May 13, 2024 • 50 mins
The essence of who we are radiates when we live in our purpose. When we can connect with our true self and share it with others. There are many blockers stopping us from being able to express our feelings, or even know what we’re experiencing, and one of them is self abandonment.
Don’t let the “self” fool you — sometimes, we unintentionally abandon ourselves because of the survival responses born as a result of trauma. Until healing begins, we can get stuck living through learned patterns of ignoring our own needs in favor of others around us, suppressing feelings to protect ourselves from the neglect of others, and rejecting our intuition.
Trauma Rewired host, Jennifer, and Elisabeth Kristof of Brain-Based Wellness are finishing the CPTSD series by discussing this final component of CPTSD: self abandonment. They talk about the ways we abandon ourselves through the lens of their own experiences, and how it manifests in a cycle of self-abuse and shame.
If you find yourself disregarding your own health and happiness, tune in to understand this component of CPTSD and how healing is possible!
Topics discussed in this episode:
-
Jennifer shares a recent story of self abandonment
-
Elisabeth defints self abandonment
-
Dissociation as a survival response
-
The effects of parentification
-
Healing self abandonment
-
How all the components of CPTSD work together
-
Becoming an expert of your nervous system
-
Toxic stress and disease
-
Learning to say “no” and self-regulate
-
The power of self-expression
-
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Have you ever gone against your instincts, not trusted yourself,
engaged in people pleasing, hid parts of yourself,
found yourself in perfectionism? Or not expressing your
feelings overall, not acting in alignment with your
values, downplaying your needs? These are
all ways that we can self abandon. We're going to
(00:24):
dive into all of this, as we tackle the final distinguishing
characteristics of, of CPTS. Self abandonment
-this is going to be a big one. Welcome tom Trauma Rewired.
I'm your co host, Jennifer Wallace, a Neurosomatic Psychedelic
Preparation and Integration guide and also on the,
NSI Education team. I'm
(00:47):
Elizabeth Christoph, your co host and founder of Brainbased.com,
an online membership where we use applied neurology, somatic
practices and neurosomatic meditations to re
pattern trauma - to change behavior, to improve capacity and resilience.
I'm also the founder of the, Neurosomatic Intelligence Coaching Certification.
So,
(01:13):
self abandonment, here we go!
For me, self
abandonment is the mother wound
of these five distinguishing characteristics. I
mean, they're all so important and have such a big impact on our health. I
think that that disconnect from ourselves, that fragmentation is just a
(01:34):
huge part of everything that drives
a lot of the other outputs
that we experience with cpts. And
like all the other chronic outputs of cpts
that we have discussed, this really comes on a spectrum. It could
look like putting other people's needs or opinions before your own,
(01:55):
ignoring your own inner thoughts, your feelings about
something, ignoring your instincts, downplaying your emotional
experience. So, it can be these little ways that we
abandon ourselves in everyday life.
It can
be more severe, too. We can find our places in
(02:16):
deep self abuse with that inner critic
where we lose self compassion. It
could lead to shame spirals that are immobilizing and
leading you to not tend to your own needs at all, your basic
needs, maybe even like showering, eating
and feeding yourself, cleaning in general.
(02:38):
It can also be
because of high levels of dissociation and the fragmented
self. Yeah,
many times we can abandon parts of
ourselves that need love, that need security,
really need it from a long time ago. They need to be seen
(03:01):
because we think those parts are too much. Or,
maybe it really is a lot to reconnect to those
parts. The feelings that will be experienced
in the body are so big and so overwhelming,
we don't want to feel that, we don't want to express it. A lot of
times that, separation, the fragmentation, comes at an
(03:24):
unconscious level. That repression, the disconnect from that part of
ourselves is not even within our conscious awareness.
We're just moving into the behaviors and the self regulation
practices that keep that part at bay.
Yes, they can be abandoned
(03:45):
in small moments of conscious choicea and be deeply
repressed. Gabor Mate says, that every human being
has a true and a genuine, authentic self.
Trauma is the disconnect
from that self, and healing is the
reconnection with it. Why do we get
(04:06):
disconnected? It's too painful to be with
ourselves. We don't have that capacity.
Dissociation is inherently a fragmentation.
This
fragmentation limits the ability for us to
lay down memory and have a continuum of
(04:30):
consciousness. The understanding
and the overall feeling, you've just been through a full experience.
It's that lapse in time that could go on for
short periods of time or could be really severe and lead to chronic
dissociation, where you may have lost literal years,
maybe decades of your life.
(04:51):
Those repressed parts that can lead to
fragmentation, self fragmentation, also lead to
self alienation. Where you could
feel disconnected from your own identity. It
can also really lead us to not know who we
are, just like the,Gabor
(05:13):
Mate quote, to not even understand what is our
unique expression and the authenticity that
I bring into this life experience
with myself. When your sense of self becomes
fragmented, it can lead to an interplay,
a complex interplay of emotions, of
(05:35):
perceptions and experiences.
We will talk about all of this a little bit more
deeply in the dissociation
conversation that we're going to have, because this really
wreaks havoc on the sense of the internal self. If you
can't rely on your own experiences and as you come
(05:56):
into your body, your very presence in your nervous
system will be the threat.
I'm really excited for our next conversation on dissociation -
to take that at a very deep neural level, because it is such
a big part of complex trauma. But, fawn
response also is a huge underlying factor of why
(06:19):
self abandonment would occur. When you're
abandoning yourself, a part of that is when you're putting yourself
as the second priority and that has
real consequences to our health, both physically and
mentally. As we abandon ourself, we're hiding
our genuine emotions from others to please them. That
(06:41):
happens all of the time with fawn response, because we're so
afraid of losing that connection, that attachment
bond with the expression of our emotions. We've
defined previously, the fawn response as a behavioral adaptation. It's a
reflexive protective trauma response, where we actually move
toward the threat a little bit, toward appeasing the
(07:03):
threat and engaging to stay safe at a social
level, to keep an attachment need met or to really placate
a predator so that we don't get hurt, hurt with some kind of retaliation.
As you were saying about fawn - it develops
when we don't get attachment needs met in development - we
(07:25):
need that for survival. So, securing attachment becomes
the priority over our own authenticity and self
expression. We reactively say,
yes, violate our own boundaries and
people please to stay socially safe, because
the conflict or severing of the attachment,
(07:47):
the discomfort of allowing someone to have their own emotional
experience, is so intense and dysregulating that this
pattern continues in adulthood. It's so funny, I just found
myself fawning and self abandoning in a
really minor way the other day. But, you know, this
is so different from the way I used to experience it. This
(08:09):
might seem kind of like a small example, but I
thinkit's how I experience self abandonment now. It's in
the smaller, or maybe lighter, lower
end of the spectrum, the less severe, because I have this daily
practice. I have more capacity in my nervous system to even to witness myself,
which is what I did the other day.
(08:30):
This is something I
have to watch out for. This is coming from my journal.
" I was at my friend's house
recently. She was so excited about
her dinner and I
had already eaten for the day. I finished eating early,
(08:51):
but I found myself wrapped up in her excitement,
wanting that excitement for myself
and not wanting to tell her no, in
her own excitement. I felt like I would be shutting her down in some
way by not accepting the food and
the beverage she offered me. So I
(09:14):
did it. I found myself eating Tomka,
which I love, but just had no room for." I mean, my
stomach was full. I had eaten. I found myself in the, Tomca and found
myself - this is good. You know what? It
wasn't good. It wasn't good. I did not like the drink, and
I did not want the Tomca, but there I was. I think what I have
(09:36):
to look out for is that experience of, like, the other person's
experience, excitement and wanting to be part
of that excitement. Not wanting to tell her no, because that's severing
the attachment. To find some yourself in this big place
of joy. Then to be," No, I
don't want that". It felt too overwhelming for me in the
(09:59):
moment. Not only am I breaking my own boundary
in that moment, but I am creating a false narrative
with, in this relationship, this friendship, and then
I am patterning a social moment
with her. Do you see that
loop? There's not only a dishonesty with myself,
(10:21):
but there's the one
that I'm creating in the relationship in the present moment.
It's hijacking in a way, this,
this kind of, it was
a conscious engagement almost, in a way, too. It's like I went into
it knowing, like, I'm not hungry and nor
(10:43):
am I interested in this probiotic beverage.
Totally. I actually, as you
were saying, that I have an example of a place where I
did not self abandon, which is a really new behavior for me.
And I think these are really good examples because they're small.
They're like these little moments, but when we
(11:04):
are aware of them and we re pattern, that's how those
shifts start to occur. My
partner got a new car - a jeep, and he loves it.
He's very,
very
proud of it. He's very protective of it. He likes to keep it very clean
(11:25):
and just perfect, you know? He was super, super excited
about it, like your friend, and wanted me to drive it.
I didn't want to drive it because, one,
driving is really stressful for me. Two, it's something that
he put so much of himself into - if I dinged it or if something
happened, that would be really, really stressful for me.
