November 21, 2022 • 42 mins
Am I in a trauma bond? Are we ALL in trauma bonds? Hosts Tracy T. Rowe and Cara Pressley find the answers to these burning questions on this episode of Let’s Red Table That. Psychologist, author, and trauma bond survivor herself Ingrid Clayton, PhD shares how her step father’s grooming led to her developing trauma bonds with romantic partners, even after years of studying for her degree. Discover for yourself if you are in trauma bonds on this episode of Let’s Red Table That.
Learn More about Ingrid Clayton, PhD
Hosts Information:
Cara Pressley
@thecareercheerleader Cara’s Instagram
@TheCareerCheerleader Cara’s Facebook
@the1cheering4U Cara’s Twitter
@FeelinSuccessful Cara’s TikTok
Tracy T. Rowe
@tracytrowe Tracy’s Instagram
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@tracytrowe Tracy’s Twitter
@tracytrowe Tracy’s TikTok
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hey, y'all, Hey, what's up, and welcome to Let's Red
Table that I'm Tracy t Row and I'm Cala Presley.
How are you feeling about today's episode? Tracy, Okay, first
of all, let me say this, I learned what trauma
bonding is. I no, no, no. I brought my own narrative.
I gave myself its definition of what I thought trauma
(00:25):
bonding was. And I'm sure they're probably some other people
who believe what I believe trauma bonding was. If you're
out there, I'll if you hear me. So I thought
trauma bonding was people that had experienced trauma, that had
similar traumas and they connected and went through healing and
bonded in that way. I didn't understand it to mean
(00:46):
that you were in your own trauma bonding experience. You
understand what I'm saying, M I do? I do? I do?
Like it's more I definitely realized in this episode it's
more of a subconscious thing that we are connected to
and or drawn to people who have familiar behaviors that
weren't as positive and or successful. So yeah, it's uh,
(01:08):
it was eye open, and I'll say that it really
was before we get into it, let's back up and
make sure we know what it is. Trauma bonding is
the connection an abused person feels towards their abuser and
develops out of a repeated cycle of abuse, devaluation, and
positive reinforcement. Healthline says leaving an abusive relationship isn't as
(01:30):
simple as walking out the door. So that right which
you know they say with domestic violence, with people that
have suffered from domestic violence, that they leave seven times
and go back before they are gone for good. I
believe it, you know. I just feel like any abusive
situation that when people here domestic violence of what have you,
(01:53):
I think they all automatically think romantic, you know your partner.
But I think it happened clearly. The season is showing
this is happening more and more. Parent child relationship, any
power dynamic, there's something many power dynamic people literally are
abusing their power out here. Bless my heart. I really
thought people were living the right way. Okay, well, speaking
of people not living in the the right way, I'm gonna
(02:14):
tell you who I'm sick of. Because this is a
common thread. Dr Romney, maybe we can get you one.
You can help us all these dog on narcissists. The
narcissists are literally the common denominator for a good number
of the things we've experienced. Am I right or wrong?
They're live in their best life out here. I mean,
I'm not sure if they're winning or not, but they're everywhere.
(02:34):
They're they're losers because they're winning. They're definitely losers. But
it's like, what is that that perspective that they are
drawn to, that they have chosen this life of narcissism. Well,
I can tell you that once I knew what the
definition was, I was like, oh, well, heck yeah, I
got trauma bond and which one do you want to
(02:55):
talk about? The knee jerk for us is to start laughing,
card like land to keep crying friends, all right and well?
And as we go through the episode, I had more
of a relation in the workplace than any romantic connection.
I just was thinking and listening like, oh yeah, oh yeah,
wait a minute, So that's gonna be interesting. I can't
(03:16):
wait to tap into it. Now it's time to share
with our online Red Table Talk community has to say
about this episode. So I can kick this off first, right, So,
Kristin Morrigan says, my goodness, that last couple got me.
I came into my relationship exactly like Brianna. I had
major daddy issues and didn't understand why anyone would want
(03:38):
to be with me. So I tried my hardest to
run my now husband off, but he stayed the course
and together we worked through my issues. I got a
little choked up on this one. Another great episode. Well
thank you, Kristen. We appreciate that. I enjoyed it too.
Gretchen Marie meg Guyer said, Wow, I took notes during
this episode for real, this one, I think a lot
(04:01):
of people can relate to. Gretchen. You are so absolutely right,
because I want you to know you weren't the only
one taking notes. Our very own car was taking those
two weren't your car? Yes, I was notebook and all,
So I understand. Tracy Brooke Chapelle said this was so phenomenal.
I saw myself and Justin and his wife tears just
rolling down my face as a serious truth hit me.
(04:25):
Understand you, Tracy, great name, Tracy, and Kim Booie said
I was engaged four times before I finally married at
twenty nine. I was a mess in my teens and
early twenties. Can't even remember a lot of it, totally
blocked it out, but all rooted in my parents divorce
and the breakup of our family. Glad I put in
(04:47):
the work, made the change and found someone who helped
me get to the other side. Been married for thirty
one years now and enjoying the best years of my life.
Oh that's nice, Kim, so good. One of We're gonna
take a quick break, but when we get back, we'll
be joined by one incredible guest from our Red Tabletop community.
(05:10):
We're bringing a fellow RTT community member to the Virtual
Red Table. Ingrid Clayton is a psychologist and author who
comes at her work with a deeper level of understanding,
and she is a trauma survivor herself, growing up with
the narcissistic stepdad. Ingrid has worked to break the bonds
of trauma in her life and support her patients in
(05:31):
doing the same. Ingrid, thank you for coming on Let's
Red Table Dad. How are you. I'm well, Thank you
so much for having me, so much for joining, so
excited for you to be here. Yes, Ingered, I have
lots and lots of questions. I mean, I'm first off,
you want to start out by saying that we're grateful
you're here and we're gonna learn a lot. And we
have a segment that we love. This is a out
(06:00):
of the show where we reveal which moments made us pause, rewind,
and listen again. We call it Wait, What So White?
There were lots of white woods in this episode, Like
several in this episode. One of the first ones, Dr
Alfie said, you know how they used to say to
W know was Ben, W don't know. But it's still
(06:20):
the devil, right, But it's the devil that both of
you are familiar with. Do you find yourself drawn to
what you know even if it's bad for you? Well,
if you're asking me personally, I'm sad to say the
answer is yes. And in fact, this is why I'm
so passionate about sharing my personal experience, because I never
(06:43):
understood that even though I thought I knew better growing
up in a narcissistic family system and addicted family system, dysfunctional, toxic,
however you want to label at family system, I knew
very young. I did not want this for the rest
of my life. I wanted to do it differently, and
I saught so much help and guidance and support to
(07:07):
attempt to do it differently. I have three degrees in psychology,
I've sat on a million therapy couches, I've been sober
for twenty seven years, and none of this information gave
me the release from what my nervous system learned as
a child growing up in this home. And so I've
(07:28):
really come to understand it that we almost have two
distinct parts of ourselves. There's the conscious rational mind that
can intellectually understand, of course I want to be in
a healthy relationship. And then there's what I learned in
my body through these very subtle, subconscious experiences about oh no,
(07:52):
this is what I have to do to be safe,
this is what I have to do to maintain connection,
this is what I have to do to have a voice.
And this experience is what ultimately led me to my
chemistry of being attracted to unavailable, narcissistic, actively addictive partners
(08:14):
over and over again, even though I was working so
hard to try to do it differently. So this idea
of the way that I've heard it is red flags
don't look like red flags when they feel like home.
Hold on, now, that's red flags and look like red
(08:35):
flags when they feel like home. So I didn't know
that it was the devil, because the devil to me, listen,
I learned how to survive in the face of these
sort of be devilments. That's I can handle that, no worries.
I can do that. Jada said it somewhere in the episode.
She's Oh, I can fix it. I can. It was
(08:57):
deeply compelling to me because it was so familiar, and
so I really had to learn that that crazy kind
of chemistry that felt like, oh, there's so much potential
here was not healthy chemistry. And in fact, my now marriage, that,
(09:18):
thank goodness, the longest healthiest relationship I've ever had, felt
night and day different entering into it than every relationship
that I had before. That's really something. What you're gravitating
to is what feels familiar, Right, it feels like home. Yeah,
it feels like home. It's not necessarily that it's a
(09:39):
red flag. It's home. It may be red flags for
everybody else, but what I see it's home. Do you
find that you're conscious of the decisions you make out
of trauma in the moment, where do you look back
later and see it clearly it's more of a hindsight,
especially in the beginning as you start to heal your trauma.
