Have you ever wondered why, despite feeling on top of the world professionally, your personal life feels like an entirely different story? Ever felt overwhelmed or confused but can't quite put a finger on why? You're not alone. This conversation is a deep dive into the world of adaptive behaviors and how trauma impacts our nervous systems. We'll explore the subtle ways our mind and body work together to protect us from feelings of rejection, embarrassment, and criticism, and how two types of family environments can contribute to trauma and mask its effects in unique ways.
In a transparent sharing of my personal journey, I illustrate how overwhelm and confusion have served as protective mechanisms. But it doesn't stop there. The narrative evolves into an empowering dialogue on healing and building trust through self-reflection. Embrace the concept of acknowledging and respecting our feelings as a pathway to understanding ourselves better and fostering resilience. This powerful conversation is a mirror to your soul, transforming your perspective on trauma and recovery. So, buckle up and get ready to explore the depths of your being!
Also, DM me if you would like to chat about how I can help you in your journey to emotional health and balance.
This podcast is not meant to take the place of therapy, to diagnose or treat anyone. I have had therapy as recently as 2021 and found it very helpful. I am not a doctor. My only degree is in computers. I am simply sharing tools I have used to help myself grow to become an emotionally healthy person and sharing stories about my journey. Please seek medical help, as I did, if you are unable to cope with life and all that it brings.
Acoustic/Folk Instrumental by Hyde - Free Instrumentals https://soundcloud.com/davidhydemusic Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported— CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/acoustic-folk-instrumental Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/YKdXVnaHfo8
Have you ever wondered why, despite feeling on top of the world professionally, your personal life feels like an entirely different story? Ever felt overwhelmed or confused but can't quite put a finger on why? You're not alone. This conversation is a deep dive into the world of adaptive behaviors and how trauma impacts our nervous systems. We'll explore the subtle ways our mind and body work together to protect us from feelings of rejection, embarrassment, and criticism, and how two types of family environments can contribute to trauma and mask its effects in unique ways.
In a transparent sharing of my personal journey, I illustrate how overwhelm and confusion have served as protective mechanisms. But it doesn't stop there. The narrative evolves into an empowering dialogue on healing and building trust through self-reflection. Embrace the concept of acknowledging and respecting our feelings as a pathway to understanding ourselves better and fostering resilience. This powerful conversation is a mirror to your soul, transforming your perspective on trauma and recovery. So, buckle up and get ready to explore the depths of your being!
Also, DM me if you would like to chat about how I can help you in your journey to emotional health and balance.
This podcast is not meant to take the place of therapy, to diagnose or treat anyone. I have had therapy as recently as 2021 and found it very helpful. I am not a doctor. My only degree is in computers. I am simply sharing tools I have used to help myself grow to become an emotionally healthy person and sharing stories about my journey. Please seek medical help, as I did, if you are unable to cope with life and all that it brings.
Acoustic/Folk Instrumental by Hyde - Free Instrumentals https://soundcloud.com/davidhydemusic Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported— CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/acoustic-folk-instrumental Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/YKdXVnaHfo8
Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Hidden Healing Podcast. Thank you for stopping by to take a listen. I have a few questions for you. Did you grow up with a lot of adverse childhood experiences? Do you live in the toxic stress of fight or flight, feeling constantly triggered by things that make you feel unsafe? Well, you're in the right place. Listen in as I share stories and lessons from my journey in healing from complex PTSD. Listening to this podcast will help you learn to retrain your nervous system so that you feel safe and experience fewer triggers, and learn how over functioning no longer serves you and how the key to healing lies in your identity and your somatic recovery. I hope you enjoy this episode.