(11:47):
I'd had a very long day. It was more than I had capacity
for. To drive around in traffic and to have the stress of,
what if I mess up his brand new, beautiful vehicle that he loves?
So in that moment, he was super excited
about it. I paused for a minute and I said I really don't
want too right now. I could tell he was a little bit disappointed
(12:09):
and we kind of talked it through, but I
didn't add that big stress load to myself.
I had a moment where I honored what my capacity was
and I said something that I knew might disappoint someone else.
It seems really small, but it's
one good rep of choosing to honor my capacity
(12:31):
and what my nervous system is really okay with and
re establishing that relational safety around,
not reflexively self abandoning.
It was interesting to be witnessing myself
in that moment. I didn't finish the whole bowl of soup.
I just had a sip, but I still found myself just
(12:53):
engaged in this way - that was, "I
just don't even know if I can help myself right
now because I think I'm so used to saying no to people so much".
I do tend to have a - I'm very... It's
so funny to say this, because I'm
so used to not self abandoning and choosing myself. I say
(13:15):
no a lot to engagement and to food and
drink things. I think in that way. You are really good about it.
I just felt like she was so excited. Bu,t
it's also awesome. Sometimes. Sure. But
it's this idea of we can have awareness and
we can see and what does it represent
(13:37):
for myself when I'm doing that, even if it's this really small thing.
Also, how huge it is, to come to this place where these are the
little moments where we self abandon instead of putting myself in really
dangerous situations or being completely checked out of
my body or not able to hear my intuition at
all. That's a win. It's a really
(13:59):
big move away from some of these very
harmful patterns, and there's so much awareness there in what you experience.
Really true. Really true. Thank you.
As someone
who knows you in the real world, you're very good
most of the time about honoring your boundaries and your capacity.
(14:22):
So, what's happening inside of us with this fond response when we
reflexively move into that behavior? Is that a part of us,
our sympathetic nervous system mobilizing us and
another part of us, our parasympathetic nervous system, our calm and respond
is at the same time, putting the brakes on. There's
a part of us that wants to say no, wants to run
(14:45):
away, wants to use our voice. That part is
immobilized by our parasympathetic nervous system.
There's also a part of us, though, that is being
activated to engage with the other person. Yes, I'll do that.
Let me help you to say whatever it is they want to hear. We've this
true freeze response happening in a freeze response.
(15:07):
Both things are happening. We're getting a heightened sympathetic
activation and a heightened parasympathetic activation.
And so you have parts of you that are bracing, shutting
down, and other parts that are moving into a reflexive
behavioral response. And again, this is
occurring because that discomfort is so
(15:29):
big, the dysregulation. When we talk
about discomfort, it's the internal felt sense of
dysregulation is so big that if you
had maybe an emotionally unstable
environment growing up or you experienced emotional neglect,
it really feels life threatening not to take on the
(15:50):
responsibility for other people's emotions. We talked about this in the
social anxiety episode, as well. But, if they're
angry or hurt or disappointed, there might be strong
repercussions for you. Not only might you lose the attachment
bond, but, like, you might get hurt, you might get punished.
It's hard, because
(16:14):
it feels so dangerous inside to not
placate that person or please them at the expense of
yourself. Yes, emotional neglect and self
abandonment are closely intertwined with each other because,
childhood emotional neglect occurs when parents fail to
adequately respond to a child's emotional needs. It's
(16:36):
basically what we don't get from
our childhood. But childhood emotional neglect is mostly
invisible.
The
child could appear to have a comfortable life
externally and still be experiencing emotional
neglect. Emotions are as
(16:59):
vital as physical needs, like food and shelter.
Emotional connection is a fundamental human
requirement for thriving. When a
child experiences childhood emotional neglect, they
are kept in the dark about their rich
emotional world. That is not an
(17:19):
experience that they get to have in their bodies. They learn that their
feelings are not important and often begin to
hide their emotions, shut the emotions down
and prioritize, really, the safety
of the attachment over
(17:39):
the emotional needs of the felt experience.
Absolutely. I mean, we might
learn that our emotional needs are not important and we're also not
learning the skills from our primaries modeling to
us how to express emotions, how to regulate after
(17:59):
emotional expression and how to let that whole natural stress cycle
complete. We don't have that skill. So that can make
us afraid of our own emotions because they're so overwhelming
to the system, because we never developed the skills to
process them. O,r we learned,
because
(18:23):
we never developed the skills to process them, or we learned it
wasn't okay to express them. We move into this automatic
repression or maybe conscious
suppression of our emotions, right? We start to feel that emotional
sensation rising up and many, many times
below the level of our consciousness. Our nervous system
(18:45):
goes into shutting down that emotion, numbing it out
with some kind of avoidance behavior. Or we might consciously decide,
this is too much. I don't want to express - my emotions are too
big. I don't want to be so needy. We
downplay our own emotional experience and emotional neglect
leads to big feelings of aloneness and isolation
(19:08):
because we're carrying all of that by ourselves. We desperately
need that social connection. We really want
that, as a young being trying to learn how to navigate the
world and our own emotional landscape. And then we start to really
prioritize again that that attachment
bond to others. So, we are much more prone to
(19:30):
put the needs of others over ourself so that we don't
lose the attachment, then we can get those emotional needs met.
Again, this is on a spectrum.
For some people, it's really debilitating co-dependency,
but it can also just lead to problems setting
boundaries, discomfort, and being alone.
(19:52):
And it leads to a lot of behaviors like overdoing
and distracting ourselves with
overtraining, just constantly filling our life with busyness,
or it could even look like really abusive
relationships and self harm. There's a big
spectrum that this can occur on.
(20:12):
Also, the experience of parentification
in early development. We've talked about parentification on here
before, but this is when the roles of the
caregiver and the child are reversed and the
child begins to take on the roles, the emotional,
physical or logistical care for the
(20:34):
primary caregiver. Instead of the child receiving
care, the child ends up giving more than they
receive and more than what they have the capacity
for. Once again, the lack of understanding
of, since this is survival, it is sort of an
automatic propelling
(20:55):
into this type of behavior, like
parentification. Or maybe, it's pretty clear
what's going on -
emotional immaturity or
overwhelming responsibilities faced by parents,
a weak support system that leads them to
(21:17):
need the child for this level of
processing. Health conditions in parents,
child abuse, or situations like divorce, financial
hardship, immigration, can all lead to
parentification. I'm not placing blame,
but these are the real life circumstances that
(21:39):
can lead to this type of experience of
parentification. In the examples I see
a lot in my clients, it comes in more
of the emotional capacity, where the
primary, just even as they age,
still never have the capacity for the emotional
(22:01):
experience. When you're in recognition
of parentification being an aspect of your life,
it can be really hard when you are now in front of your
caregiver and you're identifying the parentification
that is taking place. Again, why these tools are
so helpful and important to support you in real time.
(22:24):
Then, after an experience, really to prepare yourself
to see and spend time with your caregiver.
I think it is really important to have the tools because there can be so
much guilt. If you are a kid who had
that responsibility. As you said, a lot of times it is the
(22:45):
emotional responsibility. It's that our parents don't have the skills or the
bandwidth, the capacity in their nervous system to process emotions.
So, that falls on us, as children.
As we recognize and see that pattern, start to
try to move out of it, a lot of guilt and shame, can come
up. Those roles are so deeply established with our parents.
(23:07):
There's such a huge component of,
structural trauma that you touched on, which
is important to highlight, too. If a parent
doesn't have resources, job opportunities,
community support, that responsibility is
going to have to go somewhere because they can't manage it
(23:28):
alone. When we're talking about parentification, it's
important to look at, like, what are the components of our society that
are setting people up in this way, that that is an inevitable
outcome of somebody who doesn't have the resources that they need for
a number of reasons. And
so, and again, the consequences are still the same, like
(23:50):
not placing blame on anyone, but the, the same developmental
issues occur with anyone who experiences this. When
you have all of this responsibility, whether it's emotional or
logistical, you are always learning that you have to put your
own needs to the side, especially your emotional needs, really
for survival. Like, who has time to
(24:13):
process emotions or to feel anything when you're also
responsible for all of this other stuff to ensure not only your
safety, but, like, your family's safety, and to make sure that your
primaries and your family unit are okay. Then
this becomes a pattern, all of this into
adulthood and replays in future relationships. Even when someone else
(24:35):
may not be in the same situation, they might not need you to do all
of that for them, but that pattern is already woven into to
your nervous system. It can also lead in some
cases, to reverse abandonment anxiety, where
a child fears abandoning the parent rather than being
abandoned. I really resonate with that.
(24:56):
I feel so guilty and so intense
about establishing boundaries with my mom or not showing up for her in
the way that I feel like I should as she
ages. And that if she has to spend time alone, it
often pushes me to exceed my own capacity because I
feel so. I do. I have
(25:19):
that reverse abandonment anxiety. In all
these situations, the well worn path is to self abandon rather
than to express our own needs. Over time, this
chronic abandonment impacts our identity. Like you were talking about, we don't know
who we are, what are our desires, what are our boundaries, what's
healthy for us? The more we disconnect from, from our own internal
(25:41):
sensations, the more that has an impact on our nervous system function,
our interoceptive system, our brain function, and the
ability to create that sense of safety inside of ourselves.