So I think, for me, this is I talked about
(10:00):
my experiences in the lens of trauma at all because
it finally allowed me to make sense to myself. Right. So,
if I was going to all these therapists and going
what do I keep getting in these relationships? I can't
figure it out. The thing that finally helped me was
to understand, first of all, the body will always prioritize safety, okay,
(10:23):
And we have these trauma responses that are in effort
to keep us safe, to help us survive, to maintain connection,
even if it's not great connection. They are fight, flight, freeze,
and fawn. And this last one here, fawning is not
only my experience, but it's what Jada talked about and
(10:44):
the eye can fix it. It's what Shay talked about
in her people pleasing tendencies. So the fawning trauma response
is when we abandon ourselves in order to show up
for someone else. It's the heartbeat of codependency. Is what
fawning is. When I fawn, it's in service of I'm
going to abandon myself and show up for you. And
(11:06):
then you're gonna show up for me to write I'm
gonna fix your stuff, I'm going to help you along.
I'm gonna smile when you need me to smile. But
eventually that's gonna come full circle, isn't it? And unfortunately
it often does not. And where we lay prosody there,
that's right, And so where we end up is just
(11:27):
abandoning ourselves and staying abandoned. When you say we're abandoning ourselves,
is it's the exhaustion of it, like just subconsciously, like
I don't think I can fight this any longer. What
I mean when you say people abandon themselves, Like in
my spirit, I believe that no one wants to really
just abandon them I feel like they're doing all they
(11:47):
can and they're gonna do all they can for someone else.
But when you say they are, we know that the
actor now is abandoning themselves. But I think in the
moment it's like exhaustion. I think it shows up. It
may be depression, it may be the whole entire experience
has spiraled them into a sense of I gotta just
let go. I've done. This is such a smart point
(12:08):
that you're making and so Pete Walker is the trauma
therapist to coin the term fawning, and what he says
is that fawning is the last house on the block.
In other words, when you've tried to fight response, the
freeze and flight response and you have found them not
to work in these toxic relationships, fawning is the last town. No.
(12:32):
Nobody wants to abandon themselves. Nobody wants to say I
don't matter. I'm going to privilege you because I don't
really want to have any self worth. Right. Trauma responses
are not conscious. These are based on our instincts. Okay,
so when you think about an animal surviving in the wild,
they don't think do I want to play dead when
(12:54):
this other animal comes to attack? Do I want to
fight back and growl up? They just do it. These
are instincts. We have the same instincts. They're not conscious.
And again that also allows me to have self compassion,
because who would want to abandon themselves. It's so painful
to have to look at how many times I personally
(13:18):
did that, And a part of healing is going back
and grieving everything that I lost every time I couldn't
have a real voice or participate fully in relationship. What
you just said there too about grieving is important because
if you don't see it as a loss, and you
see it's possibly still something I can fight for, something
(13:38):
that's worth it, then you don't even get to grieve,
to let go, to move on. You're still grieving in
real time and hurt. You're just hurt. You can't even
allow it to be a grief. Like a part of
grief is the acceptance that it's over and done and
I can't do a thing about it, you know, and
you hate to say. It's a little bit easier when
it's a person that's passed right right grieving people that
(13:58):
are still alive. And that's why breaking these trauma bonds,
it's one aspect of why breaking the trauma bond is
so hard, because we also want to have hope. We
want to believe that this person is going to come
around and they're gonna show up and take responsibility and
do right by themselves and do right by me. And
who doesn't want to have that sort of hope and
(14:20):
belief in humanity? And we have to look at the
writing on the wall and that all the hope and
belief in the world is never going to change another person.
So if they are not exhibiting true behaviors, not talking
to talk, I'm talking about walking the walk, then I
think someone really has to look at maybe it's time
(14:43):
to grieve this relationship and stop investing more of myself
in it. Okay, So, Ingra we've been talking about trauma bonding.
We gave a quick definition of what trauma bonding is
in the beginning of this episode, but Angry, can you
explain more thorough the what exactly trauma bonding is. So
(15:04):
trauma bonding, it does often get confused with this idea
of two people that have trauma that are coming together
and sort of bonding over that shared experience. I think
that's often how it's talked about. But what we're talking
about in the literature of trauma is it's a hormonal,
chemical attachment between two people that is based on alternate
(15:28):
experiences of either abuse and neglect, sprinkled in with some
normal behavior some what seems like healthy attachment or even love.
And so there are two building blocks to trauma bonding.
One is intermittent reinforcement, which is the receiving or giving
of a reward rather at inconsistent intervals. Basically, this is
(15:52):
Las Vegas, Okay, intermittent reinforcement. I'm gonna sit down to
the slot machine. I know I'm gonna lose most of
the time, but I'm pulling at lever because i want
the big payout. Right, It's worth it to me to
keep throwing my money in because I'm like, there's a chance. Right.
That's basically intermittent reinforcement. The second building block is a
(16:13):
power differential. Okay, So when we see it in apparent
child relationship, through employment, through financial situations, all kinds of things.
So here's the thing that makes trauma bonding really tricky,
I think is that when we are abused or neglected,
we are chemically wired Okay, our entire body. The mission
(16:36):
again is about survival, So we are wired to focus
on getting to the other side. Right. We want to
be saved, we want to be free. And when the abuser,
the person that's neglecting you or unavailable, when they are
the person that brings you relief, the brain now associates
(16:57):
them with safety. Here's what I'm understanding. Yeah, I had
to jump in here because based on what you just said,
every single dog own body that's bleeping has had some
type of trauma bonding. I mean, and maybe not at
an instagred bible. On some spectrum, all of us have
had some measure of trauma bonding. Because what I understand
(17:20):
you saying is, even if the person doesn't know that
they're inflicting trauma, you could be traumatized by them, and
it could still be the very person that could either
do one of the two building clocks, that is, to
be the person that gives you the reward or the
person that is the power. This start this started to school.
I'm just listen. I'm listening like this started to school.
(17:42):
One too plus to is pick me and pick me,
pick me, like the too plus to is four for me,
Like I know that I enjoyed the attention of school
and getting things right and it was a stellar student, right,
So then when that started falling off, Hello middle school,
it's going on here, you know what. But it translated
into different ways for me, including like work. So when
(18:06):
you said workplace, if you're dealing with a terrible manager
and you and all your coworkers are all, that's a bond,
not romantically. I think we often see it, and of
course we're talking about romantic settings in this conversation here,
but I can see that in the workplace. Yeah, it's
definitely not just romantic relationships, right like the building box
for mine were with my stepfather and then my mother.
And so if we look at how the brain latches
(18:28):
onto the positive experience right about, oh, I've been chosen,
I've raised my hand and now I'm the favorite student
or whatever it is. Once we're chosen, the brain does
not hold onto this long term experience of every single
time that you weren't chosen. Okay. It turns off the
part of the brain that can think long term. And
this is what creates the feeling that we need the
(18:50):
abuser to survive. It's why leaving trauma bonds are so hard.
It's why so many people go, why didn't you just leave? Right?
They don't under stand what's happening in these deep dynamics
in terms of a really hormonal connection. And so if
you look at this intermittent reinforcement and go, okay, so
(19:11):
the brain is only latching onto the part where, oh,
thank goodness, we're back. We're good, right, I'm feeling good again,
the relationship is good, and you're looking at these power
dynamics where oftentimes someone's self esteem is so whittled away, right,
so their sense of themselves has become so small that
they genuinely do think that they need the other person
(19:35):
in order to survive. It feels like annihilation to leave
these relationships. It is bigger than devastation. Yeah, my life,
My life, that's a common phrase. That's a common phrase
I hear, whether they're leaving a job or relationship. Have
you never heard someone said even no mind, it's probably
in a moment of just exacerbated exhaustion, but my life
(19:59):
is over. What am I going to do? We talked
a little bit about Cheryl's story, but now we do
want to really hear from you, Ingrid. How did your
stepdad as narcissism affect your life and cause you trauma specifically?
