not so much as a band they'd to hold it together.

[SPEAKER_02]: I needed to shore up a sense of safety like my life depended on it and safety meant I cannot be in relationship with people that have harmed me and that to your point by not taking responsibility, by not admitting what happened, by not validating to like the tiniest degree.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like there was a very low bar, but by not doing any of that, you are perpetuating that very harm and no contact became almost like this [SPEAKER_02]: you know me cobbling together the only safety net I'd ever known right and you know what is grieving look like what before you go there what did that conversation with her look like where you finally set that boundary.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so basically just to recap too, and the people probably will have like her reared your story, but you initially, and if I'm remembering correctly, you initially came to your mom about the abuse when you were younger, correct?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I followed 16 and then once once your stepfather passed away, you circled, you circled back to her on that with kind of a false hope that maybe that now that he's gone, she'll be willing to look at this.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, because I'd endowed her for all of those years, those decades with some sense of real-year-old this man.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, she was married to him the whole time.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I really believed that she knew what happened, but quite frankly, was in her own fond response, where her privileging her relationship with this man.

[SPEAKER_02]: Not only involved self of abandonment, she abandoned her kids, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Not able to show up for them and advocate for them when we were literally asking for help.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so I did believe as he passed away and I felt safer.

[SPEAKER_02]: I felt safer even though he was hundreds of miles away.

[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't have much of a relationship with him.

[SPEAKER_02]: I felt safer in the world.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I imagined maybe she feels safer too.

[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe we can finally have [SPEAKER_02]: a real relationship.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was of course what I'd always wanted who doesn't want that, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: But I knew we couldn't have it unless we finally, finally, finally addressed the elephant in the room, which is that she told me I made it all up, and I was a selfish liar, and it didn't really happen.

[SPEAKER_01]: And ever speak about it, with her again, between [SPEAKER_01]: 16 until this comment no okay I don't believe so I can't I don't have any memory of it.

[SPEAKER_02]: Nope.

[SPEAKER_02]: I went into like okay.

[SPEAKER_02]: You're not available for that but this is my family and so I'm going to go along to get along and it's just going to be the elephant in the room and I'm going to tolerate it right like I'm going to deal with your lack of [SPEAKER_02]: Seeing me respecting me honoring me at all.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to see my abuser at my wedding at all these family functions because that's what it means to have a family.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like I'm constantly attached to my greatest pain and wounding and so at the end of the day I did circle back and she had just lost her husband of decades.

[SPEAKER_02]: Three decades or more.

[SPEAKER_02]: Surely that's not enough like now she's grieving and so I circled back again and you know two various means and the people are interested read the memoir because it's all in there, but at the end of the day she just wasn't able to do it right and so [SPEAKER_02]: I don't even know that it was, I had said prior if we can't have a real conversation, I cannot have you in my life.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I don't know that there was another moment where I was like, well, here's the moment, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like you're incapable, it was just like, I cannot do this.

[SPEAKER_02]: I cannot, oh, I, in fact, I sent a text, that's what it was, because something had happened, and I was like, that's it, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not going to keep pretending.

[SPEAKER_02]: You can't keep pretending, like we have this happy family life, none of its real.

[SPEAKER_02]: Do not contact me.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that you respond.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think it was her response to that that was, you know, a response that a lot of us get, which is like, I can't change the past.

[SPEAKER_02]: And we all make mistakes.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like, but I don't recall you mentioning any mistakes that you've actually made, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm not asking you to change the past.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm actually asking you to shop differently now.

[SPEAKER_02]: But it was just, it was a reflection of the same thing, dressed up in language that someone might have perceived as like, I love you.

[SPEAKER_02]: In fact, you know, I love, I want to have a relationship.

[SPEAKER_02]: I love you.

[SPEAKER_02]: There was no there there, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: And so that was it.

[SPEAKER_02]: And [SPEAKER_02]: You know, it was several years like that and meanwhile my son's getting older and that feels more complicated and all the things that we have to go through along those lines.

