[Music] tonight as I said we're going to be beginning a series on complex trauma and tonight is really going to be an overview uh I want to give you the big picture and kind of all of the parts in one night and then next week we'll start to break it down and go into more detail but just to set the stage for this top tonight my wife has on her phone a game and you may have it on your phone but it's a puzzle game and I've played it a couple times where she's nudged me to ask me if I can figure it out kind of thing but what you get is all these puzzle pieces but there's no picture on it they're all blank I don't know if you've seen them and then you get like four different tries and you touch four different pieces and they light up as to what's on that piece and then once you've got those four or you're supposed to guess what the picture is of and so if you happen to get the right piece you can figure it out right away but if you don't get the right pieces you're looking at that thing and you're going I think it might be this but I'm not sure and it's just not clear to you that's how I feel about the topic of complex trauma because what has really happened recently in the world of psychology the world of addictions is that there's become this missing piece that all of a sudden a whole bunch of things make sense because we found a missing piece that explains so many different things and so in my mind as an addictions counselor and as a counselor in relationship stuff complex trauma is that missing piece that sheds light on all kinds of different areas in life and again what I want to do tonight is help you understand that but first let me just give you what I think this missing piece begins to explain complex trauma when we come to the field of addictions all of the research is showing us that about 90% of addicts grew up with complex trauma some would even say it's higher than 90% which is saying all of a sudden we're finding a a a missing piece that explains the root cause of much of what sets a person up to become an addict and in my experience as a an addictions counselor I would agree wholeheartedly that if you are working with an addict you can usually always trace it back to complex trauma beyond that what we're also seeing is now in the medical field many physical conditions that people develop are now being traced back to complex trauma and that is huge in understanding a lot of physical ailments then what I go through as a counselor is that many many relationship problems or people in problem relationships I can trace their problems back to complex trauma how they respond in Rel relationships how they go about relationships complex trauma one of the most common explanations or insights into why some people have self-esteem issues is complex trauma when it comes to why do certain people have great difficulty handling stress complex trauma now when we come to mental health issues what we're beginning to see is that for a lot of people complex trauma is now explaining mental health disorders and just let me say this as the slide comes up is that when you look at mental health we're now seeing that many depression type issues are tied into complex trauma but what we're seeing is that for some there is a genetic piece and I don't want to deny that the genetic piece is very real but more and more we're seeing that it comes from complex trauma so take it beyond that we're seeing now that ADHD attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in many many cases is tied back to complex trauma in childhood many dis anxiety disorders Trace back to complex trauma if you have a child who's been diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder good chance complex trauma contct conduct disorders of all types complex trauma attachment disorders huge trauma is the central piece in understanding them then psychotic disorders borderline personality disorder narcissistic personality disorder all of those things complex trauma many of your specific phobias complex trauma and what is happening now in the whole mental health field is just this huge growth in understanding root causes to many of the mental health things another thing if you have a child that has a lot of learning problems it could be there is legitimate genetic stuff could be brain damage type stuff but it could be complex trauma stuff and we are seeing that what we're now seeing when it looks at juvenile delinquency or kids that end up in trouble with the law in most cases complex trauma over and over again so do you want to know my conclusion as I research and look at all of the research that is coming out is that we are living in a culture where complex trauma is all around us in fact it is increasing and we are seeing the results of it every day in the news in our workplace in our relationships it is having far-reaching effects and so that is why I want to talk about it because there's still a whole lot of information that people don't understand and my goal in teaching this is not just to give kind of the general information that's out there but to really apply it to people who are really struggling with life life issues like addiction with relationship problems with coping problems and to really see how it feeds and ties into all of that so let's start with a definition so we'll start with trauma trauma by definition is where where a person is in a place where they perceive that they're in danger so they perceive that there are dangerous circumstances that they could get hurt and they're not able to prevent them or handle them and so it's either going to kill them hurt them badly drive them crazy but they're in this situation where danger and getting hurt is what it's all about when we talk then about the types