TCT will feature content for adult ears, which may not be suitable for people under the age of 18. References to sex, sexual violence, crimes, addiction, and personal stories of trauma will be discussed and may be upsetting or scary to younger minds. Please use your best judgement when making the choice to listen and please take care of yourself.
TCT will feature content for adult ears, which may not be suitable for people under the age of 18. References to sex, sexual violence, crimes, addiction, and personal stories of trauma will be discussed and may be upsetting or scary to younger minds. Please use your best judgement when making the choice to listen and please take care of yourself.
Hello, beautiful people. I am Candy and I am Sandy. We're here to talk about all things trauma. Yes, we are. So you're probably wondering who we are. We already told you our names, but who we are, why we're doing this and how we kind of came together to become the Cloak Tatters. Candy, do you want to start us off with how you became interested in doing a podcast?
I have found myself very passionate about the topic of trauma for quite a while in my own journey of healing. And last year, was it last year? Yes, last year I started moderating panels on transforming trauma into art at local conventions. I think I did. I've done five so far. There's a lot. Yes. Many of them. I'm so excited about it. And I just, my desire came from wanting to normalize trauma and how we respond to it and why we respond in those ways so that people don't feel alone.
Right. We have a little bit of a shared interest there, except I'm a mental health clinician. I've been a behavioral health therapist for about 14 years, and I primarily treat PTSD and trauma related disorders. And I have found through my practice that trauma, unfortunately, is far more common than we ever wanted to recognize or probably know about. I think that Majority of people have some sort of trauma there's different types of trauma, medical trauma, interpersonal trauma, trauma from war, violence, things like that and then there's big T traumas and little t traumas. So what we're hoping to do through this podcast is kind of talk about all the different types of trauma and make this better. I know for myself as a clinician in Colorado, there are people clamoring to get into therapy and we have short, short, short resources here in the state and every time I meet with someone new. Generally it takes them five to six counselors to find somebody. They'll call people. They never get calls back. They reach out and it just kind of goes nowhere for them, which is extremely frustrating for folks. And we wanted to meet people sort of more at a global level to be able to identify first what trauma is, what you decided is for you, and maybe how to better cope and get through it.
Very eloquently stated. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so in the convention, I think it was at Mile High Con last year here in Colorado. I was talking to a mutual friend of ours about, he wanted me to be on a panel at Colorado Festival of Horror. Mm hmm. And I was talking to him and I said, Oh, well, I've been doing these transforming trauma into art panels, and I would love to do this at COFOH. And he said, Well, give me your contact information. I'm going to get you in touch with people and told me about your workshop. that you had. Do you want to talk about that for a second?
Yeah, I did forget about that. I failed to mention, but we're just getting started here. So we're moving through it. I presented last year at Colorado Festival of Horror in 2023, a panel on trauma in horror and it was probably, it was one of the most well attended. And I was really shocked. We had about 12 seats at the table and 12 chairs and. we ended up with about 28 people and four of those are my own people so they came to support me which was lovely. But during that workshop I realized there's clearly a need and I know for me being a trauma survivor as well as Candy and we can talk about that in later, later sessions or later times horror was one of the things that I identified really early on, probably about six to seven years old, where I really started to align with characters and I really was sort of interested in what made people tick, especially people who are causing other people harm. So I used the film The Rosemary's Baby last year at the panel to sort of illustrate how women get gaslit. I know we both love that film. And it went really, really well. I wish I would have had way more time and I wish I would have had a much bigger room. So we're hoping that for 2024 Yes. We're hoping to do a giant large panel that's expansive and joining many other voices to discuss the topic of trauma as it relates to pop culture and film, and how many of those situations in pop culture, and especially film, particularly horror movies, sci fi, fantasy, Sci fi fantasy over here, way horror over here, but we're going to make it all blend together and it's going to be really awesome. A lot of those stories really tell the story of people who are suffering and it's just an interesting context to use and being a lifelong horror fan, I can see so many things in horror films that people use to sort of work through their demons and understand other people. And maybe the directors and the writers and the producers didn't intend for that, but I certainly see it.
