Disbelief: the Second Wound

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
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Speaker 2 (00:14):
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Speaker 3 (00:20):
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Speaker 2 (00:29):
You know, gep down something bigger and get walded.

Speaker 4 (00:38):
Sweet eternal balance ball. That is good, true and beautiful. Friends,
Welcome back to Rogue Ways where tonight we're talking about disbelief.
Disbelief being the second wound of trauma. Any crisis or
any trauma may traumatize you, and then you may become
instantly re traumatized or traumatized in a new way because

(01:02):
of the disbelief of the people around you. And I've
experienced this so many times. It's actually been one of
the most confusing aspects of my trauma throughout my life,
no matter which trauma we're talking about, is how many
people won't respond to it, Treat it as though it
didn't happen, minimize it, dismiss it, tell you you're stupid

(01:25):
or you're crazier, you're just wrong, even if it happened
right in front of them, like even if they saw
a part of it or understood that it was real.
It's so fascinating to me. Before it was fascinating, it
was deeply, deeply hurtful, and probably, especially in my earliest

(01:45):
case of trauma, more hurtful than the trauma otherwise. I'm
not sure you can measure it right. I'm really not sure,
but it weighs more heavily on me to this day,
the dismissal of my trauma than the trauma itself. Get
into some of this, the psychology around it. Why people
are like that. It's not actually that they're hateful, horrible,

(02:08):
broken people. They are kind of broken. They don't hate you.
They actually love you so much they can't handle it.
It's often usually what's going on is they love you
so much they can't accept that this thing has happened
to you. But more often, probably because what we mostly
experience is is this lack of belief or this dismissal

(02:29):
from co workers, friends, you know, acquaintances, just random people.
More often it's that they can't handle that the world
contains the type of thing that happened to you. It's
actually too traumatizing for them to imagine what you experienced exists,
and so they've rather dismissed it. So it feels very personal.

(02:51):
It feels very personal, feels very harsh, it feels rude,
it feels hurtful. It's full of its own emotional trauma
just to experience it, but it isn't actually about you.
And so I've been re experiencing this yet again since
my most recent trauma and crisis, which was my anaphlexis

(03:12):
last weekend. That was life threatening to say the least,
and I've forgotten. I had forgotten that people were going
to respond that way. I'd forgotten that that's essentially the norm.
I'd forgotten that even people who are otherwise sort of
healthy and well and you know, upright and whatnot, are
likely to act this way. And so I feel it's

(03:35):
helpful for me to share this. Someone out there is
going to hear this and go, oh, that's what I
experienced and that's why it hurts so bad. And also
hopefully if you have experienced anything like this and any
of your trauma's big or small, right, nobody's measuring traumas
here just whatever traumatized you matters, right, Hopefully you will

(03:55):
be able to release some of the pain around it
once you understand the psychology of it. So I always
like to look into the psychology of things or the
sort of why of things. I like to understand why
people do what they do. It helps me to cope.
It helps me to cope with the fact that there
are so many people who have otherwise failed me through

(04:15):
the years, not meaning to and not because they don't
love me. So it's hard that you often don't have
the support you need, and especially in the most traumatizing situations,
because people aren't strong enough to be there for you.
And so if you have someone who is God bless them,

(04:36):
hold on to that person. That's amazing. I finally do
have some of those people in my life. And again,
I'm not trying to blame anyone. I'm not trying to
call anyone out. I'm not trying to criticize or judge people.
And I hope that I haven't done this to people
in my life, and I probably have without knowing it.
I don't think so. I think I'm one of the
least likely people to dismiss a trauma or you know,

(04:58):
minimize something for somebody. But who knows, right, because we
all have blind spots too. So I actually, my whole
life have been looking to try to help people acknowledge
their traumassess it, understand it, and heal from it. You know,
this is part of what makes me a good healer
and a good person to be in a sort of
therapeutic situation with is because I have gone through the

(05:21):
darkest of hells and come out the other side intact
with a whole heap of tools. So whether we approach
it from like the spiritual or the mental, or the emotional,
or the physical, or all of the above, I have
got a lot of support to offer people. So I
don't know though maybe I have right, maybe I have
also dismissed others. We should always be looking at ourselves

(05:42):
with the eye of like there, but by the grace
of God, go I right. Like whoever, whatever we're seeing
in other people, we should wonder if we could also
find it in ourselves. So that's what we're talking about tonight.
I don't know, you know how long it's going to be,
we'll see. It's how I always think, Oh it's a
quick one. And sometimes it's just not so. I am
mostly feeling pretty good. Actually I've had you know, I

(06:06):
get the again. You can't actually see like how speckily
and red and weird my skin is, and sometimes it
gets really really deep and rosy, especially after shower. I
think I mentioned this on a recent show, shower of
just the heat difference. Even if I make it sort
of like lukewarm, it's just too much for my skin.

(06:26):
It's too much sensation, and so it'll respond. And I guess,
as I may have said in previous shows too, that's
supposed to go on perhaps for three weeks or more.
So it's not super uncomfortable. My energy is finally getting
back to normal. This is a week and a few
days after the onset of antiflexis. I'm still just starting

(06:46):
to barely get back to normal. I do not have
my normal energy level. Still, I'm doing way better, though.
Every day is better. So it's good. Not trying to
worry anybody, but just for me and maybe for you
if you, ever, god forbid, have to go through something
like this. I just expected, like, okay, well, the amiflexus

(07:07):
is over and I'm on meds now so like I'm better,
but like, no, your body went through a near death
experience essentially, and so it's stressed and it's overwhelmed and
it's like barely getting its shit back together right. And
so it's been an intense recovery, much more than I expected.
I didn't know what to expect, but I expected much

(07:30):
quicker than this. And so it's interesting, to say the least,
to see how long this is taking to give myself
of some grace and some time and some rest and
everything that I might need, sleeping long nights, just just
you know, pulling it back together again. So I'm lucky.
I'm lucky to be here and be alive. I'm happy

(07:51):
about them. I'm happy my energy is returning, and I
am happy to be here sharing this all with you.
If one person is helped by the content of this episode,
I will be happy. But I also, as always essentially
doing it for myself. All the things I do, I
do for me. I want to do this episode. I

(08:14):
wanted to research this, I wanted to look into it.
I wanted to put it all together in a nice
bubble for myself. That's part of my healing process. And
if it also helps you or entertains you beautiful HALLI lujah.
We'll take it so otherwise we'll jump into things tonight
and we'll talk here. I do always want to invite

(08:37):
you to rogueways dot org. It's where everything I do is.
I do much more than this show. I have my
books here that you can buy from me. You can
also get them from Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Audible. You
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They're fantastic books for you. The fictional trilogy that follows
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(08:58):
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(09:21):
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(09:43):
but are also even if you're not trying to support
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to check out there and roadways dot. Substack dot com
is also a great place to stay in touch to
get great articles that I write for free, and also
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(10:05):
way to support as well. If you love the show,
if you love my content, if you love what I do,
if you just want to support, It's a good place
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of different but similar topic again, my most recent post
on substack is Buddha says life is suffering and that

(10:26):
we can free ourselves from this suffering by remembering to
free ourselves from the illusions of this experience and our
attachment to it. It's not technically a channel message, but
I've felt them coming through multiple times throughout it, so
it's like it'sack how I used to channel before I
knew I was doing it. It's like a half channeled conversation.
But that's for everybody, even if you're a free supporter.

