November 13, 2024 • 26 mins
In this episode I tell my friend Madeline about my trip to San Diego. I talk about why I was going, how I prepared myself, and how it all played out.
I talk about:
- Learning about how sensitive I am to the energy around me
- How my nervous system takes on stress from others
- Different scenarios that caused me trauma in the past
- Tools I used to help protect my energy this time
- How the trip went now that I had these tools
(Btw we filmed a separate episode of us introducing Madeline to everyone but it'll take some time to post it because it's mostly just us rambling.)
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Golden Girl, a space where we dive deep into health, healing, connection, and community.
(00:07):
I'm your host, Becca Golden, and this podcast is all about sharing and documenting my journey.
Each episode we'll discuss topics like health and wellness, what I'm learning in therapy, work-life balance, relationships, community, and all the ways I strive for more aliveness and presence every day. Let's dive in.
(00:30):
Okay, hi. Let's start.
Hello. Hello.
Um, for this episode, I want to recap my trip to San Diego. It just happened last week, and I want to fill you in and fill in all of our listeners.
So in this recent era of my health, I've been really learning how sensitive I am. I never realized that I'm very, very, very sensitive to mostly just to the energy of people around me, especially. And since I didn't know that, I really had no tools to help protect my own energy.
(01:11):
If people were fighting around me, I would absorb the tension from a fight, and then maybe they would resolve it separately, but I wouldn't get that resolution.
Or if someone was stressed, if a parent is stressed, or if a teacher is stressed, whoever is experiencing stress around me, I would absorb that stress from them.
(01:32):
And so you can imagine, like as a child or a teenager, if you're just taking on all of this energy from the world around you, there's a lot of stress, a lot of tension, a lot of unhappiness, judgment, resentment in your everyday life, just of people that you encounter. And that can be really overwhelming.
(01:55):
And so in a future episode, we can dive into like the nervous system and your fight, flight, fawn, or freeze responses. A lot of people talk about fight or flight, and those never really resonated with me, but the fawn and freeze are definitely ones that resonate with me. And so we'll go into that at some point, but it's really relevant for this time.
(02:18):
So can I say one question? What is fawn?
I don't quite know yet, but I think I know examples. I mean, I should just look up the definition, but I think it's like accommodating people, which is what I would do. I think it's like allowing everyone else to get their way and keeping quiet yourself. I don't think that that's the definition of it, but I think that that falls into the category as far as I know.
(02:43):
And that's new. That's one that I'm only just learning because that would be like a whole people pleasing tangent.
But I think that the fawn is an area that I'm about to get more acquainted with because I think that it's very accurate for me if it ends up being what I think it's going to be.
So there's, you know, me being super sensitive, absorbing all this energy. And in the last year of trauma therapy, it's almost my one year anniversary of doing trauma therapy. When I went to trauma therapy in the first place, like when I sought it out, that'll also be a future episode because it was for work trauma. But what I learned is that anything can be trauma, which I didn't know that I thought trauma meant something terrible has happened to you.
(03:28):
I thought trauma meant like the worst of the worst, but I thought it had to be like a thing that happened to you.
What I've learned now is that your body picks up things from the world around you and anything can be perceived as trauma. We can do a whole episode into that as well, but that's not the point of today. But it's important context as a foundation for why this trip was such a meaningful, like why I planned it the way I did and why there was so much meaning around it.
(03:56):
So as a very sensitive person, every time I used to go home to San Diego to see my parents and my friends, I didn't realize this at the time, but it was traumatizing to me every single time.
And it's not because anybody did anything wrong. It's just because I had no idea how overstimulating and overwhelming all of the different factors of those visits were for me.
(04:19):
And now that I'm working on my health and I was like starting to feel better and I really wanted to plan this visit to see if I can handle it because Thanksgiving and Christmas are coming up every year, I'm dreading going home for those holidays because they're so traumatizing for me.
So I'm going to give you a couple examples of why it felt traumatizing to me and what I did instead this time.
(04:45):
So when I usually go home to San Diego during holidays, my two sisters are there and I'm there and we see our parents and our grandparents. And usually we don't rent a car and my parents are not together anymore. So they're in separate locations. My grandparents live in a third location. And I have a lot of close friends from San Diego still that I love to see.
(05:07):
So every time I go home to San Diego when everybody is there together as a family, first of all, everyone has competing interests like Shira might want to go to see a friend at this time or might want to go to my grandma's place and then maybe Jenna wants to meet a friend somewhere else.
Like my learned trauma response to that, which is not that's not a traumatic situation in theory, but for someone who's very sensitive like me, just that dynamic alone is so overwhelming and reminds my nervous system of feelings of helplessness, feelings of not having a voice, not having to say because any contribution I make is going to get overridden, dismissed, and someone else is going to get their way.
(05:46):
So like I basically learned to just keep all of my desires to myself because it didn't add anything helpful. It just made the situation more complicated. So I think that is an example of fawn.
I mean, I need to like look this up because I don't know if that's what fawn is. But if it is, that's an example of like me just deciding, you know, if I wanted to see a friend, it's not even worth it.
(06:07):
I'm just going to tell the friend that I can't do it because I don't want to add more complexity to this issue of how are we all going to get to these places with only one vehicle. So that's one example.
We all had differing agendas and a lot of personalities, a lot of different energies in one house.