Speaker 1:
Okay, so today's topic falls under the pillar of the work. This is the real life healing and where the rubber meets the road. I know most of us here are not day oneers, but if you're here and you're listening, then you may have many adaptive behaviors that you and your nervous system have used to keep you safe, and that's why you'll hear me repeat and re-explain terms that I use and that you may have heard a hundred times before. But because you're here doing the work, your nervous system kind of sees that as dangerous and it may not give you quick access to all the terms and their meanings. You know what I mean. Like, okay, think about when your nervous system does this to you, when you're driving and you have your friend with you and they say turn right at the next light, and all of a sudden you can't remember you're right from your left, you're five years old again and you have that panic feeling like, oh my God, I don't know my left and my right, okay. So another one is when you're planning something with a friend, maybe like a party, and you're doing numbers on how much food you need or how much seating, and they throw some math at you and you're like, oh my God, I can't do my math and all of a sudden you're panicked. You know, and the truth is that you know, if they said to you what's two plus two plus two, your nervous system would probably panic and then you would be like I don't know my math, I need a calculator. So happens to people who have complex trauma.
Speaker 1:
It is something that is common and so you know we have to adapt. I guess and this is a positive adaptation, because I've learned to really say things over and over again, not even to you guys, but to myself, so that I remember. I learned to write things down so that I can say it and so that I remember. So the truth is that you could do all those things, but your nervous system feels safer if you don't. So that way there's not a chance that you'll be rejected or have public failure. That way you don't cause the people around you to find a reason to withdraw their love or acceptance, and that way you don't put yourself in the position of being criticized or publicly criticized. So a part of our mind decides not to give us access to that stuff. And then, on top of that, if you think about it if you remember from last season we talked about it if your mind or your nervous system goes into fight or flight, you lose access to up to 30% of your thinking ability. So all of that to mean that I'm going to keep repeating myself a lot, because it's not just for you, but it's for me too. And when our nervous system feels a little bit in danger, it will do all kinds of little tricky things right.
Speaker 1:
But this is a perfect segue to today's topic. Today we're talking about when we use overwhelm and confusion as an adaptive behavior so that we remain safe from all possible negative scenarios that I mentioned before, like public embarrassment or a chance of rejection or withdrawal of someone's love or acceptance or belonging, fitting in or being criticized All of that it's protecting us from that. But do you see the pattern? Because we just discussed two things. We discussed, like the mind, not giving you access to easy information, like difference between left and right, and also we're discussing using confusion and overwhelm to keep you safe. So yeah, they're both adaptive behaviors, examples of adaptive behaviors.
Speaker 1:
So I was thinking about this and I was thinking about adaptive behaviors and I think that there's kind of two, two types of families. There might be more, but just in my mind there's like two types and I think the result is pretty much the same. It's trauma, when we get trauma to our nervous system. The result is the same, but I think the families have like different aces and they show or cover it in different ways, and so, in order to gain comfort, some families try to be more organized and more on top of things, and so, if you like, an example in my mind is like an alcoholic father who is able to show up every day to work and has a good job, but when he comes home he drinks too much and is unavailable emotionally. But then there's the mom, who is able to pay all the bills, keep the house clean, she keeps the kids at school on schedule, like they're supposed to, and so all the things seem like your family is fine. And it kind of reminds me of the families of the 50s, where the mothers drank all day because, you know, there was not a lot for them. They had to take care of the families but they didn't have. They had a lot more emptiness inside because of the way that everything was now conveniences of going to grocery stores and having cars and all of the availability of food without having to work for it. You know, as in like grow it, and etc. And so they were on a emotionally unavailable to kids, but they were to keep. They were able to keep all the balls up in the air, so to speak, and I think of that person that is also very good at their job as a grown-up. It's like they run the company and they are literally everyone's boss and they are just like really on fire at work, but home life is quite the opposite. So I am talking about that to draw a comparison to the oppositeness of my family, because that's not how my life looked.
Speaker 1:
I was the other family. I was the one who never knew what day of the week it was if I didn't go to school that week or if it was summer, never knew a day of the week it was. We were the kids who missed so much school that I guess they would have probably failed us if it wasn't for the whole no kids left behind, type of thinking and they just kept passing me. The kids who didn't have clean clothes or appropriate clothes, often because you know the laundry clothes, everything was in piles everywhere and who knew where it was. You couldn't really find it and we didn't have a washer in our, in our apartment. We literally had to go down to the laundry mat somewhere and wash laundry, which costs money, which was something that sometimes we didn't have. So we were the kids whose family just could not be consistent at anything, including school. We missed a lot of important dates and appointments, and you know, it's just my working theory.
