The ability to connect with people and form real relationships is often damaged in those of us who were neglected or abused as children. And when you pull away from people and intentionally isolate yourself, and that's common, it's called avoidance. But you might be someone who doesn't intentionally isolate, you might be a covert avoider. For example, you could have a good career, you're friendly, you're interesting, there are people in your life, friends, maybe a partner or spouse, but there are hidden...
covert ways that you keep your interactions superficial. You know, you keep one foot out of the relationship without anyone quite realizing it. Sometimes you don't even realize it.
But if you've been trying and trying to connect better with people and you don't seem to be getting any traction, it's time to look at whether maybe you're secretly, covertly avoiding people and your own life. Now I'm going to talk about how we do covert avoidance and how to shift those behaviors if you're ready. If you want to open this up and make this the year you get better at meeting and caring for people in your life.
Alright, so avoiding behavior is really normal for people who had trauma when they were kids. If that's you, you may have learned to look okay on the outside, being cheerful, appropriate, functioning well. But you probably also learned to protect your inner state by avoiding any kind of situation that might trigger you.
Things like rejection or criticism or getting ostracized by a group. So those hurtful things hurt all kinds of people, but for a person with complex PTSD, it can make you feel destroyed. It can trigger a period of dysregulation that makes it really hard to think and focus and function for days. And I talk a lot about dysregulation on this channel, you might want to explore that.
But here's the first reason I'm going to give you to start healing your avoidant tendencies now, because even though getting triggered can feel like it destroys you, If you go through life rigidly protecting yourself from the way you feel around people, that destroys you too, and probably in a worse way. Without connection, your development gets frozen. On the outside, you might look confident and accomplished, but inside you're like a sad little kid just walking around. Now I call the problem covert avoidance, because it's not like avoidant personality disorder, which is an extreme kind of anxiety and social avoidance. That's on a level that would be fairly noticeable to other people.
But covert avoidance isn't that noticeable. You seem okay. You're interacting with the world, but you're also holding yourself apart from it.
So one big sign of covert avoidance is when you're too busy or too tired all the time to do normal things that a person in your position would do, like keeping where you live tidy or making decent food for yourself and your kids, perhaps. or going to bed on time or getting up on time. When you're avoiding this level of functioning, it's an inward directed kind of avoidance. Then there are the outward behaviors like being late to things.
And it's normal to be late occasionally, but if you're known for being late, if you're late by about the same number of minutes every time, it's avoidance. That was the big obvious sign that I had back in the days when I was near the end of my first marriage and when my kids were small, I was late to everything. If I said I'd come to your house at 4 o'clock, I'd be there at 4.13. If I had an important phone call that was supposed to be at 9 o'clock, I'd join at 9.02.
And if a group of friends were meeting up for a hike, I'd keep everyone waiting in the parking lot for 15 minutes. And you know, I always had my reasons. There was traffic, I had kids, and I was busy, I was juggling a lot.
It was all true. But here's the sign. I was always telling people how busy I was. Do you do that? People would say, Have you been Anna?
And I'd go, busy, I've been really busy. And I'd say it almost like I was bragging, like it was a badge of accomplishment that proved that I was doing something really important and excused my inconsiderate behavior. And I know now that my busyness is, it's part of life and not always a good sign about how I'm managing my time.
And that my broadcasting, my busyness to the world is actually a form of covert avoidance. So Being busy all the time, talking about being busy, for me it was an attempt to keep everyone's focus like out here and not in here where I wasn't feeling that great about myself. I wasn't doing that well. And the thing is even though I was juggling a lot at the time, I was working, I was a single mom, or transitioned into it then, you could take everything I did in one day to which I was showing up late and you could do it in the same amount of time by just shifting everything 20 minutes earlier and then I'd be on time for everything.
And I would have been so much less stressed. So in my mind, I couldn't make that shift because I was too busy. And in reality, I was shutting people out.
I was shutting my life out. I was angry at my life and I didn't want to be in it. Really, that's what was really going on. And in particular, I was unhappy about my recently ended marriage and I was emotionally overwhelmed.
I was overwhelmed pretty much all the time. And rather than be real about that and face it, I hung on to the marriage for as long as I could and then tried to keep everything else in my life like at arm's length and keep up appearances. I'm doing great.
Everything's fine. So that's the second reason I'm giving you today about why now is a good time to start healing your covert avoidance. When you start opening up to real connection with people, you'll begin to see more clearly, you know, what you've been afraid to look at in your own life, whatever you've been ashamed of, whatever has felt undoable for you.
When you stop hiding, you'll be better able to see. And yes, other people will be able to see too, but actually that lets them get closer to you. So back in the days when I was shutting people out, I didn't know exactly how to start opening up to people. How do you make that work? It hadn't gone well for me in the past and back then I didn't know that what was going on with me was PTSD from childhood.
