Confronting Complex PTSD with Stephanie Foo

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The past is always here, haunting our homes, standing over
us at night. They say, you don't get rid of
a ghost by pretending it isn't there. The legends tell
us to address the ghosts directly, so, writes author and
producer Stephanie fo, a gifted author, journalist, an Emmy Award

(00:22):
winning producer who has worked on shows like This, American
Life and Snap Judgment. Her journey through complex post traumatic
stress disorder, originating from significant childhood abuse and culminating with
both of her parents abandoning her before the age of eighteen,
is a poetic masterclass on complex trauma and the ongoing

(00:47):
journey of feeling whole after these kinds of experiences. Stephanie's book,
What My Bones Know has been called one of the
best non fiction books of two twenty two, and having
read it, I cannot agree more. This podcast should not

(01:07):
be used as a substitute for medical or mental health advice.
Individuals are advised to seek independent medical advice, counseling, and
or therapy from a healthcare professional with respect to any
medical condition, mental health issue, or health inquiry, including matters

(01:29):
discussed on this podcast. This episode discusses abuse, which may
be triggering to some people. The views and opinions expressed
are solely those of the podcast author or individuals participating
in the podcast, and do not represent the opinions of

(01:50):
Red Table Talk productions, iHeartMedia, or their employees. Stephanie Fou,
I am fangirling for a minute, and I read your book.
And when I read your book, I was actually on
an airplane, and there's something about an airplane. It's a
night flight, it's dark, you're alone. That's the wishing sound
of the airplane's almost womb like. And I cried so

(02:13):
much that the flight attendant actually had to check on
how I was doing. And I wasn't crying from a
place of sadness. And I'm actually getting tious. I'm thinking
about it now. There is such a recognition in your book.
Decades of working with clients who have had experiences like yours.
People who are close to me, we've had experiences like

(02:33):
what you detailed. You hit it in such a special way,
and then you took it to that journey of healing.
So not only did I feel like you were able
to use language, You're an amazing writer. You were able
to use language to capture something that I feel and
this is what's so unique about complex trauma, that's so uncapturable.
You also left us with a story of hope. So

(02:55):
I want to thank you for that, because even if
all I get to say to you today is thank
you for the ift you've given not only to survivors,
but frankly to clinicians, I think that complex trauma is
still a very misunderstood phenomenon in mental health, and more
than any textbook, I actually think your book should be
in the hands of every trainee, every graduate student, and frankly,

(03:17):
every therapist in America for what you've captured, not only
about complex trauma, but about the cultural frameworks which often
gets missed in this conversation. So again for me to
you start, we can't even end here, and I say
thank you, but we're not going to end here. Wow,
where I'd like to begin. Actually, I want to get
to your story. But because we keep using this term

(03:38):
complex trauma, for you, as a survivor, I would love
for you to lay out for anyone listening today what
it means and what complex trauma has meant to you.
But more than anything, from your perspective as a survivor,
what is complex trauma. You know, you can get traditional
PTSD from a single traumatic event. So let's say you're

(04:00):
in a car crash, you can get trauma from that.
I think complex trauma occurs when the trauma happens over
and over and over again, and so it's kind of
like if you were in a car crash every week
for three years. You know, but of course, unless you
are tremendously tremendously unlucky, that's not going to happen to

(04:21):
you unless somebody in your life or people in your
life are really letting you down. So complex trauma happens
the most in cases of child abuse, having an abusive partner,
living in a war zone. So it sort of does
really deteriorate your trust in relationships and other people because

(04:45):
it means that you have been let down hundreds, if
not thousands and thousands of times by very often people
who are supposed to love you and take care of you.
And that is a deeper wound I think, and trauma
from a singular event h and so of course it
becomes more complex to heal. How old were you when

(05:09):
that model, that framework of complex trauma was given to
you for the first time. I was thirty. Okay, thirty. Yeah.
The reason I'm asking that is obviously you were a child,
so you were in a different space, but that meant
for your late adolescence into your adulthood, you must have

(05:30):
been walking around in an experience that didn't make sense
to you. I knew I was depressed. I knew that
I was anxious. I had self harming thoughts from when
I was twelve years old, and I suspected that it
had something to do with my very unstable childhood. But

(05:50):
I don't think that I quite understood the gravitas of
how my childhood was affecting all of my day to
day interactions until I finally got the diagnosis of complex PTSD.
So I'd like to go backwards now and again. You
talk about it in the book, but not everyone listening
has read your book yet, though after this interview, I

(06:10):
hope all of them do go out to get the
richness of all that is in your book. Can you
take us back and lay out for our listeners what
this childhood looked like. I grew up in San Jose, California,
in a immigrant community. My family was comfortably middle class.
When I was thirteen, my mom left and when I

(06:32):
was sixteen, my dad left for another family and he
left me the house. So I spent the last year
of high school or so a year and a half
sort of raising myself. First of all, thank you for
sharing that. How did you make sense of this as
a child? It was all my fault? My parents said
it was all my fault, and so I internalized that.
And I think if it's the parents' fault that they

(06:54):
are chaotic. A child cannot deal with how painful that is.
And if a child thinks it's my fault, then they
have some element of control over it, and they still
have some figures that they can idealize. And so that
was very classic in my case. Your case is interesting, though, Stephanie,
because JU determines work in saying that the child takes

(07:17):
responsibility for it. That's going to be normative across the
spectrum of abuse a child can experience. It's a survival behavior, right.
It facilitates attachment if they're the good ones, and I
can still be safe. Right. In your situation, though, it
was leveled up because your parents literally articulated that their
abuse of you was your fault. They were hating you

(07:39):
because it was your fault. They were saying these things
because it was your fault. There was no interpretive moment here.
They were actually handing you that script. That's true. Yeah,
And that was all the more striking to me because
as I was reading that as a therapist, the idea
of how do you undo this when this is not
a little sort of survival the child was engaged in.

