Speaker 1: Hey, y'all, Hey, what's up, and welcome to Let's Red
Speaker 1: Table that I'm Tracy t Row and I'm Cala Presley.
Speaker 1: How are you feeling about today's episode? Tracy, Okay, first
Speaker 1: of all, let me say this, I learned what trauma
Speaker 1: bonding is. I no, no, no. I brought my own narrative.
Speaker 1: I gave myself its definition of what I thought trauma
Speaker 1: bonding was. And I'm sure they're probably some other people
Speaker 1: who believe what I believe trauma bonding was. If you're
Speaker 1: out there, I'll if you hear me. So I thought
Speaker 1: trauma bonding was people that had experienced trauma, that had
Speaker 1: similar traumas and they connected and went through healing and
Speaker 1: bonded in that way. I didn't understand it to mean
Speaker 1: that you were in your own trauma bonding experience. You
Speaker 1: understand what I'm saying, M I do? I do? I do?
Speaker 1: Like it's more I definitely realized in this episode it's
Speaker 1: more of a subconscious thing that we are connected to
Speaker 1: and or drawn to people who have familiar behaviors that
Speaker 1: weren't as positive and or successful. So yeah, it's uh,
Speaker 1: it was eye open, and I'll say that it really
Speaker 1: was before we get into it, let's back up and
Speaker 1: make sure we know what it is. Trauma bonding is
Speaker 1: the connection an abused person feels towards their abuser and
Speaker 1: develops out of a repeated cycle of abuse, devaluation, and
Speaker 1: positive reinforcement. Healthline says leaving an abusive relationship isn't as
Speaker 1: simple as walking out the door. So that right which
Speaker 1: you know they say with domestic violence, with people that
Speaker 1: have suffered from domestic violence, that they leave seven times
Speaker 1: and go back before they are gone for good. I
Speaker 1: believe it, you know. I just feel like any abusive
Speaker 1: situation that when people here domestic violence of what have you,
Speaker 1: I think they all automatically think romantic, you know your partner.
Speaker 1: But I think it happened clearly. The season is showing
Speaker 1: this is happening more and more. Parent child relationship, any
Speaker 1: power dynamic, there's something many power dynamic people literally are
Speaker 1: abusing their power out here. Bless my heart. I really
Speaker 1: thought people were living the right way. Okay, well, speaking
Speaker 1: of people not living in the the right way, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: tell you who I'm sick of. Because this is a
Speaker 1: common thread. Dr Romney, maybe we can get you one.
Speaker 1: You can help us all these dog on narcissists. The
Speaker 1: narcissists are literally the common denominator for a good number
Speaker 1: of the things we've experienced. Am I right or wrong?
Speaker 1: They're live in their best life out here. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if they're winning or not, but they're everywhere.
Speaker 1: They're they're losers because they're winning. They're definitely losers. But
Speaker 1: it's like, what is that that perspective that they are
Speaker 1: drawn to, that they have chosen this life of narcissism. Well,
Speaker 1: I can tell you that once I knew what the
Speaker 1: definition was, I was like, oh, well, heck yeah, I
Speaker 1: got trauma bond and which one do you want to
Speaker 1: talk about? The knee jerk for us is to start laughing,
Speaker 1: card like land to keep crying friends, all right and well?
Speaker 1: And as we go through the episode, I had more
Speaker 1: of a relation in the workplace than any romantic connection.
Speaker 1: I just was thinking and listening like, oh yeah, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, So that's gonna be interesting. I can't
Speaker 1: wait to tap into it. Now it's time to share
Speaker 1: with our online Red Table Talk community has to say
Speaker 1: about this episode. So I can kick this off first, right, So,
Speaker 1: Kristin Morrigan says, my goodness, that last couple got me.
Speaker 1: I came into my relationship exactly like Brianna. I had
Speaker 1: major daddy issues and didn't understand why anyone would want
Speaker 1: to be with me. So I tried my hardest to
Speaker 1: run my now husband off, but he stayed the course
Speaker 1: and together we worked through my issues. I got a
Speaker 1: little choked up on this one. Another great episode. Well
Speaker 1: thank you, Kristen. We appreciate that. I enjoyed it too.
Speaker 1: Gretchen Marie meg Guyer said, Wow, I took notes during
Speaker 1: this episode for real, this one, I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people can relate to. Gretchen. You are so absolutely right,
Speaker 1: because I want you to know you weren't the only
Speaker 1: one taking notes. Our very own car was taking those
Speaker 1: two weren't your car? Yes, I was notebook and all,
Speaker 1: So I understand. Tracy Brooke Chapelle said this was so phenomenal.
Speaker 1: I saw myself and Justin and his wife tears just
Speaker 1: rolling down my face as a serious truth hit me.
Speaker 1: Understand you, Tracy, great name, Tracy, and Kim Booie said
Speaker 1: I was engaged four times before I finally married at
Speaker 1: twenty nine. I was a mess in my teens and
Speaker 1: early twenties. Can't even remember a lot of it, totally
Speaker 1: blocked it out, but all rooted in my parents divorce
Speaker 1: and the breakup of our family. Glad I put in
Speaker 1: the work, made the change and found someone who helped
Speaker 1: me get to the other side. Been married for thirty
Speaker 1: one years now and enjoying the best years of my life.