So, it's fascinating. Maybe not consciously intend for that. Maybe not, but I know. Cause I've been doing art for quite a while, and it wasn't until in retrospect that I realized I was working through my own shit. Yep. Yep. And so, oh, I know we ended up meeting via email first and then decided of course we needed to go on a coffee date to feel each other out. And we met and sparks flew. And it's perfect, like awesome match. We're, we're vibrating at the same frequency. We're both passionate about this. We want people to understand it more. We've worked through this stuff together or not together, but on our own, we've worked through our own shit. And of course you being a professional adds extra flavor. Do you want to add anything to that?
I really think the balance that we're going to try to strike here for you as an audience. is to really bring the idea of what trauma means alive in ways that you might not have seen it before. But trauma is one of those interesting things that once you see it, it's really hard to unsee it.
Yes.
So we kind of get our ears perked and our brain involved and we go, oh, well that could have been really harmful. I remember I went to a trauma seminar at Fort Logan Mental Health Institute when I was just a grad student 14, 15 years ago, 16 years ago maybe? And one of the things that was presented at this panel, and it was a workshop, I think it was like an all day thing, it was really the message that the speaker said, and I cannot remember her name, she's a lovely woman, had really wonderful things to say, and I took pages and pages of notes during that seminar and one of the things that she said was People always ask, well, what's wrong with you? That's really the wrong question when it comes to trauma. We need to be asking, what happened to you? What happened to me is an individual question for each person, but when we start to really dig down and drill into that, it makes a whole lot of sense why we do the things we do when we've been a survivor of any kind of trauma. And sort of digging into that is like gold.
Yeah. It is, though. Because then you can take that gold and you can make shit out of it! I'm always asking why. I don't know if I got in trouble for it as a kid, as a lot of kids do, but I'm like, why, why is this happening? Why is that person doing that? And I'm always asking why. And the most important questions I needed to ask were why, why do I have four failed marriages? How come I'm finding myself in this rut in addition to. the addiction issues that I've had, and we'll talk about that later also, is gaining a better understanding of, okay, this happened, which changed the wiring in my brain, which resulted in this. And then along the way, it became my truth and I started behaving accordingly and keeping myself, we were talking about bubbles earlier, keeping myself in this little bubble of how I thought. And not all of it was even conscious, how I thought I was supposed to act and behave and just, it kept me in this cycle. So I'm so excited about talking about everything. all the things.
Yeah, we're both really excited to just have a platform. I don't think that I ever set out personally to like, I'm going to have a podcast because everybody has a podcast these days. Like there's, if you want a podcast on walking your dog in the park and a tutu on a Sunday you, there's probably a podcast specifically for that. And I've watched a lot of trauma podcasts and videos rather, and then video podcasts and audio podcasts. And I sometimes I just feel a little left, like there's not a there's not a way to tell people who maybe haven't experienced trauma it. I don't know... it's hard for people to identify like when you describe that you're a trauma survivor I think people automatically for a long time and I know for me as a clinician for a long time people really thought that trauma and PTSD was just for veterans It's not...It's not, and it doesn't necessarily mean that every little trauma is going to give you a diagnosis of PTSD, but it is going to affect us, because we are, although we are not our behavior, we very much are our experiences. So that's something that I think people sometimes in the course of trying to understand trauma, It's hard to illustrate it if you haven't been there done that with some sort of issue But I think the more we can describe it and relate it to messages that we receive in social media and social constructs of the world that is around us. They can really illustrate points about here's what trauma looked like for this character and then we find ourselves sometimes in those characters So really drawing in the movies and the films, literature and pop culture in a general way I think really helps people to like oh, I get it now.
Yes, it's, it's finding these languages that already exist and translating them into another language that will reach a different audience to help broaden the understanding of why and how and yeah, yeah, yeah!
So we're really excited to have this journey with you, and we're really pleased if you're watching that you're hanging out with us. We would love to see more of you, and we love your comments too. We would love to hear from people, and if you have specific questions about things, we're thinking about doing an episode of podcasting that perhaps maybe does like a Q& A maybe like a live session somewhere. We're located in Denver. But we're not opposed to being invited anywhere.