(08:01):
This is literally what you were being told. I internalized that,
and I think even now, probably my whole life, the
battle will be to challenge the voice in the back
of my head that is constantly this is all your fault,
even despite how lyrically you've laid your story out, how
successful your life has become, that that voice has sort

(08:24):
of taken up permanent residency. I do want us to
come back to that because I think it's important for
survivors to hear when your mother left when you were thirteen.
Now you're thirteen, you're not young young, five or six.
What was that emotionally like for you when somebody who
was such a severe abuser disappeared from your life. You know,
it was really complicated because there was an element of

(08:46):
obviously abandonment, of sadness, of feeling like Why wasn't I
enough for you to stay? Why couldn't you have tried harder?
Because I had tried so hard for my parents to
maintain their marriage into maintain a family unit. But at
the same time, there was a lot of relief because
I wasn't being beaten every day. You know, that's kind

(09:07):
of nice. It was a great reprieve, And it was
a very complicated time emotionally for me because I think,
you know, my mom was very strict, very obsessive about
grades and performance, and so I think when she left,
I kind of went buck wild in terms of having

(09:28):
total freedom. Nobody was watching over me. My dad was
sort of like very absentee parent, and so there were
times when I was like, why isn't anybody parenting me?
And I almost missed some form of that guidance. But overall,
I think it was mostly relief. And when you said
you I'm buck wild, How did that affect you in

(09:49):
terms of school, pure relationships, any of it. What does
that look like? Yeah? I think just like demolishing relationships
left and right, being very very angry. I for a
couple of years failed every class and just stopped doing
any of my extracurriculars and just kind of, I don't know,

(10:09):
watched TV and sort of the Internet and ate Cereal
all day long. Then it's just you and dad, Okay.
For a few years, what was that? Like, my dad
needed to be parented. It became a very parentified relationship
where I was taking care of him because he was
very emotionally unwell after the divorce. He had a lot

(10:29):
of feelings of abandonment, of loneliness, of hopelessness, and so
I sort of had to take care of him and
we sort of became best friends in a weird way,
partners in crime, where he really relied on me, but
he would also let me do whatever I wanted. And
after a couple of years that he did leave too
because he got a girlfriend. So then I was just

(10:51):
totally on my own. Stephanie talks about her father needing
to be parented. That right, there is a signature of
any antagonistic parenting relationship. The child has to step in
and take care of the parent, which effectively means that

(11:12):
the child's needs have no place in the relationship. This
caregiving reversal may not happen in as extreme a manner
as it did for Stephanie. But many people with egocentric
parents will recall that it was about meeting the parents
needs and wants. Children's needs and children's wants were at

(11:36):
best secondary, and that set up a precedent going into
adulthood of not having learned how to express your needs
if you came from this kind of family or parental relationship.
That part of your story, Stephanie, was really striking to me, right,

(11:57):
So what was stunning was that there was literally no
recognition in your environment that a child has been abandoned once. Okay,
thirteen is a child because child had been abandoned once
and the only remaining adult was so focused on his needs.
I think that it's actually a really compassionate take that

(12:17):
he needed to be parented. But in essence, though, still
you as the child, was the vessel of addressing your parents'
needs and being the tool they used to regulate. As
a reader, you'reel like, all I want to do is
protect Stephanie. I wanted to let her know she's gonna
be safe forever. But in fact, your father immediately pivoted
into his own needs and then cultivated a new relationship

(12:39):
and got up and left. How does one make sense
of a second abandonment prior to the age of eighteen.
I think at that age it was a combination of
rage and self loathing, because there was this part of
me that understood that this was how do you leave
a child who's already been left? How you have to

(13:00):
be a patently selfish person to do something that you're responsible,
that cool, that heartless. On the other hand, maybe that
everyone leaves because you are the problem. Maybe everyone has
left me because I am unlovable, And so that is

(13:23):
where this deep set belief really sank in. I think
is my senior year of high school, that like, if
even my parents cannot love me, then who can? Yeah?
And I think that anyone hearing this would completely resonate
with that, because again it's meaning making right you as
an adolescent, and it's a child we're left trying to
make sense of something that made no sense. I mean,

(13:45):
that's really the core of complex drama in many ways,
making sense of the brutal and that which is not
to happen in essence, And so the stories that you
make out of that are ultimately ones where you can
control the narrative, and the way to control the narrative
to say is that it's got to be me. I'm unlovable,
and so people are going to leave, and it almost

(14:06):
becomes a very easy and accessible kind of a factoid,
I'm unlovable. People self fulfilling prophecy exactly. So talk to
us about that. Talk to us about the self fulfilling prophecy.
Then how did that unfold for you? I think that
if you believe inherently that you're unlovable, that all of
your relationships going forward are therefore going to be based

(14:27):
on intense fear. Right again, this is the root of
complex PTSD. You don't trust anyone right because how could
you when you have no model for being loved appropriately?
And so I think anytime somebody tried to give me love,
I was very skeptical. I was always looking through the out.
I was like looking for the reason why they were

(14:51):
going to leave, and so they built this paranoia. Nobody
wants to constantly be assuring their partner, Yes, I do
love of you. You know that's kind of old and yeah,
I mean I would absolutely pick fights, blow things up
because I saw something on the horizon that perhaps was
not there, but then manifested it. And yet, as you know,

(15:13):
as you say that again from my shrink seat, and
I'm like, well, that absolutely makes sense, because then you
were going to be safe, right, all trauma behaviors or
safety behaviors, and that's what you were doing. But for
you was basically it's not tactical, right, It's just it's happening.
And no one around you is a trauma therapist. They're
your friends, and so that only is then going to

(15:35):
add to that sense of loneliness, but it also fortifies
the hypothesis everyone leaves when your father left, So now
you're going through it sounds like part of your junior
and all of your senior year alone. What's this known
to the other people around you, to your peers, to
your teachers, to any other adults in your environment. This
was not known to my teachers. It was known as

(15:57):
some of my peers, but not all of them. My
boyfriend knew. Funny, I thought I was just telling everyone.
I thought everybody knew this, But subconsciously I must have known.
You know, that's illegal, so don't go around telling everybody
what happened to you. Yeah, and so I you know,
it was only after the book came out that I

