Crappy Childhood Fairy - Understanding Childhood PTSD and Healing

When I ask people I coach, what is the biggest, most hard-to-manage trigger of your childhood PTSD, most of them say abandonment. And this trigger is so strong and so totally takes over your nervous system and your perception that if you're like a lot of people who were neglected or abandoned as kids, you can't even tell when you're imagining that someone's going to leave you or if your awareness is really pretty accurate. and you are seeing what's about to happen. All CPTSD triggers lead to some level of dysregulation of your emotions, your brain, your whole nervous system. And in my experience, healing is virtually impossible until you can learn to get re-regulated. So today I wanna share with you a video about getting triggered by abandonment. And this is one of the videos from my dysregulation bootcamp, which is a 20-day course that helps you Calm your CPTSD triggers so that you can get mastery over your emotions, your thinking, and your physiology so that you can live your life more in harmony with yourself, more regulated, more of the time. It's so powerful when you learn to re-regulate. I'm sharing this because I tell a story here of how triggers can get that power over you. And if you live with a vulnerability around feeling abandoned, my story could just give you some hope. I hope so. If you get dysregulated around the feeling of abandonment, I invite you to check out my dysregulation boot camp, which you can join anytime, and our four-week coaching program that's all about re-regulation. That starts October 8th, so you should register now. You can do that on my website, crappychildhoodfairy.com. Today we're going to talk about one of the most intense triggers for childhood PTSD, abandonment. This one is so primal because we're all wired to be loved and included in the tribe as if our lives depend on it. Because in any situation before the last, I don't know, 100 years or so, our lives did depend on it. We need our parents when we're born and we need dependable people connected to us throughout our lives. So just about everyone, and I know this because I've taught so many people to write their fears each day and I've heard the things that come up for everyone, being left by the tribe is a core fear. It comes out as fear of ending up alone and homeless and dying alone. And the fear isn't irrational really, it's a standard feature of being a homo sapien. But for those of us with childhood PTSD, it can go way out of proportion to the situation, to the point of being crippling, and it can make us seem really unreasonable. In my childhood, my mother would leave the family for a month at a time, starting when I was a month old. She'd run off with some guy and not tell anyone where she was or if she was coming back. Now she did come back, but the family would be in anguish and frantic with uncertainty, and this was going on all around me while I was a small kid. And then when I was about five, she'd sometimes take me with her and leave me for a moment in a lobby or for a couple of hours in a movie theater. And then she would not come back for 10, 11 hours. and the police picked me up once outside a casino. That's when I was six. I hadn't eaten all day. I had a fever. Now, nowadays you'd lose your kids over something like that, but not back then. And I mean, I was scrambling to cover for her because, of course, I didn't want them to take me away from her. But you can see where I got kind of a weird thing around abandonment, and that carried into my adulthood. And it certainly kicked up when I started having groups of friends, then boyfriends, and then working and trying to fit in. All situations where sometimes there's rejection. And before I learned to stay regulated any rejection, I'll tell you what it felt like. It was as if I'd been injected with a toxic chemical. I'm assuming it was a release of some stress hormone and I could feel that bad feeling just like flowing through my bloodstream and I think, oh no here it goes again, and I'd fall into a very dark kind of dysregulation. and there would be nothing I could do to stop it. That's a trigger. So you'll be tempted on the worksheet to put a lot of work into understanding why you have certain triggers like this one, just like I told you why. And knowing this, that's possibly helpful. Maybe you'll better understand that your reactions to abandonment are not your fault. You didn't just make it up. But I'm going to direct the majority of your focus to just remembering and noticing what it feels like when you're triggered by abandonment. What in your adult life recently has set it off? And what was it about those situations that seems to get to you so badly? So that's all in the worksheet, along with reflection on how you've come back from abandonment. Totally important, right? One thing that's going to help you tremendously with dislodging those deep-rooted triggers that have an early and understandable origin is the daily practice. When you write your fears and resentments, you can pour out whatever is coming up on a hard day when your fear of abandonment got triggered. Fear no one likes me, fear I don't know what just happened, fear I'll end up alone when I'm old and I'm resentful at my girlfriend because I have fear she didn't text me back last night and so on. Deep triggers aren't going to change because you merely decide to change. It's not likely anyway. They change when you can access that pre-language part of your brain where the abandonment hurt was installed and language out through writing not speaking, writing what that feeling is that's happening, the terror, the self-hatred, whatever it is for you. You write it, you meditate, and you'll find that the emotions are calmer and they're lying low for the time being. And your thinking is clearer. Like maybe you don't have to freak out and act jealous this time. Maybe you can forget about it. Or maybe you're sick of all the fear involved in a relationship and you want to end it. There's no right answer here. The point is that all options are open to you and you're no longer enslaved by a fear of that physiological hell associated with abandonment that limits so many of us with childhood PTSD. If you grew up with parents who were unreliable, you may have ended up with strong triggers now in adulthood when people leave you waiting, when you've made plans but they either don't show up or they don't get in touch until the last minute and they leave you anxious and afraid. with your emotions escalating every minute that passes. Do you have that? It's an emotional flashback, right? It's an old memory that sometimes doesn't even have an experience attached to it. It just floods in under certain triggers like being kept waiting. And you may not even know cognitively what hit you, but someone leaves you waiting and you fill up with adrenaline and then more adrenaline because there's this fear that you'll act in an irrational relationship destroying way. Maybe you've done that before, like exploding with anger when the person finally shows up, or you'll rationalize your fears as just you being, you know, you're just being crazy or insecure. And this confusion, whether someone is really awful and deserves your wrath, or whether you're crazy and should just stop, right? That confusion is very anxiety provoking and it's a trigger in itself. This is so very much what it's like to begin dating people when you have unhealed them. childhood trauma. It's a normal side effect, but of course we want to get some clarity and heal it. So I have a letter today from a woman I'll call May, and she writes, Dear Anna, I've noticed that a major trigger for me is when it comes to planning or waiting on someone to inform me of plans or communication around plans. With some people it flows really easily and I don't even think about it, usually with friends, but with other people who are less communicative, or friends who I'm not as close to or they don't think that we're as close as I think we are and then she clarifies that she's really talking about men she's dating. It can become really debilitating if they don't do things a certain way that indicates they care about me. She says with quotation marks circling this because I think she's calling herself a little crazy but we'll get to that. Okay. I have this idea that if someone found me to be an important and worthy person in their life, they would show that by being considerate and relatively reliable with communication and plans. I'm not saying this is correct, but it's just what I have noticed in my brain. Regardless of the trigger, in some cases it feels like a relatively reasonable request as well, meaning if someone says they will touch base tomorrow about evening plans and then doesn't text me till 6 p.m. that day, that feels borderline rude to me. Like they are keeping me waiting around on them and it must be a sign that they don't really respect or like me, for example. Maybe I'm off on that too, but that's just how it feels at the moment. I think this trigger stems a lot from my father who, according to my mom, was often unreliable about plans. For example, making plans to come see me and my sister after my parents were divorced and I was around four or five and lived with my mom, then he would break the plans. He was also demanding of time and emotional connection with me, so I felt like I often had to do whatever he wanted, when he wanted it, but was left in the lurch when I was hoping to rely on him for anything. I've seen this pain come up many times in relationships when it comes to how men create or follow up on plans with me. So I realize so much of this is a trigger, yet I also have plenty of people who simply seem like they generally... They generally want me in their lives. They communicate directly or more often than not, reliable people. So I know it's very possible for me not to be triggered by this topic. So when someone triggers it I'm not sure if that means they just don't value me in my time and I'm reading my instinct correctly or if I'm expecting too much from them too soon because of past trauma. Especially with men as I'm scared it could be the sign of an unreliable man who I'm afraid will be like my father breaking plans and being emotionally unreliable which I do not want. This can happen really early on before I even have enough of a pattern to really know for sure. With men, I feel terrified of checking in on them and asking for an update, as I would with a friend, for example, because I don't want to come across as triggered and scared. And then I find if I don't check in, I can get resentful when they do finally update me. It can go in a circle. Because of this, I'm curious. How and when do I communicate my needs to someone when I'm also aware there is a major trigger at play? I've never really known how to communicate my needs. If I even know what they are because I fear I will sound demanding and manipulative. When I think I know one and it seems reasonable enough, for example, please don't leave me hanging all day about our plans, how do I do it in a way that doesn't accidentally become an unreasonable demand on someone because of my deeper trigger around it? Signed from May. All right, May. I'm so glad you wrote. I've got your back here, and I totally know what you're talking about. I think this is something a lot of us can relate to. Waiting has been a huge trigger for me. So let's go through again. All right. Major trigger around planning, waiting on someone to tell you of plans and communication surrounding plans. With some people it flows really easily and I don't think about it usually with friends. With others, less communicative friends and friends who may not think of me as as being as close to them as I see us, or especially men I'm dating. Okay, hold on. Just as you're doing that, I'm hearing this bifurcation of people in your life. There's friends, there's people who are easy for you, and you mentioned you can just like text them and go, hey, when are we getting together? And then there's men, and there's this common characteristic with men. You're saying it's friends, but I don't know. It sounds like a bifurcation of types of relationship, and when a romantic relationship comes along. the trigger exists. Now the question for you is does it exist because you're just so triggerable or does it exist because of the men you're allowing into your life? All right okay I hear you second guessing yourself a little bit about that so let's see if we can zero in on what that is. I think a lot of people have that problem. Now you said people who are not less communicative and who may not see me as a close friend as much as I do and that it can become really debilitating for you if they don't do things a certain way. That quote indicates they care about me. Now, when you put quotes on that, I think what you're doing is trying to admit that part of you sees that that's unreasonable. And I just want to tell you, actually, that's not unreasonable. I think what's unreasonable is that you think there's any problem with you wanting indications that the people you spend your time with care about you. Of course, they should care about you and respect you and respect your time. So. Yeah, so it becomes really debilitating if they don't do things a certain way. So I'm trying to guess, you know, I'm sort of trying to read through the lines here. And I have known people who are overly insecure. It's like an insecure attachment trait. It's like, hey, are we, you know, are we getting together? Okay, are we still getting together? Because I didn't hear from you for an hour. Like it's possible to go too far in that direction. But if people leave you waiting until 6 p.m. and don't tell you what the intention is, and they're sort of holding the key to the plan, I think, I don't know, you know, I wasn't there. Maybe it's not that big a deal. It's certainly not what a date does. Somebody