First of all, the building blocks for trauma bonding are
(20:19):
right there when you have a narcissist, because narcissists intuitively
know how to exploit this intermittent reinforcement right there, just
masters at giving you just enough and then ripping it
all away. So for me, I would be given the
silent treatment in my own home for weeks, sometimes months
(20:43):
at a time by him, where I'd come out to
breakfast and my brothers exist, Oh, good morning, and how
are you? And it was literally like I I didn't
exist in my own home where the brothers, the sons
of his or you all stepped there. He was stepped
down to all of you. One was my iological brother,
one was his son, my stepbrother. But he only ignored you.
(21:04):
He only ignored me. So I was the scapegoat child.
And what I now know, which is what I finally
pieced together only very late in life, unfortunately, is that
my experience with my stepdad was one that he had
created many times before me in terms of grooming a
young girl in the hope of really for me being
(21:26):
he was grooming me to be his girlfriend. And so
in order to try and achieve that, he was engaging
in these trauma bonding techniques. Again not consciously, I don't know,
and had that language back then anyway, But he would
ignore me, ground me, steep punishments for the tiniest little things.
And then one day he'd say, Hey, there's a new
(21:49):
restaurant in town, and you love Italian food. I'd love
to pick you up from school and take you to lunch,
and then we'd go to lunch, and he'd say, you
know what, there's this jewelry store across the street, and
I have to do some business there. Why don't you
accompany me? And suddenly I'm walking out with this ring
that I've been coveting in the window. Right. So it's
(22:10):
these types of highs and lows that contribute to this
trauma bonding. How did you get to the point where
you learned about his kind of pattern behavior with grooming
and bread from me and really pedophilic behavior. Yeah, well,
so there's two things. There's the story that I've always known,
which was just my experience as I understood it at
(22:32):
the time, and the experience I shared on every therapist
couch that I ever went to. But two things never
happened in my journey. No one ever named narcissism or
narcissistic abuse, and no one ever named trauma. And so
it was about five years ago when my stepdad died
and I was suddenly called to do this writing and
(22:55):
I wasn't even sure what I was writing, but it
was stories from my own life. You know, I'll just
make a long story short that I ended up for
five years writing these experiences. What happened what they did
to me, the trauma responses. And it was only then
that I could see my own story through the lens
(23:17):
of trauma as a trauma therapist, and finally give myself
proper names and diagnoses for these things that I had
been living with my whole life, and I didn't know,
and you didn't know. Cheryl said that she was just
(23:39):
not attracted to kind men. I just was not attracted
to the nice guy. I'll never forget my very first
competitive dance partner, so sweet. I was so disgusted by
how sweet he was. And I was only attracted to
chauvinistic man. This is because as the relationship she experience,
(24:01):
we're unhealthy. That's right, angry. Have you found yourself re
enacting your own trauma, whether in relationships or other ways.
I re enacted it so many times. I lost count.
I re enacted it so many times it makes me
emotional to think about it. Even now. I genuinely thought
I was broken. I thought there must be something so
(24:23):
deeply wrong with me because I cannot get into a
healthy relationship to save my life. When Cheryl talked about
the kind person, I understand that so completely available kind people.
It was a little repulsive, and I also thought, if
you really knew me, you would not like me the
(24:45):
way because my body was so unaccustomed to that kind
of available, present and kind attention. And so after I
left my first husband, I did a ton of work
on myself. And what ended happening is I will never
forget it. Sitting across from my now husband on our
(25:05):
first date, I thought, he is so lovely and we
are having such an interesting conversation, and he's so present.
He had all of the makings of this kind, present,
available type of partner, and so I thought, I think
we're just meant to be friends, right, Like, there's no
way we could be together. I totally get that. I
totally get that. Great. I mistook that kind of crazy
(25:30):
chemistry that had happened with all of the narcissist and
addicted people before. I mistook that as a necessary ingredient
to enter into a relationship, and so when it was missing,
I truly thought, well, we must not have that kind
of chemistry. What I didn't know is that kind of
(25:51):
chemistry is unhealthy chemistry. It's a sign I should be
running in the other direction, and so right it for rights, Yeah,
So I finally figured out I need to stick around
long enough and try on this thing that was so
foreign to me, and I'm so grateful I did because
(26:12):
it is a night and day experience. How long have
you and your husbandmen together? We've been together ten years? Beautiful?
Let me tell you. I know for me and Grid,
my wife and I have been together for twenty eight years,
and like you, because I had been in so many relationships,
and interestingly enough, it really started for me the whole
(26:33):
trauma bonding now that I better understand what that was
or is. And me was with my weight and the negative,
harsh treatment that I received from my father, and I
didn't think I was worthy, right, I had this whole
issue with image, and Sweetie accepted me, and even when
I gained even more weight than I did when we met,
(26:54):
and it was weird to me, I was like, are
you are? Is this real? Are you sure you like
what you see? Are you unconditionally loving me? Is this true?
So much so that we've literally just got married on
our twenty five anniversary Because I didn't believe it was real.
It took me that long, you know, to be able
to trust it. Oh my gosh, congratulations on getting married
(27:18):
and staying together for so long. But I really identify
with the like are you sure? Like I will say
things to my husband on a weekly, if not daily
basis where I'm sort of explaining myself for questioning him,
and he'll be like, you don't have to do that,
and I'm like, what what are you like? Really, you're
(27:38):
really not judging me. I can tell you I feel
better now that you have fifteen hundred degrees and you're
burst and trained and you still suffering just litto me
is having the same trouble you're having. I feel much
better Car, what about you? No, Yeah, I have experienced
some of these feelings, but as you gotta speak, I'm
more so thinking about the workplace and just the my worthy.
(28:01):
And I knew I was because people would steal my
I knew I was because I would always get the
promotion in the workplace. I knew I was because I
was always the top rated instructor in the workplace. But
when it came to this one taking a manager, she
just couldn't quite understand why I was always being accelerated,
(28:23):
to the point that someone called one time and requested
that I teach a class because I'm just that successful.
But she made me teach it to another girl that
she trusted to try. Well, that's just flat out manipulation.
I mean, it's not that she couldn't see it. It's
not that she couldn't see it. She couldn't see it.
She couldn't stand it. And my optimism space as I'm
(28:46):
in learning, as I'm in learning these things, I couldn't
fathom that somebody would think that deeply to hold someone back,
and they definitely will. That's so painful. It's painful. But
I'm glad that I've experienced that because I can now
affirm myself over and over again and I'm aware of it. Yes,
(29:06):
for the self affirmation, I'm that I'd love that's huge.
Moum all about self affirmation. It's the healing, it's the healing,
it's real time, it's real time. Jada and Shay both
shared about feeling the need to fix people and people
pleasers ingrid. How does this play out as a trauma response, Well,
these are perfect examples of the funding trauma response. This
(29:29):
idea that if I see a broken bird, I go.
It's as though it gives me some sort of credibility
or reason to be in the relationship. It's like I
feel like I don't have any power. But if my
power is I'm gonna help you, I'm going to be
of service to you. That's fawning. That's the funding trauma response. Yeah,
(29:50):
and same with the people pleasing. Shay talked about that
such a great deal where she almost you could kind
of sense it was like she had no sense of
herself at a certain point, like no, of course you're
gonna run in and I'm only going to confront that
I don't want you here when we talk about a dresser,
and it's like wait a second, because we don't know
that we're fawning, right, So even just having this language,
(30:15):
I think can alert us to you know, I think
you said before, do you know when you're doing it?
Or do you know more in hindsight? So if I
don't know what a red flag is because I grew
up in a house full of red flags that I
was meant to have for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every
single day. Part of how we know that we've experienced trauma,
(30:35):
that we're engaging in trauma responses is to look at
our history and go, what are my patterns? What am
I repeating what am I doing again? That makes me
crazy that I'm doing it again. And when we can
put those patterns in this lens and language of trauma,
it's like we can suddenly see it for the first
(30:56):
time when we go out into the world and we go, oh,
wait a second, I'm people pleasing here. I also think
that word codependency has become so stigmatized. It's hard to
see yourself in it. You're like, no one wants to
be codependent, and people are like, why don't you just
love yourself? As though it's just this choice. Our body
(31:17):
is fawning for survival. But when I can identify it
as a trauma response, I can remind myself in that moment,
I can put my hand on my heart, which is
a self compassionate position where I can go okay, ingrid,
you are safe right now, your past is not happening.