We all used to stay with my mom and that's just a lot of female energy in one house, all four girls in the house, which there's so many pros to that as well. But the cons for me, I've now learned that I really need my own space. And I didn't know how important it was that I can have space before and after seeing people and seeing groups especially.
(06:47):
But I've learned this in therapy that if I'm going to go to a party, for example, it's so helpful if I can have some time to myself before and some time to myself after. But if I have to go from like one thing to the next to the next, eventually I just feel super burnt out and super overstimulated.
And I used to not know how to deal with that because I didn't realize anything had happened to me, but it's traumatic apparently to my nervous system. So that's some context about the trip.
(07:14):
And then I would also want to see my friends and my family would be like, "Oh, Rebecca always just wants to see her friends." Like "you didn't spend enough time with the family."
So then on top of feeling helpless and trapped because I didn't have transportation and guilty, I would be shamed and then feel like I'm doing something wrong. So it's just this whole combination of things.
(07:35):
And then on top of that, anytime I did get an opportunity to spend time with my grandparents, I would be with my sisters and my dad. And so again, I would just keep a lot of this to myself and just be there with them, not saying much. And then I would feel like, okay, that wasn't really very fun.
So I was just basically the gist of this is that I'm just getting dragged around San Diego by my family who's like living their lives normally, but I am deciding to take a back seat and deciding to let everybody else do whatever they want. And then feeling really guilty for not having spent time with the people that I wanted to,
(08:10):
but there's not enough time of day. There's not enough cars and like everything... It's just a mess. And I never realized that that affected me, but it did.
And by the way, you're allowed to like chime in.
I don't want to interrupt because I want to make sure that the audio is distinct. Do you know what I mean?
(08:30):
Yeah, but you can interrupt because I could just do a solo episode.
That's true. But no, so far I don't need to interrupt yet.
Okay.
Okay.
Where am I?
Oh, I know where you were. You thought that the experience that you had on your trips home was typical and was not something that was traumatic, but now you have, we want to hear about the realization of perhaps this is not the right thing.
(08:58):
Yeah. So I've learned that it, that's not, it doesn't have to be that way. I'm not going to say it's not normal or common or I don't know. But what I learned was that there's another way and that's so exciting.
It has to do with how did you learn this was, how did you learn that this was potentially not a path you wanted to continue on?
(09:19):
Well I, I didn't know that there was another option for another path, but it came to my attention how this was a really hard thing for me to go through during therapy.
So in therapy, I would share how I feel and I'd be like, I don't think I'm going to go home for the holidays this year. It's just really stressful.
My therapist just kind of validates like, yeah, that does sound really stressful. She doesn't tell me what to do, but as I've been learning through therapy, different ways of building self-trust and I'm choose, like I want a relationship with my family always. I love them. I want to be able to be okay around them. And the way that they are is not traumatic for other people.
(10:01):
So basically what I learned is that this is a me problem. It's not that, "oh, my family is too stressful. That's their fault. They need to become less stressful."
It's, "oh, I am very sensitive." I had no idea I was this sensitive.
I want to learn how to better regulate myself and protect my energy and like what kind of energetic boundaries can I put in place?
(10:23):
What kind of safeguards can I build around a trip like this so that I can go home for the holidays and actually enjoy myself? Because I love my family. They're amazing people and they, they don't do harmful things to me.
So if my body is perceiving this to be a traumatic experience, I believe that it's within my power to learn how to embrace my sensitive nature while protecting it as well.
(10:52):
Yeah. Something interesting though that you said is, is you don't think that this is traumatic for other people, but you actually don't know that.
Well, I guess what I mean is that my family is not treating me poorly. I wanted to make that differentiation. Like in telling the story, nobody's bullying me. Nobody's harming me. Nobody's intentionally harming me or like doing, like it's... it's such a nuance because my body could be experiencing harm from something that's inherently harmless.
(11:25):
Well, I want to go into more of the why this trip is better, but there is one thing I do want to say first is that there's intent versus impact here. And while their intent is benign and positive, the fact that they're still in negative impact, even without them trying or meaning is still bad in the first place.
(11:46):
Well, I think some of that though goes back to like my learned response to this. So if I had grown up in a different family in a different world, and then I just spent a week with this family, that's my family, but as if I had never met them before, I don't think it would be traumatic for me.
I think this is like a learned trauma response. I'm already traumatized by this. So like the slightest things will trigger my nervous system to be like, "whoa, whoa, whoa, there's a threat."
(12:14):
So I hear what you're saying too. And I think there is room for that. We all have ways that we can improve the way we treat people, especially our families.
But I guess the point I'm trying to make is that my level of sensitivity to them feels disproportionate to the behavior.
(12:35):
Sure.
And this does sound though, like something that...like there's this concept in abuse of the victim trying to rationalize and justify the abuser. So you know, who knows.
But in this case, what I am prepared to share today is that the behavior that I wanted to work to be able to be okay in was not abusive. I'm talking about just enjoying a family dinner with your family, like in a totally harmless way.
(13:07):
That would be overwhelming for me just because right now I'm in this like very fragile state. So I guess I should also take a step back and say that through this year of therapy, I've been peeling off all these layers and really removing all of my armor and just being completely vulnerable to all of my feelings.
And I'm so delicate and fragile. The smallest little things are really intense for me because I'm just unpacking it for the first time now after, you know, 31 years of being alive. You pick up a lot of stuff.