Speaker 1:
I haven't really read or analyzed this in any kind of clinical way, or you know. You guys know I'm just a lay person who's sharing my experiences in life, and this is something I was thinking about and just came up with, but it does beg the question, since we weren't doing much, we weren't at school or like living a good life out there. What were we doing? Well, we were under functioning. We were so focused on just like daily living and getting our needs met that we weren't really busy doing much. We had a lot of work to do on a day-to-day basis, because just to get dressed meant that we had to find a clean towel or clean clothes, or if we wanted to go out, we had to find and it was one or time find a jacket and a pile of full of clothes. Or if we wanted to eat, we had to wash something to cook in, and then we'd have to wash dishes to eat out of, and so it was a very you know the life of just trying to get your daily needs met for quite a while and then watching your parents cope with it all by watching too much TV or sleeping or just checking out. That's kind of something I think that both families have in common, though Parents with coping tools that look like checking out of life, watching TV for hours or eating comfort food all the time drinking too much, things like that.
Speaker 1:
I know this all sounds grim, but it wasn't always like that. In fact, there was a lot of good times, especially as we got later in our teen years we really did become active and contributing members of society. I even remember my sister and I my brother had already moved out and everything and my sister and I came to a point in life when we were just like we don't want to live in chaos and clutter anymore. All this dirtiness that comes with it, it's just not for us. We were able to clean up our home and to take care of our clothes and all of that stuff, including everything that comes with it. Of course, my mom had a lot less stress, since we were all at an age of accountability for ourselves pretty much. Especially in that time period. It was one of the healthiest times of my life, right around like 17 to 19. It's one of the better periods of time with good memories.
Speaker 1:
What I'm really getting at is that all along I had modeled for me these adaptive strategies. Then really, I had a lot of time to see that and to get those behaviors deep down inside. Plus, I had my own trauma that really short circuited all my nervous system and my brain, and so I found those behaviors useful. That's why I use confusion and overwhelm. As a grownup I began to see that, and it is not a useful skill to have to be able to live like that.
Speaker 1:
What is overwhelm and confusion? What are overwhelm and confusion? Confusion is the state of being when someone feels completely inundated, emotionally or mentally, by excessive amounts of demands or stimuli. It can manifest as feelings of being unable to cope or manage a situation that you have at hand. It results in loss of control and a sense of drowning in your own chaos. Confusion is very similar in the kind of go hand in hand. It refers to a mental state of being disoriented, where you struggle to understand or make sense of anything, a situation, information, your own thoughts. Think about trying to balance a checkbook, which I don't even do, but back in the 90s and the 80s it was 70s it was things that people did and you couldn't see the numbers or you couldn't add up your bills because it was just so confusing, kind of like a mind-fog, kind of confusion, disorienting thoughts and feelings. It really creates a sense of being lost, not being smart enough or good enough and just like you, just shut yourself down.
Speaker 1:
Really, I spent a lot of my life in overwhelm and confusion, starting from a really young age. I think about it now. Why did I do that? Well, how about when you feel that overwhelm, when you feel that confusion, our thoughts just become so clouded and whatever that we really just feel stuck. So I would end up spending many days not getting anything done or just a lot of fear, because I was so confused and things felt really hard. And when you feel that way, when you feel like I'm just can't do this, I just can't balance my money or I Can't make sense of this thing that I want to do, so I'm just not gonna do it and I'm gonna stay stuck.