The this level of self abandonment,
you never learn. I think this came up in our social anxiety
conversation. Who you are, you don't know who you
(26:05):
are in development because you've been patterned in a
way that is external. You know, like
hiding, shutting down. This is who I need to be. Show up over here like
this, do this for my parents. This is all
so self abandoning because we don't know who we are. It can
come from structural trauma reasons just as well as like, as just as
(26:26):
Elisabeth highlighted. But what we're really talking about here in
this level is, how do I
identify? There's masking
involved. As we have
been studying neurodivergence for next season, this is something
that really hit me pretty hard. Now, let's define
(26:48):
masking. Masking refers to when an individual
hides or suppresses their mental health symptoms, behaviors, or
difficulties in an effort to blend in with others.
That is self abandonment. It can occur both
intentionally and unconsciously over time. While often
associated with neurodivergent individuals such as people
(27:11):
with autism or ADHD, people with various mental
health diagnoses think of what falls under the lens of
complex trauma. You struggle with these things, but
are afraid to express them. Self abandoning your own
needs to appear normal because you are
afraid of social rejection. People
(27:32):
who mask may copy others demeanor, suppress their
true feelings, or may engage in
compensatory behaviors.
It's interesting, too, as we've been reading about
neurodivergence and looking at the health of women in
particularly, and masking, and so much
(27:54):
of self abandonment and masking come together because
we learn as women to imitate other women. We
learn the social cues from watching other women, seeing how other
women are doing things and moving through the world.
Although that's educating us, it's also
teaching us, once again to hide and to mask.
(28:16):
That perpetuates the self
abandonment, because there's so many
societal rules and expectations for women
to meet every day. If you're a coach, therapist,
practitioner, healer looking to bring nervous
system health and training and resilience into all of
(28:38):
the good work that you're doing, this conversation is, maybe, resonating
with you. You know, there's a deeper place you want to take your work with
your clients, also to help your own nervous system to
prevent burnout and to create greater capacity to
do all of the good work that you're doing. We are enrolling now in the
next cohort of neurosomatic intelligence, and we would love to book a
(29:00):
discovery call with you. You can do that at, neurosomaticintelligence.com.
There's
so much of, the narrative of being broken
that comes with Complex Trauma, that you're running
around all of the time trying to make sure that things look okay on
(29:22):
the outside or that you're
acting, quote unquote, normal in social situations,
that people don't see the internal chaos going on.
That does require a lot of self abandonment,
because it feels like you wouldn't
definitely be rejected if people saw what was really going
(29:45):
on inside. I think masking,
usually used in the context of neurodivergence,
is found typically these days. But, it can apply so
much in the realm of CPTS.
Masking can come in a lot of different forms. You can have social
masking where you're trying to behave in ways
(30:07):
that don't come naturally to you. Something as
small as making eye contact.
But, that causes discomfort in. In your nervous
system, in your body, where you're mirroring body language to try to fit
in. For me, when I'm in a shame response, it's
really difficult to make eye contact. I try to
(30:29):
force myself to do it so that I'm not disconnecting from other
people. Then that sometimes creates more
shame and more dysregulation. Then there's behavioral
masking, like concealing. We talked about this withm Lindsay on
our neurodivergence and chronic pain episode. When you
conceal the behaviors that you use for self regulation
(30:51):
- maybe you're someone who, like, rocks around a lot or you
fidget in order to self regulate, but you feel
like that makes you appear strange. It doesn't
fit in the social context. You try to hide those behaviors that you've
naturally learned that your nervous system is asking for, for self
regulation, and it can come from compensation, like
(31:12):
overcompensating. By spending more energy to hide your struggles,
like, the things that are really difficult for you,
you push yourself to adapt to these systems,
especially the educational system really comes to mind, where
you're trying to appear as if things aren't as difficult for you as they
are, so that you can fit in and live up to some kind
(31:34):
of certain standard, maybe even writing with your non dominant hand.
I had a friend that was left handed and
really self conscious about it and forced themselves to write with
their right hand because it didn't seem
socially acceptable. There's all these little
ways that we can mask the truth of who we are to try to
(31:56):
fit in at a big structural level. It's such an
interesting example. So you may be asking
yourself, like, why? Why do we mask? Why would one do
that? It really comes down to fear.
Fears of stigmas, ableism and
discrimination. They all drive masking behaviors because
(32:19):
people want to protect themselves from negative
reactions. We have, as humans, a real
desire for acceptance. Some mask to fit
in, to be accepted or to avoid standing
out. This could be a learned behavior.
Masking can be a learned behavior, because from our
(32:41):
childhood experiences, especially in
unpredictable or abusive environments, this all
leads to self abandonment. So, children adapt
by hiding their true selves, much like masking. You
can really see the interplay of
all of the components of Complex Trauma when you think about masking. For example, right
(33:04):
now, I'm thinking of, social anxiety. I'm thinking of the inner critic
intertwined. All of this comes into play.
We just talked about social anxiety and this
desire for acceptance here, for masking.
Masking to fit in, to be accepted. We all
have this desire to be accepted. When it comes to those learned
(33:25):
behaviors, just like I was talking about as women, how we learn how to be
in society and in relationship, that's very
learned because we're watching the existing examples and maybe
we're watching our own mom's self abandon
and we are learning from her.
Absolutely. Absolutely! I mean,
(33:47):
masking leads to
self abandonment because ultimately we're prioritizing
fitting in. Again, we're talking about fitting in as a
deep social need, as it.
It really feels life threatening to be rejected from the
herd, to be rejected from our community or caregivers.
(34:09):
We learn to prioritize that fitting in over honoring
our own true feelings and needs and it has an impact
on our nervous system. If we're constantly hiding or not
doing the things that we need for our unique nervous system to regulate
and create safety or maybe forcing ourselves to take
in too much stimulus because we are sensitive and
(34:31):
we want to still engage with the world. The
world is overstimulating for our unique nervous system. This
leads to chronic dysregulation, chronic stress, and
or maybe the lack of stimulus that your unique brain
needs. So either way, we all have a unique
nervous system. It has different needs. And when
(34:54):
we suppress those needs and try to fit in,
there's long term consequences on the health of our nervous system, on
our brain function, and on our physical health. You
know, as someone who obviously identifies as
having, Complex Post Traumatic Stress and
(35:17):
someone who identifies as having ADHD, there's so
many overlaps. Neurodivergence is something
we're going to be exploring next season in Season Four.
Let's just talk about some of these little overlaps
of self abandonment and ADHD, because
there is that level of, you know, and
(35:39):
when we talk about fear, there is a sensitivity
to having criticism and being judged.
There's also a sensitivity that we can find ourselves in
when we have ADHD, to understanding that we have
ADHD. Then, this inner critic
starts to come into play, and we
(36:01):
can really find ourselves in the level
of energy that it requires to pretend to, like,
pass in a social environment, it just becomes
so much the masking and the constant
need to. To just
skate through. To get that pass. It can
(36:25):
lead to depression, anxiety, fatigue, and
burnout, because the more energy it
requires to pass, the harder that level that
is to maintain. One of the experiences
for someone with ADHD is that there is this sense of
accumulated trauma that happens over repeated
(36:46):
attempts to do something the right way and not being
able to. Finally, it just starts to
boil over. I think that overlaps with self
abandonment because of how much we are masking and mimicking and
trying in the exterior to feel
validated, to feel worthy, to feel seen and heard.
(37:08):
What ends up happening is something that we talk on here a lot
is there's this undercurrent of shame that
happens because we cannot keep up with all of it.
As the mask comes off, our well being
improves,. As we embrace our
authenticity, as we come into the body for a full
(37:30):
body experience. Then, we begin to embrace who we are, setting
boundaries, learning our nervous system. The mask comes off and
our well being improves because overall, the stress level
is so much lower. Right. That's
what we're doing. We are lowering the
stress -it relates to sensory
(37:52):
processing disorders. We're going to dive into
that a lot deeper in Season Four.
I'm really excited about, Season Four and
diving into all of this. What we're talking about here is big structural
ways in which
society impacts our nervous syste -, especially if we have a nervous system
(38:14):
that's maybe a little bit different from
the nervous systems and the brains that're celebrated and
supported in this structure. We're going to be
looking at, Structural Trauma a lot in Season Four and how it
adds chronic stress to the nervous system for
(38:35):
all different types of people. Because these
structures of oppression, the patriarchy,
the dominant culture, they impact us all in different ways.
Everybody's nervous system is unique. As we're looking
at self abandonment, you can also see ways in which
different structural institutions would bake
(38:57):
that self abandonment in at a deep level for different
populations and communities.
That pattern again!