You are allowed to have a voice, it's okay to
(31:41):
have an opinion, but I genuinely have to pause and
attend to what's happening in my body because part of
a trauma response is you don't know if it's happening
right now or if it's happening thirty years ago, right,
these things get fused. Trauma knows no time when it's
living in your body, so it's us feels real. Trauma
(32:02):
too is trying to just let me just skate past it, versus,
like you said, stop at just what did that thing
feel like? What was that that trigger? What should my
response be? And giving yourself the option of responses versus
just what I always do. So challenging that narrative in
your head, right, Tracy, I know you mentioned that you've
followed into being a people pleaser, So how did you
(32:24):
break this habit for yourself? I was a people pleasing queen.
Did you hear me? I had? I was? I really was.
I'm so grateful I can identify that now. I'm happy
to say that I was able to break that habit,
but it took a long time. Part of it was
I had this unbelievable sense of unworthiness. I would compare
(32:45):
myself to other people and not feel like there was
any value that I added unless I was making them
happy with what I was doing for them. That it
was the accolade I wanted to get that. Yes, that
at a girl, that way to go, your special, your
gift to me. I'm so grateful for you and have
that acknowledgement. And I finally had to acknowledge for myself
(33:06):
that after pouring into so many other people, as Jada
said it, fixing other people and seeing the potential in
other people and shoring them up, I was pouring out
and I was empty. There was literally nothing left for
me to have for my own goals and dreams. Okay,
I likened it to this. I was paying rent for
other people and I was homeless, right, That's exactly right.
(33:29):
And I had to just stop and look around and say,
let me get my stuff together and get in this
house that eyeball and take care of my own stuff
and get my own house shored up and cleaned up
and ready, and then pursue some of my goals. I
mean I literally put going and getting another's degree on
hold and doing stuff for family. I don't regret it,
because it was all part of a lesson, but I
had to take stock and inventory and say, I'm fifty
(33:50):
years old now, the majority of my life has been lived.
What am I going to do when I look back
and say, gosh, I regret this, and I hate that
I didn't do that and have these different dreams and
realize it's because I've been people pleasing and those people
have moved on with their own lives. They didn't know
what they thought. I enjoyed it because I made it.
(34:10):
I made myself look so happy, Dawn. You wanted to Yeah,
everybody breakfast, everybody breakfast. And I learned that no was
an answer and that it was okay, and people would
be okay with no, and if they weren't, they would
have to move on. Some people will be okay with
the no, and those are the people that get to
(34:31):
stay in your life. But there's another saying, which is
when we stop people pleasing, people will not be pleased. Well,
let me tell you what I can say to that
ingrid a man in Hallelujah, because the people that were
not pleased blocked me and blessed me. That's right. But
that's a huge transition and your nervous system to go
(34:53):
from literally living for people's validation to suddenly not only
are they not giving you validation, they might be mad
and that can feel terrify. Oh gosh, I was so
uncomfortable for a I mean because this was one that
happened recently. This happened like within the last year. And
(35:13):
when I stopped people pleasing for this particular person who is,
now I know, a narcissist. I made a choice and
did what Katie Morton calls the hug and roll. And
I said, Okay, I'm creating these boundaries for myself. So
now here's what I'm not gonna do anymore. And the
minute I did that, y'all, I got cut off. I
got blocked from every time. It's amazing how they do it.
(35:35):
But I just made a good, healthy decision for myself.
I'm taking care of myself. How are you angry? And
I was. I had to sit with that. I was
so uncomfortable, and I kept saying, do I reach out?
And then it was kind of this duality of a girl. No,
you don't call them. Don't call them. You get to
live your life, you get to make a choice. You're grown.
And then it was like, but they're upset, but they
(35:56):
may be. Hadn't that right? And I had to just
get myself together and I see, you've been hurt. You
you go on, You go on with that, you have that,
that's your phone, you hold onto your phone. I'm good
us life changing, life changing, it is, and it gives
me so much anxiety. Just hearing you talk about it,
I'm like, oh no, I know that feeling so now.
(36:16):
The women at the Red Table talked about how difficult
it can be to choose yourself, and that could be
society tells us we need others to feel fulfilled, or
that as women we exist to serve. Oh my god,
see societal norms. Not angry. You wrote an entire book
called Breaking the Cycle of Trauma in Your Life and
(36:38):
you called it Believing Me. I love the title, by
the way, so you know what they're talking about. Okay,
how has choosen yourself transformed your life? I mean, it's
almost too big of a thing to try to contain
in a couple of sentences. But for many years, as
I was writing the book, it was not called believing Me.
My working title was maybe it wasn't that bad, because
(37:01):
that's the spaced in for so many years of minimizing
what happened, minimizing what it did to me. And when
we minimize what happened, we can't see the repercussions, and
then we can't get the real support. And that's why
this believing in ourselves, our own stories, what happened, What
(37:22):
we're actually experiencing and giving it a voice is such.
I mean, it blows the door open on trauma healing
in my experience. And the more that I have a voice,
the more that I am not hiding my experiences because
they might hurt other people's feelings or all that people
pleasing stuff, the more I am getting to know who
(37:44):
I am honestly for the first time in my whole life.
Like when you said, I'm fifty years old and I'm
still doing this stuff. I think they're also just comes
a time where it's like, yes, whose life am I living?
It is mine? And when am I going to put
yourself in the center. And that was a huge part
of this writing journey for me was I kind of
(38:05):
started on the surface with certain things, and then I
just had to keep drilling down to what's true, drilling
down to what's true. And there comes a point where
I am no longer willing to abandon myself to sacrifice myself.
I just I literally cannot do it anymore when I
have the conscious awareness of it. And so by the
end of the book, I was like, no, no, no, no,
(38:26):
this is not about Maybe it wasn't that bad. The
whole arc of the story is about believing me. It's
amazing to me because it reminds me of what Dr.
Susan Gleason said about taking on an archaeologists perspective with
your own life for your own self, that you literally
have to kind of dig and carve out some of
(38:48):
what is in the way of you getting to the
true core and essence of who you are. That you
have to kind of dig, dig deep find what working
you know, what is not going to be possible for
you in your life, that isn't nurturing you, or something
that you need to get out of your life. In
the way that one of my former sociates, who I
(39:09):
thought was a friend blocked and blessed me. You just
never know, blocked and blessed. I'm taking this with me today.
I love that so much. But can I just say
one thing in relation to trauma bonding, because that block
was designed in a way to see if you were
(39:31):
going to go no, no, no, no, right no, yes,
that is the cycle starting all over again. Right, that's
the load, and that's the I'm not getting you the
payout now, I'm going to block you, and it's designed
to make us go no, I need to be rewarded
by you. I need to know that you're okay, to
know that I'm okay, and you broke that trauma bond
(39:53):
by saying, wait a second, this feels terrible, but I'm
going to hold my boundary anyway, because healthy boundaries and
we're not used to them. They don't feel good, they
don't feel like a victory laugh. They feel terrible, like
you're talking about going Am I doing the right thing?
Am I just being a jerk? Like maybe I went
(40:14):
too far? That's what it feels like. But you said,
even if it's all of those things, I'm still going
to choose me. And over time you got more clarity
and felt better about yourself. And I mean it's a
perfect example of breaking a trauma bond with a healthy
bound right. Yeah, look at you more for the blocked
(40:35):
and blast. I love it. And we could talk to
you for hours. I mean, this has been so amazingly therapeutic.
What a normal gift. Thank you so much. This was
an amazing conversation. I love what you're doing. Thanks for
having me as a part of the conversation. Absolutely, thank
you so much. Thank you so much for coming to
the Virtual Red Table. We want to know how you're
(40:57):
feeling about this new season a Red Table Talk. We
are open to talk about anything with you, so please
send in your questions at Let's Red Table that at
red table talk dot com, or there's another option, leave
us a voicemail at speak pipe dot com slash Let's
Red Table that. Yes, we want to hear your voice.
(41:18):
Leave us one will We can't wait to hear. We
love that, and you know what else we love. We
love our listeners. Thank you so much for listening to us.