of trauma we Define two types so number one is the one we are most familiar with and that's called Simple trauma and that refers to a onetime event a car accident somebody that gets raped somebody that has their home invaded somebody that goes into a situation where they watch somebody getting killed one time event trauma it's terrible they feel danger it's too much to handle and then you get PTSD that is diagnosed from that post-traumatic stress disorder what is new and what is now being understood more and more is this thing called complex trauma and the key with that is that a person is in a trauma situation in on an ongoing basis so they live in a situation where they don't feel safe and so if I was to go from the experience of working with addicts most addicts would be able to share that they grew up often feeling like they were walking on eggshells they always had to be on guard they always had to be kind of looking over their shoulder they were never certain when the other shoe was going to drop and something bad was going to happen and so life for them was kind of constant on guard constant feeling of not being safe I could get hurt today so I can't fully relax and I think think in my mind that becomes the key piece in complex trauma is that the person can't fully relax there is part of them that has to remain alert and on guard that would be the simplest definition of complex trauma now let me just add some things that I hope would just expand on this and answer some initial questions okay when you think of trauma it's really important to break it into two parts there's the event that happens and there's the perception of the event that happens so you can have a child who grows up in a home and has a brother who nothing bothers them and so if Dad yells he just yells back it's not a big deal but they're a sensitive child and that seeing dad yell is traumatizing because their sense itive and their perception is danger okay so when we talk about trauma you always have to see it through the eyes of the person who feels in danger that's step one next thing and I've alluded to it is that most people who are traumatized with childhood trauma were sensitive children and when we get into the field of addiction my kind of informal research search in dealing with many clients is that about 80% of addicts were sensitive kids and so they were very sensitive to getting hurt that happened easily in their lives many people that I deal with will say to me I don't think I experienced trauma in fact I had somebody say to me today after they went through their life story they had gone through a war they had been moved to a country where they couldn't speak the language where at 11 they were put back into grade two and they go I don't think I had any trauma and I thought isn't that interesting I and I just said you know what your childhood is full of trauma but to them that was normal they just think every family's like that and when they go to their friend's house and nobody's yelling at each other they go this is a weird family what's the matter with them and so what what's your normal becomes what you think everybody goes through and you don't necessarily see that as trauma and so that's why I'm going to expand on what trauma is so that hopefully you can say wow I lived in trauma that was complex trauma but the other piece with that is I get people that say you know what my mom and dad they were very good to us we had a nice house all our needs were met there wasn't fighting or hitting or any of that thing I don't think iy of complex trauma and so what I I spend my time on and what part of this series is going to be on is helping people from that scenario be able to discern or kind of figure out whether there was trauma in that physically somewhat physically safe environment and what I find with many people is once you begin to explore that with them they go oh I think there was complex trauma it's not the violent type it's a very subtle type but it is just as damaging as the violent type and the other piece around that is that there are degrees of trauma and so you can get somebody that has experienced severe severe trauma where every day was a war field and you can get others where it's extremely subtle but it's there and and so there degre of trauma most of the effects of trauma happen at a subconscious level it's important to understand that people go well I don't remember thinking about being traumatized I don't remember thinking that I felt a certain way and I go no you probably didn't think about it at a conscious level but you probably at a subconscious level were processing it and so hopefully you can see that as we go as well now let me share with you my concern in doing any talk around trauma talking about trauma can stir up memories of trauma it can put you back into a place where flashbacks hit you and you go into panic mode and so what I want to say on this first talk is this if you start remembering stuff tonight as I'm talking feel free to shut the feeling part of you down and just see this as an academic learning exercise I don't want you to go into raw feelings and not have any tools to handle it that could send you in a very dark place which could be B very bad for you and so what I want to do tonight is just more of a teaching and hopefully you can absorb it intellectually and then in the next weeks we'll look more at the tools so that we can begin processing this painful stuff another thing that I get regularly is okay if I grew up in complex trauma usually it would be inflicted by or Allowed by parents and then people go into a bunch of different things they go number one I do not want to be sitting here saying I blame my parents for my problems okay so my goal in