(13:36):
And so I'm extra delicate right now, but I'm not as delicate as I was six months ago when I first was coming to some of these realizations. So it felt like a good time to test it out.
It might make more sense when I talk about the safeguards and how they helped me. So like the very biggest one by far, I rented a car.
I want to back up and start by saying a few of the things that seemed like they were potential issues. 1. The lack of vehicular autonomy. 2. Being in a four female household. 3. I'll also add not speaking up for yourself, even for things that are benign.
(14:15):
For the example is "I want to see my friends and I don't have a car and my family is saying, 'Oh, Becca always wants to see her friends. She's neglecting us. This is her problem. And she should be wanting to spend time with me.'"
One of the potential solutions with that is saying, "actually parents, it's okay that I want to see my friends. I love my friends. That's a you problem, not a me problem."
(14:38):
On the flip side saying, "hi friends, I don't have a car right now. If you could please pick me up. I really want to spend time with you. That would be great."
Whatever. We're not going to belabor this, but I think that is, let's at least say the vehicular autonomy and the house with all the women are two obvious things that we can, you know, have solution. And then the speaking up for yourself, we'll see if that becomes a solution. But that was one of the things that I noticed as potential three potential problems.
(15:05):
Yeah. I want to add to when you're talking about the, "Oh, Becca just wants to hang out with her friends." If we go to like a subconscious level, what I do in therapy is we go even deeper. It's like, "okay, what else though?"
And so when I dig even deeper, it's like, "Oh, my family thinks I'm a bad daughter. I'm a bad sister." Like it gets catastrophized. And I'm not... I don't spiral in my head about hypothetical scenarios.
(15:31):
Catastrophizing is not something that my brain does. But like deep in the subconscious layers, if I were to be like, "okay, why is that threatening to my nervous system to say, 'Oh, Becca just wants to be with her friends.'" Of course it shouldn't traumatize you.
No.
Oh, I mean, I shouldn't even say like, "shouldn't traumatize you" because that's the wrong language to use. Anything can be trauma. But in my head, it's almost like, "okay, that feels like something that I would normally in other circumstances be able to brush off as not a big deal. But why is it so triggering to me?"
(16:04):
And I think it's because ultimately it leads to like, "Oh, Becca just wants to hang out with her friends. Becca doesn't care about her family. Becca's a bad person."
It's like an inadequate family member. An inadequate family member and not worthy of love. Like it gets to be like so ridiculous if you follow it all the way. And then it's like, "Oh my God, I don't believe I'm worthy of love. If I can't see my friends" ?? That's a crazy thing.
(16:28):
And it's not how it really works. But until you go to that point and then you say "that seems ridiculous," then you have to say "no family members. You're being ridiculous, not me or not even ridiculous."
But then you only by going to the craziest end of this mental congo line, can you say, "I'm actually right here."
(16:50):
And that is what I've been teaching myself to do on my own time throughout my daily life in Austin. That's building self trust. Like standing up for yourself, but owning it.
Because if I were to say that to my family, typically what happened, what would happen in previous,.. Let's go a few years back before I was doing all this work.
(17:11):
If I said like, "Oh, I want to see this friend" and they'd be like, "Oh, of course you do." Like, "you never want to spend time with the family, blah, blah, blah." And I'd say, "Yes, I do."
And I would justify it. I'd defend myself. I'd say "I was with you this time and this time," like "this is something that matters to me and it doesn't make me a bad person."
But then I would go and do the thing and get back and maybe feel tension from it. And it's like, wait a second, this isn't my tension though. I picked this up because they disagreed with me and I lack the confidence in myself and I lack the self trust to feel good about my decision.
(17:45):
Even though I would go do it anyway, I would get back to my mom's house and feel like sh** because I'd be like, "I did something wrong. I disobeyed the guidelines of being a perfect family member."
Yeah, this is zero sum game. It's like you go to see your friend, you come back and you still feel bad and you don't see your friend and then you feel bad because you didn't see someone you want to spend time with. So it's... you're never winning.
(18:06):
Yeah, it's a concept called the double bind. I've learned in therapy.
Double bind, bummer.
Bummer.
Okay.
Back to the matter at hand, which is you rented a car.
I rented a car.
Mazel.
Thank you. Thank you. It was such a liberating choice for me.
Oh, and so let me just say in the car rental, I have an example of, I call them like, actually my dad called them "micro interactions". These micro interactions that I have with people and scenarios throughout my life every day that are building self trust or maybe breaking self trust.
(18:44):
So with the car rental example, this was the beginning of the trip and I had already put all this thought around, okay, how am I going to show up on this trip? And I get to the car rental place, I get my car and like open the trunk. I'm so excited. Put my bag in. It smells like smoke, cigarette smoke, so much cigarette smoke.
And I had already been texting my dad because I was going to be staying at my dad's place. And so he was expecting me. I was like, never mind. I got to go switch out the car and he texted back. He has this ozone machine that can completely get rid of all of the.
(19:14):
It's an odor eliminating device.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And he texted me. He's like, "Oh, I have that." And I was just like, "I have to switch out the car."
It was the simplest thing. I just walked right back into the place and I was like, "I need to switch the car. It smells like cigarette smoke" and I got a new car and it smelled like nothing, which is exactly what you want.
And that small thing, just that choice to say no to the ozone and to say no to the cigarette smoke. It is the smallest thing. And it's something that might not cross someone's mind.