Oh, definitely not. Adventure? Yes, please.
For sure, for sure. Yeah. Where should we springboard from that? I think we've kind of talked a little bit about some of our intro and what brought us here.
Well, I mean, there are so many different directions that we can go. And, what really struck me that you said was bringing in pop culture and looking at, and this was, I mean, this is what brought us together, looking at movies. She, she said Rosemary's Baby and I'm like, Oh, it's a comfort film for me. It's, it is a horror film. And I use the quotations because for me, like that is not something that wouldn't be considered horrific for me. I'm like, this is, this is like, I will fall asleep if I am struggling emotionally, mentally, and I need to just get horizontal for a minute and chill. I will throw on the movie and I can fall asleep to it. Like a baby, you know? And I'm like, this is really fucked up.
Yes.
And I'm like, why, why is that? And I've thought about that. But going back to talking about pop culture, movies, books I don't know, what else would there be? Well, there's all sorts of stuff. Talking about those things can help others. I like that, like, personally, myself, with my artwork and my writing. My whole thing has been to write this. allegory, I got the word right on the first try, an allegory for my life. And it's fantasy, it's like sci fi fantasy and it's dystopian. And I'm like, how do I make what happened to me and turn it into a piece of literature that, Even if somebody doesn't think they identify as being, what am I trying to say, being a victim of, or having had experienced the exact same thing, having experienced something similar and the ensuing feelings and actions that result from that, you know, leading my main character on. And how it correlates to real life. Did that make sense?
It does. It does. It very much makes sense. I think that, you know, we could probably ask anybody. And I'll switch into the horror gear because that's sort of my jam. Let's be honest, it's definitely my jam. If you saw the office that we're in right now trying to film this, there's bats and skulls and blood and vampire. I mean, it's a whole thing. I sort of live in the shadow but I am a very positive person and an optimistic person. However, I too, like Candy, am very comforted by dark things. I have loved Haunted House since I was a kid. I have loved horror movies. I begged my mom when I was seven years old. Please let me watch The Exorcist when it was televised. And she was like, what the fuck is wrong with this child? And I remember she had her hands over (my eyes) and I was like, no, I want to see what's going on. And I didn't have nightmares, although I was absolutely titillated by the fact that I was fearful of it, but it appealed to me so much. And there's a neurochemistry about watching horror films, and we'll probably talk about all of these things more in depth later, for sure, but the neurochemistry that I was experiencing was sort of this like identification with a girl who was being bullied by a demon, essentially. And thought that was really interesting play to sort of see my bullying as a kid who was like, really had trouble fitting in and had friends, but didn't get boyfriends, you know? I had breasts early, I was kind of chubby. I have naturally curly hair. My mom cut it in such a way that I kind of looked like Kid N play, but like Q tip. And it was not, it was not an easy time to look a certain way and not be that typical little blonde beauty that many of my peers were. And so when I saw Linda Blair's character, sort of suffering through these things and being possessed by this (demon). There were times that I was like, why can't I just lash out at these kids and these other kids who are bullying me and being terrible to me? What did I do wrong? And it never encouraged me to have horrible self esteem. I've always been pretty strong and confident, but I did identify with this idea that this girl is being exposed to things that is changing her behavior and whether she's possessed or not didn't really matter to me. I just saw myself in her to set, to some degree. And now it's a comfort film. It's one of my favorite top 10 films of all time.
Yeah, I know. It's so good. So I'm listening to you talking about how you identified early on. I think I went, I love, I love me some horror, love me some horror. And it comes for me analyzing my own thoughts about it. It comes more from, well, things could always be worse. This could be happening to you. Sure. And when, but when I was little experiencing the things that I did. At home, I went to escapism, and that's where I was just thinking about this. That's where She Ra, you know, Wonder Woman, the another one the Incredible Hulk.
Yes. Oh God, I love the Hulk.
Right. Oh my God, I love the Hulk.