I thought I was just a big secret failure. I thought other people just knew how to do this life thing and there was just some mystery problem with me. And I was trying really hard to have good relationships and I was just going about it wrong. I was trying not to be any trouble for people. And it's probably from some old idea from childhood that my feelings and my needs...
and even my existence were a problem for other people. And I'm not saying that people who, you know, start to like need so much from other people that it couldn't be a problem, but I was just like trying to avoid ever being seen that way. So I just try to muddle through and getting through hard times all by yourself.
It's a good thing to know how to do, but there comes a time when the avoidance has to stop if you're going to be happy. So it came to a head when I had this Like three year, four year period where I had a huge medical problem. And it started with an injury and it snowballed into a whole series of surgeries that kept having complications. And this was right when my kids'dad and I were separated and getting divorced and we were hardly speaking to each other.
And because for years I'd formed only, you know, superficial, put on your happy face friendships, I wasn't close to anybody anymore. And that meant I had almost no support. So one time I went a whole week in the hospital with just one visitor for maybe an hour. And when it was time to go home, I needed somebody who could pick me up and drive me.
Literally, by law, they can't let you just take a cab. So while I could see other people in the hospital getting flowers and hugs and happy families coming to drive them home, I had to just sit there making 10 phone calls till I could find someone who could, you know, take a couple hours out of their day and come get me and take me home. And someone came, God bless them, and... And they got me some takeout food and got me settled on the sofa and kept me company for a little while. But this had been going on for a long time and it was going to go on for a long time.
Not having the kind of relationships that could sustain me in hard times like that was like what my life was all about back then. And that's what chronic avoidance will get you. You might get through one crisis by avoiding people in life, but the next crisis is going to come and lay you low.
It's just part of life. You'll face for real what's left when you spent years thinking you had no choice but to protect yourself from people. Protecting that fragile place inside of you that lives in fear of being judged and left out and alone.
You really do end up alone when you do that. And that's the third reason I'm giving you to start healing covert avoidance now. When life gets hard, you'll need people who care about you and they'll care for you.
Because there's a long history of close connection with you and caring both ways and you'll have love and friendship and that's a very good way to live your life. It's worth it. So those are the three reasons I'm urging you to begin healing your avoidant tendencies right now. You can make this the year you do it.
Okay the first reason is not learning to connect will drain your life of depth and meaning and the opportunity to overcome social limitations that have held you back. Yes, people are triggering, but being limited in this way where you can't develop is even worse. Two, coming out of hiding and opening up to people will allow you to see clearly and face more honestly the parts of your life where you're struggling, the problems that need your attention. You getting real about what's not working for you yet can be a positive step that feels really good, especially if you've lined up some guidance.
Some ways to learn about CPTSD and most importantly some support from people who understand the trauma you've been through. And finally, the third reason it's important to heal your avoidant tendencies now, it's because there may come a time when handling everything in isolation won't be enough. You're going to need help and help is a beautiful word. You can begin to grow these lifelines. of help right now by asking for help.
You can offer help. You can learn to set boundaries so that when someone asks too much from you, which might be one of your fears, you know how to say no in the most graceful way possible. And you can also support your healing of avoidance by learning to calm triggers that make closeness with people so challenging.
You can learn how to do that in my free daily practice course. I'm always talking about it. It's always linked down below in the description section too.
We have lots of people who do that. I do free calls every two weeks. You're welcome to join me.
When you can reduce your reactivity to things that used to be hard for you, you have more choices about how you want to respond. So maybe you need less contact with hurtful people and more contact with supportive people. And who these people are will become clearer to you when you're more regulated and less reactive.
And finally, you can raise your awareness of covert avoidance and begin noticing where are you doing it? I had one friend who said she used to go around to parties with a camera around her neck so that if she were speaking with someone for more than a couple of minutes she could say she needed to leave the conversation and go take pictures or she used a clipboard in her hand I've done that before with a pen and you can walk around a party as if you're enjoying it like an observer but never risk getting ignored or drowned in a conversation so covert avoidance is subtle it's kind of like an old friend that's hard to let go of Some of us do it by looking at our phones all the time. Some of us do it by taking unfulfilling jobs and then hating that job and postponing the day when we're going to start living our life until after we leave that job that we never should have taken in the first place.
And then we've got a great excuse not to volunteer at the school or not to take a walk with our friend. Or we find ourselves collapsed on the sofa every evening. And even at home, we can do covert avoidance with people we love.
just going through the motions, or we stay with people we never loved, just buying some time for that day when we can emotionally handle making changes. You can do avoidance through food, drugs, video games, or anything that numbs you, telling yourself that as soon as you can stop, you'll get out there and start your life. I totally get it. I've done it.
And until you have a way to calm your triggers and handle stress when it comes, because it always is going to come, Your CPTSD is going to dictate that you will be cut off from your own life. So thankfully there are ways to calm your triggers and re-regulate and get support so you don't have to keep avoiding your life. All right, I can teach you.
There are many ways to do it. Check out the descriptions if you want. That's one place to start.
You don't have to fix your whole life at once. Sometimes if you just orient yourself toward healing and you can do one small thing a day, then more changes are going to naturally follow. You feel ready?
I've got another video all about healing your ability to connect lined up right here and I will see you very soon.