(19:43):
It's like a lot of people do that stuff automatically and a lot of people won't. A lot of people will just deal with it because they don't want to make a fuss.
Yes.
And I have lived so much of my life just dealing with things because I don't want to make a fuss. And it's because I have this narrative in my head that is judging me for making a fuss. Anytime I make a fuss, I hear in my head, "it's not that big a deal." "This is silly." "This is stupid." "You're causing your, you're so particular." "You're so high maintenance." "You're so this and that."
(20:11):
And it's like this narrative actually doesn't even belong to me. This is not my voice in my head. This is someone else's voice in my head.
So learning to decide that that's not my voice leads to it being silenced. Because the more I realize it's not even me, the more my body is like, "oh, well, why are we listening?" And I believe maybe sends it back to its rightful place.
(20:36):
Well, the thing that's hard to is that even for something as small as making a small fuss, there's so many, there's so many different voices saying why you shouldn't. We could come up with a lot of answers for why we feel the pressure to remain silent on small things.
Oh yeah.
And that's a good victory. That's a big one. This is... this is a... it seems like a small step in the right direction, but it really is a big step in the right direction.
(21:01):
Thank you. I agree. And it was like a whole trip of just hundreds of those types of little choices throughout the day.
Okay. Victory number one, we got the car. That's a win. Victory number two, You're going to say with your dad.
Yes. So I decided to stay with my dad. Usually I stay with my mom. She has a lot of extra beds and we all just stay there, which is just easier. She's also closer to my grandma's place.
(21:25):
But this time my dad got a pullout couch. So he had a place for me to sleep and he doesn't work from home. So my mom is a realtor. So she's always... I mean, she's like out and about and stuff. But home is her home base. My dad works from a store every day. So he goes into the store and I was doing some work still while I was there. I wasn't fully on PTO.
(21:47):
So it was nice. Like I had a whole place to myself and it was like, "ah, this is freedom." "I have a car and I have a home and space to like decompress." So that was such a win.
And then I did make a lot of plans while I was there. I did kind of overbook myself, but I made sure that before I would go and interact with people, I had time to do a meditation.
(22:10):
Good.
And afterwards I would do another meditation.
Great.
I was journaling a lot. So a lot of reflecting. And I did a lot of yoga while I was there, which is like me time. So I had dedicated time for myself. I had dedicated space for myself a ton of time to decompress, reflect, recenter, reground in my energy.
So wherever I was going, whatever energy I may have picked up, I was able to let go of that and start again before I entered a new space, which was hugely helpful.
(22:40):
So upon returning home, how did you feel at the end of the trip?
So I felt amazing. I was so-- I am so proud of myself. I think the only way to really test...Like... I can go to therapy all day and talk about the ways that I'm traumatized by being around stressful environments. But life is stressful. Like, you have to face it. So maybe in the beginning stages, when I'm extra fragile, I'll be more particular about which types of environments I put myself in. But as I start to heal more and grow more, I want to put myself into these situations that are more stressful so that I can see where I'm at.
(23:19):
Like it's almost a litmus test of, "okay, how, how much have I grown in my ability to protect my energy?" Because the other thing is my sisters weren't there. So I went in the middle of October by myself. I didn't want to throw myself into the full fire, so I didn't go during Thanksgiving, when we're all together.
I kind of just did this as a way to, to very gently nudge myself and, and teach my, myself that like, "see, it's okay." "You don't... you....you can go to San Diego without being traumatized." "You can go and come back and feel great and be happy and feel like you had a great trip." That's exactly what happened.
(23:57):
I got to spend time with all my family, almost every single friend I tried to see, but I didn't see all of them. But it was such a win for my inner self that I've been building trust with. It really taught me that like, "oh, you, you can definitely do this and it doesn't have to be that scary."
And if you arm yourself with different things like a rental car and conscious meditation choices....and there was a time I came home from dinner with somebody and, or came home, I went back to my dad's place and he had already gotten home from work. So like right when I walked in the door, he was there and he was like, "Hey, how was it?"
(24:31):
And like we were recapping and then I realized, "Oh my God, I'm overwhelmed." So I just told him, I was like, "Hey, actually, is it okay if I like go upstairs for 20 minutes and then can we catch up after that?"
He's like, Yeah, of course. So even that interaction of me realizing what I needed, asking for what I needed and having him just completely positively saying like, "Yes, of course," that's another micro interaction that is reinforcing self-trust with my inner needs and my nervous system.
(24:59):
It all.
Great.
And I feel like now I could go back during the holidays and it would be intense for me because I'm still fragile and learning about my sensitivity, but, but I feel like I could do it.
Like the trip made me feel that confident about the tools that I have and how I'm learning to use them. And I think that's really cool.
(25:20):
I think this isn't a really appropriate time to say this because I think people often say they have a really hard time with family during the holidays. This is a super common and people should be able to learn the tools to be able to spend time with their family and still feel good about it and be true to themselves. So big kudos for accomplishing that.
(25:40):
Thank you. I feel really good about it. And I never knew that it was okay to need time to decompress. I can't believe that that was something that never occurred to me, but it's, it seems so simple.
Literally, I wonder how my life would be different if I knew that just laying on the grass by myself for 20 minutes, it revives me.
(26:02):
Yeah.
Like I just need to roll around in the grass by myself for a while and then I'm a new, a new woman. So yeah, these are real tools. Roll around in the grass, in the grass, but really just a little bit of time alone can make all the difference.