It's like, I could identify, it's like, okay, these guys are going through a really tough time. moment right now and things look helpless and what are we going to do? And no matter what, the, I don't want to say the good guys always won. I mean, they did, but I don't like thinking that way because I love me a tragedy, but it was, there was always a way out. There was always a way to figure out how to get out of the predicament that they were in. And that's what I like. I'm like, drop me in the middle of shit. and it'll be an adventure but we'll figure out and there was always that hope there's that hope of the freaking pot of gold at the end of the rainbow whatever you want to call it that is what I held on to because I honestly I don't know if I would have been allowed to watch horror I didn't want to like step beyond what I thought my rules would be you know what I mean and so But literature Like, my first Stephen King book was It, and I devoured that thing.
And that's so heavy for a kid. But, you know, it's just so good. So amazing to connect with a childhood experience of things are happening to a group of kids that is way beyond their control. And they look at this monster, whether it's real or they invented it, as this sort of projection of like worst, worst case fears, worst case scenario. And so I think that a lot of us maybe identified, I mean, Stephen King is just a master anyway. I mean, the man can write. And my journey was similar to Candy's. I mean, I was, I asked for my eighth Christmas an unabridged Edgar Allen Poe. and was reading all these awful, horrific, dark stories, and my parents were like, what is she doing in there? And I'm like the quintessential only child in the 70s, entertaining myself, you know? Parents were off doing their own thing, and not that they neglected me in any way, but there was this idea that you still didn't, like, play with your kids, you know, like we do now, like we try to engage with our children, right? Go play in the street.
Yeah. Yeah.
It was the mentality. I mean, you left at nine in the morning in the summer and you didn't come back until the street lights came on. Right. That was the thing and you'd be gone all the day and, you know, people are shitting about, like, well, why am I, why were you drinking out of hoses? Because that's what they gave us. They told us, like, you're on your own, just be back, you know, we didn't have a tent.
We didn't have our handy little water bottle.
Yeah, no, we did not have that. It was just any neighbor's hose. Any neighbor's hose! We could really go someplace with that, but we won't because that's not what this intro session's about.
That's for another episode.
It is.
And we are accepting of all hoes, so just don't be afraid about that. We're not here to judge. Where was I? Oh, we were talking about Stephen King. Yeah, yeah. How he dealt with our lives at the time. Right. So I, like Candy, had my face in books and it was just books, books, books, because when you go to school, you're not really accepted, you're not part of the in crowd, which that still existed back then, 70s, 80s. I mean, it always has, it always will. But I, I really was like, books are my thing. Books are my jam. And I was a big writer. I wrote a lot of poetry. I wrote a lot of stories and that was just sort of my whole world. So it was pretty much music, reading, and film. So, and I would watch things that my parents were like, what are you watching? Oh, and then they let me watch it anyway. And I remember my dad saying something to the effect of like, well, she doesn't seem like she's emotionally scarred. And then he would like, you know, make a face and, and jerk around like there was something wrong with him and make a joke out of it. And I was like, okay. But those are the things that were just kind of made my heart feel like I belonged somewhere.
Yes. Yes. It was something of what you were just saying about yeah, identifying in film, Star Trek was a big one for me, probably the biggest. Wow. and talk about escapism, like, Hey, can you come down in your starship and take me away from all of this, please?
Yeah.
And I'll go explore adventure. There's that other adventure. I'm all about the adventure, whether it's up here or actually going out. And the nice thing was every episode, they're dropping you in this situation and oh, things are dire, but then they figure out how to get out of it. Yeah. And it's again, it brought that hope to the forefront that no matter what's going on, either in horror, it could be worse or Because yeah, horror doesn't usually end with happy.
No, not a lot of times. It's usually a really fucked up ending that leaves many people sitting there going, no, that's terrible. It's what it's meant to be. It's meant to challenge your context of like, okay, how do we get through stuff like this? Well, sometimes people don't, and that's an unfortunate, crappy reality of life is that sometimes we can't always work through the things that harm us and bad things happen to people. And that's what we're trying to do, that's it's just part of life. And as a clinician that specializes in PTSD treatment some people, there's just a register of what happened in the person's distress tolerance because everyone handles, even if you have two people in the same situation, they may very well handle it very differently because their distress tolerance is very different from the person that is also going through it. So some people. I don't want to ever be the naysayer that says you can't heal from trauma fully, but I don't really know what that looks like for, even for me at the age that I'm at, and dealing with stuff for three decades now, four decades, and, and going, am I truly really healed?
