September 22, 2025 • 29 mins
In this episode of Joyously Free!, host Joanie Lindenmeyer speaks with Patrick Quivey, a licensed clinical social worker, about the complex relationship between trauma and identity. Quivey explains how our sense of self develops through early mirroring by caregivers, evolves during adolescence, and can be disrupted by trauma, which often leaves individuals feeling isolated and […]
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(00:10):
Hi, everyone, and welcome KCIW listeners of one
hundred point seven at kciw.org
in Perkins, Oregon. And we are now syndicated,
so we're welcoming the listeners at KZZH
ninety six point seven FM, access humble Eureka,
California.
So welcome everybody to joyously free with me,
none better than author Joni Lindenmaier. I'm so
(00:32):
glad you're tuning in today. A little bit
about me, I'm a thirty four year resident
of Harbor, Oregon, a retired Del Norte High
School teacher, and a twenty twenty five Lambda
nominated author who has published three books in
two years, including my audiobook
in my voice of my memoir, None Better.
I love life and love being the producer
and host of this show. I'm so glad
(00:53):
that you are here today. Well, let's begin
with our morning salutation.
I think you remember how it goes. I
say it's a brand new day, and you
get to respond with never been lived before.
Here we go. It's a brand new day.
Never been lived before.
Yahoo. Congrats. That's the way to start every
new day. Well, this radio gatioshow, as Will
(01:15):
and Viv named it, is a show that
talks about LGBTQ
plus stories and tips along with religion, church,
faith, spirituality,
and joy.
Simply said, the purpose of the show is
to share, radiate, and spread abundant joy and
freedom.
Hence, the title of my second book, Joyously
Free, coauthored with Elizabeth Ann Atkins of two
(01:37):
sisters writing dot com. In this radio broadcast,
as well as every day of my life,
there is no hate speech,
no hate behaviors, and no bullying.
It will be blasted with the three c's,
courage, confidence, and collaboration.
Let us seek together understanding,
think out of the box, be courageous, be
confident, and let's collaborate.
(01:59):
Be open minded just as an open parachute.
Well, our special hearts are open today as
instead of our quote or a reading from
our scripture, I want you to know we're
gonna have a special prayer coming up in
just a second. But I excitedly believe in
hope in the power of the divine that
Jesus, God, whatever name you put on a
higher being is always with me and with
(02:20):
you. So be not afraid or troubled,
saddened or depressed.
Joy and peace are an internal expression of
love and harmony that is already within us,
and we only have to reach deep within
and let it out. All is well with
my soul for love is abundant and everlasting.
Let's take a little bit to center ourselves
(02:41):
before we have a prayer with music this
morning.
Let's go ahead take a deep breath in
with the good
and out with doubt.
Again, breathing through your nose,
breathe in with hope
and out from your mouth
with fears.
(03:03):
Last one.
Take a big deep breath in
with joy
and out with worry or despair.
In the name of our mother Earth, God
our creator, Jesus our redeemer, and the blowing
winds of the Holy Spirit,
we say, good morning, Jesus. Good morning, God
and spirit.
(03:23):
Thank you for being with us on this
beautiful day.
And so I pass the microphone
with the music soul of Patrick Quivey for
our morning prayer today. Enjoy, everybody.
Alright. This is the two minutes of fame.
Alright. Go for
it. I was thinking about this for last
month or so, but, you know, our topic
(03:45):
today, identity and and trauma stress.
And I remember in high school, I I
which is well over fifty, sixty years now,
I wrote this little d in the middle
of trying to figure out who I was.
I was walking
along,
and I discovered
(04:06):
I had toes.
One
to hold
us,
looking at my nose.
Help me. I'm trapped in a human
body.
Was running
so far
that I looked
real near.
(04:27):
I was running and hiding
from my one and only fear.
Help me, I'm trapped in this human body.
Now to be a human
being
kid,
(05:00):
same. But don't try to be anything else
or we'll call you insane.
Your mother and I are real proud of
your human
body.
So I grew up from that day,
misshapen
and confused.
(05:21):
And on my back, I wear this sign
that says to all of you,
Help me, I'm trapped in this human body.
Oh, that is absolutely beautiful. Everybody, let me
introduce you to my friend, a licensed clinical
(05:42):
social worker and counselor,
Patrick Quivey. Welcome, Patrick. Thank you for your
heart and soul.
We're getting our headphones on our head here.
There we go. Oh my gosh. Our topic
today is trauma and identity.
What a beautiful, well written song, and I
I loved it. You are so talented. Thank
you for being here. Like most people, I
(06:04):
was talented at one time. So that goes
back
I think I was 16 and, you know,
every which way
of of trying to figure out who am
I and not that. You know? Oh my
gosh. And, so That's a lifetime mission, isn't
it? It's a lifetime mission. Beware of getting
the answer. It might be over. You know?
Oh my gosh. There you go. There you
(06:24):
go. That's a good one. That's a good
one. Oh, we are having fun here at
KCAW today, and so we wanna thank you
all beautiful listeners on the Oregon Coast and
Northern California Coast to join us here for
joyously free. As I've said, Patrick Quivy is
our guest speaker, and so we wanna just
make sure that you are in tune and
ready to go with our topic, his wisdom.
And, Patrick,
(06:45):
drum roll,
let it rip. Trauma and identity. What can
you tell us today? Well, everything I've learned,
I learned from people talking to me. I
found out a few years ago that I
don't have much to say.