Great.
So yeah, it's possible.
Great.
Thank you.
(26:22):
Yeah, that's the San Diego story.
I loved it.
Thanks.
Have a nice day.
Welcome to Golden Girl, a space where we dive deep into health, healing, connection, and community.
(00:07):
I'm your host, Becca Golden, and this podcast is all about sharing and documenting my journey.
Each episode we'll discuss topics like health and wellness, what I'm learning in therapy, work-life balance, relationships, community, and all the ways I strive for more aliveness and presence every day. Let's dive in.
(00:30):
Okay, hi. Let's start.
Hello. Hello.
Um, for this episode, I want to recap my trip to San Diego. It just happened last week, and I want to fill you in and fill in all of our listeners.
So in this recent era of my health, I've been really learning how sensitive I am. I never realized that I'm very, very, very sensitive to mostly just to the energy of people around me, especially. And since I didn't know that, I really had no tools to help protect my own energy.
(01:11):
If people were fighting around me, I would absorb the tension from a fight, and then maybe they would resolve it separately, but I wouldn't get that resolution.
Or if someone was stressed, if a parent is stressed, or if a teacher is stressed, whoever is experiencing stress around me, I would absorb that stress from them.
(01:32):
And so you can imagine, like as a child or a teenager, if you're just taking on all of this energy from the world around you, there's a lot of stress, a lot of tension, a lot of unhappiness, judgment, resentment in your everyday life, just of people that you encounter. And that can be really overwhelming.
(01:55):
And so in a future episode, we can dive into like the nervous system and your fight, flight, fawn, or freeze responses. A lot of people talk about fight or flight, and those never really resonated with me, but the fawn and freeze are definitely ones that resonate with me. And so we'll go into that at some point, but it's really relevant for this time.
(02:18):
So can I say one question? What is fawn?
I don't quite know yet, but I think I know examples. I mean, I should just look up the definition, but I think it's like accommodating people, which is what I would do. I think it's like allowing everyone else to get their way and keeping quiet yourself. I don't think that that's the definition of it, but I think that that falls into the category as far as I know.
(02:43):
And that's new. That's one that I'm only just learning because that would be like a whole people pleasing tangent.
But I think that the fawn is an area that I'm about to get more acquainted with because I think that it's very accurate for me if it ends up being what I think it's going to be.
So there's, you know, me being super sensitive, absorbing all this energy. And in the last year of trauma therapy, it's almost my one year anniversary of doing trauma therapy. When I went to trauma therapy in the first place, like when I sought it out, that'll also be a future episode because it was for work trauma. But what I learned is that anything can be trauma, which I didn't know that I thought trauma meant something terrible has happened to you.
(03:28):
I thought trauma meant like the worst of the worst, but I thought it had to be like a thing that happened to you.
What I've learned now is that your body picks up things from the world around you and anything can be perceived as trauma. We can do a whole episode into that as well, but that's not the point of today. But it's important context as a foundation for why this trip was such a meaningful, like why I planned it the way I did and why there was so much meaning around it.
(03:56):
So as a very sensitive person, every time I used to go home to San Diego to see my parents and my friends, I didn't realize this at the time, but it was traumatizing to me every single time.
And it's not because anybody did anything wrong. It's just because I had no idea how overstimulating and overwhelming all of the different factors of those visits were for me.
(04:19):
And now that I'm working on my health and I was like starting to feel better and I really wanted to plan this visit to see if I can handle it because Thanksgiving and Christmas are coming up every year, I'm dreading going home for those holidays because they're so traumatizing for me.
So I'm going to give you a couple examples of why it felt traumatizing to me and what I did instead this time.
(04:45):
So when I usually go home to San Diego during holidays, my two sisters are there and I'm there and we see our parents and our grandparents. And usually we don't rent a car and my parents are not together anymore. So they're in separate locations. My grandparents live in a third location. And I have a lot of close friends from San Diego still that I love to see.
(05:07):
So every time I go home to San Diego when everybody is there together as a family, first of all, everyone has competing interests like Shira might want to go to see a friend at this time or might want to go to my grandma's place and then maybe Jenna wants to meet a friend somewhere else.
Like my learned trauma response to that, which is not that's not a traumatic situation in theory, but for someone who's very sensitive like me, just that dynamic alone is so overwhelming and reminds my nervous system of feelings of helplessness, feelings of not having a voice, not having to say because any contribution I make is going to get overridden, dismissed, and someone else is going to get their way.
(05:46):
So like I basically learned to just keep all of my desires to myself because it didn't add anything helpful. It just made the situation more complicated. So I think that is an example of fawn.
I mean, I need to like look this up because I don't know if that's what fawn is. But if it is, that's an example of like me just deciding, you know, if I wanted to see a friend, it's not even worth it.
(06:07):
I'm just going to tell the friend that I can't do it because I don't want to add more complexity to this issue of how are we all going to get to these places with only one vehicle. So that's one example.
We all had differing agendas and a lot of personalities, a lot of different energies in one house.
We all used to stay with my mom and that's just a lot of female energy in one house, all four girls in the house, which there's so many pros to that as well. But the cons for me, I've now learned that I really need my own space. And I didn't know how important it was that I can have space before and after seeing people and seeing groups especially.