who has asked you out on a date and who intends to be on a date with you does not want to leave you waiting like that or worried about it. They're worried that you're going to change your plans if they don't go in and, you know, make a date with you. So here's what I'm intuiting is that these, the men you're dating are not fully dating you. And I would just, you know, I'm sort of jumping cart ahead the horse here, but if you are dating somebody who leaves you anxious all day because you don't know what's going on, that sounds like it's not a date. And if you had mentioned, okay, so you said... Yeah, I have this idea that if someone found me to be an important and worthy person in their life, they would show that by being considerate and relatively reliable with communication and plans. Hello, May, yes. That's not just some idea you have, not some trauma belief. That's life. If someone likes you and respects you and values you, they will have a reasonable amount of communication and reliability. And then you say, here comes the second guessing, I'm not saying this is correct. Why do I get the feeling that someone has just gaslit the crap out of you about this? You know, where you had to defend yourself and where they go, oh, you're just, you know, this is just something that you say. This is some trigger you have. You're so unrealistic. And you go, well, I'm not saying I'm correct. Like somebody, was it your dad? Just plant it in your mind that this is crazy for you to expect. That this is, what did you say? Demanding. Oh dear, somebody has made you feel bad about yourself for expecting a normal, respectful interaction with people. Make plans, talk about it, feel safe and comfortable. If you don't know what the plan is to just text and say, hey, what time were you thinking we should get together? That's a totally okay thing to do. It's not a bad thing to do. And anybody who thinks that you're, there's something wrong with you for checking in about what time they want to get together that night when you have a plan. Anybody who would go running from you for doing that, isn't a good boyfriend. They're not a good boyfriend. Somebody, a good mate or friend is somebody who's just like, oh yeah, I wasn't sure. Five, six, I don't know. What do you think? Or six o'clock. If we do that, we can get to the movie on time. So that's just normal communication. So May, I can just hear it. Like somebody has planted this idea that you're damaged and you've had to try to like say it. Maybe it's just because I'm traumatized. So I want to read some of the things you said here. I'm not saying this is correct, it's just what I've noticed in my brain. You've noticed it because it's just common culture and common courtesy. Regardless of the trigger, in some cases it feels like a relatively reasonable request. Yes, there it is, you've zeroed in. It's not really a... you may have a trigger and the trigger may make you very emotional when it happens and maybe paralyze your response to it, but it is a reasonable request. And you say, if someone says they'll touch base tomorrow about evening plans and don't text me until 6 p.m. that day, That feels borderline rude to me. No, it's not borderline rude. It's rude. It's rude. But, you know, I think if people are, if you really are casual friends with somebody and you have a relationship that's solid enough that you're like, tomorrow, right? We're going to get together. Okay, let's check in. You know, I'll talk to you tomorrow. And then they don't talk to you till six, but you can trust them to have the plan. You're talking about people who have conditioned you to totally worry there is no plan. And I just want to challenge you, like, what you doing with people who put you in anxiety all day about whether there really is a plan. Here's what I think. I think you may have a trauma trigger about this and I get it. I have it too. It's a lot better than it used to be. But I think even more than that, you have a crap fit wound. That's crap fit where we get too good at learning to fit ourselves to unacceptable behavior and inappropriate people that you were given a crap fit wound. that there's something wrong with you if you need to know what the plan is. Like who does that except some like, I don't know, I can sort of get a feel for what your dad is like, hey babe, you know, I got to do my thing. You can't put, you know, constraints on me and, you know, gee, women or whatever, you know, some, somebody else's trip got on you and I'm hoping that you can root that out. And you get to actually be you. You get to be someone who likes to know what the plan is. Like I know tons of people, they're sort of on a continuum. Some people, they're pretty loose about it. Some people want to know. I'm okay with all of it. And when I care about those people, I try to accommodate what helps them feel comfortable. And if somebody wanted to check in with me about the plan, I would never ever think that that was weird. Now, if they checked in like five times or kept implying that I couldn't be trusted to do what I said I was going to do. Yeah, I might take offense, but it doesn't sound like you're doing that, May. So you say, it feels borderline rude, like they're keeping me waiting around on them, and it must be a sign that they don't really respect or like me, for example. Maybe I'm off on that too, but that's just how it feels at the moment. All right, this is where, like so many of us, get into gaslighting ourselves. I don't think you're off. When people leave you waiting and leave you anxious all day, and don't talk to you well i don't know may it's like if you didn't if you didn't text them during the day to let them know you wanted to know maybe they haven't done anything wrong also people who wait all day are at one end of the continuum so if you keep finding yourself with people like that and it sounds like you're really talking about menu date i would just say yeah it sounds like you're the pattern that your dad put in you is active right now as you heal from your childhood ptsd you will have less and less of a draw towards people who match that sort of neglect of you, that mistreatment of you. You will lose that ability, that special crap fit superpower to just go, oh, they didn't show up and didn't call. That's okay. I'll blame myself. I'll pretend I'm crazy and that the problem is that I'm just so needy and that they're not really the problem. And that's how I'll make this whole thing work. And I mean, how many times have all of us done that? So many times. But that's how we end up in relationships that leave us in pain and feeling empty all the time. Okay, so you say, I think this trigger stems from my father, and your mom said he was unreliable, he'd just leave you waiting. He was very demanding of time and emotional attention. So that's a yucky combination. I hope that men aren't doing that to you, where they simultaneously blow off plans with you, and then when they are with you, just demand a lot and drain your energy. You've seen this pain come up many times in relationships. Yeah, if it's coming up many times, yeah, it's probably just your core stuff. And you know what? It totally makes sense why you have that. It's not your fault. It's not your fault you have that. So you say you realize it's a trigger. Plenty of people simply seem like they generally want me in their lives. That's the kind of guy you want to date. He generally wants you in his life. They communicate directly. Very good quality in people. And more often than not, they're reliable. Yes, good quality for friends and partners. So I know it's very possible for me not to be triggered. You know, I'm sort of wondering if your trigger is at all the problem and not just who you're hanging out with. I'm not sure what it means if they don't value my time. or if I'm reading, if my instinct, if I'm reading incorrectly, or if I'm expecting too much from them too soon because of past trauma, I would just take off that clause because of past trauma, first of all. And stop, you know, like you had trauma, yeah. But the fact is you feel that way. The fact is that May's heart would like to be communicated with during the day so she can have peace in her day knowing what time everybody's getting together. That is just a totally okay personality trait. There may be people who are looser about it, but not you. So just respect yourself. Respect yourself and be like, yeah, I need to know. So when somebody says on Saturday, so tomorrow I'll give you a call. Say, okay, what time did you want to, what time were you thinking of getting together? Stand up for yourself in that way. Can you say, I feel terrified of checking in on them and asking for an update as I would with a friend, for example, because I don't want to come off as triggered and scared. Okay. Yeah, I understand that. You don't want to show the triggered and scared card like early in a relationship. Even though you are triggered and scared, you're triggered and scared about it. That's how you really feel. But yeah, I get it to put on a kind of like, you know, to not put that on other people. But how you avoid getting triggered and scared is just to ask, just to say, can you, you know, what time were you thinking? I can make plans for it if I know what time it is. Okay, so you get afraid to check in and you don't ask them and you leave it open, kind of giving them permission to not say. But then you find that if you don't check in, you get resentful when they finally do update you. And there it is. See, there's the problem. So for you, May, I'm just going to suggest, you know, try this daily practice that I teach. See if you can get some of the feelings out on paper and just ask for them to be removed. Because what can happen when you do that and then rest in meditation is you just get a little clearer about what it really is. This dilemma of is it me or is it them? starts to come a little closer together and then you go, oh, it's them. Or sometimes it's me. Sometimes it's me. But that that discernment of what it is is there and as you begin to heal as a result of getting freer and freer of the fearful and resentful thoughts that are kind of driving you to not be yourself, to deny how you really feel, what you really need, when you're denying that, of course you're resentful, but you're kind of getting resentful at somebody else because you denied it from yourself. The part that's hard to face is that people who treat you like that, like it's a little bit unlikely that they are secretly great people who are perfect for you. It's just that you haven't communicated your needs. It sounds more to me like you're letting people into your life who match your dad's neglect and you're trying to fix yourself to make it work. That's what it sounds like. So I think the hardest thing to face is that when somebody you like isn't going to work out and the... right thing to do is to just end that relationship and make space so you can work on getting in touch with what's really important to you, what really makes you happy, what sort of a person you'd really like to find and fall in love with. That there's a really good feeling ahead of that act of severing that relationship but when you were neglected by a parent that abandonment wound can be just as you said debilitating. It can be debilitating. Very hard to make that decision. Very tempting to keep thinking if I change, you know, maybe I can make them change, maybe I can change myself. And there's this huge attraction to try to blame ourselves for somebody else's bad behavior. Because if it's me, you know, I can do something about that. If it's their bad behavior and it does in fact indicate that they're not very serious about me, that is so painful to face. Because you can't do anything about it. If there ever was a chance that such a person would turn around and start respecting you, uh... One thing that might bring it about is if you had boundaries around that and you just didn't, you know, follow through on plans. So one thing I did when I was dating, and I did this when I was dating my husband, is I just set a quiet limit. I didn't tell him, but if he called me at the last minute, I wouldn't go out with him. I just wouldn't go out with him. I'd want to go out with him. But I knew that I needed to change my pattern of being, you know, the girl you call at the last minute. And I wanted to save all my dating energy for somebody who was going to treat me better than that. So I picked a day Thursday. If he called me before Thursday to ask to get together on the weekend, I'd be delighted to get together if I was free. But if he called me Saturday at five, I just had plans. So true story, he called me at 5 on a Saturday once and I just, I was so lonely back then and I was really into him and I was hoping he'd call and I wanted more than anything to hang out with him but Thursday had passed, Friday had passed, Saturday day and I was really disappointed and assumed he didn't like me but then he calls at 5, my heart jumps. I'm like, oh it's him. Oh I want it so bad to just... abandoned my plan here to act like somebody who respects herself and I just I just didn't want to do it I wanted to say yes but I just followed through I knew this was what I needed to do for me and I just said sorry I have plans now secretly my plan was to just sit there and not be that girl that was the plan I just watched TV or something that night you know the kids were at their dad's I I was free I was just sitting at home alone I was lonely and I said no And I remember he kind of went, oh, oh, okay. He goes, well, how about on Tuesday then? And I said, yeah, sure, okay. So then I had a date. I had a date on another day. But his attitude towards me flipped in that one phone call where I said no. I just said no to last-minute plans. So what you could do, May, if someone has really been disrespectful to you, is just say, oh, sorry, I didn't hear from you all day. I made other plans. And