It's very deeply ingrained into our neural
architecture. Self abandonment and
ignoring our instincts then becomes
pervasive. That can happen with emotional
(39:20):
repression, right? As a. As
all of us, but especially as I'm thinking about, like, some men that I work
with, it's really not ever encouraged or taught
to express grief at all.
Again, there
becomes this deep layer of
structural trauma that leads to that emotional
(39:43):
repression and self abandonment.
As you said, there are structural components of emotional
repression. I mean, we live in a society
that actively teaches us not to
express our emotions. We. A lot of people
identify with being part of the hustle culture, that hustle and grind, wake
(40:06):
up and grind every day. O,r that we have to be strong all
the time, keeping it together. The narrative of, pull yourself up
by your bootstraps and don't listen to your body. Continue
to push through.
That's
(40:26):
a deep system of
oppression. It's a system of oppression intentionally
designed to keep you from your authenticity
as your gift. We're just sort
of taught at this structural, systemic level
that we push through and don't listen
(40:48):
to your body. Again, there's this huge spectrum.
It's these things that are seemingly
makeup or identifying yourself somewhere.
But there is this.
There's this continuous
(41:12):
disconnect from social safety,
from feeling safe in the
world, in the body that you're in. I mean, diet culture also, as we;ve
talked about previously, disconnects us from our own internal sensations. It
ells us when to eat and what to eat and cuts us off from our
interoceptive signals leading to a
(41:34):
relationship of being really disconnected from the body. I mean, there's many, many
facets of the dominant culture
paradigm of the patriarchy that
gets woven into our
own nervous system and create these reactionary responses
and further, all of these different
(41:56):
complex trauma distinguishing characteristics.
Some of that Complex Trauma happens from
development, but some of it may happen from societal trauma,
from systemic trauma. And we
also talked with Victor about how, you know,
systems of oppression, it benefits them to keep people
(42:17):
in emotional repression, because the people who are doing
the oppressing don't have to feel the pain and the grief and
the sacred rage of the people that
they're oppressing. It becomes part of the dominant culture to
repress emotions that then gets
baked into all of us. All of
(42:39):
us get disconnected from our emotional experience because
it
serves people in a certain way. It
serves the disconnection that they want us to have to each other.
Which leads us to dissociation and self abandonment.
(43:01):
Yes. Which obviously, dissociation is a
huge, very physiological, very brain function part of
self abandonment.
Your
consciousness is quite literally abandoning
you and your body sensations, when we
have dissociation. We're going to talk a lot about this in the following
(43:24):
episode, but part of our brain is deciding
all of this information, this sensory experience is
too much. Block those sensory signals from making
it to conscious awareness. You disconnect from the sensations
coming in from your body and from information coming
in about the world around you. You can lose memory.
(43:47):
It's, it's ultimately, it's a disconnect
from presence and integration of a
sensory experience and
very much a disconnect from yourself.
We are diving into dissociation next week. When we
dissociate, we can't be embodied or feel our instincts and
(44:10):
our intuition. We can't be embodied without
interoceptive signals making it up to the cerebral
cortex. Gabor
Mate talks about the spectrum of needs between attachment and
authenticity and how they're both survival needs,
because instinct is a part of authenticity. If
(44:31):
you think about an animal out in the wilderness,
they don't just need the attachment to their caregivers, but they
also need to be able to hear their own instincts to survive if there's a
predator nearby, if the situation is dangerous, so they can
mobilize and have appropriate action. In that way,
authenticity also is a survival need. Attachment is a
(44:54):
survival need. Authenticity is a survival need. There's this
kind of relationship between the two.
With dissociation, you have disconnect from
instinct, so you're naturally losing that balance
between authenticity and attachment. It's out of whack because you don't
have those instinct signals. There's too
(45:15):
much importance put on
maintaining the attachment, often because of those developmental
experiences. There's so much underneath
self abandonment. It can lead us into so
many different harmful behaviors and relational patterns that
disconnect us from that instinct. Let's
(45:37):
talk about what do we do about this? What do we do to heal our
self abandonment? The first step is really cultivating awareness.
Just like in the two examples in the stories that we shared earlier.
We want the awareness that we self abandon when we
are self abandoning. What does that look like for us? Can I
start to notice my own needs and sensations
(46:01):
when we feel triggered by not being seen or
feeling heard? Where are we not hearing
ourselves? Where in our bodies? Where in our experience?
What part of the abandonment is self
abandonment? Is that why the trigger is so
big, because we are abandoning
(46:21):
ourselves?
Yeah, that was a huge thing for me, just
making that connection now
I'm an adult, I'm a fully capable
adult. I'm not really being abandoned
because I'm not a child that is
(46:43):
reliant on somebody else for my survival.
I'm likely abandoning myself and replaying
that pattern and creating that response inside of my body.
It's a real different level
of awareness. It gives me some agency to start to re -pattern that.
Also, we've started developing the skill of emotional
(47:06):
processing, feeling and expressing the emotions
and knowing that that's going to be messy, and that
there's just no way to
move out of the behaviors without being able to
experience and process the emotion. It's
very different to understand intellectually.
(47:27):
I have some grief, I
have some shame, or I have some anger underneath
there. Maybe you listen to the podcast and you think
it all makes sense and it resonates. But, understanding it's
really not the same as experiencing it and processing it.
It has to be re-educated to our body, if we
(47:49):
want to stop self abandoning and repressing and suppressing our
emotions, we have to develop the capacity and the skill
to actually be with those emotions and process them.
There's just no way to move out of the behavior otherwise. Emotional
processing is key
to keeping your nervous system regulated. Also, if you're not
(48:11):
engaging in emotional practices, you're likely,
if you're not processing your anger, your fear, your grief, you're
not understanding your joy back to your authenticity.
This
starts to tie into boundaries.
Boundaries are kind of the next level of this, because when
(48:31):
you start breaking your own boundaries and self
abandon, there's going to be an emotional component to that. It's normal to
feel anger or rage or resentment
when someone is breaking a boundary that you
don't even know that you have in place. That's the really interesting
thing. So, starting to set boundaries, and we do
(48:54):
that with our neurotools for regulating and processing the
stress of setting those boundaries, of receiving those
boundaries, receiving boundaries from someone else. We
have SO many neurosomatic classes on site for the ways to
work with the nervous system to make boundaries safe. So joining
us at, rewiretrial.com - you'll find that in the on demand
(49:16):
library. Self compassion!
Starting to develop the skills to
have compassion for ourselves so that we don't move into
those narratives of
I'm too much. I can't express this. I
have to put other people's needs ahead of my own. We
(49:40):
had that conversation with, Amanda Smith about
the neuro of self compassion and how it is really critical for
regulating our interoceptive system and
restoring brain function, getting fuel and activation to our
insular cortex. There's all kinds of
practices that you can do, starting with just this awareness, this conversation, to
(50:02):
develop more self compassion. Then, you can actually work with the
nervous system and the body to start to, at a neurological
level, create more capacity inside of yourself for
self compassion. And again, that is something that we do practically
and actionably on the site. We'are doing a whole series right now
on working with the distinguishing characteristics of CPTS. You
(50:25):
can join us to put these practices in
place in a way that is really applicable to
the things that we're talking about here. You can
do it for a free two weeks at, rewiretrial.com. AJust
see how we use the tools to really
make an impact in these specific ways. Then,
(50:46):
it's going to be really important that you start
spending some time with yourself to discover who you are and what
you like. I've said this before and say
it many times with clients like, I think with CPTS, what happens is
the light of who we are, the true essence and being
of us that makes us unique. It gets buried
(51:09):
under all this CPTS components, all this
crap, all this, quote, "Trauma", all these narratives, all these patterns.
What we do when we start intentionally on this
path with the nervous system and subconscious work is
that we start unloading all of these things. It's
about doing less, almost, and getting
(51:31):
the things off that don't serve you anymore so that you can come through
as your authentic self. A lot of
times that can be really scary because it's like having a blank canvas and
you think, "What do
I like to do? How do I like to be in this
world as as myself?" Then, back
(51:53):
to the tools. This is why. Back to the
tools for the experience of, like, that kind of fear that can
come into play when we want to play and have fun
and have new experiences and new explorations of
what we actually really like. The
opposite
(52:15):
of self abandonment is, self care.
Making the time to really
care for ourself and for us, that
means at a very deep level, at the level of our nervous system. Learning
about my nervous system, learning how I respond
and then taking the time, making the moments in my
(52:38):
day to really have that daily intentional nervous system hygiene
practice where I'm helping my system rehabilitate and create
safety. This is how I come
back to myself, that deep level of
knowing. This is my operating system. This is how it works. This is
how I can give my body and my nervous system the stimulus that it needs
(52:59):
to get the fuel and activation that it needs, the regulation, the safety.
And then I'm really not
abandoning. I'm really caring for myself. It makes
such a huge difference in your life. It just makes
such a huge difference in your life. Experience. Experience.
It creates a much richer
(53:21):
experience. And so join us at, rewiretrial.com
to check out our CPTS series on the site,, these are
classes for working with all of these distinguishing
characteristics and we really look forward to seeing you there working with you.