I love that you brought that up.
Does that ever really happen? Right. Because we don't forget about, we don't ever forget about the things that have happened to us, but what we do is we find a way to live with it. It's a little bit like grief, like we don't ever replace the person that's left us, but we, we grow our lives around that loss.
Around the absence of. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Oh, I love how you, how you put that. It's, And I totally just spaced what I was going to say.
That's okay. Brain blips are going to happen. No, definitely. You'll know that when you meet more of us. Brain blips are a thing. Oh, what you were saying about you know, I, I don't know if I'm ever going to get over this or, or deal with this effectively, like wondering, have I actually really dealt with my trauma? Cause like right now in my life, I feel fucking great.
Yeah. Yeah.
Everything is going wonderful. We're doing a fricking podcast talking about the number one thing that is the most important to me. And I used to be one of the, my attitude was rub some dirt on it, on it and walk it off. Yeah. Yep. And so to be, I feel like I've done a 180 and I often question myself and it's like how are, because it's so easy to dissociate from that trauma and be like, Oh, I'm fine.
Right. And so I often have to take a step back and ask myself, have you really done a 180? Deal with this being a part of your life. That's it. It's not you don't get over it Yeah, you can work through it, but it will always be a part of life.
Right and going back to what you were saying about distress tolerance learning how to develop skills to handle those moments that do come up going into like PTSD, you know, there's colors for me, there's smells, there's the sound of a Honda motorcycle and my stomach goes, and I have to be like, Hey, it's okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's okay. And then, and then I, and then I stepped back and I'm like, it really is okay. Yeah. Like I'm all right. Right. So I love that you said that. Because I, I mean, I've worked so hard and people that know me personally have been able to watch this. I feel like I'm a completely different person.
Yeah.
In the past two years than I used to be. Right. And just going back to why we're doing this, I want to be like, this is all the stuff that I did and this is what I have to offer you as far as what worked for me. Maybe something will work for you.
Yeah. Yeah. The thing that I always find interesting about trauma is that I'm a big Jung fan. Carl Jung was an amazing thinker, an amazing writer, and probably not so great as a clinician, because some of the things that they did, him and Freud, and many others, really unethical stuff went down in the early leanings of psychology and psychiatry and psychotherapy. Not all of it was good. I actually bought a book and we're going to do an episode that really talks about where psychiatry and psychology and the study of the human mind comes from and our early leanings into it. And I purchased a book from a local used bookstore about a year ago. And it's basically case studies from like the 1910s, 1920s, and the classism, and the sexism, and the misogyny, and the bigotry, and just the judgment laden pages, and I have a good clinician friend and we read some of it one night and we were like, oh my God, this is a fucking disaster. Like if we treated people in the clinical community like that now, we would lose our license. We would have complaints through DORA. We would have all these different things going on because we just didn't know what we didn't know.
Right, right.
There was something else that I had that I was going to springboard off of that. Oh, back to Carl Jung. So he influences a lot of my work and his main thing about trauma is that anything that happens to us that we don't integrate or that happens that we don't understand...I usually give my clients this analogy. You have all this gunk in you and it came from somewhere and then you take the gunk and you put it in a box and it's like slime, right? So it's this consistency that's like gooey and sticky and it adheres to things and it's messy and yucky. We try to take that we try to put it in a nice little cardboard box and put some tape on it and then we put it in the attic. We put it in a closet on the shelf, behind the closet door, and then we're like surprised when it starts to leak the fuck out. And we can't be surprised by it, but many people so much are because we have not told people, it's okay to talk about your wounds largely in society. We suffer from this repression and, and there's oppression too, a whole different thing. But this repression of what happened to us and the shame around and the guilt around having bad things happen to you that were not your fault. Like when the Me Too movement happened, like, women, billions of women everywhere were like, oh, well, me too. And I was sitting back going, no shit, me too. But it didn't not affect me. It affected me in a big way. Because it let me know, this is, this is so much more than just me, or just people on my caseload. It's so much more. It's everyone. It's systemic. It's systemic and it's embedded into our culture. And we need to work to change that.