Speaker 1: Oh that's nice, Kim, so good. One of We're gonna
Speaker 1: take a quick break, but when we get back, we'll
Speaker 1: be joined by one incredible guest from our Red Tabletop community.
Speaker 1: We're bringing a fellow RTT community member to the Virtual
Speaker 1: Red Table. Ingrid Clayton is a psychologist and author who
Speaker 1: comes at her work with a deeper level of understanding,
Speaker 1: and she is a trauma survivor herself, growing up with
Speaker 1: the narcissistic stepdad. Ingrid has worked to break the bonds
Speaker 1: of trauma in her life and support her patients in
Speaker 1: doing the same. Ingrid, thank you for coming on Let's
Speaker 1: Red Table Dad. How are you. I'm well, Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for having me, so much for joining, so
Speaker 1: excited for you to be here. Yes, Ingered, I have
Speaker 1: lots and lots of questions. I mean, I'm first off,
Speaker 1: you want to start out by saying that we're grateful
Speaker 1: you're here and we're gonna learn a lot. And we
Speaker 1: have a segment that we love. This is a out
Speaker 1: of the show where we reveal which moments made us pause, rewind,
Speaker 1: and listen again. We call it Wait, What So White?
Speaker 1: There were lots of white woods in this episode, Like
Speaker 1: several in this episode. One of the first ones, Dr
Speaker 1: Alfie said, you know how they used to say to
Speaker 1: W know was Ben, W don't know. But it's still
Speaker 1: the devil, right, But it's the devil that both of
Speaker 1: you are familiar with. Do you find yourself drawn to
Speaker 1: what you know even if it's bad for you? Well,
Speaker 1: if you're asking me personally, I'm sad to say the
Speaker 1: answer is yes. And in fact, this is why I'm
Speaker 1: so passionate about sharing my personal experience, because I never
Speaker 1: understood that even though I thought I knew better growing
Speaker 1: up in a narcissistic family system and addicted family system, dysfunctional, toxic,
Speaker 1: however you want to label at family system, I knew
Speaker 1: very young. I did not want this for the rest
Speaker 1: of my life. I wanted to do it differently, and
Speaker 1: I saught so much help and guidance and support to
Speaker 1: attempt to do it differently. I have three degrees in psychology,
Speaker 1: I've sat on a million therapy couches, I've been sober
Speaker 1: for twenty seven years, and none of this information gave
Speaker 1: me the release from what my nervous system learned as
Speaker 1: a child growing up in this home. And so I've
Speaker 1: really come to understand it that we almost have two
Speaker 1: distinct parts of ourselves. There's the conscious rational mind that
Speaker 1: can intellectually understand, of course I want to be in
Speaker 1: a healthy relationship. And then there's what I learned in
Speaker 1: my body through these very subtle, subconscious experiences about oh no,
Speaker 1: this is what I have to do to be safe,
Speaker 1: this is what I have to do to maintain connection,
Speaker 1: this is what I have to do to have a voice.
Speaker 1: And this experience is what ultimately led me to my
Speaker 1: chemistry of being attracted to unavailable, narcissistic, actively addictive partners
Speaker 1: over and over again, even though I was working so
Speaker 1: hard to try to do it differently. So this idea
Speaker 1: of the way that I've heard it is red flags
Speaker 1: don't look like red flags when they feel like home.
Speaker 1: Hold on, now, that's red flags and look like red
Speaker 1: flags when they feel like home. So I didn't know
Speaker 1: that it was the devil, because the devil to me, listen,
Speaker 1: I learned how to survive in the face of these
Speaker 1: sort of be devilments. That's I can handle that, no worries.
Speaker 1: I can do that. Jada said it somewhere in the episode.
Speaker 1: She's Oh, I can fix it. I can. It was
Speaker 1: deeply compelling to me because it was so familiar, and
Speaker 1: so I really had to learn that that crazy kind
Speaker 1: of chemistry that felt like, oh, there's so much potential
Speaker 1: here was not healthy chemistry. And in fact, my now marriage, that,
Speaker 1: thank goodness, the longest healthiest relationship I've ever had, felt
Speaker 1: night and day different entering into it than every relationship
Speaker 1: that I had before. That's really something. What you're gravitating
Speaker 1: to is what feels familiar, Right, it feels like home. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it feels like home. It's not necessarily that it's a
Speaker 1: red flag. It's home. It may be red flags for
Speaker 1: everybody else, but what I see it's home. Do you
Speaker 1: find that you're conscious of the decisions you make out
Speaker 1: of trauma in the moment, where do you look back
Speaker 1: later and see it clearly it's more of a hindsight,
Speaker 1: especially in the beginning as you start to heal your trauma.