(10:47):
So I hope that everyone has enjoyed that and all
the other things that you can find here on Roaguways
do substack dot com. Thank you all who subscribe for
free or paid. So I'll just mention again. I'll go
into details, but when I was a child, my first
sort of deepest, most profound, and still the most profound

(11:08):
trauma I've suffered in this life was being serially teeth
tortured by a dentist. And no it wasn't just you know,
it kind of hurt or I was hard to get numb.
It was that I literally didn't even know what novacane
was until I was like eleven years old. I didn't
know what numb was, and I didn't know that people

(11:28):
could be numb instead of feeling the horrible pain of
having your teeth drilled on and so multiple, multiple, multiple
times I would go in the dentist seem to also
create poles of my teeth or cavity so that I
would have to come back. I had horrible abscesses, and
everyone just thought I had a really shitty mouth, that

(11:50):
I had a really really bad genes, or I had
really poor nutrition. But my brother and my sister didn't
have the crappy situation I had, So you know, maybe
that could have tipped someone off, tips me off later,
at least as I was coming to grips that this
actually happened to me really horrible, very psychological, very intentional,

(12:10):
very dark, very twisted, and so I'll leave it at that.
I was made to return to this dentist over and
over again. Eventually I actually found other people who were
tortured by the same dentist in the same exact way,
and I found out that all of us had a
lot in common, that being that we were all the
youngest child of a single and or impoverished mother. So

(12:37):
it wasn't technically the daughter of a single mother, but
I was in all intents and purposes because my father
was mostly absent. They were definitely very poor, and so
the dentist picked victims that he knew had a very
little chance of getting out from under his grip, so

(12:59):
very very intentional, definitely a predator, one of the darkest
people you could imagine, especially being under the power of
such a person, horribly traumatizing. I definitely learned how to
leave my body and dissociate at a very early age.
You know, part of this I can then attribute some
of my spiritual gifts to later on. Just you know,
you can think, like, oh, something good came out of it,

(13:21):
and lots of other actually good things came out of
it too. And I don't just say that to try
to like dismiss my own trauma or paint over it,
but it's just as true. You know, if you're on
a healing path, you've probably seen this in yourself as well,
that even the darkest things can be turned to light.
And again, I wouldn't be a very good healer today,
spiritual or otherwise if I hadn't gone through things like

(13:43):
this and learned to transmitit them and come out the
other side, if I hadn't learned to have an exceptional
amount of space that I can hold for an exceptional
amount of darkness in other people because I've lived it right,
and I don't dismiss it and I can actually look
at it and say, yeah, I'm really sorry that happened
to you. And so this was really horrible. It was awful.

(14:05):
I would tell them, I'd say, this hurts really bad.
You know, I'm very young, so I'm just like trying
to express what I can with my limited ability to
do so. But I was just ignored and I was dismissed,
and they were like, yeah, yeah, the dentist always hurts.
It always hurts. Everyone hates the dentist. And I was like,
I was can you imagine being like, oh my god,

(14:28):
everyone has to live like this. I was so confusing
to me that anyone even did it. I was like,
I'd rather just have rotten teeth and like have toothpain
or whatever, Like I'd rather just not deal with it
because it was so horrible, and you know, they just
dismissed it. You're a cry baby, You're too sensitive, like
you're imagining things, you're being dramatic all the things, all

(14:51):
the things, and so I had to keep going back. Eventually,
my brother at some point or my sister maybe I
think it was my brother that was describing the needle
for novacane and how good it felt to be numb.
And I was like, and everyone was there, my whole
family was there, and I was like, what do you mean?

(15:12):
And he was like, you know when they put the
needle in your mouth. And I was like, I've never
had a needle and he was like, yeah, you know
when they they and it's kind of cold, and then
it's like, you know, fuzzy, and he's describing like becoming
numb and I'm like, I've never felt that. He's like, yeah,
you know, you're like face is you can't feel it.
I'm like, I've always felt all of it. And I

(15:32):
know there was a realization at a dawning of this
realization at this moment, and I know it was just
as quickly like pushed away because and you could imagine
too again, if you were someone's mother and then they're
describing this to you and then you realize that you
had ignored it. Or if you're their sister, you're the brother,
you're the father, you're anyone, and you realize that you
had ignored this thing and that this person is actually

(15:53):
describing horrors beyond horrors, that's a bit traumatizing itself. So
that was pushed away. We didn't go back to that dentist.
So maybe there was an effect there. I can't remember
if there was some other reason, right we moved or
I don't know what, but we never spoke of it again.

(16:15):
No one ever asked me like, hey, how about that torture,
Like hey, no one gave me the name torture. I
didn't even know a word for it, right, I just didn't.
I just had this like nebulous horror in a part
of my brain that I had learned to push away
and that no one else would acknowledge or look at
or talk about. So I also just didn't look at
it or talk about it. So I described this much

(16:37):
later in my life, kind of remembering this, and it
wasn't an accurate way to describe it. But I don't
know any other way to describe accepting the presence of
it or accepting its existence again, because I never really forgot.
At no point was I confused about whether or not
I had been tortured by a dentist. I didn't have

(16:59):
the language for a while. Eventually I did, you know,
But like no one ever talked about it. I didn't
talk about it with anybody, but I didn't forget it
just wasn't present in my mind. It wasn't something I
was allowed to think about. It was too big to
deal with, It was too much to deal with, and
so it just got suppressed. So when people talk about
suppressed memories or repressed memories, they're often like this, you

(17:21):
don't actually forget the thing, You just sort of learned
to ignore it as though it never happened, so we
can say we remember, we didn't ever really forget, right.
So that was really traumatizing for me to have everyone
tell me from the first moment I experienced this that
it wasn't real, that it wasn't happening, that I was dumb,
that I was a cryberry, that everybody experienced, all these

(17:43):
things that told me not to care, not to pay attention,
and not to feel any certain way about it. So
very traumatizing to have that dismissal of one of the
worst sorts of traumas maybe that people go through pretty
dark Again, A much later in my life, I was
abducted by a man. I was dragged out of a bar.

(18:07):
I was very very lightly buzzed. I wasn't, you know,
trashed at all by any means, you know, But so
I wasn't super sober either, But this guy just came
out of nowhere. Earlier in the evening, he had actually
grabbed my button. I'd actually punched him in the face,
totally who I am. And when I punched him in

(18:29):
the face, the look in his eyes terrified me because
he was excited that I had punched him. He now
all of a sudden had this like I can't even excite,
this look of pure like delight and maybe desire. But
I just, you know, walked away and I did something else,
and I was hanging out with other people and I

(18:49):
didn't see him again the rest of the night. But
when I was leaving the bar, he apparently had been
watching me and came out right as I was coming out.
And as I was leaving the bar, he grabbed me
from behind and began to drag me away. And even
though there's a whole group of people there smoking at
the door, uh, nobody did anything. And I screamed and

(19:10):
I cried, I was had tears coming on my face,
and I was screaming, help me. I was looking and
making eye contact with them, and they just like laughed,
And it was like a pure nightmare. I mean, like
I thought I had gone insane for a second. I thought,
maybe I'm dreaming for a second, because there's nothing in

(19:31):
my brain that has the ability to conceive of people
doing nothing. And you've made me, heard me tell these
stories before, but I it blew my mind, and I
just realized, like, oh, I'm alone in this. I'm surrounded
by people, but no one's going to do anything about this.
And I later understood the psychology of the group, and
I understood the psychology. People don't do anything when no

(19:52):
one's doing anything. And since no one did anything, no
one did anything. And it sounds stupid, but that's how
humans operate. And if one person would have even and said,
hold on a second, is she okay? Someone else might
have been like, no, she's not, and someone else might
have helped. But since no one did, no one did.
And you may have seen that happen in various times

(20:13):
in your life, where someone seemingly should have done something
or reacted but no one did. Because no one did,
it takes one person to just break them old a
tiny bit and suddenly people are free to act. But
everyone assumes if no one's doing anything, no one's supposed
to do anything, and nothing's wrong. So I was being
dragged down the street, away from all the people, into

(20:33):
dark places where there were no people, and I barely
got away. There was no reason I should have got away.
This guy was way stronger than me. It was literally
because I had watched it Oprah episode on accident. I
hate it. Ohprah, My friend loved her watched this episode
because she was watching it. Didn't even want to watch it.
But in that episode, Oprah teaches you how to get

(20:54):
away from a man who's much stronger than you by
becoming a dead weight. And I remembered that in that moment.
The only reason I survived this. I mean you could.
We could go through all sorts of hypotheticals, what if,
what if? What if? None of them are good. It
doesn't even matter what his intentions were. None of them
are gonna be okay. There's no good intent there's no

(21:15):
good outcome to this except you escape. And so I
became a dead way and I ran away. So already
I had this sort of rejection of my trauma, with
this whole group of people just staring at me as
I'm baking for help. I finally I break three, barely.
I became the dead way, and he dropped me, and
he almost grabbed me right away again, and I just

(21:36):
barely got away, thank my lucky stars and all my
guardians and allies. And I ran into the next open business,
which is not the one he dragged me out of,
but the next one down the street. It was like
it was like a they were like on the opposite
ends of the block. There was like nothing in between them.
So I'm like running fast as I can. I get

(21:56):
into this door. There's this long hallway. For some reason,
I've never even been in this bar before, but it's
a bar, long hallway and at the end of it
as a bouncer, and so I'm running. I get to
the end of the hallway, I'm like breathless, and I'm like,
please help me. There's a guy who's about to come
in the door behind me. I just knew. I knew
he was going to come in. I'm hearing the door
open as I'm saying this, and I'm like, please don't
let him get to me. And the bouncer looks at

(22:17):
me and it's just laughs and no words, no response,
literally just laughs. And so I can't even describe my thoughts,
my feelings at that moment, except really, I must be dreaming.
I mean, the group of people did nothing, and now

(22:37):
this bouncer is laughing at me. I think my face
was probably pure distress. I don't think I'm a good actor.
I don't think I can like hide things well. And
this is the moment of complete crisis. I'm pretty sure
it was just looked intense and he just laughed, and
so I just ran past him. I sat at a table,
the only table with an open chair, and I just

(23:00):
begged the people that I was like, please, don't let
him take me. And they said who And I said, whoever?
Is coming right behind me? And they said okay, And
there's three men who I've never met stood up and
stood right behind me, between me and him, and I
just sat there drinking their beer. Because I was in
shock and dissociated and didn't know what else to do.