I know this will sound manipulative, but the other plan can be to just sit there. in self-respect and take right your fears and resentments and start getting free of this idea that you should hold your whole day hostage for waiting for some guy to call right that's a plan that's legit and who knows maybe they'll come around or maybe they'll lose interest if people are just kind of looking for a friends with benefits or a booty call type of thing they they're not gonna they're not gonna pass that test but i've noticed that sometimes to fall in love some of us have to have a boundary put before us that communicates that the person we're considering has this respect for themselves and requires that they be treated a certain way. And in my case, the person who mentored me kind of helped me to name what that would look like even before I had it. And I agreed, yeah, that's what it would look like. And so I just decided to act as if that was who I was. And I'm telling you, from that day forward, I got asked out in advance. and now we're married. It was a long road. It wasn't just like an instant thing. But the path to marriage started that day that I became self-respecting of my time and wouldn't just be the girl you call at the last minute when you don't have anything better to do. So I hope that helps you. The waiting thing is still like, it's still a small trigger for me, but it's a lot less now because there are so few people in my life who give me that pain of making me wonder what the heck's going on. When people feel hurt or threatened, A reaction rises up. It's emotional, it's physiological, and these things shape what they do and say and think in that moment, and it can lead to behaviors that they later regret. I call those self-defeating behaviors, and everybody has some. But if you had trauma when you were a kid, your nervous system may have gone through some changes that mean your reactions are extra large. and therefore your self-defeating behaviors can overwhelm your life. So this is a big reason why having childhood PTSD is a problem in present time and not just the past. So I want to unpack the sequence that happens, that takes you from something that happens to an emotional reaction to a behavior. And you're going to find that you have a reaction pattern that can drive you, before you even realize it, into self-sabotaging behaviors. that have maybe cost you relationships with people you loved and opportunities that you wanted. And those behaviors may even have drained your sense of dignity and self-esteem. So I'll talk about common self-defeating behaviors in a minute, but I want to bring your attention to what your pattern is. Most people have a pattern, and once you see it, it's a lot easier to change. So let's take this process. Something happens. Your reaction pattern kicks in and out comes the behavior, right? So step by step, the process starts with a trigger, way over here, a trigger. And when I say trigger, I don't mean the conventional social media use of the word trigger, where it means that something made you angry or upset. When I say trigger, I mean a stimulus that happens within you or outside of you that sets off neurological dysregulation. And if you're new to my work, what I want you to know is that abuse and neglect in childhood can cause changes in your nervous system that disrupt parts of your body, your physical functioning, your thinking, your emotions, because those are all governed by your nerves. ...service system and trauma can make them glitch a little bit. That's known as dysregulation. Everybody gets dysregulated a little bit but people who are traumatized as kids are dysregulated more deeply and more of the time and can have a harder time coming back from it. Now, never fear. You can learn to notice dysregulation and quickly learn to re-regulate. So a trigger sets off dysregulation, and when you're dysregulated, the gates open for this oversized reaction, and that's where the trouble gets in. Now, just for the record, triggers are going to happen. Some can be avoided, like you can stay away from fireworks on holidays, for example, or you can not date people who yell, but... when you can't avoid the trigger, let's say feeling criticized at times or left out, you can focus on calming the reaction that you have to that trigger. And when you learn to do that, the triggering event that you can't control becomes more manageable for you too. So let me show you an example of the trigger reaction behavior sequence. Now again, most self-defeating behaviors begin with a trigger followed by a dysregulated reaction that then leads to the behavior. So let's say you go on a first date and the person says they'll call you when to plan your second date. But after many days, they haven't called, which for many people is a trigger. And you become terrified that you did something awful to push them away. And that fear is a reaction to the trigger. And then you text them three times a day for the next two weeks. And that's a self-defeating behavior. So you see what I mean? Trigger. Reaction. Behavior. So when it comes to self-defeating behaviors, most of them fall into three major groups, or what I call reaction patterns. And the patterns drive the behavior. The patterns include the urge to cling, the urge to control, and the urge to escape. And one of these patterns is usually dominant in each person, but most of us slip into our non-dominant pattern from time to time. And your pattern shows up when you're triggered. And if you don't yet have much healing, it can prompt your particular state self-defeating behaviors. Like we all have some favorites. So if you were never triggered, your reaction pattern would be dormant. Isn't that cool? Like if you never got triggered, if you could never get triggered, the reaction wouldn't happen. The behavior would be unlikely to come out or, you know, wouldn't pressure you so bad to do those things you don't want to do that sabotage you. But getting triggered is bound to happen sometimes. Remember, the reaction to the trigger is usually emotional. And for people with childhood PTSD, that can mean dysregulated emotions that come out way larger than normal. And you can teach yourself to notice these reactions, the patterns that you have that tend to cause problems, and make a conscious effort to catch them before you act on them. So what are the emotions that throw us into this loop? The three big culprits are overwhelm, fear, and loneliness. Now there are others including anger, jealousy, brokenheartedness that can certainly prompt self-defeating behaviors. But just to keep this simple, I'm lumping all reactive emotions into just those three categories. So each of those core emotions, overwhelm, fear, loneliness, tend to go hand in hand with certain reactions. Overwhelm can prompt you to want to escape. I'm overwhelmed. I got to go. Fear can prompt you to want to control. Oh, it's out of control. I want to get it under control. Loneliness can prompt you, quite logically, to cling. And those are reaction patterns. You may notice that these reaction patterns are similar to the four widely recognized trauma responses, fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. These also refer to people's basic behavior patterns, reaction patterns, when they perceive a threat. And they can be especially strong in traumatized people. I focus on escape, control, and cling. because they're more specific drivers of self-defeating behaviors, and they're interpersonal. Now, you probably have a pattern, and I'll help you identify that, the behaviors and the reactions that come out when you're triggered. To make positive changes in your life, working on how you react while triggered, is the most powerful thing you can do. When you can better manage your reactions, you'll have more control over what happens next. Instead of messing things up and creating more problems in your life, you have less of that. You can have more room in your life to make positive improvements. And when your life is going better, you won't be as triggered. And the positive upward cycle of healing continues. So let's look at the three patterns one by one. So first, the urge to escape. And this is akin to the flight response. Something triggering happens and you get a strong urge to get away. way. It's often triggered by feeling overwhelmed and here's how it can go wrong. So let's say you have an argument with your partner which is a trigger and they raise your voice at you, not abusively but it's emotional for them and for you. So there you go, reaction comes, your mind races and you're flooded with emotions so intense that you can hardly bear it. That's a reaction. You flip into escape mode then and you are convinced that at all costs, even if you ruin your relationship, you must Get out of your relationship right now. Have you ever had that feeling, that very strong feeling like, I don't care, I'm leaving? It's common. It's a normal reaction in traumatized people, but it's a self-defeating behavior that does a lot of harm to relationships. What you really needed was to make the unbearable feelings smaller and more manageable, but it's hard to see that when you're in the middle of dysregulation and overwhelm. And in this state, you might say hurtful things, announce you're leaving your relationship and not, you know, come to until you've packed your bags, or you've threatened to never return, or you've driven 30 miles away. The reaction does eventually come back down again. And as you gradually return to regular awareness, just the regret, the remorse for your behavior kicks in. Have you had that part too? And you fear that you've now ruined your relationship. So here's what you can do instead. When you keep in mind that when you're thinking of fleeing the relationship, it means that you're triggered and you accept that. And in a trauma-driven reaction, probably overwhelm, and you can take a time out to use your re-regulation tools to bring that back down. This is no time to make big decisions and no time to announce the end of our relationship or that you're leaving or anything like that. Maybe you need to leave, maybe you don't. But if you're not in danger, you can wait until you're re-regulated and out of the state of overwhelm in order to make a decision. Most things can wait until tomorrow. Now, it may require new boundaries to give yourself a pause when you're triggered and good communication with your partner so that you can agree that when either of you is having a trauma-driven reaction, you or they... can call a timeout to get re-regulated. Now this is powerful medicine for relationships and can help you avoid acting out with a self-defeating behavior. Remember if you ever think you that you need to leave your relationship assuming you're in no danger you can always postpone the decision by a day and see if your feelings are different. If you're prone to trauma-driven reactions they almost certainly will be different a day later. Now here are some self-defeating behaviors that often go along with the urge to escape. Lack of self-care, not dealing with your physical needs, taking care of your teeth, bathing, eating properly, procrastination, addictive use of substances or food or tv or the internet, going into debt over impulsive purchases, blaming other people for everything that's wrong with your life, rage, yelling, anger. These sometimes reflect the urge to control other people, but raging can also be a way to dissociate from feelings of fear and overwhelm. Sometimes anger feels like a step up from being terribly depressed. Also another sign is fantasy, including dreams of becoming rich and famous, romantic obsession, limerence, which is an addictive obsession for someone that you can't have, avoidance, fleeing relationships, or taking space when things get hard. but not working to mend the problem underneath. Refusing to make plans or promises for the future with people who are counting on you. There's also mini avoidance, which includes not returning calls and texts promptly, or flaking out on plans. Now let's talk about another reaction pattern, and let's talk about control. The urge to control people, to make other people do what you want so that you can feel okay, is based on the belief that this is the only way for you to get emotional relief. And I think we all do that a little bit sometimes. It's similar to the fight response, and it's often triggered by fear. Now here's how it can go wrong. Let's say you have an argument about your best friend's plan to go away for the weekend with some friends, and the friends that she's visiting... didn't invite you, which is a trigger, right? You feel left out. You fear that the reason is because they don't like you. That's your reaction. Nobody likes May. I never get liked. You also fear that your friend doesn't think that you're worthy of her friendship and she's been making positive changes in her life and you fear you can't keep up with her. She never told you any of this and you're embarrassed to express your fears. You find yourself saying derogatory things about her other friends, and that's something that we do sometimes when we feel threatened, and that angers her. And this in turn prompts an intense emotional reaction in you. You blurt out that if she goes to spend time with them, that you'll lose respect for her. Well, that's a self-defeating behavior. She goes anyway, and while she's gone, you become terrified that you've ruined the friendship, and then you text an apology, and then she doesn't reply. Now, what happened there? Your fears that your friend had outgrown you and would abandon you prompted you to try to jealously and maybe passive-aggressively hurt her relationships with other friends. And you hoped that you could control your fear by controlling her behavior and her feelings, which of course was bound to fail and backfire. And your fear became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now maybe