We want you to make sure that you subscribe on
I Heart Radio app and please rate this podcast on
Apple Podcast. Y'all know we want to five. We'll be
back next week for another episode of Let's Red Table
Back Special. Thanks to executive producers Jada Pinkett Smith, Falon
(41:46):
Jethro and Ellen Rapington. Thank you to our producer Kyleigundehru
and our associate producer Yolanda Chow. And finally, thanks to
our sound engineer Stephanie Aguilar. Tape for Let's Let's Sear
It's Taste for that pag
Hey, y'all, Hey, what's up, and welcome to Let's Red
Table that I'm Tracy t Row and I'm Cala Presley.
How are you feeling about today's episode? Tracy, Okay, first
of all, let me say this, I learned what trauma
bonding is. I no, no, no. I brought my own narrative.
I gave myself its definition of what I thought trauma
(00:25):
bonding was. And I'm sure they're probably some other people
who believe what I believe trauma bonding was. If you're
out there, I'll if you hear me. So I thought
trauma bonding was people that had experienced trauma, that had
similar traumas and they connected and went through healing and
bonded in that way. I didn't understand it to mean
(00:46):
that you were in your own trauma bonding experience. You
understand what I'm saying, M I do? I do? I do?
Like it's more I definitely realized in this episode it's
more of a subconscious thing that we are connected to
and or drawn to people who have familiar behaviors that
weren't as positive and or successful. So yeah, it's uh,
(01:08):
it was eye open, and I'll say that it really
was before we get into it, let's back up and
make sure we know what it is. Trauma bonding is
the connection an abused person feels towards their abuser and
develops out of a repeated cycle of abuse, devaluation, and
positive reinforcement. Healthline says leaving an abusive relationship isn't as
(01:30):
simple as walking out the door. So that right which
you know they say with domestic violence, with people that
have suffered from domestic violence, that they leave seven times
and go back before they are gone for good. I
believe it, you know. I just feel like any abusive
situation that when people here domestic violence of what have you,
(01:53):
I think they all automatically think romantic, you know your partner.
But I think it happened clearly. The season is showing
this is happening more and more. Parent child relationship, any
power dynamic, there's something many power dynamic people literally are
abusing their power out here. Bless my heart. I really
thought people were living the right way. Okay, well, speaking
of people not living in the the right way, I'm gonna
(02:14):
tell you who I'm sick of. Because this is a
common thread. Dr Romney, maybe we can get you one.
You can help us all these dog on narcissists. The
narcissists are literally the common denominator for a good number
of the things we've experienced. Am I right or wrong?
They're live in their best life out here. I mean,
I'm not sure if they're winning or not, but they're everywhere.
(02:34):
They're they're losers because they're winning. They're definitely losers. But
it's like, what is that that perspective that they are
drawn to, that they have chosen this life of narcissism. Well,
I can tell you that once I knew what the
definition was, I was like, oh, well, heck yeah, I
got trauma bond and which one do you want to
(02:55):
talk about? The knee jerk for us is to start laughing,
card like land to keep crying friends, all right and well?
And as we go through the episode, I had more
of a relation in the workplace than any romantic connection.
I just was thinking and listening like, oh yeah, oh yeah,
wait a minute, So that's gonna be interesting. I can't
(03:16):
wait to tap into it. Now it's time to share
with our online Red Table Talk community has to say
about this episode. So I can kick this off first, right, So,
Kristin Morrigan says, my goodness, that last couple got me.
I came into my relationship exactly like Brianna. I had
major daddy issues and didn't understand why anyone would want
(03:38):
to be with me. So I tried my hardest to
run my now husband off, but he stayed the course
and together we worked through my issues. I got a
little choked up on this one. Another great episode. Well
thank you, Kristen. We appreciate that. I enjoyed it too.
Gretchen Marie meg Guyer said, Wow, I took notes during
this episode for real, this one, I think a lot
(04:01):
of people can relate to. Gretchen. You are so absolutely right,
because I want you to know you weren't the only
one taking notes. Our very own car was taking those
two weren't your car? Yes, I was notebook and all,
So I understand. Tracy Brooke Chapelle said this was so phenomenal.
I saw myself and Justin and his wife tears just
rolling down my face as a serious truth hit me.
(04:25):
Understand you, Tracy, great name, Tracy, and Kim Booie said
I was engaged four times before I finally married at
twenty nine. I was a mess in my teens and
early twenties. Can't even remember a lot of it, totally
blocked it out, but all rooted in my parents divorce
and the breakup of our family. Glad I put in
(04:47):
the work, made the change and found someone who helped
me get to the other side. Been married for thirty
one years now and enjoying the best years of my life.
Oh that's nice, Kim, so good. One of We're gonna
take a quick break, but when we get back, we'll
be joined by one incredible guest from our Red Tabletop community.
(05:10):
We're bringing a fellow RTT community member to the Virtual
Red Table. Ingrid Clayton is a psychologist and author who
comes at her work with a deeper level of understanding,
and she is a trauma survivor herself, growing up with
the narcissistic stepdad. Ingrid has worked to break the bonds
of trauma in her life and support her patients in
(05:31):
doing the same. Ingrid, thank you for coming on Let's
Red Table Dad. How are you. I'm well, Thank you
so much for having me, so much for joining, so
excited for you to be here. Yes, Ingered, I have
lots and lots of questions. I mean, I'm first off,
you want to start out by saying that we're grateful
you're here and we're gonna learn a lot. And we
have a segment that we love. This is a out
(06:00):
of the show where we reveal which moments made us pause, rewind,
and listen again. We call it Wait, What So White?
There were lots of white woods in this episode, Like
several in this episode. One of the first ones, Dr
Alfie said, you know how they used to say to
W know was Ben, W don't know. But it's still
(06:20):
the devil, right, But it's the devil that both of
you are familiar with. Do you find yourself drawn to
what you know even if it's bad for you? Well,
if you're asking me personally, I'm sad to say the
answer is yes. And in fact, this is why I'm
so passionate about sharing my personal experience, because I never
(06:43):
understood that even though I thought I knew better growing
up in a narcissistic family system and addicted family system, dysfunctional, toxic,
however you want to label at family system, I knew
very young. I did not want this for the rest
of my life. I wanted to do it differently, and
I saught so much help and guidance and support to
(07:07):
attempt to do it differently. I have three degrees in psychology,
I've sat on a million therapy couches, I've been sober
for twenty seven years, and none of this information gave
me the release from what my nervous system learned as
a child growing up in this home. And so I've
(07:28):
really come to understand it that we almost have two
distinct parts of ourselves. There's the conscious rational mind that
can intellectually understand, of course I want to be in
a healthy relationship. And then there's what I learned in
my body through these very subtle, subconscious experiences about oh no,
(07:52):
this is what I have to do to be safe,
this is what I have to do to maintain connection,
this is what I have to do to have a voice.
And this experience is what ultimately led me to my
chemistry of being attracted to unavailable, narcissistic, actively addictive partners
(08:14):
over and over again, even though I was working so
hard to try to do it differently. So this idea
of the way that I've heard it is red flags
don't look like red flags when they feel like home.
Hold on, now, that's red flags and look like red
(08:35):
flags when they feel like home. So I didn't know
that it was the devil, because the devil to me, listen,
I learned how to survive in the face of these
sort of be devilments. That's I can handle that, no worries.
I can do that. Jada said it somewhere in the episode.
She's Oh, I can fix it. I can. It was
(08:57):
deeply compelling to me because it was so familiar, and
so I really had to learn that that crazy kind
of chemistry that felt like, oh, there's so much potential
here was not healthy chemistry. And in fact, my now marriage, that,
(09:18):
thank goodness, the longest healthiest relationship I've ever had, felt
night and day different entering into it than every relationship
that I had before. That's really something. What you're gravitating
to is what feels familiar, Right, it feels like home. Yeah,
it feels like home. It's not necessarily that it's a
(09:39):
red flag. It's home. It may be red flags for
everybody else, but what I see it's home. Do you
find that you're conscious of the decisions you make out
of trauma in the moment, where do you look back
later and see it clearly it's more of a hindsight,
especially in the beginning as you start to heal your trauma.