They do. Oh. But let me tell you
a few things I've learned. And,
in this day of managed care where it's
in and out and you use behavioral,
(07:05):
conditioning to get people going in three three
days and out, it's really hard to actually
listen to people.
But
since I was not a part of that
for a long time,
people come in and talk to me, and
over time, things just sort of roll out,
and you hear what they have to say,
and you watch, and you listen
(07:25):
real close and the clues come up and
you realize
what's really going on. And they'll tell you,
like, Sherlock Holmes was repeated to say,
genius loci, watch the situation long enough and
it'll explain itself. Uh-huh.
So,
And watch means, oh my gosh, you can
pick up on people's emotions.
(07:46):
You can see their facial expressions. You can
see and feel the depth of hurt their
heart, whether it's pain, hurt, trauma, or joy,
or all the above, Yep. You just watch
where they are present in the moment and
consider what is their existential reality? What is
it like to be you in this situation?
Forget
not all of it, but but don't pay
(08:08):
attention to all all the language too. You
know, you gotta listen to what
what is this person's
situation?
Mhmm. And sometimes they don't know. Mhmm. But
they'll they'll eventually reveal it. So,
just looking at the whole idea of identity.
And, you know,
in some ways that's a relatively new modern
(08:30):
not quite industrial
age, but it's it's a modern post renaissance
idea.
And one of my favorite authors,
is a guy named Julian Janes,
and he's anthropologist, and he's very well known
now because what he wrote
forty plus years ago
(08:51):
is just
upheld the time of of reading through other
anthropologists
and scholars and and going, wow, he had
something to say. What he was saying
was that hundreds of years ago, before
the golden age of Greece and the,
during the arrival of literacy in the Mediterranean
civilized world,
(09:12):
before that,
people didn't really have a concept of their
self.
And you look into literature of the times
and
what people were going through,
they tended to hear voices.
So,
you know, Agamemnon would say, well, I guess
it was
(09:32):
just a thing that I would go and
destroy
Troy and all the rest
because the gods willed it so. So in
other words,
the rage that Achilles had and the the,
vengeance that Agamemnon had, all these
these singular Greek figures that supposedly had a
personality
Mhmm. They were just listening to voices, and
(09:54):
this was
a common thing of the Mediterranean or the
civilized world as we knew it back then.
Even the even the Old Testament is full
of
of the major prophets
hearing the voice of God, and that was
not unusual.
You know? And,
so you hear it today you hear it
today differently.
No one told me on television
(10:15):
Mhmm. Or no one told me what to
do. Mhmm. So the exterior locus of control
is seen as outside oneself. Uh-huh.
And
if you're going to invent yourself,
you're still running against the grain. Mhmm. You're
still having to grow up like it's 3,000
BC. Mhmm. So,
(10:38):
that's what I began to notice is that
when people come in to say, alright, you
know, I'm depressed. I've got problems with my
kids. I got my wife and all that.
We we handle the usual problems, which gives
us the usual headaches.
And then after
that, we're dealing with our identity. Yeah. Am
(10:59):
I a good person,
by character? Or am I good enough to
be in the country club? Or do you
really wanna be a country club person? Yeah.
All these things come up to finally to
saying, what is the shape of who I
am? Mhmm. And if we're dependent style people,
as is our history,
you know,
(11:19):
then we don't ask that question. We ask,
who am I supposed to be? Mhmm.
Mhmm. And What has society made me to
be maybe even? Yeah. Yeah. And, in in
the days of that we're in now with
huge mass communications and dialed in
profiling,
to be your own person
(11:42):
feels almost illegal at times.
Wow. Not for me. I am literally out
there, and it's like, oh, boy. But you
know what? I hear where you're coming from.
Keep going. Yeah. Keep smuggling the truth there.
Yeah. Yeah. Alright. So, you know, I wrote
all this stuff down, and I knew it
would kinda disappear when I got in here.
But,
so, you know, our concept of our self,
a self, is
(12:03):
it it emerges
right from
the beginning.
We cry. We feel.
And our mother looks at us and says,
Oh, poor baby.
In which case, they smile,
and we mirror it. All of our learning,
if you watch children, it's it's amazing. They
play follow the leader.
(12:23):
I've been watching my grandchildren,
but one imitates the other. We we do
this mirroring. It's it's a it's a concept
of empathy. It's a concept of connection,
and there's something just
biological about it that says, I see, I
do.
And
so
we develop
(12:45):
a sense that we exist because someone else
told us we do.
Someone else poured their energy into us and
we feel energized.
Mhmm.
And if we don't get that,
children
who are
not given attention, if left alone, they have
what we call failure failure to thrive. I
(13:05):
know. I've seen it. You've seen it. Yeah.
And people waste away in front of you,
children, you know, and they can die, you
know?
And then
if they don't get enough,
you know, and you meet people like this
who who are
older children and even adults,
and you get the feeling like, knock, knock,
who's there?
And
(13:25):
it takes a long time to get the
answer. Mhmm. You know?
They're
they're
not as full as, the investment
Mhmm. Of another person,
be it training, be it interest, being emotions,
just having a sense of being invited to
the party and lively.
So,
(13:47):
so, you know, a couple hundred years ago,
probably
most people,
if you told them, you can be anything
you want to be,
they would say, right. You know? No.
I'm I'm my daddy's son, and we're farmers.
You know? And that would have been a
a really good thing.