the friendship is slipping away from you. But here's what you can do instead. When you can notice your trigger, in this case, not being included, you can bring all your focus to your reaction. Remembering that this trigger tends to bring up fears of abandonment and unworthiness, and your past attempts to try to manipulate and control people to stop them from leaving you have never worked. So you keep that in mind. You remind yourself that when you're afraid of abandonment, your best course of action is to pause. Just take a break. So you use your tools to calm your reaction, and then you allow your friend to make her own choices. That's how friendship works. When you connect with her again, you can show genuine friendliness. And in fact, your friend never has to know that you had a strong negative reaction. You could talk about it, but you can do it later when you're not so dysregulated. Now, if your reaction pattern is to control, here are some self-defeating behaviors that you also might have noticed in yourself. People with that control urge also are prone to black and white thinking, like either you're with me or you're against me. Either you go to the camping trip with your friends or the friendship's over. You're trying to force someone to go to therapy or substance abuse treatment. That's a control thing. Codependency is control, which in essence is trying to make someone change because of... your belief that if they would change you could be happy another control thing is setting excessive boundaries that are really rules meant to dictate what other people can say or do and then demanding that people comply with them and that's not a boundary that's control a boundary is something that you will step away from another control behavior is like threats like threatening that the that's it the relationship is over i'm leaving which is emotional abuse And it can even escalate into physical abuse. And that's certainly physical abuse is a control thing. Making a scene in public or having emotional meltdowns when you don't get what you want that basically blackmails the person to comply so that they can stay safe and not be part of the scene. Fudging the truth or outright lying so you can control what your partner knows and avoid dealing with the consequences of them knowing the truth. Now let's look at the reaction pattern of clinging. The urge to cling to people, to hold onto them at all costs, stems from a belief that any amount of misery is worth it to avoid being alone and facing the feelings that arise when relationships end. And that's like a prison for a lot of us, especially if you have abandonment wounds. You'll put up with anything not to have to face that feeling. It's associated with the fawn response, the cling, the urge to cling. And though it looks the least harmful, It is the most soul-sucking trauma-driven reaction of them all. So let's say you've fallen in love with somebody, a guy you've been hanging out with as friends for a month or so, and you don't want to push it, but you believe that he will eventually say something to make it clear that, yes, you are dating. And then one day he casually mentions he's seeing someone. Trigger sets off dysregulation, right? You're devastated. And it's as if your whole world just died. You've been waiting for a long time for him to sort of validate what you hoped for. And now you're ashamed that you ever thought that he was into you. And here we are. We're in reaction land now. Trigger reaction. So you push down your feelings. You smile. You pretend to be happy for him. And he then asks you if you mind if he brings his girlfriend to the movie that the two of you were planning to see that night. And instead of canceling the plan or telling him that you feel misled and hurt, you're like, You pretend you're looking forward to meeting her and go to the movies with them, which is a self-defeating behavior that we call being cool girl. You feel that leaving or saying something will only ruin the friendship with him, and anything, anything is better than that for you when you have that kind of emotional pain that you're afraid of being left. You feel that going to the movie is better than being alone. So here's what you can do instead. Because you know this trigger, rejection, is hard for you, and in the past has driven you to abandon yourself, lying about your feelings, and playing a role that brings you more pain and humiliation, just to save the friendship. The thought of leaving... This relationship sounds unbearable to you, so you can remind yourself that pretending to be just friends has always kept you alone and sad. Non-reciprocal friendships take up the space where a partner or friends could be, so it guarantees that you'll stay alone and sad. During alone time, you can practice doing things that give you joy, so that the failure of any one relationship really can't ruin your life. You can also take steps to make new friends. with an explicit aim to be yourself with them. Be yourself and see how it goes. You may need to remind yourself every day that hiding who you are and how you feel has never made you happy. And the only people who will ever really know and love you are the ones who love the real you. So how do you know if your reaction pattern is clinging? Here are some signs. You stay in bad relationships where you're mistreated or you're just miserable. You stay in a terrible job where you're not fulfilled and you're not earning the money that you could if you change jobs. You pretend to be a friend when you are in love with someone just to keep the relationship going. You pretend that you're cool with staying friends with an ex or with being one of several sex partners of theirs when what you want is to be with them monogamously. Holding on to a fantasy that someone will one day come around and reciprocate your feelings. but you avoid actually talking to them about this, usually because you already know they would not reciprocate and your intense feelings would make them uncomfortable. So you stay silent. You go along with whatever scenario you think will preserve a relationship, and then suddenly you flip and you hurt people, believing that they owe you more than they've given because you gave them so much. Now this is the clinging pattern. And healing from it, just like all the other ones, is a step-by-step process of building up the capacity to handle your emotions. And I know this doesn't come naturally to those of us who were traumatized as kids, but you can build it up like a muscle. So that when triggers happen, and they will happen, you have space between how you feel and what you do. And this can make all the difference in your life. Why do people who were... Traumatized as children have so many struggles connecting with other people. There is one big reason. Are you ready? It's because of people. They're triggering. They are. There are so many people I love and I enjoy their time but there are so many situations where being social feels like an obstacle course. I never quite know if I'm doing okay with other people. And even when I am doing okay, I'll come out of some get-together just filled with remorse. Like, what did I say? I vaguely think I said something wrong or I offended people, but I don't know. Or I was too negative. And sure, I guess you could say, you know, this is just ordinary insecurity. But the bottom line is, of course I'm sensitive because I'm alive and people are. triggering. So my video today is the second in my series on isolation and loneliness. Being triggered by people is a huge reason why we isolate. The original video that I'm about to share with you was a huge success back in the pre-pandemic days. We had no idea what was coming, did we, when it came to isolation. And this video that eventually became part of my isolation course, which last year got replaced by my connection boot camp, And if you're interested in that, you can check it out on my website at crappychildhoodfairy.com, Connection Boot Camp. But my channel was very small when I made this video, and yet this video attracted thousands of subscribers and taught me that not only is healing our people triggers important to this audience, but that I'm not the only one who struggles with it. So here's the original video I called, Do People Trigger You? Last week in the first video in my series on isolation, I talked about how common it is for people with CPTSD and childhood PTSD to experience being isolated and being lonely. And yeah, loneliness is part of life, at least a little bit for most people. But for people who experienced early trauma, it's like a curse many of us carry that touches everything in our lives and almost never gets talked about. So in this video, I'm going to keep talking about isolation along with one of the biggest obstacles to healing it and that's the fact that people are triggering for us. It's just true. Oh my gosh, people are intense, they're sometimes angry or annoying or dangerous and they sometimes seem to be judging us or manipulating us or sometimes they're just so cool and beautiful they're intimidating. It doesn't take much with us. The dysregulation of CPTSD gets triggered and we lose confidence in our ability to be in that moment without making a fool of ourselves or hurting someone. And those feelings can leave us with a powerful impulse to pull away and hide, to isolate. And we have a hundred ways of doing that. Now remember, when we say isolation, we're talking about an unhealthy, sometimes involuntary lack of connection with other people, or a total lack of relationships. Some people isolate in a big, obvious way, but some of us are sort of secretly isolated, and we've developed An ability to withdraw from real connection even when we're in a crowded room, or part of a family that lives together, or even inside of a marriage. And it's hard to stop isolating, almost as if the isolation had a mind of its own and was trying to sabotage us every time we start to get close to people. It's kind of like an irrepressible urge to get away, to get safe and away from the person in front of us, sometimes by any means necessary. And it might look like we just drop them, or we might act angry and unreasonable so they want to drop us. And we're usually not consciously trying to do that. It's not really what we want, but then it happens so fast and we did it. It feels sometimes so impossible to control, like a burst of coughing is hard to control that we can suppress for a minute, but it has to come out eventually. And logically you think, I should be able to stop doing that, but it just keeps happening. So if you experience neglect and abuse as a kid, you probably know what I'm talking about. People trigger you. When we're triggered, we say the wrong things, we get socially awkward, we might get too emotional or just generally be too much for other people. So we've learned to control this triggered reaction by avoiding people either by staying very peripheral and superficial or by actually staying away from people. There's a certain common sense to this when you're in the early stages of healing and you have no other way to prevent a big rush of dysregulation from just hijacking your life and you feel like You just can't go through that again. And so you keep your distance. You stay on the periphery of groups. You avoid opportunities that would require you to show up consistently. You struggle to genuinely commit to another person, even when commitment is what you want more than anything. And this kind of isolation can hollow out your life just as badly as living in a cave. Now, for some people, pets fill the gap. And thank God for the unconditional love of dogs and cats and pets. For a lot of hurt people, they are the first beings that they can let back into their lives. And some people are so hurt, that's all they can manage. But to live fully, we're going to have to connect with humans at some point, as flawed and cranky and pushy and needy and triggering as they sometimes are. So why are we so sensitive to people's normal ways? For one thing... We just didn't learn this stuff at home. When other kids were getting pep talks from their parents and being taught the nuances of interacting with people and what to do and what not to do and what everything means, we were more or less outside of all that, just completely on our own emotionally, making mistakes, saying the wrong thing, being mystified why we seem to have pushed people away. Ideally we'd have learned how this all works earlier but here we are in adulthood with an opportunity to learn it all right now. So the first thing to just accept is that being connected to people is going to involve some getting triggered. And it's worth learning to deal with that because in the long run avoiding people will only make the problem bigger. And sooner or later we want to get some control over the trigger mechanism without isolating. Just so that we can tolerate being around people and maybe just maybe cultivate some true friendship or maybe even a romance. Now the next thing is to learn to calm the triggers. And to do that, you need a way to notice and then lose the substance of that trigger, which is actually fear. When you're triggered, a thousand fears are flooding your being, just overwhelming you. So the art to reducing triggers is to notice and lose each of those fears a little at a time as you slowly take steps to connect with more people. You interact a little, you get triggered a little, and then you deal directly with the fears that came up. And then pause. And then you do the cycle again. Interact a little, get triggered a little, and then deal with the fears. Now some people seem to be able to just let go of fear, and I'm not like that. I can't actually lose fear at will, and that's why I use the writing technique you've probably heard me talk about. And if you want to try that, you may want to check out the free course of mine where I show you how to do it.