Speaker 1: So I think, for me, this is I talked about
Speaker 1: my experiences in the lens of trauma at all because
Speaker 1: it finally allowed me to make sense to myself. Right. So,
Speaker 1: if I was going to all these therapists and going
Speaker 1: what do I keep getting in these relationships? I can't
Speaker 1: figure it out. The thing that finally helped me was
Speaker 1: to understand, first of all, the body will always prioritize safety, okay,
Speaker 1: And we have these trauma responses that are in effort
Speaker 1: to keep us safe, to help us survive, to maintain connection,
Speaker 1: even if it's not great connection. They are fight, flight, freeze,
Speaker 1: and fawn. And this last one here, fawning is not
Speaker 1: only my experience, but it's what Jada talked about and
Speaker 1: the eye can fix it. It's what Shay talked about
Speaker 1: in her people pleasing tendencies. So the fawning trauma response
Speaker 1: is when we abandon ourselves in order to show up
Speaker 1: for someone else. It's the heartbeat of codependency. Is what
Speaker 1: fawning is. When I fawn, it's in service of I'm
Speaker 1: going to abandon myself and show up for you. And
Speaker 1: then you're gonna show up for me to write I'm
Speaker 1: gonna fix your stuff, I'm going to help you along.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna smile when you need me to smile. But
Speaker 1: eventually that's gonna come full circle, isn't it? And unfortunately
Speaker 1: it often does not. And where we lay prosody there,
Speaker 1: that's right, And so where we end up is just
Speaker 1: abandoning ourselves and staying abandoned. When you say we're abandoning ourselves,
Speaker 1: is it's the exhaustion of it, like just subconsciously, like
Speaker 1: I don't think I can fight this any longer. What
Speaker 1: I mean when you say people abandon themselves, Like in
Speaker 1: my spirit, I believe that no one wants to really
Speaker 1: just abandon them I feel like they're doing all they
Speaker 1: can and they're gonna do all they can for someone else.
Speaker 1: But when you say they are, we know that the
Speaker 1: actor now is abandoning themselves. But I think in the
Speaker 1: moment it's like exhaustion. I think it shows up. It
Speaker 1: may be depression, it may be the whole entire experience
Speaker 1: has spiraled them into a sense of I gotta just
Speaker 1: let go. I've done. This is such a smart point
Speaker 1: that you're making and so Pete Walker is the trauma
Speaker 1: therapist to coin the term fawning, and what he says
Speaker 1: is that fawning is the last house on the block.
Speaker 1: In other words, when you've tried to fight response, the
Speaker 1: freeze and flight response and you have found them not
Speaker 1: to work in these toxic relationships, fawning is the last town. No.
Speaker 1: Nobody wants to abandon themselves. Nobody wants to say I
Speaker 1: don't matter. I'm going to privilege you because I don't
Speaker 1: really want to have any self worth. Right. Trauma responses
Speaker 1: are not conscious. These are based on our instincts. Okay,
Speaker 1: so when you think about an animal surviving in the wild,
Speaker 1: they don't think do I want to play dead when
Speaker 1: this other animal comes to attack? Do I want to
Speaker 1: fight back and growl up? They just do it. These
Speaker 1: are instincts. We have the same instincts. They're not conscious.
Speaker 1: And again that also allows me to have self compassion,
Speaker 1: because who would want to abandon themselves. It's so painful
Speaker 1: to have to look at how many times I personally
Speaker 1: did that, And a part of healing is going back
Speaker 1: and grieving everything that I lost every time I couldn't
Speaker 1: have a real voice or participate fully in relationship. What
Speaker 1: you just said there too about grieving is important because
Speaker 1: if you don't see it as a loss, and you
Speaker 1: see it's possibly still something I can fight for, something
Speaker 1: that's worth it, then you don't even get to grieve,
Speaker 1: to let go, to move on. You're still grieving in
Speaker 1: real time and hurt. You're just hurt. You can't even
Speaker 1: allow it to be a grief. Like a part of
Speaker 1: grief is the acceptance that it's over and done and
Speaker 1: I can't do a thing about it, you know, and
Speaker 1: you hate to say. It's a little bit easier when
Speaker 1: it's a person that's passed right right grieving people that
Speaker 1: are still alive. And that's why breaking these trauma bonds,
Speaker 1: it's one aspect of why breaking the trauma bond is
Speaker 1: so hard, because we also want to have hope. We
Speaker 1: want to believe that this person is going to come
Speaker 1: around and they're gonna show up and take responsibility and
Speaker 1: do right by themselves and do right by me. And
Speaker 1: who doesn't want to have that sort of hope and
Speaker 1: belief in humanity? And we have to look at the
Speaker 1: writing on the wall and that all the hope and
Speaker 1: belief in the world is never going to change another person.
Speaker 1: So if they are not exhibiting true behaviors, not talking
Speaker 1: to talk, I'm talking about walking the walk, then I
Speaker 1: think someone really has to look at maybe it's time
Speaker 1: to grieve this relationship and stop investing more of myself
Speaker 1: in it. Okay, So, Ingra we've been talking about trauma bonding.
Speaker 1: We gave a quick definition of what trauma bonding is
Speaker 1: in the beginning of this episode, but Angry, can you
Speaker 1: explain more thorough the what exactly trauma bonding is. So
Speaker 1: trauma bonding, it does often get confused with this idea
Speaker 1: of two people that have trauma that are coming together
Speaker 1: and sort of bonding over that shared experience. I think
Speaker 1: that's often how it's talked about. But what we're talking
Speaker 1: about in the literature of trauma is it's a hormonal,
Speaker 1: chemical attachment between two people that is based on alternate
Speaker 1: experiences of either abuse and neglect, sprinkled in with some
Speaker 1: normal behavior some what seems like healthy attachment or even love.
Speaker 1: And so there are two building blocks to trauma bonding.