doing this is not that you blame your parents but that you understand how you got to where you are today your parents will have to face their own stuff whenever and it's not your job to try and accuse them of that but it's for you to understand and gain insight into what has happened in your life the second thing is that a lot of people who who grow up in certain homes feel if they talk negatively about their family or their parents they're bad kids and so it's like oh I can't talk about this I can't think about this because then I'd be disloyal to the family and and again you're going to have to work through that yourself and this is not you being a bad kid this is you trying to be an honest kid this is you trying to figure out what shaped your life and why you are where you are today and the third thing that I just want to add is for a lot of people they go if I admit that I have complex trauma it sounds like I'm saying I had a terrible childhood and it was a constant negative experience no you may have had many many years and good memories of childhood but that does not mean you did not have some complex trauma so I'm not trying to to say your your childhood was a total mess okay having said that we've defined it I've kind of gone through a couple qualifiers where does complex trauma come from what inflicts complex trauma on a child there are four different ways that a person can experience complex trauma number one if you grew up in a family of abuse that's the most obvious one and it can be physical abuse but it does not have to be physical abuse most of you who have experienced verbal and emotional abuse know that it often hurts more than physical abuse to be called down to be made fun of to be called hurtful names to be called stupid all of those things are forms of abuse and then probably the worst one is sexual abuse and we talked about that recently that about 50% of women addicts have been sexually Abus if I take this Beyond school I I mean Beyond home you this complex trauma can be going to school where you're bullied so every day you're going to school and you're nervous you're on guard you can't relax the whole time you're at school that's complex trauma just as much as if it was happening at in your home and it does not just have to be at your home or at school it can be anybody that is more powerful physically or in a position of power who does stuff and says stuff that hurts you that also is complex trauma and many will relate to having a father who maybe never hit you or never said negative things but he was a dictator it was his way or the highway you did what he wanted you weren't allowed to offer your opinion you weren't allowed to challenge anything you just did what you were told no questions asked and that is also a form of trauma and we'll look at that in more detail the next one which is really becoming more and more understood and it is just as severe as abuse is neglect and what we are realizing is that neglect actually can do greater damage in some areas than physical verbal abuse it is equally traumatizing and next week I'll expand on it but what I want you to think about tonight is if you grew up in a home where your parents were Workaholics and they were never emotionally available to you they were not able maybe they didn't have the tools maybe they had their own health issues their own problems they were dealing with but they weren't able to be there for you when you were hurting or needing to learn something you felt abandoned you felt rejected and you did not feel safe and so those were realizing cause a lot of trauma the third one which is a huge one is abandonment in the past we would have just referred to a child that has given up for adoption or turned over to CFS as being that's trauma we would get that but what we're now realizing is that children who go through the divorce of parents that's complex trauma because their little secure world is now rocked and all that they kind of look to as their rock is not there for them now and there's an instability in that another thing that that can come from that is if a a parent dies or a Grandparent Dies they're not purposely abandoning you but it feels like abandonment and so to the child all of a sudden their world has changed and somebody they've relied on is not there for them and that is complex trauma now we're also seeing that even babies that are adopted before they have any memories of that that it is actually affecting them and we'll look at that more later but all of those things become trauma of Abandonment one other thing that I would just add to that is if you grew up in a home and was fairly good let's say but all of a sudden over a period of a year or two you went through loss after loss after loss your pet might have died your grandma might have died your dad might have died others might have died you had to move Etc say goodbye to your friends it's like lost lost lost back to back to back all of a sudden my world is surrounded by insecurity and I don't feel safe so that can have an equal effect the fourth one which I want to develop because this is where it starts getting into the very subtle forms of complex trauma is we teach at finding Freedom that we were built with a set of 12 needs inside of us Central to those 12 needs are certain physical and emotional needs and if those needs were not consistently met to a child that is complex trauma so let me just quickly go through them there's the need for safety which includes food shelter a roof over your head some people didn't have that and so they had to go without food they maybe had to go and beg food from Neighbors because Mom and Dad were drunk and they didn't have any food that's trauma now this the very subtle ones if a