[SPEAKER_02]: But what also was happening is I was working with a brilliant trauma therapist and doing more of this work and working more with my clients, which I always reinforce as my own understanding and healing.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it's like those young parts of me that could not [SPEAKER_02]: tolerate a mother who never protected me, they finally know that I'm here.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm here.

[SPEAKER_02]: I can protect us in ways that I was not capable of before, but I don't feel that vulnerable, that much of a raw nerve, honestly, to anyone, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like I finally have skin.

[SPEAKER_02]: And now that I have skin, my boundaries have shifted a bit.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I have seen her with my son for my son's sake, [SPEAKER_02]: we have revisited the conversation and basically she said, well, she read my memoir and she told a friend that she believed me.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that was one step in the process.

[SPEAKER_02]: She didn't tell me, but she told a friend who told me.

[SPEAKER_02]: And when I tried to have the conversation again, not too long ago, she cannot do it.

[SPEAKER_02]: She cannot have the conversation and then I said, well, I'm going to have to close the store again.

[SPEAKER_02]: And she said, but I can listen.

[SPEAKER_02]: I can listen.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so I said every single thing you can possibly imagine in a tone that you can also imagine and I said all of the things and particularly now is a mom with a child and imagining him coming to me for help and mine not only not giving it to him but like making him the bad guy.

[SPEAKER_02]: I just [SPEAKER_02]: And she admitted I was a bad mom and I didn't do right by you and she said a lot of other things that felt a little like oh you still don't get it but she showed up to the degree that she could and then she said you know can you please please please please forgive me and in that moment I really searched my body and I was like I can I can it doesn't mean.

[SPEAKER_02]: We're like hanging out or having regular conversations.

[SPEAKER_02]: She knows about this book.

[SPEAKER_02]: I said, you know what, at the end of the day, I can forgive you, and you never have to talk about it.

[SPEAKER_02]: But you need to know that I'm never going to stop, because talking about it has saved my life and returned to me to me.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it's helping other people.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so, this is the reality now.

[SPEAKER_02]: And she said, I get it, and I'm proud of you, and I don't want you to stop.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's yeah, and it just like goes to show just shame is so like mind blowing and baffling that's right just how how we will we're willing some people are would rather lose.

[SPEAKER_01]: relationship with a child, then face the shame of themselves.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I know it's not a conscious right choice, right, but it just go the mental gymnastics that go on, just how [SPEAKER_01]: powerful like the brain is.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: That it will convince someone that it's cutting off your child is the better option between looking at the ways you screwed up.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I don't even think she would ever say cutting off my child, even though I flat out said, you're the one who's making this decision by not engaging losing a relationship with the kids.

[SPEAKER_02]: In her mind, she's thinking, well, gosh, anger just can't get over this.

[SPEAKER_02]: I hope she gets over it one day, you know?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, yeah, I just came across this like woman's Instagram who she's like taking like the opposite approach of how kids that cut off their parents are so entitled and [SPEAKER_01]: market place, for gasping up all these parents who just won't like take accountability for the way that they screwed up.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, oh, I had to do everything in me to not like comment on it.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's such a shame, but to be honest, you know, as a part of like marketing this funny book, there was a big piece in the New York Times that my book was included in.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the title of the article was, itself helped just turning everyone into being a jerk.

[SPEAKER_02]: right, a paraphrasing, but that was literally the title.

[SPEAKER_02]: And again, it just misses the mark.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, am I entitled, am I a jerk or am I finally just feeling like the effects of what happened to me?

[SPEAKER_02]: Am I trying to have a voice for the first time?

[SPEAKER_02]: Am I trying to do the thing that y'all have been telling me to do my whole life, which is set a healthy boundary?

[UNKNOWN]: Ha ha ha ha.

[SPEAKER_02]: But you want me to set a healthy boundary that doesn't ruffle any of your feathers.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know what I mean?

[SPEAKER_02]: And it's like that's just not how it works.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think it's easy to couch it in that way that it's about entitlement.

[SPEAKER_02]: And again, I go, this is similar for people that cannot wrap their heads around a fond response.

[SPEAKER_02]: They're just like, that's not even a thing.

[SPEAKER_02]: And what are you talking about?