Speaker 1: One is intermittent reinforcement, which is the receiving or giving
Speaker 1: of a reward rather at inconsistent intervals. Basically, this is
Speaker 1: Las Vegas, Okay, intermittent reinforcement. I'm gonna sit down to
Speaker 1: the slot machine. I know I'm gonna lose most of
Speaker 1: the time, but I'm pulling at lever because i want
Speaker 1: the big payout. Right, It's worth it to me to
Speaker 1: keep throwing my money in because I'm like, there's a chance. Right.
Speaker 1: That's basically intermittent reinforcement. The second building block is a
Speaker 1: power differential. Okay, So when we see it in apparent
Speaker 1: child relationship, through employment, through financial situations, all kinds of things.
Speaker 1: So here's the thing that makes trauma bonding really tricky,
Speaker 1: I think is that when we are abused or neglected,
Speaker 1: we are chemically wired Okay, our entire body. The mission
Speaker 1: again is about survival, So we are wired to focus
Speaker 1: on getting to the other side. Right. We want to
Speaker 1: be saved, we want to be free. And when the abuser,
Speaker 1: the person that's neglecting you or unavailable, when they are
Speaker 1: the person that brings you relief, the brain now associates
Speaker 1: them with safety. Here's what I'm understanding. Yeah, I had
Speaker 1: to jump in here because based on what you just said,
Speaker 1: every single dog own body that's bleeping has had some
Speaker 1: type of trauma bonding. I mean, and maybe not at
Speaker 1: an instagred bible. On some spectrum, all of us have
Speaker 1: had some measure of trauma bonding. Because what I understand
Speaker 1: you saying is, even if the person doesn't know that
Speaker 1: they're inflicting trauma, you could be traumatized by them, and
Speaker 1: it could still be the very person that could either
Speaker 1: do one of the two building clocks, that is, to
Speaker 1: be the person that gives you the reward or the
Speaker 1: person that is the power. This start this started to school.
Speaker 1: I'm just listen. I'm listening like this started to school.
Speaker 1: One too plus to is pick me and pick me,
Speaker 1: pick me, like the too plus to is four for me,
Speaker 1: Like I know that I enjoyed the attention of school
Speaker 1: and getting things right and it was a stellar student, right,
Speaker 1: So then when that started falling off, Hello middle school,
Speaker 1: it's going on here, you know what. But it translated
Speaker 1: into different ways for me, including like work. So when
Speaker 1: you said workplace, if you're dealing with a terrible manager
Speaker 1: and you and all your coworkers are all, that's a bond,
Speaker 1: not romantically. I think we often see it, and of
Speaker 1: course we're talking about romantic settings in this conversation here,
Speaker 1: but I can see that in the workplace. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: definitely not just romantic relationships, right like the building box
Speaker 1: for mine were with my stepfather and then my mother.
Speaker 1: And so if we look at how the brain latches
Speaker 1: onto the positive experience right about, oh, I've been chosen,
Speaker 1: I've raised my hand and now I'm the favorite student
Speaker 1: or whatever it is. Once we're chosen, the brain does
Speaker 1: not hold onto this long term experience of every single
Speaker 1: time that you weren't chosen. Okay. It turns off the
Speaker 1: part of the brain that can think long term. And
Speaker 1: this is what creates the feeling that we need the
Speaker 1: abuser to survive. It's why leaving trauma bonds are so hard.
Speaker 1: It's why so many people go, why didn't you just leave? Right?
Speaker 1: They don't under stand what's happening in these deep dynamics
Speaker 1: in terms of a really hormonal connection. And so if
Speaker 1: you look at this intermittent reinforcement and go, okay, so
Speaker 1: the brain is only latching onto the part where, oh,
Speaker 1: thank goodness, we're back. We're good, right, I'm feeling good again,
Speaker 1: the relationship is good, and you're looking at these power
Speaker 1: dynamics where oftentimes someone's self esteem is so whittled away, right,
Speaker 1: so their sense of themselves has become so small that
Speaker 1: they genuinely do think that they need the other person
Speaker 1: in order to survive. It feels like annihilation to leave
Speaker 1: these relationships. It is bigger than devastation. Yeah, my life,
Speaker 1: My life, that's a common phrase. That's a common phrase
Speaker 1: I hear, whether they're leaving a job or relationship. Have
Speaker 1: you never heard someone said even no mind, it's probably
Speaker 1: in a moment of just exacerbated exhaustion, but my life
Speaker 1: is over. What am I going to do? We talked
Speaker 1: a little bit about Cheryl's story, but now we do
Speaker 1: want to really hear from you, Ingrid. How did your
Speaker 1: stepdad as narcissism affect your life and cause you trauma specifically?
Speaker 1: First of all, the building blocks for trauma bonding are
Speaker 1: right there when you have a narcissist, because narcissists intuitively
Speaker 1: know how to exploit this intermittent reinforcement right there, just
Speaker 1: masters at giving you just enough and then ripping it
Speaker 1: all away. So for me, I would be given the
Speaker 1: silent treatment in my own home for weeks, sometimes months
Speaker 1: at a time by him, where I'd come out to
Speaker 1: breakfast and my brothers exist, Oh, good morning, and how
Speaker 1: are you? And it was literally like I I didn't
Speaker 1: exist in my own home where the brothers, the sons
Speaker 1: of his or you all stepped there. He was stepped
Speaker 1: down to all of you. One was my iological brother,
Speaker 1: one was his son, my stepbrother. But he only ignored you.