child grows up where they do not feel respected or valued if they're made to feel stupid less than fat all of those things little shots that are taken that child cannot relax that child doesn't feel accepted for who they are all of a sudden they're being told if only you were like your sister or if only you were smarter or if only you weren't this way and they're always kind of being made to feel not good enough that's trauma I am always in danger of being hurt because nobody accepts me that is the most subtle form of complex trauma and so you could have a family that provided for you in all kinds of ways but they never fully accepted you and if that was the case I would venture that you would have some degree of complex trauma because you never felt totally safe in that environment then there's a need to belong to feel part of and some kids always because they weren't accepted they just always felt like the black sheep of the family that they didn't fit in with the family that is trauma and then we have a need for validation to be told that we're we have certain positive characteristics and abilities if a child has never given validation only criticism that is trauma for them and then we have a need to feel safe that life will be fair that life will be consistently just and that if somebody breaks a rule that the consequence will happen but but if you grow up in a home where Dad one day is saying oh you did something that broke a rule I'm in a good mood today no big deal and the next day you break the rule and you get smacked in the head you're going I don't know what to expect in any given day all of a sudden I feel like I'm walking on eggshells because there's no consistency in the rule enforcement around here and then if you get a dad one day he's in a good mood he takes everybody out for ice cream and the next day he tells all of them how selfish they are and how they're always wanting his money and you're going I'm getting a mixed message here that's making me feel unsafe the next thing we need to in order to feel safe is we need honesty we need to be able to trust and if you grw up in a home where there's not honesty and you can't trust people in your home that's trauma and you may never have thought about it but I hope you can see wow that does make a child feel unsafe that they can't relax all of us have a desire for intimacy and that includes a desire to be open and honest without being judged or criticized to be able to share our fears our sadness our failures and be accepted and nurtured in that if you grew up in a family where if you talk about things that get blabbed everywhere or you get made fun of or you get told that you're being stupid or you're weak all of a sudden you can't share anything wow you're not safe now because you don't know when you're going to get criticized for what you share and then if you're in environment where you're expected to go from Age Two in clumsiness to age 10 in one day and so all of a sudden you do everything perfectly and you never make a mess and and if you're expected to do that you all of a sudden are in an environment where you're nervous because if I fail or if I trip or if I spill my milk I'm going to get called down I'm going to get punished and and if I'm crying I'm going to get told to grow up and to act like a man and and all of that makes a person feel very unsafe and so that is another thing another one is consistent boundaries if you grew up we one day the rule is here and the next day the rule is here and that there's not a consistent boundary or it's not enforced you don't feel safe if it's not condition unconditional love but always there's conditions to your love or the love that you receive from parents so they only are loving if you're super good but if you ever do anything wrong you're in the dogghouse and they let you know about it that's not safe and so all of that is trauma and that's the part that I want to emphasize because that's the part that's not being taught in kind of the the mainstream teaching at this point but in my experience not having those needs consistently met when people begin to realize that they begin to realize I grew up not feeling safe because of that that is equally trauma now I put that another way what happens in every human being is that pain is designed to be a positive thing so if you have a toothache you go I got a problem you go to the dentist it gets fixed so pain notifies you something isn't right so that you can fix it what happens to a child who's growing up in danger where they're in pain or trauma they they they are wanting to find a solution to it they want to fix it so that they're not being made to feel unsafe and so they try to be a better kid they try to do things to to please the parents they try all kinds of different things and what they find out is nothing is fixing this so my pain has no solution my trauma has no solution and that leads to the next thing what options then does a child have to trauma that has no solution and that's now getting into kind of the meat of our response to trauma number one priorities develop when you are in a place where there's pain with no solution where you're getting hurt and there's nothing you can do to fix it your number one priority becomes I will not get hurt again I have to find a way to not get hurt but what's happening right alongside of that is you still have those 12 needs and so you want to say I don't need anything but you're still get lonely you long for validation you long for respect and so you have these two competing priorities going on inside of you and what happens is your brain says I have a solution I will get my needs met but not get hurt not getting hurt Will trump all other priorities so I will go about getting