Speaker 1:
People with complex trauma sometimes unconsciously use that overwhelm and confusion is a way to escape from life challenges and triggers. And Really, what we're trying to do is avoid feeling Emotions or memories that may come up for us. Right, if you've had trauma other I mean aside from ACEs if you've had really big traumas in your life, then those, if you haven't dealt with them all those are things that we're trying to push down and not feel. And then, when we're facing things that Challenges and trigger us. Those things can't come up. So we're just our nervous system is really trying to keep us safe.
Speaker 1:
So, using these mechanisms to detach ourselves from Things in our life, the realities of our life, it kind of makes a buffer between us and Whatever the thing that we think is scary, or maybe Things that will remind us of trauma or that will make us feel like we're gonna be back in that danger again. And it was useful for us back then because it kept us Small if we didn't get up and go places. And that's why I talked about Getting back to how I lived in that small life where I was trying to Get my daily needs met and just like living. It kept it small so that I always felt safe because there was not scary people around me who would hurt me. There was not Situations where people would see how stupid I was because I thought I was really that stupid. And so when we have that Over around the confusion and we stop in our tracks and we lay down or we sit down and watch television or we disconnect in whatever way that we choose to disconnect Whether I mean there's so many ways to disconnect and we're just doing the bare necessities to get by.
Speaker 1:
That's our nervous system, trying to use confusion and overwhelm to keep us safe. But it's not serving us anymore, is it? I Think about times when my life was like that, when it was that small and when I was just, you know, basically not moving a lot and just being in the house, and I don't want to live that way ever again. I would not want to go back to that. But now I see myself using confusion and Overwhelm in a different way and so, like today, I felt confused and overwhelmed because I was gonna record the podcast episode and I felt unsafe because I know that all of you and and a lot of you are real people in my life. That I know because you've told me that you listen to the episodes and stuff, and I know that you guys are gonna hear this. And so For the last two weeks I've been trying to do this and I would have times when I could sit down and write and it would feel so good, and Then every time I tried to record, I would get overwhelmed and confused. And the technology and Getting into a computer which I did, and because my other computer died, and having to learn how to use this because it's a Mac and not a PC, and the mic not working with it and all of these things. Do you see what I'm saying? And so it's taking me a while just to get this back so that I could sit here and record with you, and so that's how I use it now.
Speaker 1:
A while ago, before I was able to work through a lot of this, my nose would start running and I would start sneezing, for could you imagine your nose Just dripping like a water faucet for 24 to 48 hours? That would cause me just to lay down in my bed and hold a tissue on my face and I would just lay there and every now and then I'd get up and blow my nose and by the end of it I would be so sore Because I was so stressed about something that my body was just like nope, we're calling it. You're confused and overwhelmed and you need to lay down. You cannot handle this. Those are Examples in my life.
Speaker 1:
What are some examples in your life? What are some patterns that you do when you use overwhelm and confusion to help you Remain safe, take on too much responsibility and then all of a sudden it becomes confusing appointments back to back or Things like that, and then you get overwhelmed and you have to lay down or you have to take a rest, or you have to cancel everything and take a day, an emotional day, right? So here's, here's the good part. Here's I know that I possibly felt very Negative and I'm sorry about that. I wasn't trying to be negative, but if we can relate and see these behaviors, if, if I can say things in my life Cause you to relate, then you'll know and you'll you'll see those things that need to change. And so that's what. That's why I was trying to Express it in a way that would make us connect and see how we're the same.
Speaker 1:
So here's some advice, though if you want to go all in with your complex trauma recovery but you're using overwhelm and confusion as a protection, first of all, don't feel alone. Always give yourself grace. Don't feel like the freak who just can't get your life together and you're the only one who's like this. Not, that's not true. We all of us with complex trauma have these adaptive behaviors that are no longer serving us, and if we want to get healthy, we are gonna look at them, but don't cause yourself to feel negative or bad about yourself. This is something that you did to keep yourself safe, and now you're realizing it's no longer serving me, and so it's common. So if you have complex trauma, if you know someone who does, their, chance that they're doing this too.