Awesome. That's the end of our CPTS
(53:44):
series. So thank you all once again for joining
us, and we will see you next week fo,r Dissociation.
Yes, looking forward to it. Thank you all for joining us.
This podcast is for informational and educational purposes
(54:06):
only and should not be considered medical or psychological advice.
We often discuss lived experiences through traumatic events
and sensitive topics that deal with complex developmental and
systemic trauma that may be unsettling for some listeners.
This podcast is not intended to replace professional medical
advice. If you are in the United States and you or someone you know
(54:29):
is struggling with their mental health and is in immediate danger, please call
911. For specific services relating to mental health,
please see the full disclaimer in the show notes.
Have you ever gone against your instincts, not trusted yourself,
engaged in people pleasing, hid parts of yourself,
found yourself in perfectionism? Or not expressing your
feelings overall, not acting in alignment with your
values, downplaying your needs? These are
all ways that we can self abandon. We're going to
(00:24):
dive into all of this, as we tackle the final distinguishing
characteristics of, of CPTS. Self abandonment
-this is going to be a big one. Welcome tom Trauma Rewired.
I'm your co host, Jennifer Wallace, a Neurosomatic Psychedelic
Preparation and Integration guide and also on the,
NSI Education team. I'm
(00:47):
Elizabeth Christoph, your co host and founder of Brainbased.com,
an online membership where we use applied neurology, somatic
practices and neurosomatic meditations to re
pattern trauma - to change behavior, to improve capacity and resilience.
I'm also the founder of the, Neurosomatic Intelligence Coaching Certification.
So,
(01:13):
self abandonment, here we go!
For me, self
abandonment is the mother wound
of these five distinguishing characteristics. I
mean, they're all so important and have such a big impact on our health. I
think that that disconnect from ourselves, that fragmentation is just a
(01:34):
huge part of everything that drives
a lot of the other outputs
that we experience with cpts. And
like all the other chronic outputs of cpts
that we have discussed, this really comes on a spectrum. It could
look like putting other people's needs or opinions before your own,
(01:55):
ignoring your own inner thoughts, your feelings about
something, ignoring your instincts, downplaying your emotional
experience. So, it can be these little ways that we
abandon ourselves in everyday life.
It can
be more severe, too. We can find our places in
(02:16):
deep self abuse with that inner critic
where we lose self compassion. It
could lead to shame spirals that are immobilizing and
leading you to not tend to your own needs at all, your basic
needs, maybe even like showering, eating
and feeding yourself, cleaning in general.
(02:38):
It can also be
because of high levels of dissociation and the fragmented
self. Yeah,
many times we can abandon parts of
ourselves that need love, that need security,
really need it from a long time ago. They need to be seen
(03:01):
because we think those parts are too much. Or,
maybe it really is a lot to reconnect to those
parts. The feelings that will be experienced
in the body are so big and so overwhelming,
we don't want to feel that, we don't want to express it. A lot of
times that, separation, the fragmentation, comes at an
(03:24):
unconscious level. That repression, the disconnect from that part of
ourselves is not even within our conscious awareness.
We're just moving into the behaviors and the self regulation
practices that keep that part at bay.
Yes, they can be abandoned
(03:45):
in small moments of conscious choicea and be deeply
repressed. Gabor Mate says, that every human being
has a true and a genuine, authentic self.
Trauma is the disconnect
from that self, and healing is the
reconnection with it. Why do we get
(04:06):
disconnected? It's too painful to be with
ourselves. We don't have that capacity.
Dissociation is inherently a fragmentation.
This
fragmentation limits the ability for us to
lay down memory and have a continuum of
(04:30):
consciousness. The understanding
and the overall feeling, you've just been through a full experience.
It's that lapse in time that could go on for
short periods of time or could be really severe and lead to chronic
dissociation, where you may have lost literal years,
maybe decades of your life.
(04:51):
Those repressed parts that can lead to
fragmentation, self fragmentation, also lead to
self alienation. Where you could
feel disconnected from your own identity. It
can also really lead us to not know who we
are, just like the,Gabor
(05:13):
Mate quote, to not even understand what is our
unique expression and the authenticity that
I bring into this life experience
with myself. When your sense of self becomes
fragmented, it can lead to an interplay,
a complex interplay of emotions, of
(05:35):
perceptions and experiences.
We will talk about all of this a little bit more
deeply in the dissociation
conversation that we're going to have, because this really
wreaks havoc on the sense of the internal self. If you
can't rely on your own experiences and as you come
(05:56):
into your body, your very presence in your nervous
system will be the threat.
I'm really excited for our next conversation on dissociation -
to take that at a very deep neural level, because it is such
a big part of complex trauma. But, fawn
response also is a huge underlying factor of why
(06:19):
self abandonment would occur. When you're
abandoning yourself, a part of that is when you're putting yourself
as the second priority and that has
real consequences to our health, both physically and
mentally. As we abandon ourself, we're hiding
our genuine emotions from others to please them. That
(06:41):
happens all of the time with fawn response, because we're so
afraid of losing that connection, that attachment
bond with the expression of our emotions. We've
defined previously, the fawn response as a behavioral adaptation. It's a
reflexive protective trauma response, where we actually move
toward the threat a little bit, toward appeasing the
(07:03):
threat and engaging to stay safe at a social
level, to keep an attachment need met or to really placate
a predator so that we don't get hurt, hurt with some kind of retaliation.
As you were saying about fawn - it develops
when we don't get attachment needs met in development - we
(07:25):
need that for survival. So, securing attachment becomes
the priority over our own authenticity and self
expression. We reactively say,
yes, violate our own boundaries and
people please to stay socially safe, because
the conflict or severing of the attachment,
(07:47):
the discomfort of allowing someone to have their own emotional
experience, is so intense and dysregulating that this
pattern continues in adulthood. It's so funny, I just found
myself fawning and self abandoning in a
really minor way the other day. But, you know, this
is so different from the way I used to experience it. This
(08:09):
might seem kind of like a small example, but I
thinkit's how I experience self abandonment now. It's in
the smaller, or maybe lighter, lower
end of the spectrum, the less severe, because I have this daily
practice. I have more capacity in my nervous system to even to witness myself,
which is what I did the other day.
(08:30):
This is something I
have to watch out for. This is coming from my journal.
" I was at my friend's house
recently. She was so excited about
her dinner and I
had already eaten for the day. I finished eating early,
(08:51):
but I found myself wrapped up in her excitement,
wanting that excitement for myself
and not wanting to tell her no, in
her own excitement. I felt like I would be shutting her down in some
way by not accepting the food and
the beverage she offered me. So I
(09:14):
did it. I found myself eating Tomka,
which I love, but just had no room for." I mean, my
stomach was full. I had eaten. I found myself in the, Tomca and found
myself - this is good. You know what? It
wasn't good. It wasn't good. I did not like the drink, and
I did not want the Tomca, but there I was. I think what I have
(09:36):
to look out for is that experience of, like, the other person's
experience, excitement and wanting to be part
of that excitement. Not wanting to tell her no, because that's severing
the attachment. To find some yourself in this big place
of joy. Then to be," No, I
don't want that". It felt too overwhelming for me in the
(09:59):
moment. Not only am I breaking my own boundary
in that moment, but I am creating a false narrative
with, in this relationship, this friendship, and then
I am patterning a social moment
with her. Do you see that
loop? There's not only a dishonesty with myself,
(10:21):
but there's the one
that I'm creating in the relationship in the present moment.
It's hijacking in a way, this,
this kind of, it was
a conscious engagement almost, in a way, too. It's like I went into
it knowing, like, I'm not hungry and nor
(10:43):
am I interested in this probiotic beverage.
Totally. I actually, as you
were saying, that I have an example of a place where I
did not self abandon, which is a really new behavior for me.
And I think these are really good examples because they're small.
They're like these little moments, but when we
(11:04):
are aware of them and we re pattern, that's how those
shifts start to occur. My
partner got a new car - a jeep, and he loves it.
He's very,
very
proud of it. He's very protective of it. He likes to keep it very clean
(11:25):
and just perfect, you know? He was super, super excited
about it, like your friend, and wanted me to drive it.
I didn't want to drive it because, one,
driving is really stressful for me. Two, it's something that
he put so much of himself into - if I dinged it or if something
happened, that would be really, really stressful for me.
(11:47):
I'd had a very long day. It was more than I had capacity
for. To drive around in traffic and to have the stress of,
what if I mess up his brand new, beautiful vehicle that he loves?
So in that moment, he was super excited
about it. I paused for a minute and I said I really don't
want too right now. I could tell he was a little bit disappointed
(12:09):
and we kind of talked it through, but I
didn't add that big stress load to myself.
I had a moment where I honored what my capacity was
and I said something that I knew might disappoint someone else.
It seems really small, but it's
one good rep of choosing to honor my capacity
(12:31):
and what my nervous system is really okay with and
re establishing that relational safety around,
not reflexively self abandoning.
It was interesting to be witnessing myself
in that moment. I didn't finish the whole bowl of soup.