(23:21):
I just grabbed one of their drinks and they stopped
him from getting me. Thank God for them, those anonymous men.
Thank God for them. And you know, so he left.
They walked me home because they were, like me, aware
that he was probably going to be following. I moved

(23:42):
out of that house in case he was keeping an
eye on me. I moved in with my friend, and
thank god I could do that at that time. So
I had triple rejection here right of the trauma. One,
the group of people who did nothing too, the bouncer
who laughed at me. Three when I told people the
next day, I'm still unsure if I actually told them

(24:05):
that it was a dream, because I was still dissociated
and not really like processing reality. Well, it's very difficult
to come back from a trauma. You're in all kinds
of shock mental, physical, emotional, and so this is just
the next morning. It was maybe like seven hours later.
I'm telling this story to my friend and she's laughing,
and I'm like, I'm so confused about whether or not

(24:28):
I'm in reality right now, because I can't imagine someone
telling me this and me laughing. But the bouncer also laughed,
and the group of people also laughed and like what
is funny about this? And I started freaking out. I
was like, why are you laughing at me? And she
was like, well, you told me it was a dream.
I didn't know it was real, and I don't know
if that's true. It could be right. I could have

(24:49):
been in so much shock that I did say, this
is a weird dream I had or something. But it
could also be this phenomenon we're talking about tonight, where
people can't handle what you're telling them and so they
just find a way to reach She might have been
incapable of understanding that there are people who will just
abduct you while you're just at a bar down the
street from your house, and so she might have just said, oh,

(25:11):
it must be dreamed. Must be dreaming, right. Either one
is possible. So I'm not actually sure which which of
us was doing the dissociating right or the rejection of reality.
So do you like my image of an abduction here?
As persephony being abducted into hades? So that was the

(25:31):
second time I experienced this rejection. I also had the
uh I forgot about this one until just now. I
went to a free you know, counselor therapist that was
with my college. I was going to college at the time,
and so they had free counselors, and I was like, well,
maybe I should go, right, I think this was a big,
big trauma. So I went to him and I was
like telling him what happened, and it was somewhat reluctantly

(25:53):
I'm like, I don't want to talk. I don't know
this guy from anyone. I don't really want to talk
to him. I just like, I'm worried about myself because
I clearly like it was a big deal and maybe
I should talk to someone. And I was telling him
and I was like, so, I just don't know, you
know what to do now? And he was like, well,
you know, how did you feel right afterwards? And I
was like, what, like, right after it happened. He's like, yeah,

(26:15):
I was like I felt like I wasn't in this
world and that none of it happened because I'm dissociative
because I still didn't know I had PTSD at this point,
because I still didn't understand the effects of the dentist
when I was a child. So yeah, I felt fine.
Actually I felt like, oh, I offered the guys to
sit in my living room and eat a banana with me,

(26:36):
which doesn't even make sense. I was just like, oh,
we're all having a normal time here, Hey, you want
a banana because there's just a banana on account, Like
it was ridiculous, and he was like, well, often our
first reaction is our best one, so you should stick
with that wo worst Therapist Ever award. I mean, like,

(26:57):
you shouldn't even be allowed to call yourself a counselor
a therapist. There's no reason you should be working in
this field. You're a harmful person. Like those three men
who stopped this guy, like they renewed my faith in humanity,
but everyone else in this story like just ripped it
back apart. Again, that's just like, oh my god, what

(27:17):
is happening. Horrible horrible man. So not good advice, by
the way, like the worst advice. But again another rejection
of how serious the trauma was, of how serious and
deeply disturbing the trauma was, and how much help and
support and care I actually needed and wasn't getting. So
again it fits this pattern. I another time was literally

(27:42):
stalked for months by a level three sex offender. Johnny
tells me sometimes, he's like, there's probably people who just
don't believe anything you say, because your life is an
insane series of crazy experiences. And it's true, And I
don't blame anybody for not believing anything I say. I
totally totally. Someone else was telling me, I'd be like, hmm, maybe,

(28:06):
but it's true. I lived in the wilderness next to
a thousands of acres of national forests and a really remote,
beautiful place in the mountains. I was teaching at a
school there, and I lived across the street from a
Level three sex offender house, so I didn't know for
a while that someone was stalking me. And I'm pretty
sure stalking is the correct term though, as eventually I

(28:27):
started to understand someone was pretty consistently standing around the
edges of my property drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. So
this isn't a long time to sit at the corner
of a property that isn't yours. And I don't even
in the corner of my property, it's my property. It
was just the corner of the part that was a
yard instead of national forest or whatever, right, like thick
forest and beer caps, bottles, cigarette butts, like all around

(28:53):
the perimeter. I would find this stuff, and eventually I
was like, well, that's not just like left from before
I lived here. You know, these are like fresh and
new and these are being deposited. So I was like, well,
someone's like hanging out at the edges of my property
smoking and drinking. Still didn't really put it together. Then
I started to find my car unlocked most mornings, and

(29:15):
most of the objects in them in different places than
they had been. And when it happens the first few times,
you're like, I guess I'm getting careless, and I guess
I forgot where I put these things. But after a
while you're like, I know that's not where that was.
And I know I locked my door because the other
times happened, and I thought I have to be really
sure to lock my door from now on, right, And

(29:38):
so I'm trying to tell people like I think I was,
like someone's stocking me. Maybe there's like my cars keeps
being broken into, and that the dismissals happened from right
off the bat right. They're like, why wouldn't they steal
the car. I'm like, cause a stalker isn't there to
steal your car. A stocker's there to slowly cross boundaries

(29:59):
until they rape or kill you. That's what a stalker
is there to do. And so this escalated from being
at the edge of my property to being at the
edge of my porch to being in my car. But
I was being told that I was probably imagining things,
or I probably just forgot to walk my car, or
probably just move things around, and I was going through
a divorce at the time, so people just thought like, oh,

(30:19):
her husband's probably whatever. But no, he didn't smoke or drink,
and he wouldn't have done that. He's not stupid, so like,
there's no point to this. So eventually I kind of
put it together that perhaps this was from the level
three sexifeeders across the street. I was a really large property,
so by across the street, I mean there's still probably
like a mile from my house, but close enough, close

(30:41):
enough to walk down. And eventually I was sleeping one
night and I woke up for no reason at all.
Not a sound was made. And there was another time
I was actually sleeping in my yard in a tent
because that's really nice to do when you live on
a river next to the National Forest and it's hot out,
and I heard someone approaching the tent and the only

(31:01):
reason they turned around. This was not supposed to be
a paranormal episode, but I'll just say I think Bigfoot
screamed in the woods and scared them. I'm not joking.
I don't know what that noise was, and I've grown
up in the woods my entire life, and it was
not a mating thing. And it wasn't a buck, and
it wasn't a bu it wasn't a dying thing. I
don't know what it was. And so someone suggested maybe
it was Bigfoot. And there were other experiences at this

(31:22):
house that makes me think that, yeah, maybe it was
actually never looking for Bigfoot, but I might have found him.
So there was that that was another boundary invasion, right,
And then I woke up in the middle of night
in my bed no reason at all, but I knew
for sure something was deeply wrong, you know, trust her intuition.
And I peeked out the corner of my window and

(31:42):
I could see a shadow figure trying to open my
door and get in my house. Shadow because it's dark,
not because it's a paranormal being. It's just a dark figure.
I couldn't see any details of it. I could tell
someone was trying to break into my house while I
slept silently. There's only one reason you trying to break
into a house silently in the middle of the night

(32:02):
while a woman is sleeping inside of it. And just
like the abduction episode, the outcome is never going to
be good. So I didn't have a gun at that time.
At a buck knife. I sat in the corner, terrified
that someone was about to come into my house where
I lived alone in the middle of the woods, miles
from other people. I had called nine one one and