(16:18):
realized this. The book came out. Everybody I knew read
it and everybody was like, I did not know, And
I was like, how could you not know? But yeah,
one of my very very good friends, I said, you know,
I went over to your house senior year and I
opened your refrigerator and there was nothing in it. There
were no condiments, nothing. There was a horta filter and

(16:39):
there was a couple of slices of pizza. And I
was like, where's all your food? And you said, oh,
my dad bought me a pizza last week. And she
remembers at the time thinking like that is not how
you take care of a child. I think the only
people who knew were children. They didn't have the power
to do anything. Now, was there an intentionality and you
not sharing it? Were you were very aware because the

(17:01):
way you just put it, if people knew, there might
have been its own destabilization that came from that, right.
I mean, even as a child, my parents were always like,
don't say what happens, because then you'll get put in
foster care. And that in and of itself is really terrifying.
And I at that point, I was like, there's the
devil that I do know, and there's the devil that

(17:21):
I don't, and what I know is that I can
take care of myself. And I had this very strongly
independent streak that, of course, lots of CPTSC survivors been
maintained that all we need is ourselves because we're the
only ones who can trust. And I thought I would
rather do this than be put into a home with
potentially more abusive parents. There was a particularly poignant scene

(17:44):
in your book, Stephanie, when a neighbor got involved. The
neighbor had been hearing things and it was almost like
she couldn't take it anymore, and she came across the street.
She came over to the house. And now how that
entire scene unfolded with you ultimately saying, nothing's happening. Nothing's happening.

(18:04):
If you feel comfortable talking about that scene, we can.
If you don't, I understand. It was an absolute, profound
example of the double bind a child is in any
situations when somebody actually can come along with safety, the
chronically abused child has to deny that safety. The neighbor
was trying to protect me, and I see that now,

(18:24):
but at the time, here was this person coming in
doing their best to try to help me. But this
seemed dangerous because this person was like, I'm going to
call the cops, and you don't want your mom to
go to jail. You don't want your parents to go
to jail. My mom was, you know, obviously scared, but
very much denying anything happened. And so the safest option

(18:47):
for me was to deny. And so I got on
my knees at my neighbor's feet, begging her, please don't
call the cops. And I still knowing what I know
about the foster care system, correct, Yeah, still not sure
that wasn't the correct answer. I don't disagree, and that's
exactly what I felt when I read that part of

(19:07):
your book. So anyone hearing this conversation as it read
the book, their question may very well be, well, didn't
Stephanie have extended family? And you did, but a lot
of them were in Malaysia. Yeah, they were when you
would visit Malaysia. They were also attempting to make sense
of this. How were they making sense of this experience

(19:30):
you were going through or were they completely unaware of
what was happening. They were not aware of a lot.
They were not aware when my dad left because we
were mostly in touch with my father's family. Oh, I see,
my mom wasn't very close with her family generally, so
they all knew how bad my mother was. They understood
the abuse in that sense because they had seen it,

(19:52):
because my mom would be me when you went back
to Malaysia. You know, my mom would scream at me
in front of my whole family, and so they thought
that she was quite monstrous, and so they would try
to spoil me when I was there. They would all
try and constantly say, what a good girl, what a
good well behaved girl. Hope, why, hope, why, you know,

(20:13):
to try to convince her and me maybe that I
was not the devil child my mom made me out
to be. That dynamic Stephanie of You're the favorite. You're
such a good girl. You know, we like you so much.
It's so interesting because in a way, and you actually
talk about Pete Walker in your book, who is a

(20:34):
renowned trauma and attachment therapist whose work I really really
admire in respect, but it's as though your entire family
was engaging in what we call a fawn response, as
though they were almost trying to win over your mother,
but not to protect themselves. It was like fawn response
by proxy. It was as though that if they could

(20:55):
somehow win her over and convince her of your goodness,
that you could be safe. But the thing that they
couldn't do was confront her directly about her behavior. Yeah,
you know, and that to me, they were all too
afraid of that. Since they were afraid, and in a
way it had to be all the more confusing for
you as a child. How much of that was cultural?

(21:17):
Their unwillingness, I mean, was that cultural? Do you think
that would have happened in any culture in the world
that family members wouldn't be able to address how your
mother was coming at you. You know, after I did
my story, lots of Malaysian Chinese people did reach out
and they were like, this resonated with me. But lots
of white people did too, Yeah, Americans. Yeah, And so
I don't think it's purely cultural. I think that lots

(21:38):
of people want to maintain the status quo and are
really terrified. And I think in our culture it's very
much stigmatized to criticize other people's relationships. You know, it's
sort of like, oh, clearly your partner is not the best,
but I'm just gonna keep quiet about it, because that's
your life, your thing that you need to figure out.
Nobody in our family had ever gotten divorced. Nobody and

(22:02):
our family had ever gotten counseling. I mean, you know,
and even in America, this is the nineties, that wasn't
made very accessible to us. It wasn't quite as mainstream
as it is now seeking therapy when you were young, okay,
so before the age of twenty, did anyone ever take
you aside and said, Stephanie, what's happening here is not

(22:23):
okay in your family and your extended family. No, no,
you know again that often is enough. Even if the
abuse doesn't stop, that moment of validation of what you're
enduring is absolutely wrong. I'm not saying it would end
the cycle, but for a moment, it would take the

(22:45):
person surviving at saying okay, I'm not crazy, this is
not okay, it's the crazy making thing. Yes. Yes, So
now I want to shift a little because now you
go into adulthood and you know, you get involved in
journalism and what was so I mean compelling about your
story was you're like, that's what I want to do.

(23:06):
You really kind of got your eyes Ultimately Raizor focused
on the position you wanted, and you put your head down.
You got a college degree, you did well in school,
You had a clear goal, and you went for it.
I think that many people who hear a story like yours,
we'll think, well, a person after this is going to
be completely addled and scattered and doesn't know up from
down and right from left. You instead became ridiculously focused

(23:33):
and had a extraordinary work ethic and ambition. Can you
link these two processes because in a way they almost
feel disconnected when we think of how we're told stories
of trauma. I think lots of people dissociate when they
go through trauma. And my favorite form of dissociation was work.