(06:47):
But I've learned this in therapy that if I'm going to go to a party, for example, it's so helpful if I can have some time to myself before and some time to myself after. But if I have to go from like one thing to the next to the next, eventually I just feel super burnt out and super overstimulated.
And I used to not know how to deal with that because I didn't realize anything had happened to me, but it's traumatic apparently to my nervous system. So that's some context about the trip.
(07:14):
And then I would also want to see my friends and my family would be like, "Oh, Rebecca always just wants to see her friends." Like "you didn't spend enough time with the family."
So then on top of feeling helpless and trapped because I didn't have transportation and guilty, I would be shamed and then feel like I'm doing something wrong. So it's just this whole combination of things.
(07:35):
And then on top of that, anytime I did get an opportunity to spend time with my grandparents, I would be with my sisters and my dad. And so again, I would just keep a lot of this to myself and just be there with them, not saying much. And then I would feel like, okay, that wasn't really very fun.
So I was just basically the gist of this is that I'm just getting dragged around San Diego by my family who's like living their lives normally, but I am deciding to take a back seat and deciding to let everybody else do whatever they want. And then feeling really guilty for not having spent time with the people that I wanted to,
(08:10):
but there's not enough time of day. There's not enough cars and like everything... It's just a mess. And I never realized that that affected me, but it did.
And by the way, you're allowed to like chime in.
I don't want to interrupt because I want to make sure that the audio is distinct. Do you know what I mean?
(08:30):
Yeah, but you can interrupt because I could just do a solo episode.
That's true. But no, so far I don't need to interrupt yet.
Okay.
Okay.
Where am I?
Oh, I know where you were. You thought that the experience that you had on your trips home was typical and was not something that was traumatic, but now you have, we want to hear about the realization of perhaps this is not the right thing.
(08:58):
Yeah. So I've learned that it, that's not, it doesn't have to be that way. I'm not going to say it's not normal or common or I don't know. But what I learned was that there's another way and that's so exciting.
It has to do with how did you learn this was, how did you learn that this was potentially not a path you wanted to continue on?
(09:19):
Well I, I didn't know that there was another option for another path, but it came to my attention how this was a really hard thing for me to go through during therapy.
So in therapy, I would share how I feel and I'd be like, I don't think I'm going to go home for the holidays this year. It's just really stressful.
My therapist just kind of validates like, yeah, that does sound really stressful. She doesn't tell me what to do, but as I've been learning through therapy, different ways of building self-trust and I'm choose, like I want a relationship with my family always. I love them. I want to be able to be okay around them. And the way that they are is not traumatic for other people.
(10:01):
So basically what I learned is that this is a me problem. It's not that, "oh, my family is too stressful. That's their fault. They need to become less stressful."
It's, "oh, I am very sensitive." I had no idea I was this sensitive.
I want to learn how to better regulate myself and protect my energy and like what kind of energetic boundaries can I put in place?
(10:23):
What kind of safeguards can I build around a trip like this so that I can go home for the holidays and actually enjoy myself? Because I love my family. They're amazing people and they, they don't do harmful things to me.
So if my body is perceiving this to be a traumatic experience, I believe that it's within my power to learn how to embrace my sensitive nature while protecting it as well.
(10:52):
Yeah. Something interesting though that you said is, is you don't think that this is traumatic for other people, but you actually don't know that.
Well, I guess what I mean is that my family is not treating me poorly. I wanted to make that differentiation. Like in telling the story, nobody's bullying me. Nobody's harming me. Nobody's intentionally harming me or like doing, like it's... it's such a nuance because my body could be experiencing harm from something that's inherently harmless.
(11:25):
Well, I want to go into more of the why this trip is better, but there is one thing I do want to say first is that there's intent versus impact here. And while their intent is benign and positive, the fact that they're still in negative impact, even without them trying or meaning is still bad in the first place.
(11:46):
Well, I think some of that though goes back to like my learned response to this. So if I had grown up in a different family in a different world, and then I just spent a week with this family, that's my family, but as if I had never met them before, I don't think it would be traumatic for me.
I think this is like a learned trauma response. I'm already traumatized by this. So like the slightest things will trigger my nervous system to be like, "whoa, whoa, whoa, there's a threat."
(12:14):
So I hear what you're saying too. And I think there is room for that. We all have ways that we can improve the way we treat people, especially our families.
But I guess the point I'm trying to make is that my level of sensitivity to them feels disproportionate to the behavior.
(12:35):
Sure.
And this does sound though, like something that...like there's this concept in abuse of the victim trying to rationalize and justify the abuser. So you know, who knows.
But in this case, what I am prepared to share today is that the behavior that I wanted to work to be able to be okay in was not abusive. I'm talking about just enjoying a family dinner with your family, like in a totally harmless way.
(13:07):
That would be overwhelming for me just because right now I'm in this like very fragile state. So I guess I should also take a step back and say that through this year of therapy, I've been peeling off all these layers and really removing all of my armor and just being completely vulnerable to all of my feelings.
And I'm so delicate and fragile. The smallest little things are really intense for me because I'm just unpacking it for the first time now after, you know, 31 years of being alive. You pick up a lot of stuff.
(13:36):
And so I'm extra delicate right now, but I'm not as delicate as I was six months ago when I first was coming to some of these realizations. So it felt like a good time to test it out.
It might make more sense when I talk about the safeguards and how they helped me. So like the very biggest one by far, I rented a car.