All CPTSD triggers lead to some level of dysregulation of your emotions, your brain, your whole nervous system. And in my experience, healing is virtually impossible until you can learn to get re-regulated. So today I wanna share with you a video about getting triggered by abandonment. And this is one of the videos from my dysregulation bootcamp, which is a 20-day course that helps you Calm your CPTSD triggers so that you can get mastery over your emotions, your thinking, and your physiology so that you can live your life more in harmony with yourself, more regulated, more of the time.

It's so powerful when you learn to re-regulate. I'm sharing this because I tell a story here of how triggers can get that power over you. And if you live with a vulnerability around feeling abandoned, my story could just give you some hope. I hope so. If you get dysregulated around the feeling of abandonment, I invite you to check out my dysregulation boot camp, which you can join anytime, and our four-week coaching program that's all about re-regulation.

That starts October 8th, so you should register now. You can do that on my website, crappychildhoodfairy.com. Today we're going to talk about one of the most intense triggers for childhood PTSD, abandonment.

This one is so primal because we're all wired to be loved and included in the tribe as if our lives depend on it. Because in any situation before the last, I don't know, 100 years or so, our lives did depend on it. We need our parents when we're born and we need dependable people connected to us throughout our lives.

So just about everyone, and I know this because I've taught so many people to write their fears each day and I've heard the things that come up for everyone, being left by the tribe is a core fear. It comes out as fear of ending up alone and homeless and dying alone. And the fear isn't irrational really, it's a standard feature of being a homo sapien.

But for those of us with childhood PTSD, it can go way out of proportion to the situation, to the point of being crippling, and it can make us seem really unreasonable. In my childhood, my mother would leave the family for a month at a time, starting when I was a month old. She'd run off with some guy and not tell anyone where she was or if she was coming back.

Now she did come back, but the family would be in anguish and frantic with uncertainty, and this was going on all around me while I was a small kid. And then when I was about five, she'd sometimes take me with her and leave me for a moment in a lobby or for a couple of hours in a movie theater. And then she would not come back for 10, 11 hours. and the police picked me up once outside a casino. That's when I was six.

I hadn't eaten all day. I had a fever. Now, nowadays you'd lose your kids over something like that, but not back then. And I mean, I was scrambling to cover for her because, of course, I didn't want them to take me away from her.

But you can see where I got kind of a weird thing around abandonment, and that carried into my adulthood. And it certainly kicked up when I started having groups of friends, then boyfriends, and then working and trying to fit in. All situations where sometimes there's rejection. And before I learned to stay regulated any rejection, I'll tell you what it felt like.

It was as if I'd been injected with a toxic chemical. I'm assuming it was a release of some stress hormone and I could feel that bad feeling just like flowing through my bloodstream and I think, oh no here it goes again, and I'd fall into a very dark kind of dysregulation. and there would be nothing I could do to stop it.

That's a trigger. So you'll be tempted on the worksheet to put a lot of work into understanding why you have certain triggers like this one, just like I told you why. And knowing this, that's possibly helpful. Maybe you'll better understand that your reactions to abandonment are not your fault.

You didn't just make it up. But I'm going to direct the majority of your focus to just remembering and noticing what it feels like when you're triggered by abandonment. What in your adult life recently has set it off? And what was it about those situations that seems to get to you so badly? So that's all in the worksheet, along with reflection on how you've come back from abandonment.

Totally important, right? One thing that's going to help you tremendously with dislodging those deep-rooted triggers that have an early and understandable origin is the daily practice. When you write your fears and resentments, you can pour out whatever is coming up on a hard day when your fear of abandonment got triggered. Fear no one likes me, fear I don't know what just happened, fear I'll end up alone when I'm old and I'm resentful at my girlfriend because I have fear she didn't text me back last night and so on. Deep triggers aren't going to change because you merely decide to change.

It's not likely anyway. They change when you can access that pre-language part of your brain where the abandonment hurt was installed and language out through writing not speaking, writing what that feeling is that's happening, the terror, the self-hatred, whatever it is for you. You write it, you meditate, and you'll find that the emotions are calmer and they're lying low for the time being.

And your thinking is clearer. Like maybe you don't have to freak out and act jealous this time. Maybe you can forget about it.

Or maybe you're sick of all the fear involved in a relationship and you want to end it. There's no right answer here. The point is that all options are open to you and you're no longer enslaved by a fear of that physiological hell associated with abandonment that limits so many of us with childhood PTSD. If you grew up with parents who were unreliable, you may have ended up with strong triggers now in adulthood when people leave you waiting, when you've made plans but they either don't show up or they don't get in touch until the last minute and they leave you anxious and afraid.

with your emotions escalating every minute that passes. Do you have that? It's an emotional flashback, right?

It's an old memory that sometimes doesn't even have an experience attached to it. It just floods in under certain triggers like being kept waiting. And you may not even know cognitively what hit you, but someone leaves you waiting and you fill up with adrenaline and then more adrenaline because there's this fear that you'll act in an irrational relationship destroying way. Maybe you've done that before, like exploding with anger when the person finally shows up, or you'll rationalize your fears as just you being, you know, you're just being crazy or insecure. And this confusion, whether someone is really awful and deserves your wrath, or whether you're crazy and should just stop, right?

That confusion is very anxiety provoking and it's a trigger in itself. This is so very much what it's like to begin dating people when you have unhealed them. childhood trauma. It's a normal side effect, but of course we want to get some clarity and heal it. So I have a letter today from a woman I'll call May, and she writes, Dear Anna, I've noticed that a major trigger for me is when it comes to planning or waiting on someone to inform me of plans or communication around plans.

With some people it flows really easily and I don't even think about it, usually with friends, but with other people who are less communicative, or friends who I'm not as close to or they don't think that we're as close as I think we are and then she clarifies that she's really talking about men she's dating. It can become really debilitating if they don't do things a certain way that indicates they care about me. She says with quotation marks circling this because I think she's calling herself a little crazy but we'll get to that.

Okay. I have this idea that if someone found me to be an important and worthy person in their life, they would show that by being considerate and relatively reliable with communication and plans. I'm not saying this is correct, but it's just what I have noticed in my brain. Regardless of the trigger, in some cases it feels like a relatively reasonable request as well, meaning if someone says they will touch base tomorrow about evening plans and then doesn't text me till 6 p.m.

that day, that feels borderline rude to me. Like they are keeping me waiting around on them and it must be a sign that they don't really respect or like me, for example. Maybe I'm off on that too, but that's just how it feels at the moment.

I think this trigger stems a lot from my father who, according to my mom, was often unreliable about plans. For example, making plans to come see me and my sister after my parents were divorced and I was around four or five and lived with my mom, then he would break the plans. He was also demanding of time and emotional connection with me, so I felt like I often had to do whatever he wanted, when he wanted it, but was left in the lurch when I was hoping to rely on him for anything. I've seen this pain come up many times in relationships when it comes to how men create or follow up on plans with me.

So I realize so much of this is a trigger, yet I also have plenty of people who simply seem like they generally... They generally want me in their lives. They communicate directly or more often than not, reliable people. So I know it's very possible for me not to be triggered by this topic. So when someone triggers it I'm not sure if that means they just don't value me in my time and I'm reading my instinct correctly or if I'm expecting too much from them too soon because of past trauma.

Especially with men as I'm scared it could be the sign of an unreliable man who I'm afraid will be like my father breaking plans and being emotionally unreliable which I do not want. This can happen really early on before I even have enough of a pattern to really know for sure. With men, I feel terrified of checking in on them and asking for an update, as I would with a friend, for example, because I don't want to come across as triggered and scared.

And then I find if I don't check in, I can get resentful when they do finally update me. It can go in a circle. Because of this, I'm curious.

How and when do I communicate my needs to someone when I'm also aware there is a major trigger at play? I've never really known how to communicate my needs. If I even know what they are because I fear I will sound demanding and manipulative.

When I think I know one and it seems reasonable enough, for example, please don't leave me hanging all day about our plans, how do I do it in a way that doesn't accidentally become an unreasonable demand on someone because of my deeper trigger around it? Signed from May. All right, May. I'm so glad you wrote. I've got your back here, and I totally know what you're talking about.

I think this is something a lot of us can relate to. Waiting has been a huge trigger for me. So let's go through again. All right. Major trigger around planning, waiting on someone to tell you of plans and communication surrounding plans.

With some people it flows really easily and I don't think about it usually with friends. With others, less communicative friends and friends who may not think of me as as being as close to them as I see us, or especially men I'm dating. Okay, hold on. Just as you're doing that, I'm hearing this bifurcation of people in your life. There's friends, there's people who are easy for you, and you mentioned you can just like text them and go, hey, when are we getting together?

And then there's men, and there's this common characteristic with men. You're saying it's friends, but I don't know. It sounds like a bifurcation of types of relationship, and when a romantic relationship comes along.

the trigger exists. Now the question for you is does it exist because you're just so triggerable or does it exist because of the men you're allowing into your life? All right okay I hear you second guessing yourself a little bit about that so let's see if we can zero in on what that is.

I think a lot of people have that problem. Now you said people who are not less communicative and who may not see me as a close friend as much as I do and that it can become really debilitating for you if they don't do things a certain way. That quote indicates they care about me.

Now, when you put quotes on that, I think what you're doing is trying to admit that part of you sees that that's unreasonable. And I just want to tell you, actually, that's not unreasonable. I think what's unreasonable is that you think there's any problem with you wanting indications that the people you spend your time with care about you. Of course, they should care about you and respect you and respect your time. So.

Yeah, so it becomes really debilitating if they don't do things a certain way. So I'm trying to guess, you know, I'm sort of trying to read through the lines here. And I have known people who are overly insecure.

It's like an insecure attachment trait. It's like, hey, are we, you know, are we getting together? Okay, are we still getting together? Because I didn't hear from you for an hour. Like it's possible to go too far in that direction.

But if people leave you waiting until 6 p.m. and don't tell you what the intention is, and they're sort of holding the key to the plan, I think, I don't know, you know, I wasn't there. Maybe it's not that big a deal. It's certainly not what a date does. Somebody who has asked you out on a date and who intends to be on a date with you does not want to leave you waiting like that or worried about it.

They're worried that you're going to change your plans if they don't go in and, you know, make a date with you. So here's what I'm intuiting is that these, the men you're dating are not fully dating you. And I would just, you know, I'm sort of jumping cart ahead the horse here, but if you are dating somebody who leaves you anxious all day because you don't know what's going on, that sounds like it's not a date. And if you had mentioned, okay, so you said...