Yes. Yeah, absolutely.
But Jung always talked about wholeness really meaning not so much that you're going to ignore the bad things that have happened to you, but that you can integrate them. Yes.
So when we integrate pain and we integrate negative experiences that have shaped who we've become and how we cope with people, how we show up in relationship, all of those things, we really can come to terms with, okay, these things happened to me and this was part of my experience who made me what I am, but it's not going to define the totality of who I am.
Yes. Ooh, not being defined by, yeah, what happened. Right. Oh my goodness. I used to live. I'm like, well, I'm this way because this happens and that's just how it is. And you're going to have to deal with all of me.
Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh gosh. I mean, our list of what we're going to discuss on this podcast is ever expanding and I'm excited to see what suggestions you all come up with that we haven't thought of.
I mean, it's, there's so much. There's so much and I'm just, I'm really looking forward to sharing all of it. Yeah. I mean, I essentially have like a backlog of things that have just pissed me off about society, about the world, about human behavior, and that list has been growing for about 14 years. And so this is sort of an outlet and a vehicle to be able to say, hey, look, I see you, I see your experience, but it doesn't define you. And let's just bring it out into the light because...what's the saying, you know the best disinfectant is, is light, right?
Yes.
So we bring those things out from the shadow and that's the shadow work. And if you look on my bookshelf here, there's tons of books on shadow work and sort of playing with that. And many, many people I mean, I'll just use a really quick example. I know people who have been through really, really awful childhood traumas and so much so that it just kind of fractured and split them. And the more that that these people get that attention and the love and the care and the acceptance and the validation, the less fracture there is.
Yes. And that kind of goes into, I was just thinking about internal family systems and me,
The parts, the parts, parts, work, parts. So excited about parts. Everybody should be excited about parts work!
Cause I had such a huge lack of information and understanding of what exactly happened every time personally just I experienced trauma and my biggest fear was I don't want to develop multiple personality disorder or dissociative identity disorder. Actually, it's even called something else now. And I'm like, I'm fine. You know, just, but as you know, as I've been working on myself, I realized there are different parts of myself that develop to deal with all these different things. And I would call it fractured even before I even knew what that was because it's fitting.
That's right.
You know, and I love how you're talking about community and more understanding and being loved and accepted, how that helps these different parts start to kind of flow into each other and not be so independent and like butting heads.
Right. Well, and some of the parts for people who are really extremely traumatized and had to split off in order to survive a situation or to survive a relationship that was horribly abusive those parts are meaningful and they show up for a reason because they protect us and a lot of that happens in the brain chemistry Where if bad things happen the brain sort of shuts down and goes into hibernation mode and now it's like operating in safe mode, right? And your brain is like beep, beep, boop, and it's going through the motions, but it's not all together there. And so when you have something like DID it's there for a reason, but it doesn't need to stay because once you feel more safe and protected it can integrate and gets better and people feel like they can thrive, especially if they don't feel like all of their parts have previously been accepted.
Oh, yeah.
Now we're changing into a landscape, hopefully, when healing happens, that we're with people who can accept all of those parts. Right. And that just equals more integration and more healing and more health.
To go off what you're just saying is, and the thing is, not just only, Acceptance from external sources, but within.
Internal, yes.
I would say for myself, lying to myself about what's actually going on. I'm like, no, I'm just a bitch sometimes. Well, no, maybe that's the protective part of me. That's trying to look out for Candy.
Yeah. Yeah. Bitch, bitch comes out to say no, I don't think so. Boundaries are being crossed.
That's right.
Yeah. Yeah. I think that everyone who is human has probably had an experience where I use the example all the time when I work with clients about, have you ever driven to work and you go the same way all the time? You pass the same stores, you get stuck at the same lights, you're sitting there with your coffee, and you get to work, and then you go in about your day and you kind of go, wait a minute, how did I get here?
Yeah.