But
(14:08):
it's only in the last hundred and fifty,
two hundred years that people get this idea
that, well,
I'm free to be a person.
And I'm free to
construct a life, construct an identity. Yes. Can
I jump in there? Yeah. Oh, my gosh.
Patrick, this so reminds me. I went to
the Coos Bay Southern Oregon pride just a
(14:29):
couple weeks ago. Mhmm. And at my booth,
it was beautiful. This little girl, I'm gonna
say girl, I don't know if she's a
girl or or what her identity is, and
says, mommy, I want that book. She's looking
at the none better pink cover Yeah. Yeah.
And says to mommy, I want that book.
And and, mommy says, well, why do you
want that book? And she goes, it's two
women. It's two women. They look like they
(14:51):
love each other. And so, mommy says,
well, why don't we get it next week
at Harold's Place, which is a bookstore in
in Coos Bay? And the the young child
says, mommy, you know, I know I told
you I'm lesbian, but I think I'm bi
now. I think I'm bi. And mommy says,
I love you no matter what, and you
can be whoever you wanna be.
(15:11):
It was so powerful, Patrick. It's exactly what
you're talking about, that identity. Keep going. Well,
wisely,
she gave her permission,
and wisely, she didn't make her stick to
a six year old idea. Right.
And this is, you know, one of the
areas of trauma. I'm gonna skip forward a
(15:32):
little bit.
I'm kind of traditional in my understanding of
some things. There was
an author,
writer, psychologist,
Eric Erickson. Mhmm. And he talked about stages.
Mhmm. Freud did too. And Freud's
model
was really linked to biology. I mean, this
guy was an MD, you know, he studied
(15:53):
eels.
He's
sex life of eels.
But we
go through these passages. We're old enough
to control our own bowel movements. We're old
enough to,
walk down the street by ourselves. We get
to five, six years old, and we're playing.
We're I remember playing Fireman. I remember playing
(16:16):
Cowboy. I also
remember playing Superman, and the cape was my
towel, and I jumped off the ledge,
and suddenly, it wasn't play anymore.
Mhmm.
I now know that I am immortal
and and barely that because I hurt pretty
bad after the cape did not work. Mhmm.
So at
(16:38):
at 654-5678,
you can play
at who you want to be, and there
aren't many consequences.
And you can stretch that envelope
of what feels good and what doesn't.
And then again,
we get up to be about, you know,
13 or so. The hormones are driving us
(17:00):
again.
It's not just the body growing up, it's
the hormones we,
our mind is expanding, suddenly we begin to
think
in terms that are
a little more complicated and not so concrete.
We have a conscience, maybe. Mhmm.
And we we do what we call a
(17:20):
dress rehearsal.
You get your driver's license when you're 16.
You know, maybe you can rehearse a little
bit when you're 15. Now they stretch the
rehearsal out till you can't drive your friends
around for a while. So this is a
time when
you can
feel out these roles
and
(17:41):
kind of say, well, does this really fit?
You know, is this my aptitude? Is this
is this my,
is this how I'm throwing into the world
what I'm good at? Is this what I
really want? And you don't get that until
you're a little bit separate from your parents
to go hang out with your friends, you
know?
I remember I had a young client, and
she was a very
(18:02):
parentified
kind of,
grown up,
girl, and she
would remind me at times. She says, even
though I act like I'm 16 or 17
and feel like it, I'm really just 13.
And then one day, she said, I think
I think I'm lesbian.
I said,
(18:23):
yeah. And you're 13.
Visit that again when you're 18 because you
don't have to make any decisions for a
while.
So with
But yet she still needs to live out
of that identity.
She needs to be able to to play
with that, to see if does this fit?
You know? And look at the stressors she
was on. You know? You know, tremendous stressors
(18:45):
on where she had to be
basically an adult by the age of 12
Mhmm. And trying on 12 12 had 12
adult decisions, 13 year old adult decisions.
So part of
the development of identity is
allowing for a smooth transition
of
through the phases
(19:06):
of,
being with one's parents,
being nurtured,
moving on a little bit, moving to school,
moving with your play group, starting to try
on who you wanna be,
getting the competence to do that, not just
the personality, but just the character behind it.
And
(19:27):
then
you've got a chance
to
see if this identity fits.
And but trauma, and that's
the big thing here, you know, that's what
we wanna look at. What interrupts all this?
For good, bad, or worse?
And, you know
So with sexual identity, do you think that
(19:47):
people are born with their sexual identity?
You know,
the research is looking more and more like
the the pendulum
or this the the
the
the
back. I was born lesbian. I know I
can I can trace it back to kindergarten
(20:07):
and first grade? Oh my gosh.
Yeah. There are some things that are just
inherent. I mean,
you know, I I I found out about
a my my father had a stepsister he
knew about he never knew about, and I
read her obituary.
And my god,
she looked the same. She had the same
hobbies, and all that, and they never were
(20:28):
in touch with each error. So there is
this sort of determinism
that we have
of biological determinism that says, this is who
you are. It sometimes
it seems to clash with the presentation.
Mhmm.
I look like a woman. I feel like
a man.
Yet it's complicated, and it takes time
(20:51):
for fruition
to get
to be able to be handled with with
kind of love and concern
and not rushed.
So
I think some people
are just born that way, as the song
goes. As Lady Gaga sings. Yeah. Yep. Yep.
And why does it feel so right when
she sings it?
(21:13):
To me, it is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
And then there's
lots of people who
whose sense of self
is fluid.