(23:55):
When you have a fancy job, like working at this
American life, people look at you in a way they
want to be friends with you, They want to be
near you to soak up your power. They think you're interesting.
And so the cachet that I got through success was
a great substitute for real love. I think not to mention,

(24:18):
like you know lots of Twitter comments being like like
like like like you're so cool, love your story. That's
also like a very surface level form of love and
appreciation obviously, so it doesn't feel as good, but it
also doesn't have as much weight and fear associated with
it because I don't have to do anything to maintain
this relationship except keep being successful. You raise something so interesting,

(24:42):
which is this idea of achievement and attainment as a
trauma protective behavior, because what it did was, like you said,
it would foster people coming into your life, but it
was protective because it was in a strange way. And
I never thought of this until you were just talking
your achievement and the cache. As you put it, people

(25:03):
could then love the cache and you wouldn't have to
worry about them having to love Stephanie and you know,
and I think about people who get advanced degrees and
all of that like that. To be very transparent with you,
I was very much told that, Like I thought, like, Okay,
if I get a doctorate, at least I'll feel legitimate,
because I didn't feel legitimate as a human being, but
the PhD would legitimize me, which is actually quite horrifying

(25:24):
because it's actually a devaluation of the self. You were
saying something very similar with this idea of I get
the job, I have the title, I get the traction
on social media, but even more important the issue you
brought up as this idea of work as dissociation. We
don't think about it that way, you know, least of
all in a capitalist society, right, you know, But that
this idea that we actually fetishize people who work around

(25:48):
the clock and get up at five am and did
an eighteen hour work day, that in fact, many many times,
that is a dissociative experience. It dissociates from feeling. And
another important point is I think when we talk about
dissociation the error people make as they go right to
Sybil and a person who has multiple personalities, and it's

(26:09):
not that at all. It's a real numbing and a
distancing and detaching from feeling. And so the fact that
you're bringing in work to be in that space is
really quite significant, and so I thank you for bringing
that point of view. My session with Stephanie will continue
after this break. This idea of work is dissociation and

(26:32):
pick up on that, because I think that was a
really important point you're making here. You made in the book.
Work is something that is so hypervalue that we are
thinking if somebody works all the time and succeeds at work, well,
then nothing could be going wrong for them. There was
this one moment who would always give this talk at
this fancy college, and this guy would always make some

(26:55):
comment about like how amazing it was that I was
like whatever, twenty seven and that I was where I was,
and how it was so astronomical. And I think the
last year I did the talk, I never got invited
back after this, or maybe I shouldn't have said it,
but I was like, you know, I don't know that
I recommend having such an astronomical right, because I think

(27:15):
that working this hard is not sustainable, and I think
I would have had a longer career in radio if
I had not burned myself out to that degree. But yeah,
all people see is wow, that's so shiny and perfect,
and yeah, it also reinforced this idea of Stephanie so strong,

(27:36):
Stephanie hasn't eat the help. Correct, And I think that
what ends up happening is we kind of get into
this sort of resilience porn kind of place, which is
she's so resilient. Resilience is great, but resilience is anonymous
only with success, so correct correct, and that it is yes,
there's a certain amount of resilience that you'd gone through
all of this and we're able to show up in

(27:59):
the way of being productive, which is again also an
overvaluation of productivity as sort of like this measure of
a person. But what we don't tend to do with
friends or family or anyone colleagues, so we don't tend
to want to look under the hood like are they
okay just because they're productive, just because they're working hard,
like to punch out what some of these definitions of

(28:20):
resilience are rather than just this kind of hard working,
productive piece. Because I thought that was a really fascinating
part of your story, and yet you were also in
your book you detailed that it wasn't all rainbows and
sunshine at work. You actually were working with a really,
really difficult colleague and that was a very defining experience
for you professionally. It was interesting because outside of my

(28:42):
office everyone was like Stephanie's at the top of the world,
and inside the office, I felt like the weakest link
because I had a very abusive boss who was constantly
demeaning me and making me feel stupid and small and
crazy all the time. Because like I would do a
story that everybody would love in terms of the world

(29:06):
and other co workers, and he'd be like that was
that I didn't like that at all. That was like
embarrassing to our show. So it meant that I was
constantly in my coworkers offices on their floors, like crying
and asking for their validation. And that was I think
kind of what snapped me into realizing, like, I'm not strong.

(29:29):
I need help because right now I'm seeking help from
the floor of my coworkers office who is so over
it right now, and I have to have something better
than this. Okay, So I'm going to say two things
to that, because it's actually hit me in an interesting place.
I absolutely agree, I understood your decision making process of
I'm sitting on the floor of a colleague's office. I'm

(29:50):
going through this terrible stressful thing and it's really taking
a toll on me. I need to seek out professional help.
I disagree with the I'm not strong, you know, I
think that that's the piece i'd take some umbradge at
You're right, right, because for two reasons, anyone dealing with
a toxic boss, I don't care if you don't have
a history of complex trauma from childhood. That's actually a

(30:12):
really noxious process that can take a toll on anyone,
and I think it's something we don't talk about how
impactful that can be. Number one, but number two, you
had been through complex trauma, and what this boss was
doing to you was invalidating you and telling you you
were no good. Was literally literally a recapitulation of what

(30:35):
happened in your childhood. In this boss was channeling your
mother and father. I had told him stories from my childhood.
He knew all about my childhood, and I told him
stories about how like when I had written a diary entries,
my mom forced me to write diary entries and then
afterward I would bring them to her and she would
sit there and force me to stand behind her and

(30:57):
she would just rip me a new one, go through
my diary entreen to say like, this is anspelled. You
use them too much, You're terrible writer. And he would
do the exact same thing to me. He had me
stand behind him as he went through my work and
he would play it over and over as he just
told me, like, why can't you get this right? What's

(31:17):
wrong with you? What's wrong with you? I was literally
standing in the same position that I would have to
be with my mother. I mean, there's a certain sadism
in the boss, but beyond that, sitting on the floor
of the colleague and venting, I actually think that was
a really good choice because you actually had the wherewithal
to seek out another human being to talk about it,