I just had a sip, but I still found myself just
(12:53):
engaged in this way - that was, "I
just don't even know if I can help myself right
now because I think I'm so used to saying no to people so much".
I do tend to have a - I'm very... It's
so funny to say this, because I'm
so used to not self abandoning and choosing myself. I say
(13:15):
no a lot to engagement and to food and
drink things. I think in that way. You are really good about it.
I just felt like she was so excited. Bu,t
it's also awesome. Sometimes. Sure. But
it's this idea of we can have awareness and
we can see and what does it represent
(13:37):
for myself when I'm doing that, even if it's this really small thing.
Also, how huge it is, to come to this place where these are the
little moments where we self abandon instead of putting myself in really
dangerous situations or being completely checked out of
my body or not able to hear my intuition at
all. That's a win. It's a really
(13:59):
big move away from some of these very
harmful patterns, and there's so much awareness there in what you experience.
Really true. Really true. Thank you.
As someone
who knows you in the real world, you're very good
most of the time about honoring your boundaries and your capacity.
(14:22):
So, what's happening inside of us with this fond response when we
reflexively move into that behavior? Is that a part of us,
our sympathetic nervous system mobilizing us and
another part of us, our parasympathetic nervous system, our calm and respond
is at the same time, putting the brakes on. There's
a part of us that wants to say no, wants to run
(14:45):
away, wants to use our voice. That part is
immobilized by our parasympathetic nervous system.
There's also a part of us, though, that is being
activated to engage with the other person. Yes, I'll do that.
Let me help you to say whatever it is they want to hear. We've this
true freeze response happening in a freeze response.
(15:07):
Both things are happening. We're getting a heightened sympathetic
activation and a heightened parasympathetic activation.
And so you have parts of you that are bracing, shutting
down, and other parts that are moving into a reflexive
behavioral response. And again, this is
occurring because that discomfort is so
(15:29):
big, the dysregulation. When we talk
about discomfort, it's the internal felt sense of
dysregulation is so big that if you
had maybe an emotionally unstable
environment growing up or you experienced emotional neglect,
it really feels life threatening not to take on the
(15:50):
responsibility for other people's emotions. We talked about this in the
social anxiety episode, as well. But, if they're
angry or hurt or disappointed, there might be strong
repercussions for you. Not only might you lose the attachment
bond, but, like, you might get hurt, you might get punished.
It's hard, because
(16:14):
it feels so dangerous inside to not
placate that person or please them at the expense of
yourself. Yes, emotional neglect and self
abandonment are closely intertwined with each other because,
childhood emotional neglect occurs when parents fail to
adequately respond to a child's emotional needs. It's
(16:36):
basically what we don't get from
our childhood. But childhood emotional neglect is mostly
invisible.
The
child could appear to have a comfortable life
externally and still be experiencing emotional
neglect. Emotions are as
(16:59):
vital as physical needs, like food and shelter.
Emotional connection is a fundamental human
requirement for thriving. When a
child experiences childhood emotional neglect, they
are kept in the dark about their rich
emotional world. That is not an
(17:19):
experience that they get to have in their bodies. They learn that their
feelings are not important and often begin to
hide their emotions, shut the emotions down
and prioritize, really, the safety
of the attachment over
(17:39):
the emotional needs of the felt experience.
Absolutely. I mean, we might
learn that our emotional needs are not important and we're also not
learning the skills from our primaries modeling to
us how to express emotions, how to regulate after
(17:59):
emotional expression and how to let that whole natural stress cycle
complete. We don't have that skill. So that can make
us afraid of our own emotions because they're so overwhelming
to the system, because we never developed the skills to
process them. O,r we learned,
because
(18:23):
we never developed the skills to process them, or we learned it
wasn't okay to express them. We move into this automatic
repression or maybe conscious
suppression of our emotions, right? We start to feel that emotional
sensation rising up and many, many times
below the level of our consciousness. Our nervous system
(18:45):
goes into shutting down that emotion, numbing it out
with some kind of avoidance behavior. Or we might consciously decide,
this is too much. I don't want to express - my emotions are too
big. I don't want to be so needy. We
downplay our own emotional experience and emotional neglect
leads to big feelings of aloneness and isolation
(19:08):
because we're carrying all of that by ourselves. We desperately
need that social connection. We really want
that, as a young being trying to learn how to navigate the
world and our own emotional landscape. And then we start to really
prioritize again that that attachment
bond to others. So, we are much more prone to
(19:30):
put the needs of others over ourself so that we don't
lose the attachment, then we can get those emotional needs met.
Again, this is on a spectrum.
For some people, it's really debilitating co-dependency,
but it can also just lead to problems setting
boundaries, discomfort, and being alone.
(19:52):
And it leads to a lot of behaviors like overdoing
and distracting ourselves with
overtraining, just constantly filling our life with busyness,
or it could even look like really abusive
relationships and self harm. There's a big
spectrum that this can occur on.
(20:12):
Also, the experience of parentification
in early development. We've talked about parentification on here
before, but this is when the roles of the
caregiver and the child are reversed and the
child begins to take on the roles, the emotional,
physical or logistical care for the
(20:34):
primary caregiver. Instead of the child receiving
care, the child ends up giving more than they
receive and more than what they have the capacity
for. Once again, the lack of understanding
of, since this is survival, it is sort of an
automatic propelling
(20:55):
into this type of behavior, like
parentification. Or maybe, it's pretty clear
what's going on -
emotional immaturity or
overwhelming responsibilities faced by parents,
a weak support system that leads them to
(21:17):
need the child for this level of
processing. Health conditions in parents,
child abuse, or situations like divorce, financial
hardship, immigration, can all lead to
parentification. I'm not placing blame,
but these are the real life circumstances that
(21:39):
can lead to this type of experience of
parentification. In the examples I see
a lot in my clients, it comes in more
of the emotional capacity, where the
primary, just even as they age,
still never have the capacity for the emotional
(22:01):
experience. When you're in recognition
of parentification being an aspect of your life,
it can be really hard when you are now in front of your
caregiver and you're identifying the parentification
that is taking place. Again, why these tools are
so helpful and important to support you in real time.
(22:24):
Then, after an experience, really to prepare yourself
to see and spend time with your caregiver.
I think it is really important to have the tools because there can be so
much guilt. If you are a kid who had
that responsibility. As you said, a lot of times it is the
(22:45):
emotional responsibility. It's that our parents don't have the skills or the
bandwidth, the capacity in their nervous system to process emotions.
So, that falls on us, as children.
As we recognize and see that pattern, start to
try to move out of it, a lot of guilt and shame, can come
up. Those roles are so deeply established with our parents.
(23:07):
There's such a huge component of,
structural trauma that you touched on, which
is important to highlight, too. If a parent
doesn't have resources, job opportunities,
community support, that responsibility is
going to have to go somewhere because they can't manage it
(23:28):
alone. When we're talking about parentification, it's
important to look at, like, what are the components of our society that
are setting people up in this way, that that is an inevitable
outcome of somebody who doesn't have the resources that they need for
a number of reasons. And
so, and again, the consequences are still the same, like
(23:50):
not placing blame on anyone, but the, the same developmental
issues occur with anyone who experiences this. When
you have all of this responsibility, whether it's emotional or
logistical, you are always learning that you have to put your
own needs to the side, especially your emotional needs, really
for survival. Like, who has time to
(24:13):
process emotions or to feel anything when you're also
responsible for all of this other stuff to ensure not only your
safety, but, like, your family's safety, and to make sure that your
primaries and your family unit are okay. Then
this becomes a pattern, all of this into
adulthood and replays in future relationships. Even when someone else
(24:35):
may not be in the same situation, they might not need you to do all
of that for them, but that pattern is already woven into to
your nervous system. It can also lead in some
cases, to reverse abandonment anxiety, where
a child fears abandoning the parent rather than being
abandoned. I really resonate with that.
(24:56):
I feel so guilty and so intense
about establishing boundaries with my mom or not showing up for her in
the way that I feel like I should as she
ages. And that if she has to spend time alone, it
often pushes me to exceed my own capacity because I
feel so. I do. I have
(25:19):
that reverse abandonment anxiety. In all
these situations, the well worn path is to self abandon rather
than to express our own needs. Over time, this
chronic abandonment impacts our identity. Like you were talking about, we don't know
who we are, what are our desires, what are our boundaries, what's
healthy for us? The more we disconnect from, from our own internal
(25:41):
sensations, the more that has an impact on our nervous system function,
our interoceptive system, our brain function, and the
ability to create that sense of safety inside of ourselves.
The this level of self abandonment,
you never learn. I think this came up in our social anxiety
conversation. Who you are, you don't know who you
(26:05):
are in development because you've been patterned in a
way that is external. You know, like
hiding, shutting down. This is who I need to be. Show up over here like
this, do this for my parents. This is all
so self abandoning because we don't know who we are. It can
come from structural trauma reasons just as well as like, as just as
(26:26):
Elisabeth highlighted. But what we're really talking about here in
this level is, how do I
identify? There's masking
involved. As we have
been studying neurodivergence for next season, this is something
that really hit me pretty hard. Now, let's define
(26:48):
masking. Masking refers to when an individual
hides or suppresses their mental health symptoms, behaviors, or
difficulties in an effort to blend in with others.