Speaker 1: He only ignored me. So I was the scapegoat child.
Speaker 1: And what I now know, which is what I finally
Speaker 1: pieced together only very late in life, unfortunately, is that
Speaker 1: my experience with my stepdad was one that he had
Speaker 1: created many times before me in terms of grooming a
Speaker 1: young girl in the hope of really for me being
Speaker 1: he was grooming me to be his girlfriend. And so
Speaker 1: in order to try and achieve that, he was engaging
Speaker 1: in these trauma bonding techniques. Again not consciously, I don't know,
Speaker 1: and had that language back then anyway, But he would
Speaker 1: ignore me, ground me, steep punishments for the tiniest little things.
Speaker 1: And then one day he'd say, Hey, there's a new
Speaker 1: restaurant in town, and you love Italian food. I'd love
Speaker 1: to pick you up from school and take you to lunch,
Speaker 1: and then we'd go to lunch, and he'd say, you
Speaker 1: know what, there's this jewelry store across the street, and
Speaker 1: I have to do some business there. Why don't you
Speaker 1: accompany me? And suddenly I'm walking out with this ring
Speaker 1: that I've been coveting in the window. Right. So it's
Speaker 1: these types of highs and lows that contribute to this
Speaker 1: trauma bonding. How did you get to the point where
Speaker 1: you learned about his kind of pattern behavior with grooming
Speaker 1: and bread from me and really pedophilic behavior. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: so there's two things. There's the story that I've always known,
Speaker 1: which was just my experience as I understood it at
Speaker 1: the time, and the experience I shared on every therapist
Speaker 1: couch that I ever went to. But two things never
Speaker 1: happened in my journey. No one ever named narcissism or
Speaker 1: narcissistic abuse, and no one ever named trauma. And so
Speaker 1: it was about five years ago when my stepdad died
Speaker 1: and I was suddenly called to do this writing and
Speaker 1: I wasn't even sure what I was writing, but it
Speaker 1: was stories from my own life. You know, I'll just
Speaker 1: make a long story short that I ended up for
Speaker 1: five years writing these experiences. What happened what they did
Speaker 1: to me, the trauma responses. And it was only then
Speaker 1: that I could see my own story through the lens
Speaker 1: of trauma as a trauma therapist, and finally give myself
Speaker 1: proper names and diagnoses for these things that I had
Speaker 1: been living with my whole life, and I didn't know,
Speaker 1: and you didn't know. Cheryl said that she was just
Speaker 1: not attracted to kind men. I just was not attracted
Speaker 1: to the nice guy. I'll never forget my very first
Speaker 1: competitive dance partner, so sweet. I was so disgusted by
Speaker 1: how sweet he was. And I was only attracted to
Speaker 1: chauvinistic man. This is because as the relationship she experience,
Speaker 1: we're unhealthy. That's right, angry. Have you found yourself re
Speaker 1: enacting your own trauma, whether in relationships or other ways.
Speaker 1: I re enacted it so many times. I lost count.
Speaker 1: I re enacted it so many times it makes me
Speaker 1: emotional to think about it. Even now. I genuinely thought
Speaker 1: I was broken. I thought there must be something so
Speaker 1: deeply wrong with me because I cannot get into a
Speaker 1: healthy relationship to save my life. When Cheryl talked about
Speaker 1: the kind person, I understand that so completely available kind people.
Speaker 1: It was a little repulsive, and I also thought, if
Speaker 1: you really knew me, you would not like me the
Speaker 1: way because my body was so unaccustomed to that kind
Speaker 1: of available, present and kind attention. And so after I
Speaker 1: left my first husband, I did a ton of work
Speaker 1: on myself. And what ended happening is I will never
Speaker 1: forget it. Sitting across from my now husband on our
Speaker 1: first date, I thought, he is so lovely and we
Speaker 1: are having such an interesting conversation, and he's so present.
Speaker 1: He had all of the makings of this kind, present,
Speaker 1: available type of partner, and so I thought, I think
Speaker 1: we're just meant to be friends, right, Like, there's no
Speaker 1: way we could be together. I totally get that. I
Speaker 1: totally get that. Great. I mistook that kind of crazy
Speaker 1: chemistry that had happened with all of the narcissist and
Speaker 1: addicted people before. I mistook that as a necessary ingredient
Speaker 1: to enter into a relationship, and so when it was missing,
Speaker 1: I truly thought, well, we must not have that kind
Speaker 1: of chemistry. What I didn't know is that kind of
Speaker 1: chemistry is unhealthy chemistry. It's a sign I should be
Speaker 1: running in the other direction, and so right it for rights, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I finally figured out I need to stick around
Speaker 1: long enough and try on this thing that was so
Speaker 1: foreign to me, and I'm so grateful I did because
Speaker 1: it is a night and day experience. How long have
Speaker 1: you and your husbandmen together? We've been together ten years? Beautiful?
Speaker 1: Let me tell you. I know for me and Grid,
Speaker 1: my wife and I have been together for twenty eight years,
Speaker 1: and like you, because I had been in so many relationships,
Speaker 1: and interestingly enough, it really started for me the whole
Speaker 1: trauma bonding now that I better understand what that was
Speaker 1: or is. And me was with my weight and the negative,
Speaker 1: harsh treatment that I received from my father, and I
Speaker 1: didn't think I was worthy, right, I had this whole
Speaker 1: issue with image, and Sweetie accepted me, and even when
Speaker 1: I gained even more weight than I did when we met,
Speaker 1: and it was weird to me, I was like, are
Speaker 1: you are? Is this real? Are you sure you like
Speaker 1: what you see? Are you unconditionally loving me? Is this true?