(31:40):
to vent about it. And while I understand that may
not have been appropriate, and it certainly wasn't sustainable, right,
I can get all of that, Yeah, at a brass
tap their strength and vulnerability. Beyond even vulnerability, it's the
fact that you still actually kept getting up in the morning,
and I'm sure it was taking a terrible toll on you.
The one thing to remember, and I see this time
and time again when I'm working with complex trauma survivors,

(32:03):
is there's a self judgment. Right Again, too many workplaces
are basically hazing rituals anyhow, But when they're in those
situations dealing with the angry, sadistic boss, the entitled rant
from a client, the entitled rant from a boss, whomever,
and that person with the history of complex trauma almost
feels themselves crumbling underneath that. They'll say, see, I'm not

(32:25):
that strong, I can't hang in the workplace, and it
is that like helping them connect the dots and saying
you're not made for this. Something happened to you. It's
almost like if you were born with a bomb leg,
Like I'm like, yeah, maybe the job going up and
down the stairs a lot's probably not it's going to
hurt you. Doesn't mean you can't do it, but I
think that there's an activation. So then the person who's

(32:47):
gone through complex trauma SS, well, there's something wrong with me.
I can't put up with a toxic boss. There's nothing
wrong with you. Something happened to you. And I think
that languaging becomes a really important thing to give survivors
and for people to hold within them from a letting
go of self judgment that oh, this is supposed to
be a problem for me more than it might be

(33:07):
for somebody who didn't have this backstory. Yeah. Absolutely. Then
you get into therapy. What is so compelling about your story?
And it's really it's a real master class in sort
of trauma therapy. Was your personal journey if you could
walk us, so some of how you started this journey
and where, because I have some questions about that but

(33:29):
how you started therapy, how that worked out for you,
and how that all unfolded for you. Started therapy actually
when I was like nineteen and I just went to
like a sliding scale local therapist in San Francisco. Well,
I'd actually seen a couple of therapists before then, but
she was the one that helped the most. I saw
her for years, and she was really great in teaching

(33:51):
me very basic things like learning how to use eye
statements and helping me navigate through a lot of relationships,
and how to assert my needs and how to be
less negative in the way that I talked about myself,
all valid things. But after I got my CPTSD diagnosis,

(34:12):
I really knew that I needed somebody who was specialized
in trauma work, and so I just went full court
press on it, and I quit my job and I
did every single thing I could. I was doing restorative yoga,
I was doing em DR, I was doing mushrooms. I

(34:33):
went to breathwork classes and all of that, and I
think it all helped a little bit. I think there
was sort of like a three pronged necessary approach. Number one,
the most important thing was sort of getting a sort
of mind body stability, being able to calm down when

(34:54):
I was triggered, and I think resortive yoga really helped
for that. Meditation really helped for that, and so just
being able to sort of breathe and take a minute
when I was in a really, really triggered position. The
second thing I think was changing the narrative that I
had about myself, changing this narrative of shame, recognizing how
horrible the things that happened to me were instead of

(35:16):
minimizing them constantly. I think MDR was really helpful for that.
It sort of helped me see with a very objective
clarity the brutality of my abuse. And lastly, I think,
and this is something that we don't really talk enough
about in the therapy sphere, was relational therapy sort of
building up my ability to trust other people. Learning how

(35:41):
to carry on a conversation kind of from scratch with people,
Learning how to be curious about their cues instead of
sort of constantly jumping to fear whenever they might have
a frown or change of tone and their voice or whatever.
Learning how to listen, learning how my trauma and all
of that fear got in the way of me being

(36:03):
a good friend. Yeah, sort of relearning all of that
with the therapist was very important. Did you do all
of this with one therapist or did you do it
with different therapists. I think the journey began with many therapists,
and I think they really set like a very good
foundation to do more work. But I think kind of

(36:23):
the revolutionary work came with doctor Jacob Houm. And the
therapy that we did do was also really unique because
we recorded all of our conversations, all of our therapy sessions.
Then immediately after I would go and I would transcribe
our entire therapy session put into Google Docs, and then
he and I would go through all of the minutia

(36:46):
of that session in Google Docs and make comments about
like here Stephanie wasn't listening, here, Jacob wasn't attuning to her. Here,
Stephanie wasn't attuning to him. They're sort of pointing out
all of breaking down what it is to trust a person.
I think it was a great exercise in trusting somebody else,
because what a vulnerable thing to do with somebody for

(37:09):
both people. He's obviously as a therapist, being very vulnerable
in this position. Yeah, like I've talked to many therapists before,
and maybe you can talk about this about how that's
absolutely terrifying to them, because that's like opening up a
can of worms for their supervisors, I think. And like,
what if somebody then files a complaint saying, oh, my

(37:32):
therapist said this to me in session, and here's the
exact here is the evidence. But I think that was
something that was really helpful for me, was he was
leveling the complicated power structures around therapist and client. I
thought that the work you did with doctor hamas revolutionary

(37:52):
because even in real time, it's really hard to pay
attention to what you're calling as the attunement, the listening,
the attunement, sales as it were, the misinterpretations, all of that.
That kind of line by line analysis, interactional analysis in
essence you were doing is the sort of stuff we
tend to see in research, definitely not in clinical practice.

(38:13):
It's not even so much the worry that a therapist
would be worried about what we said. I mean a
short of us saying something really deeply inappropriate. I mean,
I think it's the dance of therapy. It's imperfect, but
that the two of you put in that time to
do that kind of line by line analysis. It really
then speaks to the power of even a single part

(38:34):
of one conversation with one person. Right, so even in
a ten minute conversation, there can just be one thing
that the whole thing hinges on, which would lead to
a moment of really you feeling unsafe, the other person
feeling disconnected, that loss of attunement, and the whole thing
goes off the rails, and that right there for you
to understand that and to recognize it's not random, and

(38:55):
it's not scary, and it's not out of control, but
there's actually a rhythm that there was signal in the
noise as it were. I have to say as a
therapist it was really really eye opening some of my
clients to record their sessions and I say, you can
do with them as you wish, and we can go
back and break things down. So that has always been
something I have said to my clients. This is your time,

(39:16):
and this is your voice, and this is your story,
so it belongs to you. You've invited me into your space,
I haven't invited you into mine. So that's very much
how I view the therapeutic frame. But it was really
quite amazing because some people listening to this and we
haven't actually talked with anyone who's talked about their experience
of EMDR. Can you talk a little bit about what

(39:36):
your experience was of being a client who's experiencing trauma
and who's gone through EMDR, because it could actually be
really useful to get that first person perspective. Yeah, MDR
is the process of going through your trauma or recollecting it,
and there's different ways you can do it. A lot
of people sort of follow a finger, yeah, left and right.