Intimacy in a way that I won't get hurt and do you want to know what you end up getting fake intimacy and it eventually hurts you so you begin to try to come up with solutions that will get your needs met without you ever getting hurt and it's seems to work for a little while but but what ends up happening is it doesn't work and you hurt yourself and so that we're going to develop in more detail but let's focus what do we do to not get hurt three solutions that we come up with we use the F letter as simply a way to remember them fight flight freeze are the three options so number one if I am in danger and I'm feeling feeling like I might get hurt I will fight I will use anger I will intimidate I will hurt them before they hurt me and so anger becomes a great way of protecting ourself from getting hurt what happens for some people is that you go all of this painful stuff that's happening to me is my fault I must have done something to deserve it and so what they do is direct the anger ATS and they say I need to punish myself I need to hurt myself and so a lot of self harm behaviors can develop the second option is flight I am going to avoid pain and so what I have is a diagram in your sheet and I've talked about it before but there's a circle that has trauma or pain then there's a mind going into it and so early on the child goes there's no solution to my pain so there's no point going through it so the minute I feel pain I will take off I am out of here I am going into Escape avoid mode after a while the child goes why wait till I'm in pain let's back that up a little bit now as soon as I start feeling stress or as soon as I feel uncomfortable I'm taken off so you have an earlier exit point to get out of here and then you go why do you wait till I'm feeling uncomfortable or stressed why not back it up even further I'm out of here as soon as I see any sign of danger so you walk into a room and you check it out and you are always watching people and as soon as you see danger I'm gone and then you go why wait till I see danger I could still get hurt so what I will do is I will now begin to look at situations and I will go to worst case scenarios and red danger into situations just to make sure I never get hurt and so the minute you get in any situation you go oh oh that no I don't like that I'm out of here nothing's happened probably nothing would have happened but you and your mind have created a worst case scenario IO and you're gone and what begins to happen is you just keep hurting yourself so let me take that further when you've grown up in trauma what you realize is this if I am feeling pain stress uncomfortable seeing signs of danger I need a nanc response I can't sit around and say I wonder if I should Escape I should weigh the pros and cons of that and take five minutes to think about it you go no I could get hurt in the next second I got to be out of here before that second is done and so you have this instant nanc where once you're triggered that danger is lurking you're gone in that short of a time and there's an intensity to it I am not going to just saunter out of here I'm gone like a bullet out of here and I'm going to have all intense emotions in gear so here's what happens you see a warning sign you get a nanc response time and then you get a nanc of escalation time you can go from zero to 100 in a nanc that's how trauma affects you and so that's where people when life is going smoothly they go the other shoe's going to drop something bad's about to happen I'm gone and everything's good but that's how you've been trained and so what they will often do when things are going good is I'm just going to sabotage it because I'm pretty sure something bad's going to happen eventually so let's just get it over with the other thing that can happen as ways of escaping or avoiding is I'm not going to run geographically necessarily from Winnipeg I will still live in Winnipeg but I will do a bunch of things to avoid getting hurt I will constantly fill my life with distractions so I will play video games whatever I will constantly be doing stuff so I don't have to think so I don't have to feel and so I don't have to interact with people that's a common one some say I would just create my own little fantasy world where I don't experience any pain I can kind of check out of this life and go into that life and so some do it just in their imag imagination some do it through books or movies but you create a fantasy and then others say you know what I'm just going to cut myself off from people I will isolate that way I will never get hurt news flash you just hurt yourself big time but that is what we do okay third option and this is most common with a child is a little child can't fight because they're too little they can't run away they can't take flight because they're too little so then they have to go to a third option which is I will just freeze and shut down emotionally instead of feeling this pain my only thing is to try to disconnect from my emotions and so what happens often in a child is you kind of split into into two you have on one hand here's the emotions that are safe to express here on the other hand are the emotions that are going to get me made fun of or called stupid or called weak they're the emotions that'll make me vulnerable so I will shut down anything that will make me vulnerable and I'll just try to live in this side this part of me and I will become less human but that's okay because then I won't get hurt and so that's where many people go and that's very common with trauma some then go to you know what if I don't care about anything I won't get hurt so I will just not care about anything and so that's where you get the whatever who cares you want to know