Yeah, I have this idea that if someone found me to be an important and worthy person in their life, they would show that by being considerate and relatively reliable with communication and plans. Hello, May, yes. That's not just some idea you have, not some trauma belief.

That's life. If someone likes you and respects you and values you, they will have a reasonable amount of communication and reliability. And then you say, here comes the second guessing, I'm not saying this is correct.

Why do I get the feeling that someone has just gaslit the crap out of you about this? You know, where you had to defend yourself and where they go, oh, you're just, you know, this is just something that you say. This is some trigger you have. You're so unrealistic.

And you go, well, I'm not saying I'm correct. Like somebody, was it your dad? Just plant it in your mind that this is crazy for you to expect.

That this is, what did you say? Demanding. Oh dear, somebody has made you feel bad about yourself for expecting a normal, respectful interaction with people.

Make plans, talk about it, feel safe and comfortable. If you don't know what the plan is to just text and say, hey, what time were you thinking we should get together? That's a totally okay thing to do.

It's not a bad thing to do. And anybody who thinks that you're, there's something wrong with you for checking in about what time they want to get together that night when you have a plan. Anybody who would go running from you for doing that, isn't a good boyfriend.

They're not a good boyfriend. Somebody, a good mate or friend is somebody who's just like, oh yeah, I wasn't sure. Five, six, I don't know. What do you think? Or six o'clock.

If we do that, we can get to the movie on time. So that's just normal communication. So May, I can just hear it.

Like somebody has planted this idea that you're damaged and you've had to try to like say it. Maybe it's just because I'm traumatized. So I want to read some of the things you said here.

I'm not saying this is correct, it's just what I've noticed in my brain. You've noticed it because it's just common culture and common courtesy. Regardless of the trigger, in some cases it feels like a relatively reasonable request. Yes, there it is, you've zeroed in. It's not really a...

you may have a trigger and the trigger may make you very emotional when it happens and maybe paralyze your response to it, but it is a reasonable request. And you say, if someone says they'll touch base tomorrow about evening plans and don't text me until 6 p.m. that day, That feels borderline rude to me.

No, it's not borderline rude. It's rude. It's rude. But, you know, I think if people are, if you really are casual friends with somebody and you have a relationship that's solid enough that you're like, tomorrow, right?

We're going to get together. Okay, let's check in. You know, I'll talk to you tomorrow. And then they don't talk to you till six, but you can trust them to have the plan. You're talking about people who have conditioned you to totally worry there is no plan.

And I just want to challenge you, like, what you doing with people who put you in anxiety all day about whether there really is a plan. Here's what I think. I think you may have a trauma trigger about this and I get it.

I have it too. It's a lot better than it used to be. But I think even more than that, you have a crap fit wound.

That's crap fit where we get too good at learning to fit ourselves to unacceptable behavior and inappropriate people that you were given a crap fit wound. that there's something wrong with you if you need to know what the plan is. Like who does that except some like, I don't know, I can sort of get a feel for what your dad is like, hey babe, you know, I got to do my thing.

You can't put, you know, constraints on me and, you know, gee, women or whatever, you know, some, somebody else's trip got on you and I'm hoping that you can root that out. And you get to actually be you. You get to be someone who likes to know what the plan is. Like I know tons of people, they're sort of on a continuum.

Some people, they're pretty loose about it. Some people want to know. I'm okay with all of it.

And when I care about those people, I try to accommodate what helps them feel comfortable. And if somebody wanted to check in with me about the plan, I would never ever think that that was weird. Now, if they checked in like five times or kept implying that I couldn't be trusted to do what I said I was going to do.

Yeah, I might take offense, but it doesn't sound like you're doing that, May. So you say, it feels borderline rude, like they're keeping me waiting around on them, and it must be a sign that they don't really respect or like me, for example. Maybe I'm off on that too, but that's just how it feels at the moment. All right, this is where, like so many of us, get into gaslighting ourselves. I don't think you're off.

When people leave you waiting and leave you anxious all day, and don't talk to you well i don't know may it's like if you didn't if you didn't text them during the day to let them know you wanted to know maybe they haven't done anything wrong also people who wait all day are at one end of the continuum so if you keep finding yourself with people like that and it sounds like you're really talking about menu date i would just say yeah it sounds like you're the pattern that your dad put in you is active right now as you heal from your childhood ptsd you will have less and less of a draw towards people who match that sort of neglect of you, that mistreatment of you. You will lose that ability, that special crap fit superpower to just go, oh, they didn't show up and didn't call. That's okay. I'll blame myself. I'll pretend I'm crazy and that the problem is that I'm just so needy and that they're not really the problem.

And that's how I'll make this whole thing work. And I mean, how many times have all of us done that? So many times. But that's how we end up in relationships that leave us in pain and feeling empty all the time.

Okay, so you say, I think this trigger stems from my father, and your mom said he was unreliable, he'd just leave you waiting. He was very demanding of time and emotional attention. So that's a yucky combination.

I hope that men aren't doing that to you, where they simultaneously blow off plans with you, and then when they are with you, just demand a lot and drain your energy. You've seen this pain come up many times in relationships. Yeah, if it's coming up many times, yeah, it's probably just your core stuff.

And you know what? It totally makes sense why you have that. It's not your fault. It's not your fault you have that.

So you say you realize it's a trigger. Plenty of people simply seem like they generally want me in their lives. That's the kind of guy you want to date.

He generally wants you in his life. They communicate directly. Very good quality in people. And more often than not, they're reliable.

Yes, good quality for friends and partners. So I know it's very possible for me not to be triggered. You know, I'm sort of wondering if your trigger is at all the problem and not just who you're hanging out with.

I'm not sure what it means if they don't value my time. or if I'm reading, if my instinct, if I'm reading incorrectly, or if I'm expecting too much from them too soon because of past trauma, I would just take off that clause because of past trauma, first of all. And stop, you know, like you had trauma, yeah.

But the fact is you feel that way. The fact is that May's heart would like to be communicated with during the day so she can have peace in her day knowing what time everybody's getting together. That is just a totally okay personality trait. There may be people who are looser about it, but not you. So just respect yourself.

Respect yourself and be like, yeah, I need to know. So when somebody says on Saturday, so tomorrow I'll give you a call. Say, okay, what time did you want to, what time were you thinking of getting together? Stand up for yourself in that way. Can you say, I feel terrified of checking in on them and asking for an update as I would with a friend, for example, because I don't want to come off as triggered and scared.

Okay. Yeah, I understand that. You don't want to show the triggered and scared card like early in a relationship. Even though you are triggered and scared, you're triggered and scared about it.

That's how you really feel. But yeah, I get it to put on a kind of like, you know, to not put that on other people. But how you avoid getting triggered and scared is just to ask, just to say, can you, you know, what time were you thinking? I can make plans for it if I know what time it is.

Okay, so you get afraid to check in and you don't ask them and you leave it open, kind of giving them permission to not say. But then you find that if you don't check in, you get resentful when they finally do update you. And there it is.

See, there's the problem. So for you, May, I'm just going to suggest, you know, try this daily practice that I teach. See if you can get some of the feelings out on paper and just ask for them to be removed.

Because what can happen when you do that and then rest in meditation is you just get a little clearer about what it really is. This dilemma of is it me or is it them? starts to come a little closer together and then you go, oh, it's them.

Or sometimes it's me. Sometimes it's me. But that that discernment of what it is is there and as you begin to heal as a result of getting freer and freer of the fearful and resentful thoughts that are kind of driving you to not be yourself, to deny how you really feel, what you really need, when you're denying that, of course you're resentful, but you're kind of getting resentful at somebody else because you denied it from yourself. The part that's hard to face is that people who treat you like that, like it's a little bit unlikely that they are secretly great people who are perfect for you. It's just that you haven't communicated your needs.

It sounds more to me like you're letting people into your life who match your dad's neglect and you're trying to fix yourself to make it work. That's what it sounds like. So I think the hardest thing to face is that when somebody you like isn't going to work out and the... right thing to do is to just end that relationship and make space so you can work on getting in touch with what's really important to you, what really makes you happy, what sort of a person you'd really like to find and fall in love with.

That there's a really good feeling ahead of that act of severing that relationship but when you were neglected by a parent that abandonment wound can be just as you said debilitating. It can be debilitating. Very hard to make that decision. Very tempting to keep thinking if I change, you know, maybe I can make them change, maybe I can change myself. And there's this huge attraction to try to blame ourselves for somebody else's bad behavior.

Because if it's me, you know, I can do something about that. If it's their bad behavior and it does in fact indicate that they're not very serious about me, that is so painful to face. Because you can't do anything about it.

If there ever was a chance that such a person would turn around and start respecting you, uh... One thing that might bring it about is if you had boundaries around that and you just didn't, you know, follow through on plans. So one thing I did when I was dating, and I did this when I was dating my husband, is I just set a quiet limit. I didn't tell him, but if he called me at the last minute, I wouldn't go out with him.

I just wouldn't go out with him. I'd want to go out with him. But I knew that I needed to change my pattern of being, you know, the girl you call at the last minute. And I wanted to save all my dating energy for somebody who was going to treat me better than that.

So I picked a day Thursday. If he called me before Thursday to ask to get together on the weekend, I'd be delighted to get together if I was free. But if he called me Saturday at five, I just had plans.

So true story, he called me at 5 on a Saturday once and I just, I was so lonely back then and I was really into him and I was hoping he'd call and I wanted more than anything to hang out with him but Thursday had passed, Friday had passed, Saturday day and I was really disappointed and assumed he didn't like me but then he calls at 5, my heart jumps. I'm like, oh it's him. Oh I want it so bad to just...

abandoned my plan here to act like somebody who respects herself and I just I just didn't want to do it I wanted to say yes but I just followed through I knew this was what I needed to do for me and I just said sorry I have plans now secretly my plan was to just sit there and not be that girl that was the plan I just watched TV or something that night you know the kids were at their dad's I I was free I was just sitting at home alone I was lonely and I said no And I remember he kind of went, oh, oh, okay. He goes, well, how about on Tuesday then? And I said, yeah, sure, okay. So then I had a date.

I had a date on another day. But his attitude towards me flipped in that one phone call where I said no. I just said no to last-minute plans.