So I think, for me, this is I talked about
(10:00):
my experiences in the lens of trauma at all because
it finally allowed me to make sense to myself. Right. So,
if I was going to all these therapists and going
what do I keep getting in these relationships? I can't
figure it out. The thing that finally helped me was
to understand, first of all, the body will always prioritize safety, okay,
(10:23):
And we have these trauma responses that are in effort
to keep us safe, to help us survive, to maintain connection,
even if it's not great connection. They are fight, flight, freeze,
and fawn. And this last one here, fawning is not
only my experience, but it's what Jada talked about and
(10:44):
the eye can fix it. It's what Shay talked about
in her people pleasing tendencies. So the fawning trauma response
is when we abandon ourselves in order to show up
for someone else. It's the heartbeat of codependency. Is what
fawning is. When I fawn, it's in service of I'm
going to abandon myself and show up for you. And
(11:06):
then you're gonna show up for me to write I'm
gonna fix your stuff, I'm going to help you along.
I'm gonna smile when you need me to smile. But
eventually that's gonna come full circle, isn't it? And unfortunately
it often does not. And where we lay prosody there,
that's right, And so where we end up is just
(11:27):
abandoning ourselves and staying abandoned. When you say we're abandoning ourselves,
is it's the exhaustion of it, like just subconsciously, like
I don't think I can fight this any longer. What
I mean when you say people abandon themselves, Like in
my spirit, I believe that no one wants to really
just abandon them I feel like they're doing all they
(11:47):
can and they're gonna do all they can for someone else.
But when you say they are, we know that the
actor now is abandoning themselves. But I think in the
moment it's like exhaustion. I think it shows up. It
may be depression, it may be the whole entire experience
has spiraled them into a sense of I gotta just
let go. I've done. This is such a smart point
(12:08):
that you're making and so Pete Walker is the trauma
therapist to coin the term fawning, and what he says
is that fawning is the last house on the block.
In other words, when you've tried to fight response, the
freeze and flight response and you have found them not
to work in these toxic relationships, fawning is the last town. No.
(12:32):
Nobody wants to abandon themselves. Nobody wants to say I
don't matter. I'm going to privilege you because I don't
really want to have any self worth. Right. Trauma responses
are not conscious. These are based on our instincts. Okay,
so when you think about an animal surviving in the wild,
they don't think do I want to play dead when
(12:54):
this other animal comes to attack? Do I want to
fight back and growl up? They just do it. These
are instincts. We have the same instincts. They're not conscious.
And again that also allows me to have self compassion,
because who would want to abandon themselves. It's so painful
to have to look at how many times I personally
(13:18):
did that, And a part of healing is going back
and grieving everything that I lost every time I couldn't
have a real voice or participate fully in relationship. What
you just said there too about grieving is important because
if you don't see it as a loss, and you
see it's possibly still something I can fight for, something
(13:38):
that's worth it, then you don't even get to grieve,
to let go, to move on. You're still grieving in
real time and hurt. You're just hurt. You can't even
allow it to be a grief. Like a part of
grief is the acceptance that it's over and done and
I can't do a thing about it, you know, and
you hate to say. It's a little bit easier when
it's a person that's passed right right grieving people that
(13:58):
are still alive. And that's why breaking these trauma bonds,
it's one aspect of why breaking the trauma bond is
so hard, because we also want to have hope. We
want to believe that this person is going to come
around and they're gonna show up and take responsibility and
do right by themselves and do right by me. And
who doesn't want to have that sort of hope and
(14:20):
belief in humanity? And we have to look at the
writing on the wall and that all the hope and
belief in the world is never going to change another person.
So if they are not exhibiting true behaviors, not talking
to talk, I'm talking about walking the walk, then I
think someone really has to look at maybe it's time
(14:43):
to grieve this relationship and stop investing more of myself
in it. Okay, So, Ingra we've been talking about trauma bonding.
We gave a quick definition of what trauma bonding is
in the beginning of this episode, but Angry, can you
explain more thorough the what exactly trauma bonding is. So
(15:04):
trauma bonding, it does often get confused with this idea
of two people that have trauma that are coming together
and sort of bonding over that shared experience. I think
that's often how it's talked about. But what we're talking
about in the literature of trauma is it's a hormonal,
chemical attachment between two people that is based on alternate
(15:28):
experiences of either abuse and neglect, sprinkled in with some
normal behavior some what seems like healthy attachment or even love.
And so there are two building blocks to trauma bonding.
One is intermittent reinforcement, which is the receiving or giving
of a reward rather at inconsistent intervals. Basically, this is
(15:52):
Las Vegas, Okay, intermittent reinforcement. I'm gonna sit down to
the slot machine. I know I'm gonna lose most of
the time, but I'm pulling at lever because i want
the big payout. Right, It's worth it to me to
keep throwing my money in because I'm like, there's a chance. Right.
That's basically intermittent reinforcement. The second building block is a
(16:13):
power differential. Okay, So when we see it in apparent
child relationship, through employment, through financial situations, all kinds of things.
So here's the thing that makes trauma bonding really tricky,
I think is that when we are abused or neglected,
we are chemically wired Okay, our entire body. The mission
(16:36):
again is about survival, So we are wired to focus
on getting to the other side. Right. We want to
be saved, we want to be free. And when the abuser,
the person that's neglecting you or unavailable, when they are
the person that brings you relief, the brain now associates
(16:57):
them with safety. Here's what I'm understanding. Yeah, I had
to jump in here because based on what you just said,
every single dog own body that's bleeping has had some
type of trauma bonding. I mean, and maybe not at
an instagred bible. On some spectrum, all of us have
had some measure of trauma bonding. Because what I understand
(17:20):
you saying is, even if the person doesn't know that
they're inflicting trauma, you could be traumatized by them, and
it could still be the very person that could either
do one of the two building clocks, that is, to
be the person that gives you the reward or the
person that is the power. This start this started to school.
I'm just listen. I'm listening like this started to school.
(17:42):
One too plus to is pick me and pick me,
pick me, like the too plus to is four for me,
Like I know that I enjoyed the attention of school
and getting things right and it was a stellar student, right,
So then when that started falling off, Hello middle school,
it's going on here, you know what. But it translated
into different ways for me, including like work. So when
(18:06):
you said workplace, if you're dealing with a terrible manager
and you and all your coworkers are all, that's a bond,
not romantically. I think we often see it, and of
course we're talking about romantic settings in this conversation here,
but I can see that in the workplace. Yeah, it's
definitely not just romantic relationships, right like the building box
for mine were with my stepfather and then my mother.
And so if we look at how the brain latches
(18:28):
onto the positive experience right about, oh, I've been chosen,
I've raised my hand and now I'm the favorite student
or whatever it is. Once we're chosen, the brain does
not hold onto this long term experience of every single
time that you weren't chosen. Okay. It turns off the
part of the brain that can think long term. And
this is what creates the feeling that we need the
(18:50):
abuser to survive. It's why leaving trauma bonds are so hard.
It's why so many people go, why didn't you just leave? Right?
They don't under stand what's happening in these deep dynamics
in terms of a really hormonal connection. And so if
you look at this intermittent reinforcement and go, okay, so
(19:11):
the brain is only latching onto the part where, oh,
thank goodness, we're back. We're good, right, I'm feeling good again,
the relationship is good, and you're looking at these power
dynamics where oftentimes someone's self esteem is so whittled away, right,
so their sense of themselves has become so small that
they genuinely do think that they need the other person
(19:35):
in order to survive. It feels like annihilation to leave
these relationships. It is bigger than devastation. Yeah, my life,
My life, that's a common phrase. That's a common phrase
I hear, whether they're leaving a job or relationship. Have
you never heard someone said even no mind, it's probably
in a moment of just exacerbated exhaustion, but my life
(19:59):
is over. What am I going to do? We talked
a little bit about Cheryl's story, but now we do
want to really hear from you, Ingrid. How did your
stepdad as narcissism affect your life and cause you trauma specifically?
First of all, the building blocks for trauma bonding are
(20:19):
right there when you have a narcissist, because narcissists intuitively
know how to exploit this intermittent reinforcement right there, just
masters at giving you just enough and then ripping it
all away. So for me, I would be given the
silent treatment in my own home for weeks, sometimes months
(20:43):
at a time by him, where I'd come out to
breakfast and my brothers exist, Oh, good morning, and how
are you? And it was literally like I I didn't
exist in my own home where the brothers, the sons
of his or you all stepped there. He was stepped
down to all of you. One was my iological brother,
one was his son, my stepbrother. But he only ignored you.