Absolutely.
And I think in some ways that is
the big issue of our twentieth, twenty first
century,
(21:33):
is that we have
marching down over the last three thousand years
a continuum of growing towards
the ability to choose yourself.
And,
you know, a hundred plus, a hundred fifty
years ago, most of us lived agriculturally,
you know, and then there was a move
(21:54):
towards cities,
and
eventually, you had people going to college. Suddenly,
you know, the economy and democracy
and,
communications,
suddenly allows for the
choice of who you want to be.
And and just on political side, I look
(22:15):
at all the repression that's going on
against the DEI initiatives that our entire culture,
voting rights, gay and lesbian
recognition of all their rights, etcetera.
It's
it's net effect, if it's not its purpose,
is to shut down
the self. Yeah.
And that's trauma. That's trauma. Get back to
(22:37):
trauma. Get into the trauma stuff here, Patrick.
Please.
Everybody has trauma. We used to think in
the last fifty years, oh, it's just the
guys in Vietnam or war, etcetera, and and
truly that was where we begin to identify
it.
But I'll bet you've had trauma. Oh, absolutely.
I bet you've had it. I have. And
(22:58):
not just,
where things were bad or painful.
The
operating principle with trauma is
you're in deep water and you're alone.
And not so much
alone in terms
of is there anybody around,
but your situation is that
(23:19):
you're not getting the help, you're not getting
the,
the assurance that you're gonna live through this
or recognition of what you're going through.
So so,
you know, and there's there's lots of things
we can look at, what happens within the
brain, and there are definite brain processes and
there are definite cognitive shifts that happen.
So let's talk a little bit about what
(23:40):
happens.
Let's suppose
And make sure you throw in some tips
for the listeners today on that. Okay, please?
Yeah. Okay.
Let's suppose you step off the curb
on a busy street and you see a
bus,
and it's about 200 yards away.
(24:00):
You get enough of an alert just to
look at that and say, have I got
time? Yeah. I got time. I need to
skirt across the street.
That is not a trauma.
But there is a 10 ton bus running
straight at you, but you're in control.
You're also not alone in the sense of
society is designed to stop sign for him.
(24:21):
You know? So Mhmm. But
if you step off the bus, off the
curb,
and suddenly there's a bus about 20 feet
from you doing 35 miles an hour,
you're overwhelmed because you don't even have the
ten seconds to switch into your full alert
system, fight or flight.
(24:41):
You're arrested.
You're stopped.
And you're also alone because no one can
grab you.
So when these things happen, and they happen
maybe over time,
several things go on in the brain.
We call we can call it the limbic
system, the amygdala,
(25:01):
goes into overreaction. The part that does emotional
processing,
part it gets hyperactive. It's like, oh my
god. Oh my god. Oh my god. Yeah.
You know? Crisis. Crisis. And then it has
difficulty in in,
distinguishing after that, you know, is that a
bus that's a quarter mile away or is
it right in front of me? I see
(25:22):
a bus, I'm scared. Ah. You know?
Everything's a red flag. And then so, you
know, you've got the part of the brain
that's making learning
at the campus.
It shuts down.
It so
looking at
what what happens next I wish we had
an hour.
(25:43):
What happens
next is the in the identity,
of a person,
there's no one to talk to,
and the brain says, I have to be
out of here. It reverts into itself as
a way of pulling back. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. You
get you get the tunnel vision.
And then
(26:04):
there's no one to hear your voice but
you, and you and your voice says,
this can't be real.
It's a way of keeping it accurate. This
is what it is. In other words, it's
saying, I'm out of here. That can't be
real.
I wish I were somewhere else.
And then
at that point,
one begins to have a soliloquy of one's
(26:25):
own,
and there's no one to talk to but
yourself.
Either
either no one will believe you or no
one's there.
You're gonna need to come up with some
tips here. We're getting down to just a
minute left or so. Alright. So if you're
dealing with
friends, family, kids especially,
and you're getting this feeling that they're not
(26:46):
learning from you,
what you may actually be doing is talking
to
the part of that person that they invented
as their
their interior
soliloquy
that says, well, I'll protect you. Mhmm. And
out it rolls,
and the tough guy is there,
and it's not about anything else. It's just
(27:08):
about being tough. And you pull junior aside
and say, quit being on your sister.
You know? Quit quit, getting in trouble. Quit
stealing stuff.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
And then situation's over, and it's as if
you never talked to them.
So we keep doing conditioning,
restrictions,
limits,
(27:29):
parenting, da da da.
We got one minute. We are down to
thirty seconds to have direction. The person you
were talking to
is the person that disappeared.
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
You have to look at the situation that
they're in.
Are they scared? Are they lonely?
Are they stuck?
And that's the person that you're trying to
(27:51):
get through those shutters
that represents something else,
the bad boy, bad girl,
and say, where's the kid? Yeah. And let
me talk to the kid.
They won't act like they're hearing you, but
inside, shuttered away,
is someone waking up slowly to someone recognizing
who and what they are. Wow. So we
(28:13):
need to listen to each other.
We need to be with each other. We
need to ask these questions. We need to
seek help. Yep. Okay? Those are the tips.
I hate to cut you off, Patrick. Like
you said, we could've gone for another hour,
but we gotta narrow this down because it's
about time to say thank you to Mike
Gorse on the film on, you know, the
sound, and thank you to KZW
for making this all happen, k z z
(28:34):
h. And we wanna just say smile big,
wear bright colors, seek help. You can do
this.