That is self abandonment. It can occur both
intentionally and unconsciously over time. While often
associated with neurodivergent individuals such as people
(27:11):
with autism or ADHD, people with various mental
health diagnoses think of what falls under the lens of
complex trauma. You struggle with these things, but
are afraid to express them. Self abandoning your own
needs to appear normal because you are
afraid of social rejection. People
(27:32):
who mask may copy others demeanor, suppress their
true feelings, or may engage in
compensatory behaviors.
It's interesting, too, as we've been reading about
neurodivergence and looking at the health of women in
particularly, and masking, and so much
(27:54):
of self abandonment and masking come together because
we learn as women to imitate other women. We
learn the social cues from watching other women, seeing how other
women are doing things and moving through the world.
Although that's educating us, it's also
teaching us, once again to hide and to mask.
(28:16):
That perpetuates the self
abandonment, because there's so many
societal rules and expectations for women
to meet every day. If you're a coach, therapist,
practitioner, healer looking to bring nervous
system health and training and resilience into all of
(28:38):
the good work that you're doing, this conversation is, maybe, resonating
with you. You know, there's a deeper place you want to take your work with
your clients, also to help your own nervous system to
prevent burnout and to create greater capacity to
do all of the good work that you're doing. We are enrolling now in the
next cohort of neurosomatic intelligence, and we would love to book a
(29:00):
discovery call with you. You can do that at, neurosomaticintelligence.com.
There's
so much of, the narrative of being broken
that comes with Complex Trauma, that you're running
around all of the time trying to make sure that things look okay on
(29:22):
the outside or that you're
acting, quote unquote, normal in social situations,
that people don't see the internal chaos going on.
That does require a lot of self abandonment,
because it feels like you wouldn't
definitely be rejected if people saw what was really going
(29:45):
on inside. I think masking,
usually used in the context of neurodivergence,
is found typically these days. But, it can apply so
much in the realm of CPTS.
Masking can come in a lot of different forms. You can have social
masking where you're trying to behave in ways
(30:07):
that don't come naturally to you. Something as
small as making eye contact.
But, that causes discomfort in. In your nervous
system, in your body, where you're mirroring body language to try to fit
in. For me, when I'm in a shame response, it's
really difficult to make eye contact. I try to
(30:29):
force myself to do it so that I'm not disconnecting from other
people. Then that sometimes creates more
shame and more dysregulation. Then there's behavioral
masking, like concealing. We talked about this withm Lindsay on
our neurodivergence and chronic pain episode. When you
conceal the behaviors that you use for self regulation
(30:51):
- maybe you're someone who, like, rocks around a lot or you
fidget in order to self regulate, but you feel
like that makes you appear strange. It doesn't
fit in the social context. You try to hide those behaviors that you've
naturally learned that your nervous system is asking for, for self
regulation, and it can come from compensation, like
(31:12):
overcompensating. By spending more energy to hide your struggles,
like, the things that are really difficult for you,
you push yourself to adapt to these systems,
especially the educational system really comes to mind, where
you're trying to appear as if things aren't as difficult for you as they
are, so that you can fit in and live up to some kind
(31:34):
of certain standard, maybe even writing with your non dominant hand.
I had a friend that was left handed and
really self conscious about it and forced themselves to write with
their right hand because it didn't seem
socially acceptable. There's all these little
ways that we can mask the truth of who we are to try to
(31:56):
fit in at a big structural level. It's such an
interesting example. So you may be asking
yourself, like, why? Why do we mask? Why would one do
that? It really comes down to fear.
Fears of stigmas, ableism and
discrimination. They all drive masking behaviors because
(32:19):
people want to protect themselves from negative
reactions. We have, as humans, a real
desire for acceptance. Some mask to fit
in, to be accepted or to avoid standing
out. This could be a learned behavior.
Masking can be a learned behavior, because from our
(32:41):
childhood experiences, especially in
unpredictable or abusive environments, this all
leads to self abandonment. So, children adapt
by hiding their true selves, much like masking. You
can really see the interplay of
all of the components of Complex Trauma when you think about masking. For example, right
(33:04):
now, I'm thinking of, social anxiety. I'm thinking of the inner critic
intertwined. All of this comes into play.
We just talked about social anxiety and this
desire for acceptance here, for masking.
Masking to fit in, to be accepted. We all
have this desire to be accepted. When it comes to those learned
(33:25):
behaviors, just like I was talking about as women, how we learn how to be
in society and in relationship, that's very
learned because we're watching the existing examples and maybe
we're watching our own mom's self abandon
and we are learning from her.
Absolutely. Absolutely! I mean,
(33:47):
masking leads to
self abandonment because ultimately we're prioritizing
fitting in. Again, we're talking about fitting in as a
deep social need, as it.
It really feels life threatening to be rejected from the
herd, to be rejected from our community or caregivers.
(34:09):
We learn to prioritize that fitting in over honoring
our own true feelings and needs and it has an impact
on our nervous system. If we're constantly hiding or not
doing the things that we need for our unique nervous system to regulate
and create safety or maybe forcing ourselves to take
in too much stimulus because we are sensitive and
(34:31):
we want to still engage with the world. The
world is overstimulating for our unique nervous system. This
leads to chronic dysregulation, chronic stress, and
or maybe the lack of stimulus that your unique brain
needs. So either way, we all have a unique
nervous system. It has different needs. And when
(34:54):
we suppress those needs and try to fit in,
there's long term consequences on the health of our nervous system, on
our brain function, and on our physical health. You
know, as someone who obviously identifies as
having, Complex Post Traumatic Stress and
(35:17):
someone who identifies as having ADHD, there's so
many overlaps. Neurodivergence is something
we're going to be exploring next season in Season Four.
Let's just talk about some of these little overlaps
of self abandonment and ADHD, because
there is that level of, you know, and
(35:39):
when we talk about fear, there is a sensitivity
to having criticism and being judged.
There's also a sensitivity that we can find ourselves in
when we have ADHD, to understanding that we have
ADHD. Then, this inner critic
starts to come into play, and we
(36:01):
can really find ourselves in the level
of energy that it requires to pretend to, like,
pass in a social environment, it just becomes
so much the masking and the constant
need to. To just
skate through. To get that pass. It can
(36:25):
lead to depression, anxiety, fatigue, and
burnout, because the more energy it
requires to pass, the harder that level that
is to maintain. One of the experiences
for someone with ADHD is that there is this sense of
accumulated trauma that happens over repeated
(36:46):
attempts to do something the right way and not being
able to. Finally, it just starts to
boil over. I think that overlaps with self
abandonment because of how much we are masking and mimicking and
trying in the exterior to feel
validated, to feel worthy, to feel seen and heard.
(37:08):
What ends up happening is something that we talk on here a lot
is there's this undercurrent of shame that
happens because we cannot keep up with all of it.
As the mask comes off, our well being
improves,. As we embrace our
authenticity, as we come into the body for a full
(37:30):
body experience. Then, we begin to embrace who we are, setting
boundaries, learning our nervous system. The mask comes off and
our well being improves because overall, the stress level
is so much lower. Right. That's
what we're doing. We are lowering the
stress -it relates to sensory
(37:52):
processing disorders. We're going to dive into
that a lot deeper in Season Four.
I'm really excited about, Season Four and
diving into all of this. What we're talking about here is big structural
ways in which
society impacts our nervous syste -, especially if we have a nervous system
(38:14):
that's maybe a little bit different from
the nervous systems and the brains that're celebrated and
supported in this structure. We're going to be
looking at, Structural Trauma a lot in Season Four and how it
adds chronic stress to the nervous system for
(38:35):
all different types of people. Because these
structures of oppression, the patriarchy,
the dominant culture, they impact us all in different ways.
Everybody's nervous system is unique. As we're looking
at self abandonment, you can also see ways in which
different structural institutions would bake
(38:57):
that self abandonment in at a deep level for different
populations and communities.
That pattern again!
It's very deeply ingrained into our neural
architecture. Self abandonment and
ignoring our instincts then becomes
pervasive. That can happen with emotional
(39:20):
repression, right? As a. As
all of us, but especially as I'm thinking about, like, some men that I work
with, it's really not ever encouraged or taught
to express grief at all.
Again, there
becomes this deep layer of
structural trauma that leads to that emotional
(39:43):
repression and self abandonment.
As you said, there are structural components of emotional
repression. I mean, we live in a society
that actively teaches us not to
express our emotions. We. A lot of people
identify with being part of the hustle culture, that hustle and grind, wake
(40:06):
up and grind every day. O,r that we have to be strong all
the time, keeping it together. The narrative of, pull yourself up
by your bootstraps and don't listen to your body. Continue
to push through.