something if you really get honest you really do care but it's an attempt to try to minimize your desires and you care about stuff others go to you know what I'll just start numbing my emotions and so when you find drugs and alcohol or activities that become addictive they're great because they just keep you in a numb State and that is a popular thing and more and more we're seeing where pharmaceutical drugs are being used mainly for numbing in people's lives and then in the most severe cases the brain will actually block the memory it'll say this is too painful you cannot numb it you cannot distract yourself it will destroy you so I will block that memory and so it's interesting that most people with complex trauma have big gaps in their memory in childhood they will say I don't remember anything from age three to age 11 and that usually is an indication that their brain did not remember because it was so busy trying to protect you and trying to survive it was blocking anything that was making you feel in danger what usually happens is as you heal and work through your trauma stuff those memories start coming back one thing I want to quickly add is your brain stores memories in two different parts of the brain in one part of the brain it stores the details of what happened and in the other part of the brain it stores the emotions that you experienced when that event happened what the brain blocks is the details of what happened but it doesn't block the emotions that you experience so what can happen to you if you have complex trauma is you can go into a situation and you all of a sudden just feel huge Panic huge anxiety I want to run I want to get out of here and you have no memory of anything happening to you in your past like what is happening now and that is partly or could be because that memory the details part has been blocked but all of those emotions are being triggered and they're alive and they're still affecting you okay let me wrap up with this what causes when you break it down what causes complex trauma and again this is a new new way of looking at it but it makes the pieces make sense complex trauma always comes from somebody in a position of power or authority over you abusing that power abusing their Authority so let me just take for example you have a dad who is in a position of authority over you as your dad he's physically stronger and he's in that position of being a dad instead of using that position of power to say I have children depending on me I have children who need nurture and their needs met they go I use this power to be selfish I use this to get what I want to have everything go my way and now you've taken your position of power and you have abused it and that is the dynamic that happens in homes that create complex trauma trauma so Dad or whoever the authority is is now saying I'm in a position nobody can challenge me I'm in this position of power so I will do whatever I want and I can get away with it and then what happens is if you're a parent you have these little children that have needs and they now get to be a pain they feel like a burden because they always are needy needy needy and so the parent actually begins to resent the needs of the child and and instead of trying to meet the needs they see these children as kind of an inconvenience to their pleasure to their fun and so they then distort reality for the child and a huge damage and we'll look at it in more detail but huge damage takes place because what the dad would do is say you're being selfish for wanting that and it could be a legitimate need when the truth is dad is being selfish for not wanting to make a sacrifice to meet the needs of the child but he twists it and says you are being selfish and you are being bad and so the child is made to feel that they're guilty they're a bad child and they're the cause of their parent being upset and so their world begins to form from that distortion and what ultimately usually happens is the child becomes the parent because they're making the sacrifices they're giving up their needs they're doing whatever they have to do to get along with everybody and so they are becoming like the parent and the parent is becoming like a little selfish child and the whole Dynamics get switched and in some severe cases the child actually has to cook the meals for the parent clean the house for the parent do all of the adult responsibilities because the parents are so wrapped up in their own addiction and self-centeredness that they're totally irresponsible that is the bottom line where do you begin to heal it and here's all I will say in my view dealing with complex trauma is what we would call a bio psychosocial spiritual issue there's a biological component about how you grew up all of that is huge in that there's a psychological component there's things that have happened inside of you in your thinking in how you view yourself and how you cope that has to be looked at there's a social element it has set you up for bad relationships it's set you up for how who you want to hang around with and there has to be changes at a social level and there's a spiritual component that is is necessary if a person is ever going to get over this stuff I hope that just gives you well I'm sure for many of you it was like a big dump truck load and you say after about the 10th shovel full I kind of got overwhelmed but I hope it gives you something that gives you perspective and insight into some of your stuff let's just close in prayer father such a difficult important big topic one that almost everybody here can relate to and are dealing with the consequences of it and I just pray that not only will we learn information but that a lot of healing will happen in many lives amen