(32:22):
they said, we're like half an hour out, but we'll
be there. And so I had half an hour with
me and this person, hoping that I would be able
to take him down before he took me down. Terrifying
when I told people afterwards again, I moved out of
this house too because of this. Twice I've had to

(32:44):
move just from men who want to do horrible things
to me, men who I don't know, men who have
never met, men who have no reason to choose me
or pick me or stock me or abduct me. So
when I told people about it, literally they were like, oh,

(33:05):
that's not happening. I mean like literally they told me
to my face, like that's not what's happening. My coworker,
I was like, I have to move because a man
has been stalking me and has now tried to get
into my house in the middle of the night, and
that's the highest escalation. I should have not been comfortable
with the other escalations, and since I have no way
to protect myself, and emergency services and police can be

(33:28):
sometimes more than half an hour away. I'm going to
move somewhere more populated and safer, where emergency services are
safe like that, I feel safer. Whether you can ever
be safe in the world or not, it's a whole
other question, but where I at least feel safer. And
they were just like, no, that's not even what are
you talking about. They literally just thought I must be insane,
which doesn't even make sense to me. I don't think

(33:51):
it's that insane to have a stalker. I don't think
it's that insane to want to move because you feel unsafe. Literally,
just I'm insane. And that was actually the beginning of
when I started to become sort of like ostracized in
this community, which eventually, like three or four years later,
led to me leaving teaching altogether. But at the time

(34:12):
I just was deeply hurt. I was like, why would
they why would they think I'm a liar or a
crazy person instead of knowing that there's people who do
this in the world. But that's exactly it. People can't
handle admitting that there's people who do that in the world,
so instead they will say this woman I've known for

(34:32):
years who was otherwise totally sane, totally reliable, really professional
and good at a job. And la da da, she's crazy.
That's easier than saying maybe there's people who stock or
try to do worse. Crazy dismissed my experience, laugh to me,

(34:54):
called me crazy, told me I was just wrong to
my face, that that's not happening. So two more. I
lived in Bahrain for a minute. I was teaching in Bahrain.
This has actually happened. First, I'm doing these out of
order on accident. But I lived there for I was
supposed to live there for two years. I was there

(35:15):
for about five months, I think, and the civil war
there between the Shia and the Sunni were very, very
hot and violent. But I didn't know that. The Bahrain
is exceptional at controlling the media. Exceptional. It's very difficult.

(35:37):
There's actually a woman who was fired from CNN for
talking about the violence in Bahrain. Her name is Amber Lyon,
I believe, and that's how you know that you don't
know what's going on in Bahrain. People were abducted and
tortured there. People were one of our drivers was abducted
for a week and then just thrown on the street,
bleeding and dying and found that way. It was crazy.

(35:59):
So I didn't know that until I got there for
obvious reasons. And once I started to put it together,
I was like. The first thing was I was outside
one day. I was like, my eyes hurt. And one
of the guys would live there for a while. I
was like, oh, yeah, you get used to it. It's
tear gas. And I was like where he's like everywhere
all the time. I was like why, He's like, oh,
the Civil War. You didn't know. I'm like what, No,
But I was still like, well, I don't know. It's

(36:20):
far away. It's like whatever. It's sad, but nothing I
can do about it. I have to live, so I'm
just gonna live. And then the next hint was this
driver getting disappeared. Crazy. And then bombs started going off
in my neighborhood. And the first bomb, I was like, oh,
you know, bombs go off, like just like to try

(36:42):
to deal with it, I walk around this neighborhood every day.
I walked to do errands, I walked to go shopping.
I mean, you have to. You're living in a city,
and that's how you survived. So I'd walk to my gym,
I would walk to the club, I'd walk to get
the bus in the more like, you know, it's walking
all over so car bombs are going off and another
and then another, and eventually within one week, eight people

(37:05):
were dead and they were all within eight blocks of
my house. And so I went to my school leader,
head guy whatever, and I was like, Hey, I don't
want to die in a car ball. Maybe you can
understand that. And his response was, you're so sensitive. You've

(37:28):
got to be stronger. That is like the worst dismissal
so far, like the worst victim shame. He so he
wasn't saying, no, there's no bombs going off, there's no
one dying, You're fine. He was just like, you need
to tough enough and just deal with the fact that
you might die in a car ball. He's like, none
of you expats have died so far. It's all us locals.

(37:48):
I'm like, you have no threat. You live in a
gated community. You have your groceries and everything brought to you.
I have to walk around in the neighborhood where people
are dying. That's not being sensitive, but it's hard. It
can be really hard. After a whole life of having
all of your traumas dismissed by almost everyone, to trust

(38:10):
yourself that yes, this is actually horrible, and yes you
should do something about it, and yes it's okay to
even make drastic changes to make yourself safe. Like the
two times I've moved, one of them being from a
house I owned. I'd sell my house to move from
this house, And in this case, I was going to

(38:32):
move again, but I could tell that he wasn't gonna
help me. There was a whole situation where it's sketchy
over there. So I actually ran away in the middle
of the night on a midnight plane and went home.
I didn't tell anyone I was going to do that
That's okay with me, because if you're going to tell
me to my face to be tougher in the face
of car bombs that kill people blocks from me, I'm

(38:56):
just gonna go you're clearly not a person who can
be reasoned with, and you're clearly not in connection with
actual reality. So you know, he probably lived through this
trauma his whole life, and so he's just like, yeah,
you know, it's a civil war, and you just deal
with bombs and people dying and I'm like, I don't
actually have to, maybe you have to, I can go home,
And so I did, which led to me pretty quickly

(39:19):
understanding I had PTSD and CPTSD and that's his whole
own story too. But yet again this is being dismissed.
Even when I got home, I could tell when I'm
telling people and there's bombs going off. So I came
home that people were like, she's probably exaggerated. The bombs
were probably just like really far away, or you know,
nobody really died, or it's just it just was obvious

(39:39):
that people were like, I don't know, she didn't want
to be there anymore. That was her excuse, right, So
I had to continuously be like, no, it was bombs.
People died like it was an abduction and I almost died.
It was an invasion after months of stalking, I almost died.
It was you know, a torture and a dentist that

(40:00):
was harming me, and it was really wrong and not okay.
Like I have to tell myself these things, and I
find myself, even when I tell other people these stories
that I like, sometimes find myself over emphasizing, like how
bad it was, because I'm trying to convince them that
it was, and they can't be convinced. If they're the

(40:24):
people who can't handle darkness and can't handle trauma, can't
handle crisis, can't handle a world that's full of uncertainty,
can't handle their own mortality, can't handle that, they can't
control everything, then they're not going to be convinced no
matter how many details I pile on. But I still
find myself doing it. I still find myself telling people

(40:46):
almost too much, sometimes like yeah, and then it was
like this, and then it was like this, and they're
like not reacting. So I'm like, okay, well it was
like this, I mean, like, how many details do you need?
And then I have to remember, like none, They actually
don't need any They actually won't respond well to any
layer of this story. It might have even been better
to just not even tell them. But I've also experienced

(41:08):
the other thing, where then people are like, why didn't
you tell me? And I'm like, because you can't handle
shit and you always ignore me, why would I tell you?
You literally dismiss one hundred percent of my traumas or crisy,
so I just don't tell you anymore. Both happen, right,
I mean, what's the answer. I don't know. So, you know,
leading up to last week where I had this antaphlexis,

(41:30):
and you know, there's an interesting thing here too, where
like I can take a lot of trauma of trauma
and punishment and horror and proximity to death and not
really be too perturbed by it. So when you maybe
heard the story last week of the actual experience itself,

(41:52):
I think the episode's called Antaphlexis and antibiotics, you might
have been like, why didn't she call nine one one? Well,
because I've been trained my whole life to not respond
to trauma or crisis. I mean, like if I am
the best person for you to like get your arm
cut off with or something, I will like not even
hesitate to just be right in there, like just senching

(42:15):
the blood, like we got this. We're gonna be okay.
Like I will not lose my shit afterwards. I will
after it's all over, I'll go somewhere and just like
freak out, but in the moment, like I will dissociate
fully from the emotional and I will just be there,
be practical and be in the trenches with you. It's amazing.
It's a really cool skill. Except when it's my own

(42:38):
crisis I'm in. I was looking at this first aid
plan for antaphlexis, right, you see it here before you
if you're looking, and it's like, if you have any
one of the following signs, you need to call nine
one one. I had like five of them. I had
abdominal pain, vomiting with other signs. So if you have

(43:03):
other signs of antiphlexis and vomiting or diarrhea, you're supposed
to call nine one one. Uh. I was pale and floppy.
I had difficulty talking. I had swelling of my lips,
swelling of my gums, not technically my tongue or my throat.
I had difficulty breathing. I was wheezing breathing. I had

(43:23):
too many of these. I had a consistent cough. I
had almost all of these, and I didn't call nine one.
I didn't call an ambulance and I didn't go to
the emergent care because I was like, it's cool to
just see what happens. I can breathe. And to Johnny's credit,
I think Johnny was like, okay, do we call now? Okay, now, okay, now, okay.