Speaker 1: So much so that we've literally just got married on
Speaker 1: our twenty five anniversary Because I didn't believe it was real.
Speaker 1: It took me that long, you know, to be able
Speaker 1: to trust it. Oh my gosh, congratulations on getting married
Speaker 1: and staying together for so long. But I really identify
Speaker 1: with the like are you sure? Like I will say
Speaker 1: things to my husband on a weekly, if not daily
Speaker 1: basis where I'm sort of explaining myself for questioning him,
Speaker 1: and he'll be like, you don't have to do that,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, what what are you like? Really, you're
Speaker 1: really not judging me. I can tell you I feel
Speaker 1: better now that you have fifteen hundred degrees and you're
Speaker 1: burst and trained and you still suffering just litto me
Speaker 1: is having the same trouble you're having. I feel much
Speaker 1: better Car, what about you? No, Yeah, I have experienced
Speaker 1: some of these feelings, but as you gotta speak, I'm
Speaker 1: more so thinking about the workplace and just the my worthy.
Speaker 1: And I knew I was because people would steal my
Speaker 1: I knew I was because I would always get the
Speaker 1: promotion in the workplace. I knew I was because I
Speaker 1: was always the top rated instructor in the workplace. But
Speaker 1: when it came to this one taking a manager, she
Speaker 1: just couldn't quite understand why I was always being accelerated,
Speaker 1: to the point that someone called one time and requested
Speaker 1: that I teach a class because I'm just that successful.
Speaker 1: But she made me teach it to another girl that
Speaker 1: she trusted to try. Well, that's just flat out manipulation.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not that she couldn't see it. It's
Speaker 1: not that she couldn't see it. She couldn't see it.
Speaker 1: She couldn't stand it. And my optimism space as I'm
Speaker 1: in learning, as I'm in learning these things, I couldn't
Speaker 1: fathom that somebody would think that deeply to hold someone back,
Speaker 1: and they definitely will. That's so painful. It's painful. But
Speaker 1: I'm glad that I've experienced that because I can now
Speaker 1: affirm myself over and over again and I'm aware of it. Yes,
Speaker 1: for the self affirmation, I'm that I'd love that's huge.
Speaker 1: Moum all about self affirmation. It's the healing, it's the healing,
Speaker 1: it's real time, it's real time. Jada and Shay both
Speaker 1: shared about feeling the need to fix people and people
Speaker 1: pleasers ingrid. How does this play out as a trauma response, Well,
Speaker 1: these are perfect examples of the funding trauma response. This
Speaker 1: idea that if I see a broken bird, I go.
Speaker 1: It's as though it gives me some sort of credibility
Speaker 1: or reason to be in the relationship. It's like I
Speaker 1: feel like I don't have any power. But if my
Speaker 1: power is I'm gonna help you, I'm going to be
Speaker 1: of service to you. That's fawning. That's the funding trauma response. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and same with the people pleasing. Shay talked about that
Speaker 1: such a great deal where she almost you could kind
Speaker 1: of sense it was like she had no sense of
Speaker 1: herself at a certain point, like no, of course you're
Speaker 1: gonna run in and I'm only going to confront that
Speaker 1: I don't want you here when we talk about a dresser,
Speaker 1: and it's like wait a second, because we don't know
Speaker 1: that we're fawning, right, So even just having this language,
Speaker 1: I think can alert us to you know, I think
Speaker 1: you said before, do you know when you're doing it?
Speaker 1: Or do you know more in hindsight? So if I
Speaker 1: don't know what a red flag is because I grew
Speaker 1: up in a house full of red flags that I
Speaker 1: was meant to have for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every
Speaker 1: single day. Part of how we know that we've experienced trauma,
Speaker 1: that we're engaging in trauma responses is to look at
Speaker 1: our history and go, what are my patterns? What am
Speaker 1: I repeating what am I doing again? That makes me
Speaker 1: crazy that I'm doing it again. And when we can
Speaker 1: put those patterns in this lens and language of trauma,
Speaker 1: it's like we can suddenly see it for the first
Speaker 1: time when we go out into the world and we go, oh,
Speaker 1: wait a second, I'm people pleasing here. I also think
Speaker 1: that word codependency has become so stigmatized. It's hard to
Speaker 1: see yourself in it. You're like, no one wants to
Speaker 1: be codependent, and people are like, why don't you just
Speaker 1: love yourself? As though it's just this choice. Our body
Speaker 1: is fawning for survival. But when I can identify it
Speaker 1: as a trauma response, I can remind myself in that moment,
Speaker 1: I can put my hand on my heart, which is
Speaker 1: a self compassionate position where I can go okay, ingrid,
Speaker 1: you are safe right now, your past is not happening.