[SPEAKER_02]: And it's just manipulation or whatever they want to say.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I go, you know what you're telling me right now is that you've never been disempowered a day in your life.

[SPEAKER_02]: And God bless you, I'm so glad that you have no clue what I am even talking about, and don't you dare tell me what my experience has been or judge it if you have not walked one single day in my shoes.

[SPEAKER_01]: Hell yes.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: I want to circle back to the, the, obviously you have a relation somewhat of a relationship with their mom now, but I am curious what the what the grieving looked like as far as coming to her.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm circling back.

[SPEAKER_02]: Did I, did I sort of leave a comment on the movie?

[SPEAKER_02]: Andering.

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, goodness.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I mean, let me just say this first before like so one thing that I've really been coming to terms with over the past several months for me is I realize how much me intellectualizing my parents.

[SPEAKER_01]: is really cutting me off from experiencing just like the deep sadness of the reality of the situation with my parents.

[SPEAKER_02]: You said it better than I could say, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Is that [SPEAKER_02]: Real grieving means dropping into just the reality, the painful reality, not figuring it out or understanding it or writing on top of the experience because I'm going to pack it and all this like clinical language or whatever.

[SPEAKER_02]: And [SPEAKER_02]: You know, when I was writing the memoir and shortly after I had this evidence that like even all these years later, my mom was in fact not going to say, oh my God, I'm so sorry that happened.

[SPEAKER_02]: And let's have a real conversation.

[SPEAKER_02]: That feeling, that very vulnerable, primitive, wounded, oh my God, the person that's supposed to love me [SPEAKER_02]: dropped me and is essentially saying they would do it again.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I mean, there was no pain like that pain.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I remember two things.

[SPEAKER_02]: One, sleeping next to Yancy as it was like the grief was coming for me.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, no, no, no, I don't want to feel this.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like I was willing myself not to feel it.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it wouldn't let me run this time.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the feeling of lying next to the contrast, in other words, of lying next to the person that was holding more space and more love for me than I'd ever held my entire life.

[SPEAKER_02]: And yet feeling this feeling of the mother wound coming for me, being like you never really mattered to begin with.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was like I felt like [SPEAKER_02]: Talk about shame.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it was just, I felt slimy.

[SPEAKER_02]: I felt mired in this goo that was like, even my husband must not be real.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not meant for this world.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it just sucks you in.

[SPEAKER_02]: It sucks me into a very dark place.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I did not want him to know that I was feeling it.

[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't want him to see me cry.

[SPEAKER_02]: I felt, [SPEAKER_02]: Not ugly physically, but there was like this too ugly for the world's kind of a thing, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: And I had to like slink quietly out of bed and go into the bathroom and sob like I hadn't sobbed my entire life until there was no energy left, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: And so that was one big scene, one big moment.

[SPEAKER_02]: But talk about the millions of moments in between.

[SPEAKER_02]: Talk about the moment of me.

[SPEAKER_02]: selling this book, Fawning, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: I went from deciding that I'm going to validate my own story and I'm going to self-publish my memoir and it was the most healing and helpful thing I'd ever done.

[SPEAKER_02]: Fast forward and I'm sitting in 14 different meetings with major publishers and they're all like Ingrid.

[SPEAKER_02]: We want you to write this book on Fawning and [SPEAKER_02]: I was in London for a conference when I got the news that Penguin Random House was you know, basically taking the book off the table before anyone else could scoop it up.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm sitting on the plane coming home and that feeling when you have a parent that's alive, but you can't really call them and tell them like, I did this thing.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's another moment of grief, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: That's another moment of grief.

[SPEAKER_02]: My son goes through things where I go, God is a parent, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: It's so lonely sometimes as a parent, but to not be able to reach back to that other link in the chain and be like, hey, I'm going through this thing.

[SPEAKER_02]: I could use the support.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's just countless and countless moments and opportunities where [SPEAKER_02]: I have to pause and slow down.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so even coming back from London, I had to open my laptop and I was writing a letter to myself and feeling all the feelings.

[SPEAKER_02]: And when that became too much, I had to go in the airplane bathroom and have a huge sob and sort of just come back to the seat [SPEAKER_02]: keep going, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's this ongoing process.