(39:59):
Their therapist moves this left and right. I did. I
wanted to keep my eyes closed, and so I had
two buzzers in my hands and I would have a
buzz in one ear and a buzz on my hand
and then the buzz on the other side. And I
think something about it was like it kept me grounded
enough to sort of go through this, yeah, process of

(40:20):
looking at my trauma without getting too triggered, without seeing
it from like an overly emotional standpoint, seeing it in again,
a very factual standpoint, like a very real standpoint, almost
like I was watching it happened to somebody else, I
would say, and having a strange out of body experience.

(40:41):
Let's take a moment to learn more about this term
she just mentioned. E M d R stands for eye movement,
desensitization and reprocessing and is a therapy meant to help
a person who is experienced trauma to access and work

(41:02):
through traumatic memories. It's meant to foster healing from the
distress people experience after having had any kind of traumatic experience.
When I talk about a couple of other things, one
is that you went back to your high school. And
this was a really important part of the book to me,
because you talked to a teacher, okay, and you were

(41:24):
actually saying, like, were you so, what was your take
on what was happening to my peers back when I
was in high school in terms of abuse and trauma?
What was his response to that? Because this is a
really important part of your story, I thought. I think
one of the reasons why I minimized my trauma so
much growing up is because it was so common in
my community. Like all of my best friends, we're going

(41:45):
through what I went through, or sometimes much worse than
when I went through. So I thought, certainly all the
adults must have seen some percentage of this at the
very least, and he was like, no, you're a very
privileged Asian children whose parents BUYUMAC books, and so there's
no abuse here, and there's just pressure, and that's what

(42:08):
it was. He framed the entire story, and what I
felt was a trope and a stereotype of Asian kids
tiger parenting. Everyone wants to go to Harvard, and I
thought it was so neat and tidy and unseeing that
this could be happening, and that what was stunning was
what happened when you went to go talk to the
school psychologists who said, who said that hundreds and hundreds

(42:34):
of her students were still being physically exactly exactly. And
I thought that juxtaposition that the teacher almost was sort
of wedded to, like, well, this is what happens here,
and everyone's under pressure to get good grades, and the
reality of that this isn't just about Okay, these are
Asian kids, so this isn't happening was not only a
disconnect between what was happening in the adults in that environment,

(42:54):
it actually meant that there were fewer eyes fully sort
of appreciating what was happening. And I thought that that
difference in falling into that sort of stereotype mode meant
that mental health services and that kind of outreach wasn't
going to happen. It was just not even the awareness.
So these are not only model kids, their families must
be model families too. And what's a little pressure because

(43:15):
they all want to go to the best schools. And
you must see this with your Asian and South Asian clients, right, like, absolutely,
I mean absolutely, I knew this was a problem. I
knew this was a problem after I spoke to school psychologists.
Since my book has come out, you wouldn't believe the
number of messages I get, thousands of messages Asian Americans

(43:38):
and from people from San Jose, from my own community
saying like, yes, the abuse is prevalent, and yet somehow
this model minority myth persists. And when you go to
any school, like I just went to my school district
to give a talk on this last summer, again, all
of the teachers are like completely clueless about it and

(44:00):
completely like, I think you might be making way too
big of a deal about this. Wow, my conversation will
continue after this break. I have very good students. My
students are very good. They have all a's, and I'm like,

(44:20):
that's not the point. But let's see there it is,
though they're good and they're getting you these a's because
they're afraid, because this is their way of placating the
world around. This is the way of that they build
their safety, correct, like the way that I built mine.
It doesn't mean that there isn't horrible stuff happening at
home for them, right, necessitating them to build that safety. Absolutely,

(44:42):
and I think that that idea is that this is
being done for safety. And have the experience gaslighted, you
know that, Oh they're getting a's, It's fine, that is
a gaslight. One of the people you interviged in your
book was an expert in estrangement, and I found that
section of your book to be really powerful. Yourself or
from a Malaysian Chinese family, where family family values sort

(45:05):
of the collective protection of the family unit are really foremost. Yeah,
but again this is where I'm saying, this is transcultural.
Family estrangement is a taboo. It's not supposed to happen.
My understanding is you really don't have much to do
with your parents anymore. Am I correct about them? I
do not speak with either Okay, so that falls under estrangement,

(45:29):
which does I've worked with a lot of clients who
are estranged for a range of reasons, mostly due to
this kind of abusive and antagonistic behavior. Your expert said
something so brilliant, and it was this idea that nobody
wants estrangement. Nobody wakes up in the morning saying I'm
going to figure out a way to get a strange
from my family, and that once people are estranged, it's

(45:53):
not like they're walking around saying woohoo, I got rid
of my family, but that they actually live in a
state of grief and sadness over what never was, over
what was lost, over what happened. But your expert was saying,
this isn't about estrangement good, this is about estrangement necessary
and the grief that goes along with it. So can

(46:14):
you talk a little bit about why you even talk
to an estrangement expert and how that's played out for you. Well,
I cited Christina Sharp's work, and then I spoke to
Katherine Saint Louis, who did just tons of reporting on estrangement.
And because I was at the time trying to decide
whether I should be estrange for my father or not.
And Catherine told me, I can't tell you whether you

(46:36):
should or you shouldn't. I can only tell you that
if you do, lots of other people have done it,
and they've done it because it's necessary, and I had
to determine if it was necessary. And I think there's
lots of times when I wonder if it was necessary
less now it's been a few years, but I think
it was necessary for my mental health. It was necessary