(43:45):
Now He's like yeah, and so we probably should have.

Speaker 2 (43:50):
But.

Speaker 4 (43:51):
I just was like, I don't know, I don't I
think I'm not gonna die, like should be okay, you know.
And so times amplexes can be super quick and all
these things come on within like twenty minutes. Mine came
out over twelve hours. I want to say. So, so, yeah,

(44:12):
it was bad, and I find I'm going to say,
like seventy percent of people who have you can kind
of see some of my red stuff, some of it
kind of shows up if I'm close. I want to
say about seventy percent of people have had some level
of dismissal around it. And so I find myself again

(44:33):
being like, no, I no, it was bad. No, it
was like life threatening and it was like really severe,
and people are like, oh, it's just like a rash,
though I'm sure sure it was just a rash. Someone said, well,
haven't you always had rashes? Well, yeah, I have always
had rashes my whole life. I've had autoimmune And so
I can get wealthy and like rashy and hot, and

(44:56):
my skin can get red and raised from basically any
chemical and sometimes like just changes in temperature, but most
often it's like a chemical exposure of some kind sort
of like multiple chemical sensitivity syndrome. But that's it. My
face doesn't swell, I don't sneeze, my breathing doesn't become
labored or difficult. You know, all those other signs don't happen.

(45:18):
So you know, what is the point of asking me,
don't I always have rashes? The point is to minimize
and say, oh, no, this was just what you've always had, right,
it's just normal. No, it wasn't normal at all. It's
very crazy. It was very crazy. It was life threatening,
and I went too long putting up with it, as

(45:38):
is my tradition, as is my want, because that's been
my training through life, is to minimize my own experiences
to a severe level. When I can notice that something
is wrong and then choose to take care of myself,
it's like a massive success. And I'm doing that more

(46:01):
and more in my life. I have been for years.
I've been healed and done PTSD therapy many many years ago,
and really good habits and really good responses and way better.
But you know, this reminded me of just how much
I can put up with. And so you again, you
may see both. You may see yourself and the person
who has been traumatized even once, but maybe even frequently

(46:23):
like myself, and have learned because of others responses rejecting it,
minimizing it, you know, saying it didn't happen. You've learned
to reject it in yourself. And that's why I say,
and this episode is titled Disbelief is the second wound,

(46:44):
because the trauma itself was bad enough. It's bad enough
that my body went through this shock and his immune
system overload and my nerves are all frayed. Am I
exhausted and you know, struggled to stay alive for many days.
That's about enough. It's much worse to on top of that,

(47:05):
have many, many people who I know care about me
be in various stages of dismissal of what actually happened
and not accepting that this actually happened to me, telling
me that it didn't happen to me, basically in various ways. Right,
you're overreacting. Oh you're just allergic to everything, aren't you. No.
I've never had an actual allergic response to anything, over

(47:29):
and over and over again, so I get it too. Write.
Part of this is people are coming to terms with
it like they like are like, how bad was this?
And isn't it okay? And isn't it okay? And you're like, well,
it wasn't okay, And sometimes are like, oh wow, it
really wasn't okay and they get there, and then a
lot of times they don't and they just stay with
like it wasn't bad, You're okay, everything's fine, and so

(47:54):
it happened. So see if we can get this a
little bit bigger. Oh sorry, so so bad, but says
what a person is traumatized. It's not only the trauma
they're healing from, but the number of times they weren't believed.
It's being exposed to people who defend their perpetrator. It's

(48:15):
being shamed for not letting it go. It's healing from
the world's response to vulnerability. And it's true. And so
it can be as painful as damaging as the event
itself to have this trauma, to have this trauma occur
and then have it be dismissed, no matter what the

(48:36):
trauma is, and it happens in all kinds of ways.
To remember, one of my students once was in a
car accident. It was a very very small car accident.
It wasn't that bad, but it doesn't matter for him.
It like it ribbed him apart. He wasn't okay, he
was having panic attacks, like he was going through it
and who knows why. There's all kinds of reasons why.

(48:58):
There might be so many other stressors in his life
and that was just the thing that pushed him over
the edge. There's all sorts of trauma responses to any
level of an unexpected occurrence. The unexpected part is actually
the part that traumatizes us. And we don't know when
we can't be sure, we don't feel like we have stability.
So there's a lot of reasons why this might have
traumatized him. But people were literally making fun of him

(49:19):
for it. They're like, oh, you didn't even get hurt,
No one even got hurt. The car is barely scratched.
What's wrong with you? Like buck up? And it was
so sad to watch and try to clarify for them
why that was horrible and what they should do instead
and help them choose better. But it's hard to watch
because you could see him struggle with like something's wrong

(49:40):
with me? What's wrong with me? And like nothing's wrong
with you? That was a trauma for you that was
a trauma for you. Perhaps physically too, Even if it's
a small accident, your brain can get kind of jostled around.
That can be really hard to heal from, and that
can be very unrecognized. Brain injuries are really difficult to recognize,
very diff dificult to heal from, so all kinds of reasons.

(50:06):
But then it leaves us grappling with this right of
this trauma, not only the trauma physical and mental, emotional
and otherwise, but also then this rejection by the people
who we love or the people who are supposed to
take care of us, the people who are supposed to
understand us. And then you feel really lonely, You feel
really isolated because you're like, I don't have anybody here

(50:29):
who can reflect my experience back at me or just
be with me in it, which is why we are
lucky when we have really good therapists as well or
healers in various traditions and ways. And it's confusing again,
Like I said, all those times, I was just like,
what is happening? Why are people responding this way? Am

(50:51):
I dreaming? Even I don't ask myself am I dreaming?
And the trauma itself I ask myself, am I dreaming
in people's response to it, because it's so weird to me,
But it helps, it helps for us to understand why.
So we're gonna talking now about why this happens, why
people oops, why people act like this. They're psychological reasons why,

(51:18):
and they are worth exploring. So the first one is
the just world fallacy, just as in justice, the justice
a just world. We live in a world of justice
right fallacy meaning it's not true. It is true at
the much higher level, it's not true at this uh

(51:39):
interpersonal level, this societal level. And so this just world
false fallacy was kind of put together by psychologist Melvin Learner.
And this is a powerful cognitive bias that he identified,
and he called it the world hypothesis. It suggests that

(52:02):
people need to believe the world is fair. If something
terrible happens to someone, observers may blame the victim or
minimize the situation to protect their worldview. This creates a
cruel paradox. The more severe the trauma, the more likely
others are to doubt it, which is true. The most

(52:22):
severe trauma I had, not only did they doubt, they
rejected it fully and they've still never acknowledged it happened
the lower levels like eventually sometimes, like I said, people
get to it and go, oh, yeah, that was really bad, right.
But part of why they do this, the biggest part,
is this belief in a just world, this belief that
the world is better than that. You must have done

(52:44):
something wrong, you must be crazy, you must be wrong
about what happened, because you're a good person and this
horrible thing happened to you, And that's not the world
I believe in. I believe in the world where good
things happen to good people and bad things happen to
bad people. Bad things happen to people who are in
bad situations. And I've talked about this too, where it

(53:05):
is true very technically and worth noting and worth taking
responsibility for, and worth choosing differently, it is true that
if I weren't drinking alone in a college town late
at night, I wouldn't have been abducted. It's also true
people get abducted in broad daylight doing nothing wrong, totally sober, whatever.