So what you could do, May, if someone has really been disrespectful to you, is just say, oh, sorry, I didn't hear from you all day. I made other plans. And I know this will sound manipulative, but the other plan can be to just sit there.

in self-respect and take right your fears and resentments and start getting free of this idea that you should hold your whole day hostage for waiting for some guy to call right that's a plan that's legit and who knows maybe they'll come around or maybe they'll lose interest if people are just kind of looking for a friends with benefits or a booty call type of thing they they're not gonna they're not gonna pass that test but i've noticed that sometimes to fall in love some of us have to have a boundary put before us that communicates that the person we're considering has this respect for themselves and requires that they be treated a certain way. And in my case, the person who mentored me kind of helped me to name what that would look like even before I had it. And I agreed, yeah, that's what it would look like. And so I just decided to act as if that was who I was. And I'm telling you, from that day forward, I got asked out in advance.

and now we're married. It was a long road. It wasn't just like an instant thing.

But the path to marriage started that day that I became self-respecting of my time and wouldn't just be the girl you call at the last minute when you don't have anything better to do. So I hope that helps you. The waiting thing is still like, it's still a small trigger for me, but it's a lot less now because there are so few people in my life who give me that pain of making me wonder what the heck's going on. When people feel hurt or threatened, A reaction rises up.

It's emotional, it's physiological, and these things shape what they do and say and think in that moment, and it can lead to behaviors that they later regret. I call those self-defeating behaviors, and everybody has some. But if you had trauma when you were a kid, your nervous system may have gone through some changes that mean your reactions are extra large. and therefore your self-defeating behaviors can overwhelm your life.

So this is a big reason why having childhood PTSD is a problem in present time and not just the past. So I want to unpack the sequence that happens, that takes you from something that happens to an emotional reaction to a behavior. And you're going to find that you have a reaction pattern that can drive you, before you even realize it, into self-sabotaging behaviors. that have maybe cost you relationships with people you loved and opportunities that you wanted.

And those behaviors may even have drained your sense of dignity and self-esteem. So I'll talk about common self-defeating behaviors in a minute, but I want to bring your attention to what your pattern is. Most people have a pattern, and once you see it, it's a lot easier to change. So let's take this process.

Something happens. Your reaction pattern kicks in and out comes the behavior, right? So step by step, the process starts with a trigger, way over here, a trigger.

And when I say trigger, I don't mean the conventional social media use of the word trigger, where it means that something made you angry or upset. When I say trigger, I mean a stimulus that happens within you or outside of you that sets off neurological dysregulation. And if you're new to my work, what I want you to know is that abuse and neglect in childhood can cause changes in your nervous system that disrupt parts of your body, your physical functioning, your thinking, your emotions, because those are all governed by your nerves. ...service system and trauma can make them glitch a little bit. That's known as dysregulation.

Everybody gets dysregulated a little bit but people who are traumatized as kids are dysregulated more deeply and more of the time and can have a harder time coming back from it. Now, never fear. You can learn to notice dysregulation and quickly learn to re-regulate. So a trigger sets off dysregulation, and when you're dysregulated, the gates open for this oversized reaction, and that's where the trouble gets in. Now, just for the record, triggers are going to happen.

Some can be avoided, like you can stay away from fireworks on holidays, for example, or you can not date people who yell, but... when you can't avoid the trigger, let's say feeling criticized at times or left out, you can focus on calming the reaction that you have to that trigger. And when you learn to do that, the triggering event that you can't control becomes more manageable for you too.

So let me show you an example of the trigger reaction behavior sequence. Now again, most self-defeating behaviors begin with a trigger followed by a dysregulated reaction that then leads to the behavior. So let's say you go on a first date and the person says they'll call you when to plan your second date. But after many days, they haven't called, which for many people is a trigger.

And you become terrified that you did something awful to push them away. And that fear is a reaction to the trigger. And then you text them three times a day for the next two weeks.

And that's a self-defeating behavior. So you see what I mean? Trigger.

Reaction. Behavior. So when it comes to self-defeating behaviors, most of them fall into three major groups, or what I call reaction patterns. And the patterns drive the behavior. The patterns include the urge to cling, the urge to control, and the urge to escape.

And one of these patterns is usually dominant in each person, but most of us slip into our non-dominant pattern from time to time. And your pattern shows up when you're triggered. And if you don't yet have much healing, it can prompt your particular state self-defeating behaviors. Like we all have some favorites. So if you were never triggered, your reaction pattern would be dormant.

Isn't that cool? Like if you never got triggered, if you could never get triggered, the reaction wouldn't happen. The behavior would be unlikely to come out or, you know, wouldn't pressure you so bad to do those things you don't want to do that sabotage you.

But getting triggered is bound to happen sometimes. Remember, the reaction to the trigger is usually emotional. And for people with childhood PTSD, that can mean dysregulated emotions that come out way larger than normal.

And you can teach yourself to notice these reactions, the patterns that you have that tend to cause problems, and make a conscious effort to catch them before you act on them. So what are the emotions that throw us into this loop? The three big culprits are overwhelm, fear, and loneliness.

Now there are others including anger, jealousy, brokenheartedness that can certainly prompt self-defeating behaviors. But just to keep this simple, I'm lumping all reactive emotions into just those three categories. So each of those core emotions, overwhelm, fear, loneliness, tend to go hand in hand with certain reactions.

Overwhelm can prompt you to want to escape. I'm overwhelmed. I got to go.

Fear can prompt you to want to control. Oh, it's out of control. I want to get it under control.

Loneliness can prompt you, quite logically, to cling. And those are reaction patterns. You may notice that these reaction patterns are similar to the four widely recognized trauma responses, fight, flight, freeze, and fawn.

These also refer to people's basic behavior patterns, reaction patterns, when they perceive a threat. And they can be especially strong in traumatized people. I focus on escape, control, and cling.

because they're more specific drivers of self-defeating behaviors, and they're interpersonal. Now, you probably have a pattern, and I'll help you identify that, the behaviors and the reactions that come out when you're triggered. To make positive changes in your life, working on how you react while triggered, is the most powerful thing you can do.

When you can better manage your reactions, you'll have more control over what happens next. Instead of messing things up and creating more problems in your life, you have less of that. You can have more room in your life to make positive improvements. And when your life is going better, you won't be as triggered.

And the positive upward cycle of healing continues. So let's look at the three patterns one by one. So first, the urge to escape. And this is akin to the flight response.

Something triggering happens and you get a strong urge to get away. way. It's often triggered by feeling overwhelmed and here's how it can go wrong. So let's say you have an argument with your partner which is a trigger and they raise your voice at you, not abusively but it's emotional for them and for you. So there you go, reaction comes, your mind races and you're flooded with emotions so intense that you can hardly bear it.

That's a reaction. You flip into escape mode then and you are convinced that at all costs, even if you ruin your relationship, you must Get out of your relationship right now. Have you ever had that feeling, that very strong feeling like, I don't care, I'm leaving?

It's common. It's a normal reaction in traumatized people, but it's a self-defeating behavior that does a lot of harm to relationships. What you really needed was to make the unbearable feelings smaller and more manageable, but it's hard to see that when you're in the middle of dysregulation and overwhelm.

And in this state, you might say hurtful things, announce you're leaving your relationship and not, you know, come to until you've packed your bags, or you've threatened to never return, or you've driven 30 miles away. The reaction does eventually come back down again. And as you gradually return to regular awareness, just the regret, the remorse for your behavior kicks in.

Have you had that part too? And you fear that you've now ruined your relationship. So here's what you can do instead. When you keep in mind that when you're thinking of fleeing the relationship, it means that you're triggered and you accept that.

And in a trauma-driven reaction, probably overwhelm, and you can take a time out to use your re-regulation tools to bring that back down. This is no time to make big decisions and no time to announce the end of our relationship or that you're leaving or anything like that. Maybe you need to leave, maybe you don't.

But if you're not in danger, you can wait until you're re-regulated and out of the state of overwhelm in order to make a decision. Most things can wait until tomorrow. Now, it may require new boundaries to give yourself a pause when you're triggered and good communication with your partner so that you can agree that when either of you is having a trauma-driven reaction, you or they...

can call a timeout to get re-regulated. Now this is powerful medicine for relationships and can help you avoid acting out with a self-defeating behavior. Remember if you ever think you that you need to leave your relationship assuming you're in no danger you can always postpone the decision by a day and see if your feelings are different. If you're prone to trauma-driven reactions they almost certainly will be different a day later. Now here are some self-defeating behaviors that often go along with the urge to escape.

Lack of self-care, not dealing with your physical needs, taking care of your teeth, bathing, eating properly, procrastination, addictive use of substances or food or tv or the internet, going into debt over impulsive purchases, blaming other people for everything that's wrong with your life, rage, yelling, anger. These sometimes reflect the urge to control other people, but raging can also be a way to dissociate from feelings of fear and overwhelm. Sometimes anger feels like a step up from being terribly depressed.

Also another sign is fantasy, including dreams of becoming rich and famous, romantic obsession, limerence, which is an addictive obsession for someone that you can't have, avoidance, fleeing relationships, or taking space when things get hard. but not working to mend the problem underneath. Refusing to make plans or promises for the future with people who are counting on you. There's also mini avoidance, which includes not returning calls and texts promptly, or flaking out on plans.

Now let's talk about another reaction pattern, and let's talk about control. The urge to control people, to make other people do what you want so that you can feel okay, is based on the belief that this is the only way for you to get emotional relief. And I think we all do that a little bit sometimes. It's similar to the fight response, and it's often triggered by fear. Now here's how it can go wrong.

Let's say you have an argument about your best friend's plan to go away for the weekend with some friends, and the friends that she's visiting... didn't invite you, which is a trigger, right? You feel left out. You fear that the reason is because they don't like you.

That's your reaction. Nobody likes May. I never get liked.

You also fear that your friend doesn't think that you're worthy of her friendship and she's been making positive changes in her life and you fear you can't keep up with her. She never told you any of this and you're embarrassed to express your fears. You find yourself saying derogatory things about her other friends, and that's something that we do sometimes when we feel threatened, and that angers her.

And this in turn prompts an intense emotional reaction in you. You blurt out that if she goes to spend time with them, that you'll lose respect for her. Well, that's a self-defeating behavior.

She goes anyway, and while she's gone, you become terrified that you've ruined the friendship, and then you text an apology, and then she doesn't reply. Now, what happened there? Your fears that your friend had outgrown you and would abandon you prompted you to try to jealously and maybe passive-aggressively hurt her relationships with other friends.

And you hoped that you could control your fear by controlling her behavior and her feelings, which of course was bound to fail and backfire. And your fear became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now maybe the friendship is slipping away from you.