[SPEAKER_02]: This type of grief is like every other kind of grief when you're talking about loss, where you think you're doing just fine and then out of nowhere you just get this blow, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: And it's often in these unusual circumstances, you're like, well, I thought it would happen here, but boy, it's really caught me off guard.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, weathering the [SPEAKER_02]: storms of these grief patterns that move through my system is a big part of the ongoing process of healing.

[SPEAKER_02]: And new memories arise even that I didn't know about from before other parts, you know, that longer I do this part's work.

[SPEAKER_02]: Boy, they are holding some history and some wisdom that I can understand why I forgot.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I can understand anything you'd be willing to [SPEAKER_02]: No, I'm not going to go there yet.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's too.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's not for the supplies.

[SPEAKER_02]: Enough.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I still only have fragments.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it wouldn't feel fair to what I feel like is emerging.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I'm going to trust the process that's emerging.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to trust this process and the parts just like I trusted the writing.

[SPEAKER_02]: that came before and know that my life is dedicated to this process of re-claiming me and taking care of myself, whatever that looks like.

[SPEAKER_01]: I really, that what you spoke to about when you were flying back from London, like that I can relate to it.

[SPEAKER_01]: I know so many people can of that unique pain that comes from having your parents have a disinterest in your life.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like there's something that's very, it really, really hits the gut.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I think I didn't even know those things really.

[SPEAKER_02]: I hadn't felt them really and still I until I started writing them about them in the memoir.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then I could see like, oh, yeah, you never came to see me at college or where I lived or, you know, I moved across the country and you never came to see me.

[SPEAKER_02]: They, oh, I got a PhD and you didn't come to graduation.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, all of these things.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so, [SPEAKER_02]: Fast forward to this moment of like selling the book and it's just you're not just feeling the grief of that moment you're feeling it for a lifetime of those experiences where here you are doing it alone in this way again right obviously I had my friends and my husband, but it's different it's different.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so proud of you.

[SPEAKER_01]: And you're such a beautiful example of like the reality, the hard truth of this messy ass healing journey that we're on that it's unfortunately folks, it's never ends.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's good.

[SPEAKER_02]: Better.

[SPEAKER_02]: Wouldn't you say, I mean, yes.

[SPEAKER_02]: If it didn't also return me to me in ways that like I couldn't have written this book or are you kidding me?

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm I proud of myself.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm proud of this work that I'm putting into the world.

[SPEAKER_02]: This feels like it blows my mind that my life has led up to my ability to do this.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you talk about that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Fawning presentation where I don't want to be too big because I'm a target.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, oh my gosh, can I get over how big I am in my life right now?

[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm still terrified.

[SPEAKER_02]: There are parts of me that are like, [SPEAKER_02]: What's the blowback going to be?

[SPEAKER_02]: But I know without a doubt that the richness and the community and the goodness and the healing is going to be so much bigger than anything else that could ever come for me.

[SPEAKER_02]: And even if it does, I have my home back.

[SPEAKER_02]: I know who I am.

[SPEAKER_02]: I know my intentions.

[SPEAKER_02]: I know that I'm not saying I have it all figured out.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm saying can we just have this aspect of the conversation already?

[SPEAKER_02]: This is just my contribution, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: So, [SPEAKER_02]: It almost doesn't matter, even if someone does come for me, because I'm going to be able to say, like, okay, well, what's about you and that?

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, not just own it.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, oh, and that, I did something wrong.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, heaven forbid, we consider that maybe it has nothing to do with us.

[SPEAKER_02]: And if it is, and us at all, that's right.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, on behalf of all the fauners out there, thank you so much for writing this book.

[SPEAKER_01]: Is there anything about this book that you want to share that I haven't asked?

[SPEAKER_02]: No, you asked the best questions.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for unpacking this even more.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I feel like even this conversation gives me a chance to sort of know myself more, to love myself more.

[SPEAKER_02]: And you give that to your listeners.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's a huge gift what you do.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm so glad you're back.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I want to give you two those to the amazing work that you're doing on behalf of Beat Amam, too.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, thank you, thank you for sharing that.