(53:27):
So it's not the total picture, but it's worth saying,
like risk reduction is a beneficial thing, it's not stupid
to look at possible mistakes you did make and then
not make them again. Yes, you should be able to
have a drink or two and be out and have fun.
And that's all true. And we know the world we

(53:48):
live in, and so it's also intelligent to have people
with you or you know, other safety mechanisms in place.
So you have to know it's not a just world.
You have to act appropriately, and you have to also
know it's not a just world, so that when people
come to you with this thing that happened that's horrible,
you don't reject it. I talk about this too in

(54:09):
terms of the border crisis and the immigration question. And
you know, no matter where you stand on whether you
want people to immigrate here legally, illegally or none at all,
or whatever it is, it is true that the vast
majority of illegal immigrants are trafficking drugs or children. And
you might even be okay with trafficking drugs, but hopefully

(54:29):
no one's okay with trafficking children. But when you bring
that up, people will just reject it. We'll say, oh,
you're just trying to make excuses for why you're a racist,
because their worldview needs to believe that that isn't happening,
because if it is happening, it's a much darker world
than they thought, and now someone has to deal with that,

(54:50):
and they don't know who, and they don't know how.
So it's easier to call you crazy, stupid, reject it.
That's not happened. It's a very similar thing, right, That
is the US world fallacy as well, just in a
different sort of light. But both of them have the
ability to reject these negative, horrible things that happen, and
especially the trauma someone may have gone through. Right, it's

(55:11):
not happening that that doesn't happen. You know, when that
abductor was dragging me away, he told the crowd, don't worry,
this is my girlfriend. We do this all the time.
So they had a really good excuse for choosing to
believe this was a just world and what was happening
was okay. But again, I was very distressed and crying,

(55:34):
and there's no world for me in which a distressed
crying girl shouldn't be believed. Even if that is some
sort of weird fetish that they're playing out for some
reason in public together, I would still to be on
the safe side interfere just in case anyway, just world, right,
it's a just world, so nothing bad happens, and you're wrong,

(55:56):
you're wrong, or you're bad right. This is victim shiteing,
victim blaming, victim dismissal, minimizing the victimization, minimizing the trauma.
And it is very very ironic and cruel that the
more severe the trauma, the more likely people are to
doubt it and reject it outright. So the more you

(56:17):
need people to see you, be with you and validate
you and help you, the less likely they are to
do so. Very unfortunate. And so here's a quote from
Melvin Lerner, who coined this term and did this study.
He says, the belief in a just world is a
form of denial. It enables people to maintain a sense
of order and control in a chaotic world at the

(56:39):
expense of those who suffer. His study or his study
is called the belief in a just world a fundamental delusion.
So it's a little bit different from some of the
other things that we're going to talk about that are
also part of the psychological reason why people reject other
people's suffering as not real. And the other is cognitive dissonance,

(57:04):
and this is the popular one in the sort of
conspiracy and alternative realms to explain the lack of ability
people seem to have to cope with or just accept
the dark truths of the world. So cognitive dissonance is
a as a it leads to emotional avoidance. Often I

(57:27):
can lead to neglect. This was the case for me
when I was a child. I should have ideally had
the belief in what I was experiencing and the protection
from predators and not as a form of neglect unfortunately,
And it can lead to procrastination. I don't want to
deal with it. I'm not going to look at it.

(57:48):
I'm not going to start right. You can justify your actions,
your reactions, your choices. In the face of this, I
can be in flat out denial and other things. So
lots of cognitive dissonance effects, We've got a lot of

(58:10):
studies on it. Well, just a couple of them are
being pulled from here and saying traumatic stories provoke discomfort.
When someone hears about stalking, assault, or near death experiences,
their nervous system may react with fear or helplessness. To
resolve this intertention, which is a cognitive dissonance. People may

(58:31):
reject the story, I rationalize it away. Minimization becomes a
defense mechanism, so you might even see the just world
hypothesis is a type of cognitive dissonance, type of that
same denial. Cognitive dissonance is just the sort of umbrella
term for all the different types of cognitive dissonance, all
the types of where our brain sees something but it
doesn't fit with what we expect, it doesn't fit with

(58:53):
what we want, and so we reject it instead of
accepting it. That's essentially cognitive dissonance, right, cognitive in your
brain dissonance me and these two things aren't matching up,
not accepting the new information. So we all have this.
There's also various forms of confirmation bias and different things
that are also connected with this. But it's difficult, and

(59:19):
the difficult thing about it is people don't know when
they're doing it. You might see when someone's doing it
because it's something you've already accepted, right, something you've already
learned to sort of like, oh, okay, this is how
I can exist with this information? Right, this can come
into my brain and come into my psyche. I got
this and then you see someone else just flat out

(59:40):
rejecting it. Right, all kinds of cultures dissonance, and it
makes mass societal control possible. It's bad, but you wouldn't
see it if you were doing it yourself. I shouldn't
say that you are possibly doing it and not knowing it.

(01:00:01):
And this is true with all psychological things we can
say to ourselves. Oh, I'm not like that. I accept
new information. Maybe you do, and maybe you have most
of the time, and maybe there's some you haven't, right
when you're in denial, Like you don't know you're in denial.
I don't know if you've ever been in denial, or
if you've ever seen someone who's in like clinical denial,

(01:00:22):
but you couldn't even believe the things that they have
forgotten or pushed out of their mind. My sort of
not quite forgetting of my childhood torture is a form
of that denial. Right, Big, huge things that are obvious
can be completely blocked out, So you don't necessarily know

(01:00:45):
what you have blocked out. You don't necessarily know what
you have cognitive dissonance around, but you will often actively
avoid anything that would increase the dissonance. Today, when I
went to the dentist. The dentist to prescribe the antabiotics
that sent me into my anaphyactic shock response. They all

(01:01:10):
knew what had happened. Just like a week I went
for a cleaning. I was actually supposed to go for
a cleaning last like Tuesday, I think, but I was
so so sick still, there was like no way that
was going to happen, and so we you know, rescheduled it,
and so I went today, had the energy to go.
It was good, it was fine. Nobody mentioned it. And

(01:01:30):
when someone said something like I have a really nice dentist,
and they were like, do you do you want a
heating pad on the after you heating pad and like
the char to vibrate and all these like things to
like soothe you, I was like, no, my nerves are
very shot and I'm likely to go into reaction as
I have been this whole episode. It's fine, it's just
a thing that happens. It will happen for a few weeks.

(01:01:53):
But I was explaining how my if I, you know,
give too much impulse or sensory information to my body,
it can like trigger more of a response, and so
I'd rather not and and I just felt everyone like
tense and then just like not respond Nobody responded to that,
and then like eventually they just were like, so the

(01:02:13):
weather right, because they didn't want to confront what had
just happened. So, in cognitive distance, you will avoid anything
that may bring you close to acknowledging the thing. And
that's a very minor example, but you've probably seen this
or done this multiple times yourself. Oh, don't talk about it,
don't go there, don't go to that store, don't go

(01:02:34):
over there, don't open this book. All right, And so
here's some quotes from some of the some of the
greats from leon Af Festinger, a theory of cognitive dissonance.
He says dissonance theory predicts that people will actively avoid
situations and information that would increase the dissonance they feel.

(01:02:59):
Epic Titus says, people are not disturbed by things, but
by the view they take of them. It's true, it's
all up here, it's all up here, and so that's
cognitive dissonance. It's another reason that people dismiss experiences, dismiss trauma,
dismiss crises, dismiss how you feel, diminish them, reject them,

(01:03:27):
we also have this thing that is true where women
are less likely to be not just believed, but treated
as though their experiences are valid and accurate. So if
you are believed, you may then be sort of like,

(01:03:51):
but it's a woman, So she's like a bit histrionic, right,
or she's emotional, or she's reactive, or she's hysterical. And
this isn't the majority of the dismissedal life experience, but
I have experienced it, and that Bahrain example is one example.
That director of that school telling me that I was

(01:04:14):
too sensitive and too emotional. I don't think he would
have said that to a man. I could be wrong.
He might, that might just be his response to balms.
But I think he said that to me because I'm
a woman, and I've also obviously had it from doctors
and stuff. And this is actually where this comes in.
It's worth's the easiest to study is men and women

(01:04:37):
in the exact same situation, with the exact same doctors
and the exact same symptoms and the exact same reports
of severity, men will be given sort of more painkillers
or more belief or more support in reducing their symptoms,
and women will be like hmmm. I mean, you don't
really need anything, you're just being crazy and they'll be
given less. And so it's studiable, it's reproducible, we have

(01:05:01):
data on it, and so it's true. And so on.
Gender bias and disbelief we have. From Samuel Samuel Awitz
from Brave Men and Emotional Women, pain and women is
often not taken seriously. It's seen as psychological, emotional, or imagined.
And from doctor Judith Hermann from Trauma and Recovery. We
still live in a world where women must be perfect

(01:05:22):
victims to be believed. And it's true, and you know,
part of that being stalked and harassed and all of that.
I was like, well, how much worse would it have
had to get for you to believe me? Right? Like
the experiences I listed weren't enough for people I was