(46:57):
to protect myself and I have relationships with tricky people.
But I think ground for what I think is appropriate
whether I should keep you in my life or not,
is whether you're going to try. Are you going to
hear me, Are you going to give a shit? Are
you going to really like put in the effort to
try and make this work between the two of us,

(47:19):
or is it just going to be me give and giving, giving,
trying to make you listen to me, never getting any
of that back in return. And I think with my parents,
they didn't want to try. They have not prioritized me
in twenty years basically in any way, shape or form,
And so just having a relationship like that, anyone knows

(47:39):
it's totally draining and totally, as we were saying earlier,
crazy making. And to those who in the mental health
establishment who are like fixed the relationship at all costs, Yeah,
I am not against reconciliation. I'm not against reconciliation with
my parents, but you have to reck ignize that, Like,

(48:01):
for reconciliation to happen, you need more than just the
person who has been abused, right, and often especially in
terms of people of color, in terms of immigrants, you
need a whole community. Yes, Like the person who is
being abusive often is not being abusive out of just
total like carelessness. They often have deep, deep wounds themselves.

(48:26):
They often have like deep mental health crises. And it
was kind of like what I was talking about earlier.
There's all this stigma culturally that's preventing them from getting help.
They don't have their resources, Like the mental health establishment
in the United States is geared mostly to help intellectual
white people. There aren't enough culturally trained therapists who can

(48:48):
support them, who can sort of help them in a
way that brings in community, that brings in their religion,
that provides them therapy in a destigmatized way. And so
in some ways I do I mean, I blame my parents,
they have real accountability here, but in some ways I
blame the entire system as well. And I am so
glad you put it in that framework, because when people

(49:10):
have gone through these paths, even when estrangement becomes necessary,
they're carrying the burden of ancestors of intergenerational trauma, awareness
of the political systems, of the colonizing processes that got
their generations before to this point, and that really complicated
balancing act of having to save yourself, but to do

(49:30):
so knowing that history is actually the legacy of every
community of color in this country, frankly, and any marginalized
group in this world. So it is something that is
such a painful part of this journey, and I think
it results in a persistent grief that we don't ever
fully move past. So I really thank you for putting
that so clearly, because I think that that is the

(49:51):
call to arms for this mental health around the world,
is that we can support survivors, give them contexts, support
people who engage in this behavior, and move from there.
But I want to as we come to our end,
what is so beautiful about your story is that it
has I consider a happy ending, And I think that

(50:12):
one that survivors really really need to hear is talk
to us about where you're at now. And you're very young,
so it's a lot of story, a lot of story left.
But yeah, the ending being sort of where we're beginning
it with you right now catching it now. It's actually
a really beautiful story. Can you share that? Because I
think it's a really beacon of hope. I think that

(50:36):
I have more hope than I ever have right now
in the future. I found a wonderful family to sort
of provide me with some of that support and acknowledgement
and who seeing me and who show up the ways
that I ask them to show up through my husband's family.
I have a really tremendously supportive partner who gets triggered

(50:58):
himself and you know, has his own traumas, but like
is really intent on working together on them. How are
you able to trust a man enough to fall in love?
I mean, I mean it's completely seriously talk about lack
of trust. How did you trust him and then give
yourself permission to fall in love? I don't every day,

(51:18):
Thank you me, I don't trust him. Thank you for
sharing that. Yeah, And I'm like you're shady. There's plenty
of still like you don't care about me? But then
he shows up. Yeah, and then I say you don't
care about me and he's like, I don't and he
so that a thousand thousand times now, And there's days
where he's like, you don't care about me, and I'm
like I do, and how do you? How dare you

(51:41):
not see that already? But he just kept showing up.
And I think for me, I don't know that I'll
ever feel totally safe in this world, but I know
that like, I have to jump, I have to take chances.
I have to grab happiness where I can and try

(52:03):
and let the people who want to love me love me,
or else I'm just going to have a very empty life.
So yeah, I keep trying to be brave. Well, it's
incredibly brave because the very things that keep you safe,
that sort of voice in the back of your head
that's always telling you it's all danger and it's all bad,
that voice is actually sort of strangely designed to keep
you safe too. And the courage is actually getting out

(52:26):
of bed in the morning and saying, okay, voice, the
voice is not moving. I always imagine that voice the
trauma voice sits in a little chair in like a dark,
dusty corner of your brain, and it's just, oh kay,
you're not leaving, so you just stay there. I got you.
I understand you're trying to keep me safe. I understand that.
But the real courage in the post complex trauma landscape
is to get up in the morning and I tell

(52:47):
everyone I work with, you got up this morning. We're good,
all right, now, just keep going. And I think that
that's what you've done. And I think more than anything,
I think love is an incredibly healing force. But what
I really am full as that you're willing to talk
about how it's complicated love, that there's still struggles with
trust is the doubt, it's the self doubt, and that

(53:08):
you're able to talk about that, that people will find
their love stories, and that it is about patients, that
it's about being recognized real quick. Just to just to
close that out. It doesn't need to be romantic love.
Thank you, Thank you. Some of the most like healing
love in my life is my friend's love. I'm really
glad you brought that up too, because I think then
it's about love, right, whether it's it's friends, love, partner love.

(53:31):
It's about love, and it sounds in these friendships you
are able to be seen, but when you are having
a difficult moment, they can still stand strong in the
face of that. And I think for many trauma survivors,
the conviction as people are going to run away when
they see my stuff come out, and that no love
is that you hang out when the stuff comes out,
and there are people who can do that. It may

(53:52):
not have happened once before, but it can happen. So
I think that that's thank you so much that love
in its many forms. I want to make a last
point here as we come to our end. Here. The
show is called Navigating Narcissism, and that was not your framework,
and I think it's a tricky word. That's why we
take it on in this podcast. And when I use
that word, I care less about the personality style because

(54:15):
it's not a disorder, it's a style. But it's the
behaviors that hang out with it, right. The behaviors that
come from that are invalidation and minimization and manipulation and
devaluation and dehumanization and betrayal. All of that stuff is
what sort of sits under that kind of larger umbrella.