I want to back up and start by saying a few of the things that seemed like they were potential issues. 1. The lack of vehicular autonomy. 2. Being in a four female household. 3. I'll also add not speaking up for yourself, even for things that are benign.
(14:15):
For the example is "I want to see my friends and I don't have a car and my family is saying, 'Oh, Becca always wants to see her friends. She's neglecting us. This is her problem. And she should be wanting to spend time with me.'"
One of the potential solutions with that is saying, "actually parents, it's okay that I want to see my friends. I love my friends. That's a you problem, not a me problem."
(14:38):
On the flip side saying, "hi friends, I don't have a car right now. If you could please pick me up. I really want to spend time with you. That would be great."
Whatever. We're not going to belabor this, but I think that is, let's at least say the vehicular autonomy and the house with all the women are two obvious things that we can, you know, have solution. And then the speaking up for yourself, we'll see if that becomes a solution. But that was one of the things that I noticed as potential three potential problems.
(15:05):
Yeah. I want to add to when you're talking about the, "Oh, Becca just wants to hang out with her friends." If we go to like a subconscious level, what I do in therapy is we go even deeper. It's like, "okay, what else though?"
And so when I dig even deeper, it's like, "Oh, my family thinks I'm a bad daughter. I'm a bad sister." Like it gets catastrophized. And I'm not... I don't spiral in my head about hypothetical scenarios.
(15:31):
Catastrophizing is not something that my brain does. But like deep in the subconscious layers, if I were to be like, "okay, why is that threatening to my nervous system to say, 'Oh, Becca just wants to be with her friends.'" Of course it shouldn't traumatize you.
No.
Oh, I mean, I shouldn't even say like, "shouldn't traumatize you" because that's the wrong language to use. Anything can be trauma. But in my head, it's almost like, "okay, that feels like something that I would normally in other circumstances be able to brush off as not a big deal. But why is it so triggering to me?"
(16:04):
And I think it's because ultimately it leads to like, "Oh, Becca just wants to hang out with her friends. Becca doesn't care about her family. Becca's a bad person."
It's like an inadequate family member. An inadequate family member and not worthy of love. Like it gets to be like so ridiculous if you follow it all the way. And then it's like, "Oh my God, I don't believe I'm worthy of love. If I can't see my friends" ?? That's a crazy thing.
(16:28):
And it's not how it really works. But until you go to that point and then you say "that seems ridiculous," then you have to say "no family members. You're being ridiculous, not me or not even ridiculous."
But then you only by going to the craziest end of this mental congo line, can you say, "I'm actually right here."
(16:50):
And that is what I've been teaching myself to do on my own time throughout my daily life in Austin. That's building self trust. Like standing up for yourself, but owning it.
Because if I were to say that to my family, typically what happened, what would happen in previous,.. Let's go a few years back before I was doing all this work.
(17:11):
If I said like, "Oh, I want to see this friend" and they'd be like, "Oh, of course you do." Like, "you never want to spend time with the family, blah, blah, blah." And I'd say, "Yes, I do."
And I would justify it. I'd defend myself. I'd say "I was with you this time and this time," like "this is something that matters to me and it doesn't make me a bad person."
But then I would go and do the thing and get back and maybe feel tension from it. And it's like, wait a second, this isn't my tension though. I picked this up because they disagreed with me and I lack the confidence in myself and I lack the self trust to feel good about my decision.
(17:45):
Even though I would go do it anyway, I would get back to my mom's house and feel like sh** because I'd be like, "I did something wrong. I disobeyed the guidelines of being a perfect family member."
Yeah, this is zero sum game. It's like you go to see your friend, you come back and you still feel bad and you don't see your friend and then you feel bad because you didn't see someone you want to spend time with. So it's... you're never winning.
(18:06):
Yeah, it's a concept called the double bind. I've learned in therapy.
Double bind, bummer.
Bummer.
Okay.
Back to the matter at hand, which is you rented a car.
I rented a car.
Mazel.
Thank you. Thank you. It was such a liberating choice for me.
Oh, and so let me just say in the car rental, I have an example of, I call them like, actually my dad called them "micro interactions". These micro interactions that I have with people and scenarios throughout my life every day that are building self trust or maybe breaking self trust.
(18:44):
So with the car rental example, this was the beginning of the trip and I had already put all this thought around, okay, how am I going to show up on this trip? And I get to the car rental place, I get my car and like open the trunk. I'm so excited. Put my bag in. It smells like smoke, cigarette smoke, so much cigarette smoke.
And I had already been texting my dad because I was going to be staying at my dad's place. And so he was expecting me. I was like, never mind. I got to go switch out the car and he texted back. He has this ozone machine that can completely get rid of all of the.
(19:14):
It's an odor eliminating device.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And he texted me. He's like, "Oh, I have that." And I was just like, "I have to switch out the car."
It was the simplest thing. I just walked right back into the place and I was like, "I need to switch the car. It smells like cigarette smoke" and I got a new car and it smelled like nothing, which is exactly what you want.
And that small thing, just that choice to say no to the ozone and to say no to the cigarette smoke. It is the smallest thing. And it's something that might not cross someone's mind.
(19:43):
It's like a lot of people do that stuff automatically and a lot of people won't. A lot of people will just deal with it because they don't want to make a fuss.
Yes.