(01:05:43):
just wrong. But if the person would have successfully gotten
into my house silently and I didn't wake up, and
I hadn't called nine to one and I didn't have
a buck knife in my hand, what then? And then
you would have had to believe me. I'm guessing. I'm
guessing it would have become obvious. I either would have
appeared or been dead or who knows what and so

(01:06:04):
right you have to be like so deeply obviously traumatized,
victimized to even be believed. So a few more reasons
here why people dismiss trauma. Can't handle it, So I
have secondary victimization. When survivors are doubted, blamed, or mocked,

(01:06:28):
they experience what psychologists call secondary victimization. This additional layer
of trauma can worsen PTSD symptoms and lead to long
term mistrust, self doubt, and emotional isolation. Researchers like Jennifer
Freid have described this as betrayal trauma, harm not only
from the original event, but from the social systems and

(01:06:48):
relationships that failed to protect or believe the survivor. So here,
betrayal trauma theory suggests that children who have experienced betrayal
trauma have a tendency to quote forget their traumas to
promote their survival. A child has no choice but to
rely on the caregiver for all basic human needs, and,
according to the theory, forgetting or ignoring the abuse is

(01:07:09):
one way to maintain whatever support is still available from
that support person. I have known people who are way
more tortured than I. Was as children and who remained
with their abusers for a long time, and I for
a long time struggled to understand why they would do that,

(01:07:30):
and then I sort of understood, like that was still
the only person who was giving them food or shelter
or clothes or anything like love, and so that's what
they had to do, which is horrifying. It's horrifying. But
this betrayal trauma is also the same in not receiving

(01:07:50):
a response of affirmation or support in sharing any of
our trauma with anyone. So it can be from your parents,
it can be from your siblings. It can be from
your friends. It can be from your distant family or
acquaintances or coworkers. It can be from random people online.
It can be from your dentist and your dentist assistant. Right,
so now you've been betrayed. Now not only has the

(01:08:11):
trauma happened, but when you shared it, this person responded
in such a way that now you know you can't
trust them. You can't trust them to see reality, you
can't trust them to see you, You can't trust them
to respond appropriately in any situation. So you know, I
talk about sometimes my trust issues, and I say I
don't trust anybody, and if you do, I envy you.

(01:08:37):
I trust Johnny, Sorry everyone else out that I love you.
It's not your fault. I don't trust anybody. I'll trust
you to a point, but I know exactly where that
point is, and I know exactly where it ends. And
there's someone who I trust completely, and do you? I
would love to know, actually, if people do. I think
people do. I don't know what it's like. I have

(01:08:57):
never known what it's like to trust somebody. So people
sort of mark that on my list of like PTSD
symptoms and I'm like, well, that one I think came
with birth, but who knows, it's definitely been reinforced all
along the way. And you know, I just can we
even have these standards for people? Is it even appropriate

(01:09:21):
to expect people to do anything but dismiss and reject
and because they're not doing great themselves. I don't know
if you noticed, but there's not many people who are
actually well. And so if they started out not actually
well then and then they're trying to just deal with
the world and you're bringing them this thing that they
can't handle. Is it fair to feel betrayed? I mean,

(01:09:45):
it's okay to feel betrayed. It's okay to feel however
you feel. But at some point you have to also
just forgive people. You have to forgive. I have to
forgive the group of people who did nothing. I understand
why they did nothing. I have to forgive the bouncer
for laughing. I understand why he laughed. I had to
took me a long time to understand it, but I
understand it, and I have to forgive him. I don't

(01:10:08):
have to, I just do because I just I can
imagine being those people. I can imagine. I cannot technically
understand and imagine. I really don't think I personally would
have done any of those things. I really don't, but
I get it, and so there. But by the grace
of God, go I forgive them. Here's another quote. When

(01:10:29):
institutions fail to protect those who report trauma, they contribute
to a form of harm known as institutional betrayal. Oh yeah,
and that was early too, right. I'm like, who will
help me? No one who will stop the predator. No
one who's gonna call nine one one isn't even gonna
call half an hour out Like, okay, I'll try to survive.

(01:10:53):
I just like I mean, why would I have relied
on them in the first place. I don't know, but
you know, no one should. It's a good lesson for
all of us. Perhaps, But also, can't trust you, can't
trust you. I could go on, we do a whole
show about institutional failure institutional betrayal, but we won't. Maybe

(01:11:16):
we will someday. And people also, oh, here's some betrayal
trauma symptoms, by the way, emotional numbness, physical pain. You know, really,
you like suppress all of this because no one will
even let you like express it or say it or anything,
and so it's like inside of you. People don't believe

(01:11:37):
me that I essentially cured my lifelong chronic, horrifying physical
pain in my back through healing emotionally through PTSD therapy.
I have very little pain now. I still sometimes very extreme,
but it's like it was constant and extreme, and that
it was just extreme from time to time. Very much better.

(01:12:00):
Physical pain is absolutely a symptom of this type of
trauma and the suppression of it, and then the betrayal
trauma on top of the trauma, anxiety, depression, low self esteem,
post traumatic stress disorder, emotional dysregulation, substance abuse. This is
a list of my life. This is just the story
of my life. So then there's this thing too. You know,

(01:12:25):
they can't kill the truth, so they try to assassinate
the character. They can't kill what happened. They can't stop
what happened to you, And they really don't want to
accept it. So they say you're crazy, they say you're stupid,
they say you're wrong. They say you deserved it, they
say you asked for it, they say you're imagining it.
All the things they say. They assassinate your character instead,

(01:12:45):
and they silence any talk of the predator, right, any
noticing of the predatory behavior. People also minimize traumatic stories
to avoid confronting the existence of real predators. Accepting that
someone could be capable of evil actions shatters the illusion

(01:13:05):
of safety. Dismissing a survivor's story is for some a
way to protect their psychological sense of order. It's very
similar to the just world fallacy. It's not really different,
it's just a different way of looking at it. Of
why people ignore darkness, evil, dark people, predatory behavior, predators themselves.

(01:13:28):
We can't accept that level of evil, right, It's why
people don't want to accept that children are being trafficked
across the border. It's all kinds of it's in all
kinds of assets. That's why it's why predators get away
with it. Right again, I have to forgive my parents.
If your kid is telling you this dentist is hurting
me really badly and whatever you're like, I mean, he wouldn't.

(01:13:48):
Why would he obviously? I mean it's a kid, right,
there's all kinds of reasons why, and he knew it
and that's why he did it that way. But it
makes sense. It protects their psychological sense of the way
the world works, of who people are, of good and bad,
of how far they are from evil or darkness or
chaos or the uncontrollable. So doctor Bessel from The Body

(01:14:15):
Keeps the Score, which I've heard is a really great book,
by the way, I haven't read it, but I already
understand it. I think you might too. But if you
don't understand how your body stores trauma, how it stores information,
and all this negative stuff that's happened to you, if
not healed, is ripping you apart. It's giving you heart attacks,
it's causing your liver to fail, it's harming you physically,

(01:14:36):
then it might be a good book to read. The
Body keeps the score. But doctor Bessel says, we don't
want to believe terrible things happen because if they happen
to others, they can happen to us. So we look
for flaws in the victim stories instead. Don't want to
believe it can happen to us. Don't want to believe
it's even possible for it to happen to us. Oops,

(01:15:00):
we'll talk about this in a second. So silencing survivors
is a way of maintaining the illusion of control and
in order to sort of like heal this in yourself
and others. Some people are like, you have to get
to a point where we can believe each other. Right,
we have to get to the point where you just
when someone comes to you and says this thing happened,

(01:15:21):
you just start from a place of belief. And you
may have to actively do that. If you're listening to
this and you're like, I don't want to ever treat
anyone that way, then you might have to actively say
to yourself when people tell me something horrible, I'm going
to stop and I'm going to do what I need
to do in order to sort of like release whatever
else might have come up and just say like, I

(01:15:42):
believe you, right, And you could go back later and say, Okay,
I changed my mind, don't believe you anymore. Maybe it's
you get to a point where you're like, realize, no,
that person actually was lying and whatever, and that happens
to complicating the matter further. You might have to do
that intentionally. You might also on your own say like, well,

(01:16:03):
maybe I don't need to share my trauma with people.
Maybe I don't need to tell people the story. And then,
like I said, you might find the people who feel
betrayed because you didn't tell them. So you got to
you gotta take your pick. And and maybe there's just
a level to it where you're just saying, yeah, you know,
I've suffered a lot, or I've had really hard experiences

(01:16:25):
or not, you know, you can still share it without
getting into details. Maybe it's up to you. It's your life,
it's your experience, it's the people in your life, it's
your relationship with them. So how you receive people's traumatic stories,
people's crises, people's experiences of darkness and evil, and then
how you share your own, it's really up to you.

