Being interviewed on a Podcast about childhood trauma

Listening to my own words after being interviewed on 2 episodes of Dear Little Me: You Are Not Alone, with Dawn Chitty

It can feel so comfortable to fall back on excuses and explanations we heard as children.

Familiarity.

“That’s just how things were done here, we live in a small town.”

“My mom often needed medication to deal with various illnesses and injuries.”

“I trusted my doctor and he put me on pain medication.”

Stepping out of those limits can feel nearly impossible, because our view of the world is often formed within the boundaries of our caretakers’ fears and expectations.

If no one had ever done things differently, we might feel like something isn’t right but also feel like we have no idea how to step into something more.

We may take childhood circumstances at face value and it may not occur to us that there is a deeper implication (or an untruth) behind what we often witnessed or heard.

We may continue living out the same patterns of trusting people to tell us what to do, how to think, how to see things, and not even realize we’ve been doing it.

Stepping outside of our experience for a moment to view it objectively is extremely beneficial when being IN the experience has often felt so overwhelming or confusing. But it really helps to hear other people’s stories and pay close attention to how we feel when we hear them/interact with others. If our world was created to be really small, it may feel shocking at first to realize how big the truth actually is.

“As a child you went through more trauma than most adults.”

I heard this my entire life, repeatedly. But listening to myself answer the next question, I realized that I hadn’t actually been through “more” than most adults. mine was just more overt. Things that people would think Wow, that’s really shitty, that you went through that.

But looking at my “symptoms,” the manifestations of feeling so unloved and abandoned, was my experience really so extreme?

How many people are doing their best to cope with life, while also battling similar roadblocks and doubt?

I feel like most adults are quietly dealing with the effects of childhood traumas that they don’t even realize would be categorized as such.

How many kids are forced to accept hugs and unwanted touches from family members they only see a couple of times a year? Does that not teach a child to ignore their own inner messages of NO just as much as my experience did?

How many children are placed in front of a screen so their parents can complete all of the menial tasks that now apparently constitute a “successful” adult life, despite both parents often working full time jobs and already being gone from their kids most of the day? Isn’t that just as isolating and lonely as me being left with strangers when all I really wanted was attention from my mom?

I don’t believe this platitude offers much in the way of validation or feeling truly seen if you look at it more deeply, but I do think it’s a way for people to try to cope with the reality that our society reinforces and even rewards this life of “casual” trauma that makes such coping necessary. And that is endearing to me, even if it’s incredibly sad.

Humans are not meant to live this way. We are wired for connection and nurturing. Reaching out like this is proof, to me, that many people are suffering on some level and are aching for connection.

Children will seek the comfort of mother, even if it’s damaging to their own wellbeing.

A few tidbits I heard myself say:

“I struggled with a disconnect from what it’s supposed to be like to have a mom.”

“As a kid I would have coffee with milk and sweetener, and that’s comfort. That’s Mom.”

“I wanted to have a mom. I wanted to have that experience.”

“I’m figuring all of this out on my own without a mom there to guide me through it.”

Mother is the root of everything. I spoke of being “used to” heart racing, fight or flight, instability. It occurred to me, listening to this playback: that was my Mom. With the BPD, I never knew which Mom I was going to get that day, or if I was even going to get one. That was my baseline of comfort for a long time. Instability.

One thing that children need, that can change the trajectory of their self worth and confidence, especially after trauma: being noticed, listened to, and validated.

As I listened to myself talk about my childhood, I realized that I often just wanted someone to be a safe space for me. To know I wasn’t alone. To be told that I was loved despite any mistakes or undesirable behavior, rather than condemned for them and get in trouble.

I even said it at the beginning of part 1: There was no single adult who could consistently be my home base. So I found my identity and security in what I could.

This is the beginning of seeking external validation.

After having been through what I did with my mom and being in foster care, no one ever stopped to ask me if I was okay, or what i needed. I was just expected to keep performing and was actually shamed for being “just like my mother.” I feel this only deepened my mother wound, as I then also learned to associate shame with what I had desired for a long time: to be like mom. (I feel I had long since determined that being like myself was simply not an option, as she was so undesirable and a disappointment.)

We are raised to adhere to a value system, to exist on a worthiness scale. We live in a tit-for-tat culture.

“I was a good kid. I didn’t do anything to be grounded for two years straight.”

These were the pleadings of an inner child who was still trying to make sense of WHY she didn’t get the love she needed. It must be me. I must have done something wrong.

This reminds me of the “eye for an eye” message in church. Just more bs religious trauma and it all goes back to family trauma, which is so deeply ingrained and passed down.

Overall Moral of the story:

Having a record of your own candid thoughts and recollections can be so helpful in retracing patterns and recognizing feedback loops you’ve been clinging to.

Back when I created my Journey to Self program, I implemented a graphing technique I learned from Kaia Alline, an incredible coach who helped me through uncovering repressed emotions and navigating grief after divorce. I knew at the time that the graph had been helpful in achieving objectivity, but I didn’t realize just how much I would refer back to it throughout the rest of my program. Many of the later metaphors and “Assignments” during our 12-week journey refer back to that graph of emotions, and I eventually came to relate to the graph in terms of feeling Powerless versus Powerful.

I had been offering my clients space to refer back to their own candid writing or sketching, without recognizing just how profound that could continue to be when you revisit it over time. Experiencing it myself was humbling and so powerful.

I’m very grateful to Dawn for inviting me to join this experience, and I look forward to co-creating light spaces with more amazing people on this journey.