Speaker 1: You are allowed to have a voice, it's okay to
Speaker 1: have an opinion, but I genuinely have to pause and
Speaker 1: attend to what's happening in my body because part of
Speaker 1: a trauma response is you don't know if it's happening
Speaker 1: right now or if it's happening thirty years ago, right,
Speaker 1: these things get fused. Trauma knows no time when it's
Speaker 1: living in your body, so it's us feels real. Trauma
Speaker 1: too is trying to just let me just skate past it, versus,
Speaker 1: like you said, stop at just what did that thing
Speaker 1: feel like? What was that that trigger? What should my
Speaker 1: response be? And giving yourself the option of responses versus
Speaker 1: just what I always do. So challenging that narrative in
Speaker 1: your head, right, Tracy, I know you mentioned that you've
Speaker 1: followed into being a people pleaser, So how did you
Speaker 1: break this habit for yourself? I was a people pleasing queen.
Speaker 1: Did you hear me? I had? I was? I really was.
Speaker 1: I'm so grateful I can identify that now. I'm happy
Speaker 1: to say that I was able to break that habit,
Speaker 1: but it took a long time. Part of it was
Speaker 1: I had this unbelievable sense of unworthiness. I would compare
Speaker 1: myself to other people and not feel like there was
Speaker 1: any value that I added unless I was making them
Speaker 1: happy with what I was doing for them. That it
Speaker 1: was the accolade I wanted to get that. Yes, that
Speaker 1: at a girl, that way to go, your special, your
Speaker 1: gift to me. I'm so grateful for you and have
Speaker 1: that acknowledgement. And I finally had to acknowledge for myself
Speaker 1: that after pouring into so many other people, as Jada
Speaker 1: said it, fixing other people and seeing the potential in
Speaker 1: other people and shoring them up, I was pouring out
Speaker 1: and I was empty. There was literally nothing left for
Speaker 1: me to have for my own goals and dreams. Okay,
Speaker 1: I likened it to this. I was paying rent for
Speaker 1: other people and I was homeless, right, That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: And I had to just stop and look around and say,
Speaker 1: let me get my stuff together and get in this
Speaker 1: house that eyeball and take care of my own stuff
Speaker 1: and get my own house shored up and cleaned up
Speaker 1: and ready, and then pursue some of my goals. I
Speaker 1: mean I literally put going and getting another's degree on
Speaker 1: hold and doing stuff for family. I don't regret it,
Speaker 1: because it was all part of a lesson, but I
Speaker 1: had to take stock and inventory and say, I'm fifty
Speaker 1: years old now, the majority of my life has been lived.
Speaker 1: What am I going to do when I look back
Speaker 1: and say, gosh, I regret this, and I hate that
Speaker 1: I didn't do that and have these different dreams and
Speaker 1: realize it's because I've been people pleasing and those people
Speaker 1: have moved on with their own lives. They didn't know
Speaker 1: what they thought. I enjoyed it because I made it.
Speaker 1: I made myself look so happy, Dawn. You wanted to Yeah,
Speaker 1: everybody breakfast, everybody breakfast. And I learned that no was
Speaker 1: an answer and that it was okay, and people would
Speaker 1: be okay with no, and if they weren't, they would
Speaker 1: have to move on. Some people will be okay with
Speaker 1: the no, and those are the people that get to
Speaker 1: stay in your life. But there's another saying, which is
Speaker 1: when we stop people pleasing, people will not be pleased. Well,
Speaker 1: let me tell you what I can say to that
Speaker 1: ingrid a man in Hallelujah, because the people that were
Speaker 1: not pleased blocked me and blessed me. That's right. But
Speaker 1: that's a huge transition and your nervous system to go
Speaker 1: from literally living for people's validation to suddenly not only
Speaker 1: are they not giving you validation, they might be mad
Speaker 1: and that can feel terrify. Oh gosh, I was so
Speaker 1: uncomfortable for a I mean because this was one that
Speaker 1: happened recently. This happened like within the last year. And
Speaker 1: when I stopped people pleasing for this particular person who is,
Speaker 1: now I know, a narcissist. I made a choice and
Speaker 1: did what Katie Morton calls the hug and roll. And
Speaker 1: I said, Okay, I'm creating these boundaries for myself. So
Speaker 1: now here's what I'm not gonna do anymore. And the
Speaker 1: minute I did that, y'all, I got cut off. I
Speaker 1: got blocked from every time. It's amazing how they do it.
Speaker 1: But I just made a good, healthy decision for myself.
Speaker 1: I'm taking care of myself. How are you angry? And
Speaker 1: I was. I had to sit with that. I was
Speaker 1: so uncomfortable, and I kept saying, do I reach out?
Speaker 1: And then it was kind of this duality of a girl. No,
Speaker 1: you don't call them. Don't call them. You get to
Speaker 1: live your life, you get to make a choice. You're grown.
Speaker 1: And then it was like, but they're upset, but they
Speaker 1: may be. Hadn't that right? And I had to just
Speaker 1: get myself together and I see, you've been hurt. You
Speaker 1: you go on, You go on with that, you have that,
Speaker 1: that's your phone, you hold onto your phone. I'm good
Speaker 1: us life changing, life changing, it is, and it gives
Speaker 1: me so much anxiety. Just hearing you talk about it,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh no, I know that feeling so now.
Speaker 1: The women at the Red Table talked about how difficult
Speaker 1: it can be to choose yourself, and that could be
Speaker 1: society tells us we need others to feel fulfilled, or
Speaker 1: that as women we exist to serve. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: see societal norms. Not angry. You wrote an entire book
Speaker 1: called Breaking the Cycle of Trauma in Your Life and
Speaker 1: you called it Believing Me. I love the title, by
Speaker 1: the way, so you know what they're talking about. Okay,
Speaker 1: how has choosen yourself transformed your life? I mean, it's
Speaker 1: almost too big of a thing to try to contain
Speaker 1: in a couple of sentences. But for many years, as
Speaker 1: I was writing the book, it was not called believing Me.