And I have lived so much of my life just dealing with things because I don't want to make a fuss. And it's because I have this narrative in my head that is judging me for making a fuss. Anytime I make a fuss, I hear in my head, "it's not that big a deal." "This is silly." "This is stupid." "You're causing your, you're so particular." "You're so high maintenance." "You're so this and that."
(20:11):
And it's like this narrative actually doesn't even belong to me. This is not my voice in my head. This is someone else's voice in my head.
So learning to decide that that's not my voice leads to it being silenced. Because the more I realize it's not even me, the more my body is like, "oh, well, why are we listening?" And I believe maybe sends it back to its rightful place.
(20:36):
Well, the thing that's hard to is that even for something as small as making a small fuss, there's so many, there's so many different voices saying why you shouldn't. We could come up with a lot of answers for why we feel the pressure to remain silent on small things.
Oh yeah.
And that's a good victory. That's a big one. This is... this is a... it seems like a small step in the right direction, but it really is a big step in the right direction.
(21:01):
Thank you. I agree. And it was like a whole trip of just hundreds of those types of little choices throughout the day.
Okay. Victory number one, we got the car. That's a win. Victory number two, You're going to say with your dad.
Yes. So I decided to stay with my dad. Usually I stay with my mom. She has a lot of extra beds and we all just stay there, which is just easier. She's also closer to my grandma's place.
(21:25):
But this time my dad got a pullout couch. So he had a place for me to sleep and he doesn't work from home. So my mom is a realtor. So she's always... I mean, she's like out and about and stuff. But home is her home base. My dad works from a store every day. So he goes into the store and I was doing some work still while I was there. I wasn't fully on PTO.
(21:47):
So it was nice. Like I had a whole place to myself and it was like, "ah, this is freedom." "I have a car and I have a home and space to like decompress." So that was such a win.
And then I did make a lot of plans while I was there. I did kind of overbook myself, but I made sure that before I would go and interact with people, I had time to do a meditation.
(22:10):
Good.
And afterwards I would do another meditation.
Great.
I was journaling a lot. So a lot of reflecting. And I did a lot of yoga while I was there, which is like me time. So I had dedicated time for myself. I had dedicated space for myself a ton of time to decompress, reflect, recenter, reground in my energy.
So wherever I was going, whatever energy I may have picked up, I was able to let go of that and start again before I entered a new space, which was hugely helpful.
(22:40):
So upon returning home, how did you feel at the end of the trip?
So I felt amazing. I was so-- I am so proud of myself. I think the only way to really test...Like... I can go to therapy all day and talk about the ways that I'm traumatized by being around stressful environments. But life is stressful. Like, you have to face it. So maybe in the beginning stages, when I'm extra fragile, I'll be more particular about which types of environments I put myself in. But as I start to heal more and grow more, I want to put myself into these situations that are more stressful so that I can see where I'm at.
(23:19):
Like it's almost a litmus test of, "okay, how, how much have I grown in my ability to protect my energy?" Because the other thing is my sisters weren't there. So I went in the middle of October by myself. I didn't want to throw myself into the full fire, so I didn't go during Thanksgiving, when we're all together.
I kind of just did this as a way to, to very gently nudge myself and, and teach my, myself that like, "see, it's okay." "You don't... you....you can go to San Diego without being traumatized." "You can go and come back and feel great and be happy and feel like you had a great trip." That's exactly what happened.
(23:57):
I got to spend time with all my family, almost every single friend I tried to see, but I didn't see all of them. But it was such a win for my inner self that I've been building trust with. It really taught me that like, "oh, you, you can definitely do this and it doesn't have to be that scary."
And if you arm yourself with different things like a rental car and conscious meditation choices....and there was a time I came home from dinner with somebody and, or came home, I went back to my dad's place and he had already gotten home from work. So like right when I walked in the door, he was there and he was like, "Hey, how was it?"
(24:31):
And like we were recapping and then I realized, "Oh my God, I'm overwhelmed." So I just told him, I was like, "Hey, actually, is it okay if I like go upstairs for 20 minutes and then can we catch up after that?"
He's like, Yeah, of course. So even that interaction of me realizing what I needed, asking for what I needed and having him just completely positively saying like, "Yes, of course," that's another micro interaction that is reinforcing self-trust with my inner needs and my nervous system.
(24:59):
It all.
Great.
And I feel like now I could go back during the holidays and it would be intense for me because I'm still fragile and learning about my sensitivity, but, but I feel like I could do it.
Like the trip made me feel that confident about the tools that I have and how I'm learning to use them. And I think that's really cool.
(25:20):
I think this isn't a really appropriate time to say this because I think people often say they have a really hard time with family during the holidays. This is a super common and people should be able to learn the tools to be able to spend time with their family and still feel good about it and be true to themselves. So big kudos for accomplishing that.
(25:40):
Thank you. I feel really good about it. And I never knew that it was okay to need time to decompress. I can't believe that that was something that never occurred to me, but it's, it seems so simple.
Literally, I wonder how my life would be different if I knew that just laying on the grass by myself for 20 minutes, it revives me.
(26:02):
Yeah.
Like I just need to roll around in the grass by myself for a while and then I'm a new, a new woman. So yeah, these are real tools. Roll around in the grass, in the grass, but really just a little bit of time alone can make all the difference.
Great.
So yeah, it's possible.
Great.
Thank you.
(26:22):
Yeah, that's the San Diego story.
I loved it.
Thanks.
Have a nice day.
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