We got your back. Right. And enjoy your
human body.
There you go. Love you. Thank you so
much, Patrick. You're the best. Bye.
Hi, everyone, and welcome KCIW listeners of one
hundred point seven at kciw.org
in Perkins, Oregon. And we are now syndicated,
so we're welcoming the listeners at KZZH
ninety six point seven FM, access humble Eureka,
California.
So welcome everybody to joyously free with me,
none better than author Joni Lindenmaier. I'm so
(00:32):
glad you're tuning in today. A little bit
about me, I'm a thirty four year resident
of Harbor, Oregon, a retired Del Norte High
School teacher, and a twenty twenty five Lambda
nominated author who has published three books in
two years, including my audiobook
in my voice of my memoir, None Better.
I love life and love being the producer
and host of this show. I'm so glad
(00:53):
that you are here today. Well, let's begin
with our morning salutation.
I think you remember how it goes. I
say it's a brand new day, and you
get to respond with never been lived before.
Here we go. It's a brand new day.
Never been lived before.
Yahoo. Congrats. That's the way to start every
new day. Well, this radio gatioshow, as Will
(01:15):
and Viv named it, is a show that
talks about LGBTQ
plus stories and tips along with religion, church,
faith, spirituality,
and joy.
Simply said, the purpose of the show is
to share, radiate, and spread abundant joy and
freedom.
Hence, the title of my second book, Joyously
Free, coauthored with Elizabeth Ann Atkins of two
(01:37):
sisters writing dot com. In this radio broadcast,
as well as every day of my life,
there is no hate speech,
no hate behaviors, and no bullying.
It will be blasted with the three c's,
courage, confidence, and collaboration.
Let us seek together understanding,
think out of the box, be courageous, be
confident, and let's collaborate.
(01:59):
Be open minded just as an open parachute.
Well, our special hearts are open today as
instead of our quote or a reading from
our scripture, I want you to know we're
gonna have a special prayer coming up in
just a second. But I excitedly believe in
hope in the power of the divine that
Jesus, God, whatever name you put on a
higher being is always with me and with
(02:20):
you. So be not afraid or troubled,
saddened or depressed.
Joy and peace are an internal expression of
love and harmony that is already within us,
and we only have to reach deep within
and let it out. All is well with
my soul for love is abundant and everlasting.
Let's take a little bit to center ourselves
(02:41):
before we have a prayer with music this
morning.
Let's go ahead take a deep breath in
with the good
and out with doubt.
Again, breathing through your nose,
breathe in with hope
and out from your mouth
with fears.
(03:03):
Last one.
Take a big deep breath in
with joy
and out with worry or despair.
In the name of our mother Earth, God
our creator, Jesus our redeemer, and the blowing
winds of the Holy Spirit,
we say, good morning, Jesus. Good morning, God
and spirit.
(03:23):
Thank you for being with us on this
beautiful day.
And so I pass the microphone
with the music soul of Patrick Quivey for
our morning prayer today. Enjoy, everybody.
Alright. This is the two minutes of fame.
Alright. Go for
it. I was thinking about this for last
month or so, but, you know, our topic
(03:45):
today, identity and and trauma stress.
And I remember in high school, I I
which is well over fifty, sixty years now,
I wrote this little d in the middle
of trying to figure out who I was.
I was walking
along,
and I discovered
(04:06):
I had toes.
One
to hold
us,
looking at my nose.
Help me. I'm trapped in a human
body.
Was running
so far
that I looked
real near.
(04:27):
I was running and hiding
from my one and only fear.
Help me, I'm trapped in this human body.
Now to be a human
being
kid,
(05:00):
same. But don't try to be anything else
or we'll call you insane.
Your mother and I are real proud of
your human
body.
So I grew up from that day,
misshapen
and confused.
(05:21):
And on my back, I wear this sign
that says to all of you,
Help me, I'm trapped in this human body.
Oh, that is absolutely beautiful. Everybody, let me
introduce you to my friend, a licensed clinical
(05:42):
social worker and counselor,
Patrick Quivey. Welcome, Patrick. Thank you for your
heart and soul.
We're getting our headphones on our head here.
There we go. Oh my gosh. Our topic
today is trauma and identity.
What a beautiful, well written song, and I
I loved it. You are so talented. Thank
you for being here. Like most people, I
(06:04):
was talented at one time. So that goes
back
I think I was 16 and, you know,
every which way
of of trying to figure out who am
I and not that. You know? Oh my
gosh. And, so That's a lifetime mission, isn't
it? It's a lifetime mission. Beware of getting
the answer. It might be over. You know?
Oh my gosh. There you go. There you
(06:24):
go. That's a good one. That's a good
one. Oh, we are having fun here at
KCAW today, and so we wanna thank you
all beautiful listeners on the Oregon Coast and
Northern California Coast to join us here for
joyously free. As I've said, Patrick Quivy is
our guest speaker, and so we wanna just
make sure that you are in tune and
ready to go with our topic, his wisdom.
And, Patrick,
(06:45):
drum roll,
let it rip. Trauma and identity. What can
you tell us today? Well, everything I've learned,
I learned from people talking to me. I
found out a few years ago that I
don't have much to say.
They do. Oh. But let me tell you
a few things I've learned. And,
in this day of managed care where it's
in and out and you use behavioral,
(07:05):
conditioning to get people going in three three
days and out, it's really hard to actually
listen to people.