Speaker 1: My working title was maybe it wasn't that bad, because
Speaker 1: that's the spaced in for so many years of minimizing
Speaker 1: what happened, minimizing what it did to me. And when
Speaker 1: we minimize what happened, we can't see the repercussions, and
Speaker 1: then we can't get the real support. And that's why
Speaker 1: this believing in ourselves, our own stories, what happened, What
Speaker 1: we're actually experiencing and giving it a voice is such.
Speaker 1: I mean, it blows the door open on trauma healing
Speaker 1: in my experience. And the more that I have a voice,
Speaker 1: the more that I am not hiding my experiences because
Speaker 1: they might hurt other people's feelings or all that people
Speaker 1: pleasing stuff, the more I am getting to know who
Speaker 1: I am honestly for the first time in my whole life.
Speaker 1: Like when you said, I'm fifty years old and I'm
Speaker 1: still doing this stuff. I think they're also just comes
Speaker 1: a time where it's like, yes, whose life am I living?
Speaker 1: It is mine? And when am I going to put
Speaker 1: yourself in the center. And that was a huge part
Speaker 1: of this writing journey for me was I kind of
Speaker 1: started on the surface with certain things, and then I
Speaker 1: just had to keep drilling down to what's true, drilling
Speaker 1: down to what's true. And there comes a point where
Speaker 1: I am no longer willing to abandon myself to sacrifice myself.
Speaker 1: I just I literally cannot do it anymore when I
Speaker 1: have the conscious awareness of it. And so by the
Speaker 1: end of the book, I was like, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: this is not about Maybe it wasn't that bad. The
Speaker 1: whole arc of the story is about believing me. It's
Speaker 1: amazing to me because it reminds me of what Dr.
Speaker 1: Susan Gleason said about taking on an archaeologists perspective with
Speaker 1: your own life for your own self, that you literally
Speaker 1: have to kind of dig and carve out some of
Speaker 1: what is in the way of you getting to the
Speaker 1: true core and essence of who you are. That you
Speaker 1: have to kind of dig, dig deep find what working
Speaker 1: you know, what is not going to be possible for
Speaker 1: you in your life, that isn't nurturing you, or something
Speaker 1: that you need to get out of your life. In
Speaker 1: the way that one of my former sociates, who I
Speaker 1: thought was a friend blocked and blessed me. You just
Speaker 1: never know, blocked and blessed. I'm taking this with me today.
Speaker 1: I love that so much. But can I just say
Speaker 1: one thing in relation to trauma bonding, because that block
Speaker 1: was designed in a way to see if you were
Speaker 1: going to go no, no, no, no, right no, yes,
Speaker 1: that is the cycle starting all over again. Right, that's
Speaker 1: the load, and that's the I'm not getting you the
Speaker 1: payout now, I'm going to block you, and it's designed
Speaker 1: to make us go no, I need to be rewarded
Speaker 1: by you. I need to know that you're okay, to
Speaker 1: know that I'm okay, and you broke that trauma bond
Speaker 1: by saying, wait a second, this feels terrible, but I'm
Speaker 1: going to hold my boundary anyway, because healthy boundaries and
Speaker 1: we're not used to them. They don't feel good, they
Speaker 1: don't feel like a victory laugh. They feel terrible, like
Speaker 1: you're talking about going Am I doing the right thing?
Speaker 1: Am I just being a jerk? Like maybe I went
Speaker 1: too far? That's what it feels like. But you said,
Speaker 1: even if it's all of those things, I'm still going
Speaker 1: to choose me. And over time you got more clarity
Speaker 1: and felt better about yourself. And I mean it's a
Speaker 1: perfect example of breaking a trauma bond with a healthy
Speaker 1: bound right. Yeah, look at you more for the blocked
Speaker 1: and blast. I love it. And we could talk to
Speaker 1: you for hours. I mean, this has been so amazingly therapeutic.
Speaker 1: What a normal gift. Thank you so much. This was
Speaker 1: an amazing conversation. I love what you're doing. Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me as a part of the conversation. Absolutely, thank
Speaker 1: you so much. Thank you so much for coming to
Speaker 1: the Virtual Red Table. We want to know how you're
Speaker 1: feeling about this new season a Red Table Talk. We
Speaker 1: are open to talk about anything with you, so please
Speaker 1: send in your questions at Let's Red Table that at
Speaker 1: red table talk dot com, or there's another option, leave
Speaker 1: us a voicemail at speak pipe dot com slash Let's
Speaker 1: Red Table that. Yes, we want to hear your voice.
Speaker 1: Leave us one will We can't wait to hear. We
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Speaker 1: Back Special. Thanks to executive producers Jada Pinkett Smith, Falon
Speaker 1: Jethro and Ellen Rapington. Thank you to our producer Kyleigundehru
Speaker 1: and our associate producer Yolanda Chow. And finally, thanks to
Speaker 1: our sound engineer Stephanie Aguilar. Tape for Let's Let's Sear
Speaker 1: It's Taste for that pag