Speaker 1:
So when you feel overwhelmed or when you feel confused about how to take action in your life or your day, or you have a free hour and you have a lot of stuff and you feel really overwhelmed and it's the only free hour you have in the day to do these things and you can't or you don't know how to show up in your day because you know there's so much going on, you don't know where to use your energy and resources. Just stop, just stop. Go to your safe place, your comfortable place. For me, it's on my bed or outside on the couch, if it's warm and sunny, and then you sit down and close your eyes and go inward and just take a minute to acknowledge that overwhelm and Acknowledge the confusion you feel, and I'll just allow it to be. You're not trying to change it. This is where you get to be the neutral observer in your own life, in your own mind. That means Don't make those feelings good or bad, just allow them to exist and see them.
Speaker 1:
I think of it like picking up a rock at the beach. It's interesting and you see it. You see this pebble and you turn it this way and you turn it that way and you observe it on all the sides and you feel it in your hand and it's interesting, right? That's kind of how it is when we get that overwhelm and we get that confusion. Sometimes, when we feel that overwhelming confusion, we immediately stop and we think that the thoughts that we're having in those feelings are facts or that there's just wisdom in submitting because you need to slow down anyways, you need to take a step back and Be sure you're doing the right thing, and that sometimes may cause you to just stop in your tracks, when what you really need is just a minute to be alone with those feelings and to give them the respect that they need and deserve. And poof. It's like that you sat down for 90 seconds, or sometimes five minutes, and the thoughts and the feelings, they lose the power, they lose the energy and you remember them, but you're just not feeling them in your body and you can take a baby step forward now and you can go. Oh, that's right, I wanted to clean off my desk. Let me just clean off my desk right now. And then you kind of get in a cadence and you keep going. Your nervous system can become destabilized very quickly and when it does stop, go inward and see the thoughts and the feelings.
Speaker 1:
Another example that I heard that I really loved is like a waterfall. It's like when you're stopping to to Acknowledge the overwhelming, the confusion, to allow it its its place. It's like when you go behind a waterfall versus standing in the waterfall. So recently this early spring I Went on a hike and one of the places we go to has this lovely waterfall and when it rains really hard which it does a lot it actually is so powerful and so I hyped up behind it and that was the first time and it was interesting because I was on my bucket list is going behind the waterfall, and I got to go behind the waterfall and stand there and the water was rushing so fast.
Speaker 1:
It's like those emotions and you just feel overwhelmed and your heart is pumping and you just can't handle that right and I could feel that water even just in the splashes. That was that we're getting me and I could feel the power of it, but it's like you step back against the wall and you just look at the water falling and it's just, it's amazing, it's amazing, and so it's that same thing. It's like a waterfall. You're not standing in the water pelting you and, you know, pushing you out of control, but you're standing back and just looking at it. So that's kind of like looking at the, the pebble that you pick up on the beat. You're just looking and observing and being that neutral observer.
Speaker 1:
So, little by little, slow and steady, you learn to trust yourself.
Speaker 1:
You learn when you really do need a rest and then, when you do need a rest, it's okay to stop.
Speaker 1:
But when what you really need is just to acknowledge those feelings, to be that neutral observer and to give those those feelings which stem from the past, give them their respect and acknowledge that they're trying to just protect you, then you can sometimes step forward and keep going.
Speaker 1:
And I think that's the key here is that we want to just do that, because Sometimes we're gonna find out we need to stop, but other times you're gonna find out that we keep going, moving towards the things in coherent and consistent ways, and it is just going to feel really good when that happens and you're gonna really just build trust and healing and Self-support, and so, of course, as we do this guess what? It's also letting us get to know ourselves and letting us know how strong we are and how we can listen to our inner voice. And when we learn how to trust ourselves, it's part of that, part of part of those pillars that are all building us up and it's all just connected. So hopefully you see how overwhelm and confusion are adaptive behaviors and that it's okay that that we have those adaptive behaviors, but that we can also choose To sit with them and observe them and sometimes move forward. So I'm I'm so happy you join me again this week and I look forward to again speaking with you next week.