But
since I was not a part of that
for a long time,
people come in and talk to me, and
over time, things just sort of roll out,
and you hear what they have to say,
and you watch, and you listen
(07:25):
real close and the clues come up and
you realize
what's really going on. And they'll tell you,
like, Sherlock Holmes was repeated to say,
genius loci, watch the situation long enough and
it'll explain itself. Uh-huh.
So,
And watch means, oh my gosh, you can
pick up on people's emotions.
(07:46):
You can see their facial expressions. You can
see and feel the depth of hurt their
heart, whether it's pain, hurt, trauma, or joy,
or all the above, Yep. You just watch
where they are present in the moment and
consider what is their existential reality? What is
it like to be you in this situation?
Forget
not all of it, but but don't pay
(08:08):
attention to all all the language too. You
know, you gotta listen to what
what is this person's
situation?
Mhmm. And sometimes they don't know. Mhmm. But
they'll they'll eventually reveal it. So,
just looking at the whole idea of identity.
And, you know,
in some ways that's a relatively new modern
(08:30):
not quite industrial
age, but it's it's a modern post renaissance
idea.
And one of my favorite authors,
is a guy named Julian Janes,
and he's anthropologist, and he's very well known
now because what he wrote
forty plus years ago
(08:51):
is just
upheld the time of of reading through other
anthropologists
and scholars and and going, wow, he had
something to say. What he was saying
was that hundreds of years ago, before
the golden age of Greece and the,
during the arrival of literacy in the Mediterranean
civilized world,
(09:12):
before that,
people didn't really have a concept of their
self.
And you look into literature of the times
and
what people were going through,
they tended to hear voices.
So,
you know, Agamemnon would say, well, I guess
it was
(09:32):
just a thing that I would go and
destroy
Troy and all the rest
because the gods willed it so. So in
other words,
the rage that Achilles had and the the,
vengeance that Agamemnon had, all these
these singular Greek figures that supposedly had a
personality
Mhmm. They were just listening to voices, and
(09:54):
this was
a common thing of the Mediterranean or the
civilized world as we knew it back then.
Even the even the Old Testament is full
of
of the major prophets
hearing the voice of God, and that was
not unusual.
You know? And,
so you hear it today you hear it
today differently.
No one told me on television
(10:15):
Mhmm. Or no one told me what to
do. Mhmm. So the exterior locus of control
is seen as outside oneself. Uh-huh.
And
if you're going to invent yourself,
you're still running against the grain. Mhmm. You're
still having to grow up like it's 3,000
BC. Mhmm. So,
(10:38):
that's what I began to notice is that
when people come in to say, alright, you
know, I'm depressed. I've got problems with my
kids. I got my wife and all that.
We we handle the usual problems, which gives
us the usual headaches.
And then after
that, we're dealing with our identity. Yeah. Am
(10:59):
I a good person,
by character? Or am I good enough to
be in the country club? Or do you
really wanna be a country club person? Yeah.
All these things come up to finally to
saying, what is the shape of who I
am? Mhmm. And if we're dependent style people,
as is our history,
you know,
(11:19):
then we don't ask that question. We ask,
who am I supposed to be? Mhmm.
Mhmm. And What has society made me to
be maybe even? Yeah. Yeah. And, in in
the days of that we're in now with
huge mass communications and dialed in
profiling,
to be your own person
(11:42):
feels almost illegal at times.
Wow. Not for me. I am literally out
there, and it's like, oh, boy. But you
know what? I hear where you're coming from.
Keep going. Yeah. Keep smuggling the truth there.
Yeah. Yeah. Alright. So, you know, I wrote
all this stuff down, and I knew it
would kinda disappear when I got in here.
But,
so, you know, our concept of our self,
a self, is
(12:03):
it it emerges
right from
the beginning.
We cry. We feel.
And our mother looks at us and says,
Oh, poor baby.
In which case, they smile,
and we mirror it. All of our learning,
if you watch children, it's it's amazing. They
play follow the leader.
(12:23):
I've been watching my grandchildren,
but one imitates the other. We we do
this mirroring. It's it's a it's a concept
of empathy. It's a concept of connection,
and there's something just
biological about it that says, I see, I
do.
And
so
we develop
(12:45):
a sense that we exist because someone else
told us we do.
Someone else poured their energy into us and
we feel energized.
Mhmm.
And if we don't get that,
children
who are
not given attention, if left alone, they have
what we call failure failure to thrive. I
(13:05):
know. I've seen it. You've seen it. Yeah.
And people waste away in front of you,
children, you know, and they can die, you
know?
And then
if they don't get enough,
you know, and you meet people like this
who who are
older children and even adults,
and you get the feeling like, knock, knock,
who's there?
And
(13:25):
it takes a long time to get the
answer. Mhmm. You know?
They're
they're
not as full as, the investment
Mhmm. Of another person,
be it training, be it interest, being emotions,
just having a sense of being invited to
the party and lively.
So,
(13:47):
so, you know, a couple hundred years ago,
probably
most people,
if you told them, you can be anything
you want to be,
they would say, right. You know? No.
I'm I'm my daddy's son, and we're farmers.
You know? And that would have been a
a really good thing.
But
(14:08):
it's only in the last hundred and fifty,
two hundred years that people get this idea
that, well,
I'm free to be a person.
And I'm free to
construct a life, construct an identity. Yes. Can
I jump in there? Yeah. Oh, my gosh.