(21:04):
He only ignored me. So I was the scapegoat child.
And what I now know, which is what I finally
pieced together only very late in life, unfortunately, is that
my experience with my stepdad was one that he had
created many times before me in terms of grooming a
young girl in the hope of really for me being
(21:26):
he was grooming me to be his girlfriend. And so
in order to try and achieve that, he was engaging
in these trauma bonding techniques. Again not consciously, I don't know,
and had that language back then anyway, But he would
ignore me, ground me, steep punishments for the tiniest little things.
And then one day he'd say, Hey, there's a new
(21:49):
restaurant in town, and you love Italian food. I'd love
to pick you up from school and take you to lunch,
and then we'd go to lunch, and he'd say, you
know what, there's this jewelry store across the street, and
I have to do some business there. Why don't you
accompany me? And suddenly I'm walking out with this ring
that I've been coveting in the window. Right. So it's
(22:10):
these types of highs and lows that contribute to this
trauma bonding. How did you get to the point where
you learned about his kind of pattern behavior with grooming
and bread from me and really pedophilic behavior. Yeah, well,
so there's two things. There's the story that I've always known,
which was just my experience as I understood it at
(22:32):
the time, and the experience I shared on every therapist
couch that I ever went to. But two things never
happened in my journey. No one ever named narcissism or
narcissistic abuse, and no one ever named trauma. And so
it was about five years ago when my stepdad died
and I was suddenly called to do this writing and
(22:55):
I wasn't even sure what I was writing, but it
was stories from my own life. You know, I'll just
make a long story short that I ended up for
five years writing these experiences. What happened what they did
to me, the trauma responses. And it was only then
that I could see my own story through the lens
(23:17):
of trauma as a trauma therapist, and finally give myself
proper names and diagnoses for these things that I had
been living with my whole life, and I didn't know,
and you didn't know. Cheryl said that she was just
(23:39):
not attracted to kind men. I just was not attracted
to the nice guy. I'll never forget my very first
competitive dance partner, so sweet. I was so disgusted by
how sweet he was. And I was only attracted to
chauvinistic man. This is because as the relationship she experience,
(24:01):
we're unhealthy. That's right, angry. Have you found yourself re
enacting your own trauma, whether in relationships or other ways.
I re enacted it so many times. I lost count.
I re enacted it so many times it makes me
emotional to think about it. Even now. I genuinely thought
I was broken. I thought there must be something so
(24:23):
deeply wrong with me because I cannot get into a
healthy relationship to save my life. When Cheryl talked about
the kind person, I understand that so completely available kind people.
It was a little repulsive, and I also thought, if
you really knew me, you would not like me the
(24:45):
way because my body was so unaccustomed to that kind
of available, present and kind attention. And so after I
left my first husband, I did a ton of work
on myself. And what ended happening is I will never
forget it. Sitting across from my now husband on our
(25:05):
first date, I thought, he is so lovely and we
are having such an interesting conversation, and he's so present.
He had all of the makings of this kind, present,
available type of partner, and so I thought, I think
we're just meant to be friends, right, Like, there's no
way we could be together. I totally get that. I
totally get that. Great. I mistook that kind of crazy
(25:30):
chemistry that had happened with all of the narcissist and
addicted people before. I mistook that as a necessary ingredient
to enter into a relationship, and so when it was missing,
I truly thought, well, we must not have that kind
of chemistry. What I didn't know is that kind of
(25:51):
chemistry is unhealthy chemistry. It's a sign I should be
running in the other direction, and so right it for rights, Yeah,
So I finally figured out I need to stick around
long enough and try on this thing that was so
foreign to me, and I'm so grateful I did because
(26:12):
it is a night and day experience. How long have
you and your husbandmen together? We've been together ten years? Beautiful?
Let me tell you. I know for me and Grid,
my wife and I have been together for twenty eight years,
and like you, because I had been in so many relationships,
and interestingly enough, it really started for me the whole
(26:33):
trauma bonding now that I better understand what that was
or is. And me was with my weight and the negative,
harsh treatment that I received from my father, and I
didn't think I was worthy, right, I had this whole
issue with image, and Sweetie accepted me, and even when
I gained even more weight than I did when we met,
(26:54):
and it was weird to me, I was like, are
you are? Is this real? Are you sure you like
what you see? Are you unconditionally loving me? Is this true?
So much so that we've literally just got married on
our twenty five anniversary Because I didn't believe it was real.
It took me that long, you know, to be able
to trust it. Oh my gosh, congratulations on getting married
(27:18):
and staying together for so long. But I really identify
with the like are you sure? Like I will say
things to my husband on a weekly, if not daily
basis where I'm sort of explaining myself for questioning him,
and he'll be like, you don't have to do that,
and I'm like, what what are you like? Really, you're
(27:38):
really not judging me. I can tell you I feel
better now that you have fifteen hundred degrees and you're
burst and trained and you still suffering just litto me
is having the same trouble you're having. I feel much
better Car, what about you? No, Yeah, I have experienced
some of these feelings, but as you gotta speak, I'm
more so thinking about the workplace and just the my worthy.
(28:01):
And I knew I was because people would steal my
I knew I was because I would always get the
promotion in the workplace. I knew I was because I
was always the top rated instructor in the workplace. But
when it came to this one taking a manager, she
just couldn't quite understand why I was always being accelerated,
(28:23):
to the point that someone called one time and requested
that I teach a class because I'm just that successful.
But she made me teach it to another girl that
she trusted to try. Well, that's just flat out manipulation.
I mean, it's not that she couldn't see it. It's
not that she couldn't see it. She couldn't see it.
She couldn't stand it. And my optimism space as I'm
(28:46):
in learning, as I'm in learning these things, I couldn't
fathom that somebody would think that deeply to hold someone back,
and they definitely will. That's so painful. It's painful. But
I'm glad that I've experienced that because I can now
affirm myself over and over again and I'm aware of it. Yes,
(29:06):
for the self affirmation, I'm that I'd love that's huge.
Moum all about self affirmation. It's the healing, it's the healing,
it's real time, it's real time. Jada and Shay both
shared about feeling the need to fix people and people
pleasers ingrid. How does this play out as a trauma response, Well,
these are perfect examples of the funding trauma response. This
(29:29):
idea that if I see a broken bird, I go.
It's as though it gives me some sort of credibility
or reason to be in the relationship. It's like I
feel like I don't have any power. But if my
power is I'm gonna help you, I'm going to be
of service to you. That's fawning. That's the funding trauma response. Yeah,
(29:50):
and same with the people pleasing. Shay talked about that
such a great deal where she almost you could kind
of sense it was like she had no sense of
herself at a certain point, like no, of course you're
gonna run in and I'm only going to confront that
I don't want you here when we talk about a dresser,
and it's like wait a second, because we don't know
that we're fawning, right, So even just having this language,
(30:15):
I think can alert us to you know, I think
you said before, do you know when you're doing it?
Or do you know more in hindsight? So if I
don't know what a red flag is because I grew
up in a house full of red flags that I
was meant to have for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every
single day. Part of how we know that we've experienced trauma,
(30:35):
that we're engaging in trauma responses is to look at
our history and go, what are my patterns? What am
I repeating what am I doing again? That makes me
crazy that I'm doing it again. And when we can
put those patterns in this lens and language of trauma,
it's like we can suddenly see it for the first
(30:56):
time when we go out into the world and we go, oh,
wait a second, I'm people pleasing here. I also think
that word codependency has become so stigmatized. It's hard to
see yourself in it. You're like, no one wants to
be codependent, and people are like, why don't you just
love yourself? As though it's just this choice. Our body
(31:17):
is fawning for survival. But when I can identify it
as a trauma response, I can remind myself in that moment,
I can put my hand on my heart, which is
a self compassionate position where I can go okay, ingrid,
you are safe right now, your past is not happening.