That's
(40:26):
a deep system of
oppression. It's a system of oppression intentionally
designed to keep you from your authenticity
as your gift. We're just sort
of taught at this structural, systemic level
that we push through and don't listen
(40:48):
to your body. Again, there's this huge spectrum.
It's these things that are seemingly
makeup or identifying yourself somewhere.
But there is this.
There's this continuous
(41:12):
disconnect from social safety,
from feeling safe in the
world, in the body that you're in. I mean, diet culture also, as we;ve
talked about previously, disconnects us from our own internal sensations. It
ells us when to eat and what to eat and cuts us off from our
interoceptive signals leading to a
(41:34):
relationship of being really disconnected from the body. I mean, there's many, many
facets of the dominant culture
paradigm of the patriarchy that
gets woven into our
own nervous system and create these reactionary responses
and further, all of these different
(41:56):
complex trauma distinguishing characteristics.
Some of that Complex Trauma happens from
development, but some of it may happen from societal trauma,
from systemic trauma. And we
also talked with Victor about how, you know,
systems of oppression, it benefits them to keep people
(42:17):
in emotional repression, because the people who are doing
the oppressing don't have to feel the pain and the grief and
the sacred rage of the people that
they're oppressing. It becomes part of the dominant culture to
repress emotions that then gets
baked into all of us. All of
(42:39):
us get disconnected from our emotional experience because
it
serves people in a certain way. It
serves the disconnection that they want us to have to each other.
Which leads us to dissociation and self abandonment.
(43:01):
Yes. Which obviously, dissociation is a
huge, very physiological, very brain function part of
self abandonment.
Your
consciousness is quite literally abandoning
you and your body sensations, when we
have dissociation. We're going to talk a lot about this in the following
(43:24):
episode, but part of our brain is deciding
all of this information, this sensory experience is
too much. Block those sensory signals from making
it to conscious awareness. You disconnect from the sensations
coming in from your body and from information coming
in about the world around you. You can lose memory.
(43:47):
It's, it's ultimately, it's a disconnect
from presence and integration of a
sensory experience and
very much a disconnect from yourself.
We are diving into dissociation next week. When we
dissociate, we can't be embodied or feel our instincts and
(44:10):
our intuition. We can't be embodied without
interoceptive signals making it up to the cerebral
cortex. Gabor
Mate talks about the spectrum of needs between attachment and
authenticity and how they're both survival needs,
because instinct is a part of authenticity. If
(44:31):
you think about an animal out in the wilderness,
they don't just need the attachment to their caregivers, but they
also need to be able to hear their own instincts to survive if there's a
predator nearby, if the situation is dangerous, so they can
mobilize and have appropriate action. In that way,
authenticity also is a survival need. Attachment is a
(44:54):
survival need. Authenticity is a survival need. There's this
kind of relationship between the two.
With dissociation, you have disconnect from
instinct, so you're naturally losing that balance
between authenticity and attachment. It's out of whack because you don't
have those instinct signals. There's too
(45:15):
much importance put on
maintaining the attachment, often because of those developmental
experiences. There's so much underneath
self abandonment. It can lead us into so
many different harmful behaviors and relational patterns that
disconnect us from that instinct. Let's
(45:37):
talk about what do we do about this? What do we do to heal our
self abandonment? The first step is really cultivating awareness.
Just like in the two examples in the stories that we shared earlier.
We want the awareness that we self abandon when we
are self abandoning. What does that look like for us? Can I
start to notice my own needs and sensations
(46:01):
when we feel triggered by not being seen or
feeling heard? Where are we not hearing
ourselves? Where in our bodies? Where in our experience?
What part of the abandonment is self
abandonment? Is that why the trigger is so
big, because we are abandoning
(46:21):
ourselves?
Yeah, that was a huge thing for me, just
making that connection now
I'm an adult, I'm a fully capable
adult. I'm not really being abandoned
because I'm not a child that is
(46:43):
reliant on somebody else for my survival.
I'm likely abandoning myself and replaying
that pattern and creating that response inside of my body.
It's a real different level
of awareness. It gives me some agency to start to re -pattern that.
Also, we've started developing the skill of emotional
(47:06):
processing, feeling and expressing the emotions
and knowing that that's going to be messy, and that
there's just no way to
move out of the behaviors without being able to
experience and process the emotion. It's
very different to understand intellectually.
(47:27):
I have some grief, I
have some shame, or I have some anger underneath
there. Maybe you listen to the podcast and you think
it all makes sense and it resonates. But, understanding it's
really not the same as experiencing it and processing it.
It has to be re-educated to our body, if we
(47:49):
want to stop self abandoning and repressing and suppressing our
emotions, we have to develop the capacity and the skill
to actually be with those emotions and process them.
There's just no way to move out of the behavior otherwise. Emotional
processing is key
to keeping your nervous system regulated. Also, if you're not
(48:11):
engaging in emotional practices, you're likely,
if you're not processing your anger, your fear, your grief, you're
not understanding your joy back to your authenticity.
This
starts to tie into boundaries.
Boundaries are kind of the next level of this, because when
(48:31):
you start breaking your own boundaries and self
abandon, there's going to be an emotional component to that. It's normal to
feel anger or rage or resentment
when someone is breaking a boundary that you
don't even know that you have in place. That's the really interesting
thing. So, starting to set boundaries, and we do
(48:54):
that with our neurotools for regulating and processing the
stress of setting those boundaries, of receiving those
boundaries, receiving boundaries from someone else. We
have SO many neurosomatic classes on site for the ways to
work with the nervous system to make boundaries safe. So joining
us at, rewiretrial.com - you'll find that in the on demand
(49:16):
library. Self compassion!
Starting to develop the skills to
have compassion for ourselves so that we don't move into
those narratives of
I'm too much. I can't express this. I
have to put other people's needs ahead of my own. We
(49:40):
had that conversation with, Amanda Smith about
the neuro of self compassion and how it is really critical for
regulating our interoceptive system and
restoring brain function, getting fuel and activation to our
insular cortex. There's all kinds of
practices that you can do, starting with just this awareness, this conversation, to
(50:02):
develop more self compassion. Then, you can actually work with the
nervous system and the body to start to, at a neurological
level, create more capacity inside of yourself for
self compassion. And again, that is something that we do practically
and actionably on the site. We'are doing a whole series right now
on working with the distinguishing characteristics of CPTS. You
(50:25):
can join us to put these practices in
place in a way that is really applicable to
the things that we're talking about here. You can
do it for a free two weeks at, rewiretrial.com. AJust
see how we use the tools to really
make an impact in these specific ways. Then,
(50:46):
it's going to be really important that you start
spending some time with yourself to discover who you are and what
you like. I've said this before and say
it many times with clients like, I think with CPTS, what happens is
the light of who we are, the true essence and being
of us that makes us unique. It gets buried
(51:09):
under all this CPTS components, all this
crap, all this, quote, "Trauma", all these narratives, all these patterns.
What we do when we start intentionally on this
path with the nervous system and subconscious work is
that we start unloading all of these things. It's
about doing less, almost, and getting
(51:31):
the things off that don't serve you anymore so that you can come through
as your authentic self. A lot of
times that can be really scary because it's like having a blank canvas and
you think, "What do
I like to do? How do I like to be in this
world as as myself?" Then, back
(51:53):
to the tools. This is why. Back to the
tools for the experience of, like, that kind of fear that can
come into play when we want to play and have fun
and have new experiences and new explorations of
what we actually really like. The
opposite
(52:15):
of self abandonment is, self care.
Making the time to really
care for ourself and for us, that
means at a very deep level, at the level of our nervous system. Learning
about my nervous system, learning how I respond
and then taking the time, making the moments in my
(52:38):
day to really have that daily intentional nervous system hygiene
practice where I'm helping my system rehabilitate and create
safety. This is how I come
back to myself, that deep level of
knowing. This is my operating system. This is how it works. This is
how I can give my body and my nervous system the stimulus that it needs
(52:59):
to get the fuel and activation that it needs, the regulation, the safety.
And then I'm really not
abandoning. I'm really caring for myself. It makes
such a huge difference in your life. It just makes
such a huge difference in your life. Experience. Experience.
It creates a much richer
(53:21):
experience. And so join us at, rewiretrial.com
to check out our CPTS series on the site,, these are
classes for working with all of these distinguishing
characteristics and we really look forward to seeing you there working with you.
Awesome. That's the end of our CPTS
(53:44):
series. So thank you all once again for joining
us, and we will see you next week fo,r Dissociation.
Yes, looking forward to it. Thank you all for joining us.
This podcast is for informational and educational purposes
(54:06):
only and should not be considered medical or psychological advice.
We often discuss lived experiences through traumatic events
and sensitive topics that deal with complex developmental and
systemic trauma that may be unsettling for some listeners.
This podcast is not intended to replace professional medical
advice. If you are in the United States and you or someone you know
(54:29):
is struggling with their mental health and is in immediate danger, please call
911. For specific services relating to mental health,
please see the full disclaimer in the show notes.
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Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.