Patrick, this so reminds me. I went to
the Coos Bay Southern Oregon pride just a
(14:29):
couple weeks ago. Mhmm. And at my booth,
it was beautiful. This little girl, I'm gonna
say girl, I don't know if she's a
girl or or what her identity is, and
says, mommy, I want that book. She's looking
at the none better pink cover Yeah. Yeah.
And says to mommy, I want that book.
And and, mommy says, well, why do you
want that book? And she goes, it's two
women. It's two women. They look like they
(14:51):
love each other. And so, mommy says,
well, why don't we get it next week
at Harold's Place, which is a bookstore in
in Coos Bay? And the the young child
says, mommy, you know, I know I told
you I'm lesbian, but I think I'm bi
now. I think I'm bi. And mommy says,
I love you no matter what, and you
can be whoever you wanna be.
(15:11):
It was so powerful, Patrick. It's exactly what
you're talking about, that identity. Keep going. Well,
wisely,
she gave her permission,
and wisely, she didn't make her stick to
a six year old idea. Right.
And this is, you know, one of the
areas of trauma. I'm gonna skip forward a
(15:32):
little bit.
I'm kind of traditional in my understanding of
some things. There was
an author,
writer, psychologist,
Eric Erickson. Mhmm. And he talked about stages.
Mhmm. Freud did too. And Freud's
model
was really linked to biology. I mean, this
guy was an MD, you know, he studied
(15:53):
eels.
He's
sex life of eels.
But we
go through these passages. We're old enough
to control our own bowel movements. We're old
enough to,
walk down the street by ourselves. We get
to five, six years old, and we're playing.
We're I remember playing Fireman. I remember playing
(16:16):
Cowboy. I also
remember playing Superman, and the cape was my
towel, and I jumped off the ledge,
and suddenly, it wasn't play anymore.
Mhmm.
I now know that I am immortal
and and barely that because I hurt pretty
bad after the cape did not work. Mhmm.
So at
(16:38):
at 654-5678,
you can play
at who you want to be, and there
aren't many consequences.
And you can stretch that envelope
of what feels good and what doesn't.
And then again,
we get up to be about, you know,
13 or so. The hormones are driving us
(17:00):
again.
It's not just the body growing up, it's
the hormones we,
our mind is expanding, suddenly we begin to
think
in terms that are
a little more complicated and not so concrete.
We have a conscience, maybe. Mhmm.
And we we do what we call a
(17:20):
dress rehearsal.
You get your driver's license when you're 16.
You know, maybe you can rehearse a little
bit when you're 15. Now they stretch the
rehearsal out till you can't drive your friends
around for a while. So this is a
time when
you can
feel out these roles
and
(17:41):
kind of say, well, does this really fit?
You know, is this my aptitude? Is this
is this my,
is this how I'm throwing into the world
what I'm good at? Is this what I
really want? And you don't get that until
you're a little bit separate from your parents
to go hang out with your friends, you
know?
I remember I had a young client, and
she was a very
(18:02):
parentified
kind of,
grown up,
girl, and she
would remind me at times. She says, even
though I act like I'm 16 or 17
and feel like it, I'm really just 13.
And then one day, she said, I think
I think I'm lesbian.
I said,
(18:23):
yeah. And you're 13.
Visit that again when you're 18 because you
don't have to make any decisions for a
while.
So with
But yet she still needs to live out
of that identity.
She needs to be able to to play
with that, to see if does this fit?
You know? And look at the stressors she
was on. You know? You know, tremendous stressors
(18:45):
on where she had to be
basically an adult by the age of 12
Mhmm. And trying on 12 12 had 12
adult decisions, 13 year old adult decisions.
So part of
the development of identity is
allowing for a smooth transition
of
through the phases
(19:06):
of,
being with one's parents,
being nurtured,
moving on a little bit, moving to school,
moving with your play group, starting to try
on who you wanna be,
getting the competence to do that, not just
the personality, but just the character behind it.
And
(19:27):
then
you've got a chance
to
see if this identity fits.
And but trauma, and that's
the big thing here, you know, that's what
we wanna look at. What interrupts all this?
For good, bad, or worse?
And, you know
So with sexual identity, do you think that
(19:47):
people are born with their sexual identity?
You know,
the research is looking more and more like
the the pendulum
or this the the
the
the
back. I was born lesbian. I know I
can I can trace it back to kindergarten
(20:07):
and first grade? Oh my gosh.
Yeah. There are some things that are just
inherent. I mean,
you know, I I I found out about
a my my father had a stepsister he
knew about he never knew about, and I
read her obituary.
And my god,
she looked the same. She had the same
hobbies, and all that, and they never were
(20:28):
in touch with each error. So there is
this sort of determinism
that we have
of biological determinism that says, this is who
you are. It sometimes
it seems to clash with the presentation.
Mhmm.
I look like a woman. I feel like
a man.
Yet it's complicated, and it takes time
(20:51):
for fruition
to get
to be able to be handled with with
kind of love and concern
and not rushed.
So
I think some people
are just born that way, as the song
goes. As Lady Gaga sings. Yeah. Yep. Yep.
And why does it feel so right when
she sings it?
(21:13):
To me, it is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
And then there's
lots of people who
whose sense of self
is fluid.
Absolutely.
And I think in some ways that is
the big issue of our twentieth, twenty first
century,
(21:33):
is that we have
marching down over the last three thousand years
a continuum of growing towards
the ability to choose yourself.