(54:36):
And while that was not how you ever framed your story,
and I don't think it is your frame. I think
your frame is very focused on you in your story
of complex trauma, and that's where it shall remain. It's
on this podcast because being exposed to those interpersonal patterns,
when one is chronically invalidated and not seen and having

(54:58):
reality distorted harms us. And we've talked with other guests
on our podcast. We've literally said I have complex trauma
as a byproduct of narcissistic abuse. In your case, it
was these dynamics but very complicatedly housed in parents that
came from very complicated cultural backgrounds who likely brought in

(55:18):
their trauma too, And we've talked with other survivors who
had parents who had gone through trauma as well, that
this isn't about labeling someone as narcissistic, but that this
is about understanding that there are interpersonal patterns that hurt
us and that we carry within us, and that we
can then move beyond. And yeah, at some level we're

(55:41):
carrying a little of that weight on our back always,
but that there is a path forward and it doesn't
define us, and that we can enter into meaningful, purposeful lives, work,
and above all, loving relationships. And so I just wanted
to give that context for why your story was so
important to us here on this podcast. And I appreciate that.

(56:04):
And I think, you know, in terms of my parents,
I think the term narcissistic is a little bit limiting
for them. Agree. I think that they exhibit narcissistic behaviors absolutely,
like no question. But I think narcissism for them is
complicated because and not because they're good people, because I

(56:28):
think their history and potential abuse whatever is tricky. And
I think that I've seen this most in my reporting
with like survivors of the Khmer Rouge, in that you
have these people who are so so trauma having survived
to genocide, and they're so focused on survival that all
they see is themselves in survival and they wind up

(56:50):
kind of being abusive to their children. I've seen in
other communities that not being true when the person is
getting the full support of their community, When the abuser
is getting the full support of their community, of their religion,
of getting the right therapy that they need, I think
there is hope. I think that that is not accessible

(57:13):
enough in this country right now, enough for the vast,
vast majority of us to make those repairs. I absolutely agree.
I really appreciate that framing, and I think it's about
the behavior. To me, the label, the framing, it's all
about the behavior, and then it's taking that behavior, framing
it in a context, and then looking for Like you said,
these contexts can vary by culture, by history, by story,

(57:36):
and then access and sadly mental health treatment has really
become who has the privilege to actually be able to
get the help? And that to me, it's a real
problem in the world. But thank you again. Where can
people find you, Stephanie? Because your story is something and
I think something that many many people need to hear.
And I have your book right here. I kind of
carry it around. It's completely dog here. It is a

(57:57):
little sort of bible. But where can people find you?
My paperback comes out great, You're Worried twenty first awesome,
so it'll be affordable. I also have a audiobook on
Audible that is available that includes recordings of the sessions
with doctor Ham, So lots of people like that. And
you can find me on Twitter and I'm on the radio,

(58:18):
but I'm most President on Instagram in my handle is
fo foo foo. Great. All right, great, Well everyone finds
Stephanie because it's an amazing conversation. Thank you for the
gift of your time, of your story and your journey.
It was a game changer for me, and I really
feel honored that I got to meet you and talk
with you. So thank you again, Stephanie. Well, thank you,

(58:40):
thank you for being vulnerable in this interview as well.
And I really appreciate you having me and having this
nuanced conversation. Thank you. Well. I hope our paths cross again.
So thank you, Stephanie. And here are my takeaways from
my conversation with Stephanie. First, one of the most painful
full legacies of childhood abuse is the child's takeaway that

(59:05):
maybe I am unlovable, And as Stephanie says, if my
parents cannot love me, then who can. Children experiencing trauma
make meaning of their situation by blaming themselves as a
way to keep themselves safe. But these inner narratives can
persist throughout adulthood. These beliefs can drive decisions throughout life

(59:32):
that support that unlovability, and therapy is essential to address
these deeply held beliefs for this next takeaway, Seeking safety
is a primary motivation of a trauma survivor, and that
sometimes can get distorted. For example, when Stephanie's neighbor try

(59:55):
to intervene when she was a child, Stephanie felt she
had to protect her mother. When these cycles show up
in adulthood, it can mean that turning away from genuinely
helpful people and then justifying the harmful behavior of others.

(01:00:18):
And these safety behaviors may also involve doing well, doing
well at work or at school, and because doing well
is valued, these behaviors are often missed. For any survivor,
it means taking a hard look at your life and

(01:00:39):
questioning how you may use practices like working hard and
succeeding as a way of distancing from your pain and
feeling safe. In our next takeaway, when Stephanie talked about
what worked to help her work through her trauma, she

(01:01:00):
listed multiple approaches, including psychotherapy, emdr psychedelics, and relational therapy.
What she found most useful was learning, at an almost
microscopic level, learning how to relate again, learning to trust, converse,

(01:01:21):
be curious, and not to go right to fear from
interpersonal cues like a frown. Complex trauma steals this basic skill,
but it can be life changing, and the way she
did it was inspired and unique. In this next takeaway,
when Stephanie places her parents' behavior within the framework of culture,

(01:01:47):
intergenerational trauma, and historical oppression, she isn't rationalizing, but instead
she is contextualizing, and that's an important distinction. Remember, Stephanie
still ended contact with her parents and built up a
new world of family with her friends, her husband, and

(01:02:11):
her in laws. Contextualizing doesn't mean that you are excusing
the abusive behavior, but it is possible to simultaneously set
a firm and permanent boundary but also recognize the complex
and historic origin of the abusive behavior. To do so

(01:02:33):
can actually really foster healing. It doesn't have to be
either or or black or white. Healing is all about
the gray. And for our final takeaway, Stephanie doesn't portray
her healing as an easy path. She certainly doesn't say
I'm at someone, I have wonderful friends, and now we

(01:02:53):
walk into the sunset. She acknowledges that on many days
there our challenges and a need for reassurance and safety.
Healing is absolutely possible, and you can find a love story.
It's not always an easy love story, but the hope

(01:03:13):
is for a patient love story and for someone who
sees you, sees all of you, and can be that
place of safety

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Host

Dr. Ramini Durvasula

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