You are allowed to have a voice, it's okay to
(31:41):
have an opinion, but I genuinely have to pause and
attend to what's happening in my body because part of
a trauma response is you don't know if it's happening
right now or if it's happening thirty years ago, right,
these things get fused. Trauma knows no time when it's
living in your body, so it's us feels real. Trauma
(32:02):
too is trying to just let me just skate past it, versus,
like you said, stop at just what did that thing
feel like? What was that that trigger? What should my
response be? And giving yourself the option of responses versus
just what I always do. So challenging that narrative in
your head, right, Tracy, I know you mentioned that you've
followed into being a people pleaser, So how did you
(32:24):
break this habit for yourself? I was a people pleasing queen.
Did you hear me? I had? I was? I really was.
I'm so grateful I can identify that now. I'm happy
to say that I was able to break that habit,
but it took a long time. Part of it was
I had this unbelievable sense of unworthiness. I would compare
(32:45):
myself to other people and not feel like there was
any value that I added unless I was making them
happy with what I was doing for them. That it
was the accolade I wanted to get that. Yes, that
at a girl, that way to go, your special, your
gift to me. I'm so grateful for you and have
that acknowledgement. And I finally had to acknowledge for myself
(33:06):
that after pouring into so many other people, as Jada
said it, fixing other people and seeing the potential in
other people and shoring them up, I was pouring out
and I was empty. There was literally nothing left for
me to have for my own goals and dreams. Okay,
I likened it to this. I was paying rent for
other people and I was homeless, right, That's exactly right.
(33:29):
And I had to just stop and look around and say,
let me get my stuff together and get in this
house that eyeball and take care of my own stuff
and get my own house shored up and cleaned up
and ready, and then pursue some of my goals. I
mean I literally put going and getting another's degree on
hold and doing stuff for family. I don't regret it,
because it was all part of a lesson, but I
had to take stock and inventory and say, I'm fifty
(33:50):
years old now, the majority of my life has been lived.
What am I going to do when I look back
and say, gosh, I regret this, and I hate that
I didn't do that and have these different dreams and
realize it's because I've been people pleasing and those people
have moved on with their own lives. They didn't know
what they thought. I enjoyed it because I made it.
(34:10):
I made myself look so happy, Dawn. You wanted to Yeah,
everybody breakfast, everybody breakfast. And I learned that no was
an answer and that it was okay, and people would
be okay with no, and if they weren't, they would
have to move on. Some people will be okay with
the no, and those are the people that get to
(34:31):
stay in your life. But there's another saying, which is
when we stop people pleasing, people will not be pleased. Well,
let me tell you what I can say to that
ingrid a man in Hallelujah, because the people that were
not pleased blocked me and blessed me. That's right. But
that's a huge transition and your nervous system to go
(34:53):
from literally living for people's validation to suddenly not only
are they not giving you validation, they might be mad
and that can feel terrify. Oh gosh, I was so
uncomfortable for a I mean because this was one that
happened recently. This happened like within the last year. And
(35:13):
when I stopped people pleasing for this particular person who is,
now I know, a narcissist. I made a choice and
did what Katie Morton calls the hug and roll. And
I said, Okay, I'm creating these boundaries for myself. So
now here's what I'm not gonna do anymore. And the
minute I did that, y'all, I got cut off. I
got blocked from every time. It's amazing how they do it.
(35:35):
But I just made a good, healthy decision for myself.
I'm taking care of myself. How are you angry? And
I was. I had to sit with that. I was
so uncomfortable, and I kept saying, do I reach out?
And then it was kind of this duality of a girl. No,
you don't call them. Don't call them. You get to
live your life, you get to make a choice. You're grown.
And then it was like, but they're upset, but they
(35:56):
may be. Hadn't that right? And I had to just
get myself together and I see, you've been hurt. You
you go on, You go on with that, you have that,
that's your phone, you hold onto your phone. I'm good
us life changing, life changing, it is, and it gives
me so much anxiety. Just hearing you talk about it,
I'm like, oh no, I know that feeling so now.
(36:16):
The women at the Red Table talked about how difficult
it can be to choose yourself, and that could be
society tells us we need others to feel fulfilled, or
that as women we exist to serve. Oh my god,
see societal norms. Not angry. You wrote an entire book
called Breaking the Cycle of Trauma in Your Life and
(36:38):
you called it Believing Me. I love the title, by
the way, so you know what they're talking about. Okay,
how has choosen yourself transformed your life? I mean, it's
almost too big of a thing to try to contain
in a couple of sentences. But for many years, as
I was writing the book, it was not called believing Me.
My working title was maybe it wasn't that bad, because
(37:01):
that's the spaced in for so many years of minimizing
what happened, minimizing what it did to me. And when
we minimize what happened, we can't see the repercussions, and
then we can't get the real support. And that's why
this believing in ourselves, our own stories, what happened, What
(37:22):
we're actually experiencing and giving it a voice is such.
I mean, it blows the door open on trauma healing
in my experience. And the more that I have a voice,
the more that I am not hiding my experiences because
they might hurt other people's feelings or all that people
pleasing stuff, the more I am getting to know who
(37:44):
I am honestly for the first time in my whole life.
Like when you said, I'm fifty years old and I'm
still doing this stuff. I think they're also just comes
a time where it's like, yes, whose life am I living?
It is mine? And when am I going to put
yourself in the center. And that was a huge part
of this writing journey for me was I kind of
(38:05):
started on the surface with certain things, and then I
just had to keep drilling down to what's true, drilling
down to what's true. And there comes a point where
I am no longer willing to abandon myself to sacrifice myself.
I just I literally cannot do it anymore when I
have the conscious awareness of it. And so by the
end of the book, I was like, no, no, no, no,
(38:26):
this is not about Maybe it wasn't that bad. The
whole arc of the story is about believing me. It's
amazing to me because it reminds me of what Dr.
Susan Gleason said about taking on an archaeologists perspective with
your own life for your own self, that you literally
have to kind of dig and carve out some of
(38:48):
what is in the way of you getting to the
true core and essence of who you are. That you
have to kind of dig, dig deep find what working
you know, what is not going to be possible for
you in your life, that isn't nurturing you, or something
that you need to get out of your life. In
the way that one of my former sociates, who I
(39:09):
thought was a friend blocked and blessed me. You just
never know, blocked and blessed. I'm taking this with me today.
I love that so much. But can I just say
one thing in relation to trauma bonding, because that block
was designed in a way to see if you were
(39:31):
going to go no, no, no, no, right no, yes,
that is the cycle starting all over again. Right, that's
the load, and that's the I'm not getting you the
payout now, I'm going to block you, and it's designed
to make us go no, I need to be rewarded
by you. I need to know that you're okay, to
know that I'm okay, and you broke that trauma bond
(39:53):
by saying, wait a second, this feels terrible, but I'm
going to hold my boundary anyway, because healthy boundaries and
we're not used to them. They don't feel good, they
don't feel like a victory laugh. They feel terrible, like
you're talking about going Am I doing the right thing?
Am I just being a jerk? Like maybe I went
(40:14):
too far? That's what it feels like. But you said,
even if it's all of those things, I'm still going
to choose me. And over time you got more clarity
and felt better about yourself. And I mean it's a
perfect example of breaking a trauma bond with a healthy
bound right. Yeah, look at you more for the blocked
(40:35):
and blast. I love it. And we could talk to
you for hours. I mean, this has been so amazingly therapeutic.
What a normal gift. Thank you so much. This was
an amazing conversation. I love what you're doing. Thanks for
having me as a part of the conversation. Absolutely, thank
you so much. Thank you so much for coming to
the Virtual Red Table. We want to know how you're
(40:57):
feeling about this new season a Red Table Talk. We
are open to talk about anything with you, so please
send in your questions at Let's Red Table that at
red table talk dot com, or there's another option, leave
us a voicemail at speak pipe dot com slash Let's
Red Table that. Yes, we want to hear your voice.
(41:18):
Leave us one will We can't wait to hear. We
love that, and you know what else we love. We
love our listeners. Thank you so much for listening to us.
We want you to make sure that you subscribe on
I Heart Radio app and please rate this podcast on
Apple Podcast. Y'all know we want to five. We'll be
back next week for another episode of Let's Red Table
Back Special. Thanks to executive producers Jada Pinkett Smith, Falon
(41:46):
Jethro and Ellen Rapington. Thank you to our producer Kyleigundehru
and our associate producer Yolanda Chow. And finally, thanks to
our sound engineer Stephanie Aguilar. Tape for Let's Let's Sear
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