And,
you know, a hundred plus, a hundred fifty
years ago, most of us lived agriculturally,
you know, and then there was a move
(21:54):
towards cities,
and
eventually, you had people going to college. Suddenly,
you know, the economy and democracy
and,
communications,
suddenly allows for the
choice of who you want to be.
And and just on political side, I look
(22:15):
at all the repression that's going on
against the DEI initiatives that our entire culture,
voting rights, gay and lesbian
recognition of all their rights, etcetera.
It's
it's net effect, if it's not its purpose,
is to shut down
the self. Yeah.
And that's trauma. That's trauma. Get back to
(22:37):
trauma. Get into the trauma stuff here, Patrick.
Please.
Everybody has trauma. We used to think in
the last fifty years, oh, it's just the
guys in Vietnam or war, etcetera, and and
truly that was where we begin to identify
it.
But I'll bet you've had trauma. Oh, absolutely.
I bet you've had it. I have. And
(22:58):
not just,
where things were bad or painful.
The
operating principle with trauma is
you're in deep water and you're alone.
And not so much
alone in terms
of is there anybody around,
but your situation is that
(23:19):
you're not getting the help, you're not getting
the,
the assurance that you're gonna live through this
or recognition of what you're going through.
So so,
you know, and there's there's lots of things
we can look at, what happens within the
brain, and there are definite brain processes and
there are definite cognitive shifts that happen.
So let's talk a little bit about what
(23:40):
happens.
Let's suppose
And make sure you throw in some tips
for the listeners today on that. Okay, please?
Yeah. Okay.
Let's suppose you step off the curb
on a busy street and you see a
bus,
and it's about 200 yards away.
(24:00):
You get enough of an alert just to
look at that and say, have I got
time? Yeah. I got time. I need to
skirt across the street.
That is not a trauma.
But there is a 10 ton bus running
straight at you, but you're in control.
You're also not alone in the sense of
society is designed to stop sign for him.
(24:21):
You know? So Mhmm. But
if you step off the bus, off the
curb,
and suddenly there's a bus about 20 feet
from you doing 35 miles an hour,
you're overwhelmed because you don't even have the
ten seconds to switch into your full alert
system, fight or flight.
(24:41):
You're arrested.
You're stopped.
And you're also alone because no one can
grab you.
So when these things happen, and they happen
maybe over time,
several things go on in the brain.
We call we can call it the limbic
system, the amygdala,
(25:01):
goes into overreaction. The part that does emotional
processing,
part it gets hyperactive. It's like, oh my
god. Oh my god. Oh my god. Yeah.
You know? Crisis. Crisis. And then it has
difficulty in in,
distinguishing after that, you know, is that a
bus that's a quarter mile away or is
it right in front of me? I see
(25:22):
a bus, I'm scared. Ah. You know?
Everything's a red flag. And then so, you
know, you've got the part of the brain
that's making learning
at the campus.
It shuts down.
It so
looking at
what what happens next I wish we had
an hour.
(25:43):
What happens
next is the in the identity,
of a person,
there's no one to talk to,
and the brain says, I have to be
out of here. It reverts into itself as
a way of pulling back. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. You
get you get the tunnel vision.
And then
(26:04):
there's no one to hear your voice but
you, and you and your voice says,
this can't be real.
It's a way of keeping it accurate. This
is what it is. In other words, it's
saying, I'm out of here. That can't be
real.
I wish I were somewhere else.
And then
at that point,
one begins to have a soliloquy of one's
(26:25):
own,
and there's no one to talk to but
yourself.
Either
either no one will believe you or no
one's there.
You're gonna need to come up with some
tips here. We're getting down to just a
minute left or so. Alright. So if you're
dealing with
friends, family, kids especially,
and you're getting this feeling that they're not
(26:46):
learning from you,
what you may actually be doing is talking
to
the part of that person that they invented
as their
their interior
soliloquy
that says, well, I'll protect you. Mhmm. And
out it rolls,
and the tough guy is there,
and it's not about anything else. It's just
(27:08):
about being tough. And you pull junior aside
and say, quit being on your sister.
You know? Quit quit, getting in trouble. Quit
stealing stuff.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
And then situation's over, and it's as if
you never talked to them.
So we keep doing conditioning,
restrictions,
limits,
(27:29):
parenting, da da da.
We got one minute. We are down to
thirty seconds to have direction. The person you
were talking to
is the person that disappeared.
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
You have to look at the situation that
they're in.
Are they scared? Are they lonely?
Are they stuck?
And that's the person that you're trying to
(27:51):
get through those shutters
that represents something else,
the bad boy, bad girl,
and say, where's the kid? Yeah. And let
me talk to the kid.
They won't act like they're hearing you, but
inside, shuttered away,
is someone waking up slowly to someone recognizing
who and what they are. Wow. So we
(28:13):
need to listen to each other.
We need to be with each other. We
need to ask these questions. We need to
seek help. Yep. Okay? Those are the tips.
I hate to cut you off, Patrick. Like
you said, we could've gone for another hour,
but we gotta narrow this down because it's
about time to say thank you to Mike
Gorse on the film on, you know, the
sound, and thank you to KZW
for making this all happen, k z z
(28:34):
h. And we wanna just say smile big,
wear bright colors, seek help. You can do
this.
We got your back. Right. And enjoy your
human body.
There you go. Love you. Thank you so
much, Patrick. You're the best. Bye.
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