(01:16:48):
So obviously appropriate times, not appropriate times, appropriate people and
appropriate people. And so that's all something to decide for
yourself what's healthy for you and what's not. But it
and it also is really not true that we should
believe all people. It's really not true, like that whole
thing where we're like, believe all women, It's not true.

(01:17:09):
There are plenty of people, especially in the cluster B
personality disorder grouping people, narcissists, sociopaths, histrionic people. There's plenty
of people who make things up. There's plenty of people
who are absolutely lying about it. There's plenty of people
who are using this to their advantage. They're using it

(01:17:30):
to destroy someone's life because they're jealous of them or
mad at them, right wanted something from them they couldn't get.
So it is also confusingly perhaps not true that you
should believe all people. It's like I said at the
beginning of this episode, there's so many things that have
happened to me in my life that are insane and

(01:17:52):
intense and extreme that I totally understand if there's people
who question me or don't believe me, or you know,
especially people who don't know me, like I don't care
at all, because I might not either, because I know
so many people who have lied about really horrendous things.
I mean like really horrendous things. I know people have
lied about rape, I know people who have lied about incest.

(01:18:17):
And if you've never good, I'm glad. I've known some sketchy,
dark people and I've seen what they've done to people's lives,
so it's definitely worth it to wonder, to question, you know,
But maybe we could just like draw lines somewhere and
we could say, Okay, in the moment, if someone's running
to you and they're like, ah, maybe you just start

(01:18:38):
with like, okay, what do you need? How can I
help you? And then, like I said, after that, if
you're like this doesn't really fit together or like I'm
not sure, then maybe you question it. You know, maybe
to the person you just say, I understand that that
feels horrible or this is awful or whatever, and then

(01:19:00):
in your mind you also know, like I don't know
if it happened or not, it's okay, it's okay. I
think at some point, you know, you can become sort
of like self aware enough that you can tell the
difference between people who are genuinely needing, you genuinely having

(01:19:25):
emotions and right trauma crisis and the people who maybe aren't,
And like, the healthier you are in yourself, the less
you're gonna have those people who aren't around you anyways,
doesn't mean they're not gonna pop up, try to take advantage,
try to scam you, whatever. But yeah, it's it's also

(01:19:45):
it's also another extreme to go the route of just
constantly searching for the victimization and everyone and trying to
affirm the victimization and everyone. And I see people like
this too, again often in the cluster B category, who
like want people to be victimized and want to find
ways them. Oh that happened to you, Oh that was rape? Right,

(01:20:06):
Like I don't think it was rape. I think it
was consensual. And then they just didn't like it afterwards, like, no,
that's rape, Oh that happened to you? Know that person
was abusive. I think they're just a dick. I don't
know if it's a you know, still someone you might
not want your life, but like maybe not abusive, right,
And maybe you've met these people too who are just
too far the other way. Everything's an extreme victimization crisis

(01:20:28):
like trauma constantly for everyone. That's a bit too far.
The other direction this is also we shouldn't go the
so far as to make it like what would be
the opposite of the just world that the predatory like
chaos world. That's also a fallacy, right, There also is
relative stability in life. There also is the ability to

(01:20:50):
understand that wild things out of our control happen, and
that's okay, Like we just have to move forward and
find ways to feel you know, rooted and good and
strong and stable and in the ways that we can.
You know, they're both true. They're both true, and so
we don't want to go to either extreme. And here's

(01:21:10):
sort of a flashback to Middle Path episode sorts of Days.
That's really what it comes down to, not going to
some extreme or the other, not going into I don't
believe anybody, or there's no darkness in the world, there's
no bad and there's no wrong, And also not saying like, well,
everything's perfect all the time, or you know, everything's horrible
all the time. Everything's bad, everyone's traumatized, everyone's abused, everyone

(01:21:34):
is in darkness. It's just both not true. Even in
a life like this full of trauma after trauma, after trauma,
after trauma, after chaos, after you know even that I
have a wonderful, amazing life. I have a very well
rounded sense of self. I have a really good ability
to love myself and and others. I have transmuted my

(01:21:56):
darkness into a light that I get to share with people.
And it's not a Pollyanna ignore the darkness. Light. It
is the best type of light because it says, yeah,
shit is dark as fuck out there, real dark, and
sometimes we come face to face with that horrifying darkness

(01:22:16):
and I know it, and I get it, and we're
gonna be okay. And look, I'm okay, right, I'm good,
And that's the best part about it. Do you eventually
learn you're indestructible? Actually, and I think I said this
last week too, you're actually indostructal. You're actually so strong.
People say this thing all the time, You're so strong,

(01:22:38):
And I kind of say in myself in my heart,
like I kind of wish I didn't have to be,
but I am. And thank you for seeing it and
noticing You're right that says you're not a victim. For
sharing your story, you are a survivor, setting the world
on fire with your truth, and you never know who
needs your light, your warmth and raging courage. And I

(01:23:01):
saw this today sort of synchronistically, and I had been
putting together this research again just for myself. I wasn't
actually looking to do a show on this. I was
just like, I need to touch base with the reasons
why people do this again so I can continue to
let go of how much it hurts my feelings when people,
some I love and some I don't know at all

(01:23:22):
tell me that my experience wasn't real or that it
didn't matter, or that it wasn't very bad. And so
I was doing this for myself and I saw this
quote and I was like, yeah, you know what, I
should do a show on this, because somebody does need that.
Somebody out there is sitting there going, oh my god,
that's what happened to me. Oh that's why they did
that to me. Oh that's what that was, And that

(01:23:43):
is worth everything. And it's also helpful for me to
remember that it is true that I have to turn
the starkness into light and that it is okay. It's
okay to have experienced the stark of experience. It's okay
to have come face to face with demons and it's

(01:24:05):
okay to talk about it, and it's okay to say.
So it's okay and it's not a burden. Because this
is the other thing I do is that I'm like, well,
it's a burden. Obviously people can't handle. Obviously, people are
just like, don't say it, don't talk to me, don't right,
And so I don't want to burden them. But it's

(01:24:27):
not a burden. It's not a burden. Uh well, what
is kind of? I mean, it literally is sort of
for them. But at the same time, it's it's theirs
to take or not. It's theirs to deal with or not.
It's theirs to transmute or not. It's not up to
me what burdens them or what doesn't or what feels
too overwhelming for them. I can't control that, but I

(01:24:49):
can know that for me, I have to be honest
about what happens to me, Right, I have to be like, yeah,
it was anaphyleaxis, or yeah the guy adopted me, or
yeah so bomb and it killed someone. I have to
do that for me, so, but I don't do that
for me. I suffer. I have physical pain, I have
mental health issues. I have anxiety, I have depression, So

(01:25:13):
it's not okay for me to suppress it, to deny it,
to not talk about it, to pretend it didn't happen,
or to try to hold it back from someone in
case it feels overwhelming to them. So again I said,
you have to decide for yourself what you want to
do with your trauma, who and when and where, what's
appropriate and not appropriate. And this is what I've come
to for me, is I have to say it, not

(01:25:34):
all the time, not in every space, not to everyone, right,
not in every detail, but I have to be honest
about it. And the people who don't want to handle it,
they're welcome to leave, right. I'm not in charge of
what they listen to, what I say or what I
talk or what I do, and if they're around or not,
that's their choice. So I do it for me. I

(01:25:57):
do this show for me, and I'm glad if it
also helps others. And we'll just have one more, one
more quote here in case you resonate with it too,
Rupy Kower says, and here you are living despite it all,
and here we are living despite it all. And isn't

(01:26:18):
it good to be alive. I did not think so.
A week ago, about a week and four days ago,
I was begging to die because I was in such
excruciating pain. Just a few days later, I'm very, very
grateful to be alive despite it all, living despite it all,

(01:26:41):
in the center here, surrounded by light, life and love. Hallelujah.
And until you are as well, travel well, aim for balance,
and always look inside.

Speaker 1 (01:26:52):
First groom grim and screams, it's a plot to drop
the IQ. Fighting amongst each other, all the rumors that
don't like you.

Speaker 2 (01:27:09):
W Chrome has cropped the melancholi with the wood ones
of holly, suggestions out of pick the rings of camel, plots.

Speaker 3 (01:27:14):
Of holly, but took the mental dowery and secure a top.
Rely hypocrisy. It is back of ree and back the top.

Speaker 2 (01:27:20):
Of me with their hands up to touch the acasta,
because you know, deep down is something bigger than your wallet.

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