But here's what you can do instead. When you can notice your trigger, in this case, not being included, you can bring all your focus to your reaction. Remembering that this trigger tends to bring up fears of abandonment and unworthiness, and your past attempts to try to manipulate and control people to stop them from leaving you have never worked.

So you keep that in mind. You remind yourself that when you're afraid of abandonment, your best course of action is to pause. Just take a break.

So you use your tools to calm your reaction, and then you allow your friend to make her own choices. That's how friendship works. When you connect with her again, you can show genuine friendliness. And in fact, your friend never has to know that you had a strong negative reaction.

You could talk about it, but you can do it later when you're not so dysregulated. Now, if your reaction pattern is to control, here are some self-defeating behaviors that you also might have noticed in yourself. People with that control urge also are prone to black and white thinking, like either you're with me or you're against me. Either you go to the camping trip with your friends or the friendship's over. You're trying to force someone to go to therapy or substance abuse treatment.

That's a control thing. Codependency is control, which in essence is trying to make someone change because of... your belief that if they would change you could be happy another control thing is setting excessive boundaries that are really rules meant to dictate what other people can say or do and then demanding that people comply with them and that's not a boundary that's control a boundary is something that you will step away from another control behavior is like threats like threatening that the that's it the relationship is over i'm leaving which is emotional abuse And it can even escalate into physical abuse.

And that's certainly physical abuse is a control thing. Making a scene in public or having emotional meltdowns when you don't get what you want that basically blackmails the person to comply so that they can stay safe and not be part of the scene. Fudging the truth or outright lying so you can control what your partner knows and avoid dealing with the consequences of them knowing the truth.

Now let's look at the reaction pattern of clinging. The urge to cling to people, to hold onto them at all costs, stems from a belief that any amount of misery is worth it to avoid being alone and facing the feelings that arise when relationships end. And that's like a prison for a lot of us, especially if you have abandonment wounds. You'll put up with anything not to have to face that feeling.

It's associated with the fawn response, the cling, the urge to cling. And though it looks the least harmful, It is the most soul-sucking trauma-driven reaction of them all. So let's say you've fallen in love with somebody, a guy you've been hanging out with as friends for a month or so, and you don't want to push it, but you believe that he will eventually say something to make it clear that, yes, you are dating. And then one day he casually mentions he's seeing someone.

Trigger sets off dysregulation, right? You're devastated. And it's as if your whole world just died. You've been waiting for a long time for him to sort of validate what you hoped for. And now you're ashamed that you ever thought that he was into you.

And here we are. We're in reaction land now. Trigger reaction. So you push down your feelings.

You smile. You pretend to be happy for him. And he then asks you if you mind if he brings his girlfriend to the movie that the two of you were planning to see that night.

And instead of canceling the plan or telling him that you feel misled and hurt, you're like, You pretend you're looking forward to meeting her and go to the movies with them, which is a self-defeating behavior that we call being cool girl. You feel that leaving or saying something will only ruin the friendship with him, and anything, anything is better than that for you when you have that kind of emotional pain that you're afraid of being left. You feel that going to the movie is better than being alone. So here's what you can do instead. Because you know this trigger, rejection, is hard for you, and in the past has driven you to abandon yourself, lying about your feelings, and playing a role that brings you more pain and humiliation, just to save the friendship.

The thought of leaving... This relationship sounds unbearable to you, so you can remind yourself that pretending to be just friends has always kept you alone and sad. Non-reciprocal friendships take up the space where a partner or friends could be, so it guarantees that you'll stay alone and sad. During alone time, you can practice doing things that give you joy, so that the failure of any one relationship really can't ruin your life. You can also take steps to make new friends.

with an explicit aim to be yourself with them. Be yourself and see how it goes. You may need to remind yourself every day that hiding who you are and how you feel has never made you happy.

And the only people who will ever really know and love you are the ones who love the real you. So how do you know if your reaction pattern is clinging? Here are some signs.

You stay in bad relationships where you're mistreated or you're just miserable. You stay in a terrible job where you're not fulfilled and you're not earning the money that you could if you change jobs. You pretend to be a friend when you are in love with someone just to keep the relationship going.

You pretend that you're cool with staying friends with an ex or with being one of several sex partners of theirs when what you want is to be with them monogamously. Holding on to a fantasy that someone will one day come around and reciprocate your feelings. but you avoid actually talking to them about this, usually because you already know they would not reciprocate and your intense feelings would make them uncomfortable.

So you stay silent. You go along with whatever scenario you think will preserve a relationship, and then suddenly you flip and you hurt people, believing that they owe you more than they've given because you gave them so much. Now this is the clinging pattern. And healing from it, just like all the other ones, is a step-by-step process of building up the capacity to handle your emotions. And I know this doesn't come naturally to those of us who were traumatized as kids, but you can build it up like a muscle.

So that when triggers happen, and they will happen, you have space between how you feel and what you do. And this can make all the difference in your life. Why do people who were...

Traumatized as children have so many struggles connecting with other people. There is one big reason. Are you ready? It's because of people.

They're triggering. They are. There are so many people I love and I enjoy their time but there are so many situations where being social feels like an obstacle course. I never quite know if I'm doing okay with other people. And even when I am doing okay, I'll come out of some get-together just filled with remorse.

Like, what did I say? I vaguely think I said something wrong or I offended people, but I don't know. Or I was too negative. And sure, I guess you could say, you know, this is just ordinary insecurity.

But the bottom line is, of course I'm sensitive because I'm alive and people are. triggering. So my video today is the second in my series on isolation and loneliness. Being triggered by people is a huge reason why we isolate. The original video that I'm about to share with you was a huge success back in the pre-pandemic days.

We had no idea what was coming, did we, when it came to isolation. And this video that eventually became part of my isolation course, which last year got replaced by my connection boot camp, And if you're interested in that, you can check it out on my website at crappychildhoodfairy.com, Connection Boot Camp. But my channel was very small when I made this video, and yet this video attracted thousands of subscribers and taught me that not only is healing our people triggers important to this audience, but that I'm not the only one who struggles with it. So here's the original video I called, Do People Trigger You? Last week in the first video in my series on isolation, I talked about how common it is for people with CPTSD and childhood PTSD to experience being isolated and being lonely.

And yeah, loneliness is part of life, at least a little bit for most people. But for people who experienced early trauma, it's like a curse many of us carry that touches everything in our lives and almost never gets talked about. So in this video, I'm going to keep talking about isolation along with one of the biggest obstacles to healing it and that's the fact that people are triggering for us. It's just true.

Oh my gosh, people are intense, they're sometimes angry or annoying or dangerous and they sometimes seem to be judging us or manipulating us or sometimes they're just so cool and beautiful they're intimidating. It doesn't take much with us. The dysregulation of CPTSD gets triggered and we lose confidence in our ability to be in that moment without making a fool of ourselves or hurting someone. And those feelings can leave us with a powerful impulse to pull away and hide, to isolate.

And we have a hundred ways of doing that. Now remember, when we say isolation, we're talking about an unhealthy, sometimes involuntary lack of connection with other people, or a total lack of relationships. Some people isolate in a big, obvious way, but some of us are sort of secretly isolated, and we've developed An ability to withdraw from real connection even when we're in a crowded room, or part of a family that lives together, or even inside of a marriage. And it's hard to stop isolating, almost as if the isolation had a mind of its own and was trying to sabotage us every time we start to get close to people. It's kind of like an irrepressible urge to get away, to get safe and away from the person in front of us, sometimes by any means necessary.

And it might look like we just drop them, or we might act angry and unreasonable so they want to drop us. And we're usually not consciously trying to do that. It's not really what we want, but then it happens so fast and we did it. It feels sometimes so impossible to control, like a burst of coughing is hard to control that we can suppress for a minute, but it has to come out eventually. And logically you think, I should be able to stop doing that, but it just keeps happening.

So if you experience neglect and abuse as a kid, you probably know what I'm talking about. People trigger you. When we're triggered, we say the wrong things, we get socially awkward, we might get too emotional or just generally be too much for other people.

So we've learned to control this triggered reaction by avoiding people either by staying very peripheral and superficial or by actually staying away from people. There's a certain common sense to this when you're in the early stages of healing and you have no other way to prevent a big rush of dysregulation from just hijacking your life and you feel like You just can't go through that again. And so you keep your distance. You stay on the periphery of groups. You avoid opportunities that would require you to show up consistently.

You struggle to genuinely commit to another person, even when commitment is what you want more than anything. And this kind of isolation can hollow out your life just as badly as living in a cave. Now, for some people, pets fill the gap. And thank God for the unconditional love of dogs and cats and pets.

For a lot of hurt people, they are the first beings that they can let back into their lives. And some people are so hurt, that's all they can manage. But to live fully, we're going to have to connect with humans at some point, as flawed and cranky and pushy and needy and triggering as they sometimes are.

So why are we so sensitive to people's normal ways? For one thing... We just didn't learn this stuff at home.

When other kids were getting pep talks from their parents and being taught the nuances of interacting with people and what to do and what not to do and what everything means, we were more or less outside of all that, just completely on our own emotionally, making mistakes, saying the wrong thing, being mystified why we seem to have pushed people away. Ideally we'd have learned how this all works earlier but here we are in adulthood with an opportunity to learn it all right now. So the first thing to just accept is that being connected to people is going to involve some getting triggered.

And it's worth learning to deal with that because in the long run avoiding people will only make the problem bigger. And sooner or later we want to get some control over the trigger mechanism without isolating. Just so that we can tolerate being around people and maybe just maybe cultivate some true friendship or maybe even a romance. Now the next thing is to learn to calm the triggers.

And to do that, you need a way to notice and then lose the substance of that trigger, which is actually fear. When you're triggered, a thousand fears are flooding your being, just overwhelming you. So the art to reducing triggers is to notice and lose each of those fears a little at a time as you slowly take steps to connect with more people.

You interact a little, you get triggered a little, and then you deal directly with the fears that came up. And then pause. And then you do the cycle again.

Interact a little, get triggered a little, and then deal with the fears. Now some people seem to be able to just let go of fear, and I'm not like that. I can't actually lose fear at will, and that's why I use the writing technique you've probably heard me talk about.

And if you want to try that, you may want to check out the free course of mine where I show you how to do it.

Transcript for:Crappy Childhood Fairy - Understanding Childhood PTSD and Healing

Transcript for:
Crappy Childhood Fairy - Understanding Childhood PTSD and Healing