And that's sort of an example of everyday dissociation, where your brain just sort of needs, a part of it checks out, and it's like, I am on standby, and then you're driving the car, and then you're like, I can't remember, and then you start to think like, Oh, I've driven this so many times. It's like the same damn thing. It's a groundhog day over and over. And so there's a part of you driving and then there's a part of you that's just off, you know, playing a movie in your head. And so, so sometimes when I, when people have asked me like about how it is to feel like dissociation, because many people with post traumatic stress disorder or a trauma related disorder that doesn't have a PTSD label, explain that to me.
Like I sort of feel like I'm. Fly not automatic and I'm not getting all the input. Well, why is that happening? And we can correct that we can correct that by bringing all that stuff up to the surface because then you know how to integrate it Your brain goes. Oh, I know what to do with that. And then my heart heals too.
Yes. Oh So much stuff so much stuff. We've actually covered a ton of things that we're going to talk about. And I'm just, I'm freaking thrilled to be here.
We're so excited!
Yeah. And we're probably going to do a lot more ad libbing. Part of our whole shtick is we just want to show up as ourselves and we don't want to put airs on and we don't want to be people who we aren't and we're just going to be real here and you're going to hear some language and you're probably going to hear some things that maybe ruffle your feathers or get you thinking about some things. Please don't stop watching or participating, and I'm not saying you have to be here. If we say something and you're like, I'm out, that's totally your prerogative. But I would ask you to sort of sit with things and sit in the discomfort because some of the things that we're going to talk about are are very uncomfortable because trauma is uncomfortable. And when it affects the society like we've seen, I mean, I could, I could go on in the pandemic. I saw shit in the pandemic when it was active that I could not believe. And I don't know if some of y'all watching are guilty of some of those things, but like, we don't throw soup on people. Oh, when our order gets wrong, that is not how we handle things. It's a symptom. It's a symptom. Yeah. It's a symptom. And I left my office in March, 2020. When I had an office that wasn't at my house, and I said, okay, maybe I'm gonna bring a few things with me Like maybe we'll be out for four, six, eight weeks It turns out I never went back and the only time I did was to pack all my shit and come home Which was great for me But there was this idea that I knew something bad was going to come with this, and I knew people were not going to handle this well. And as soon as we got a couple weeks into it, about the third week in March, I sat to myself and I was like, holy shit, people are not going to handle this well. They want what they want, they want to be able to go and live their lives unencumbered, they don't want barriers, and we're going to really see how little distress tolerance many people have. And seeing people behave the way they were behaving and being rude and being angry and throwing things and the violence. We can't live like that. I don't want to live in a world like that. I started my career in the prison system. Working with people who were behind bars initially and then they would be released on probation and parole to us. And that experiment in seeing why people do what they do and also learning these people are not their behavior, but the behaviors mean something They are a symptom of a much deeper problem.
Exactly. Yeah going back to why yeah, why is this happening? Yeah. Why are you responding in this way? Yeah, and there's an answer for it.
Yes. There's always an answer for it. Yet sometimes we're just not aware of what that answer is, right? So you were saying something earlier that I I always I laugh at a little bit. This is just how I am.
Oh, right. Right.
When you're bitchy or you're, you know, acting out in some way and having that sort of inner police person to be able to check yourself on that shit is such a valuable skill and I would highly recommend everybody get that skill.
Invaluable.
Because we all have moments where we act the fuck out and we are going to do that. We're absolutely going to act out in certain situations and I think it's really up to us individually to kind of check ourselves rather than have other people from the outside say, hey, what's going on with you right now? Most of the time when you're doing something that is not positive and people are questioning your behavior. Their immediate response is either anger or frustration. Why are you doing this?
Right. Why are you acting like this?
Okay. But we're not digging onto what's underneath it because something is driving that disgruntledness. When people are going to a restaurant in the pandemic and getting takeout and they say their soup is too hot and then they throw it on a clerk. That's not normal behavior. That's not normal behavior. And I want to get away from the normal or normative. I prefer normative because there's a spectrum of things, right?
Yes. It's not black or white. Right. Reasonable.
Yes. Reasonable behavior. What's a reasonable and expected behavior of somebody who's frustrated with their meal? Well, you go up to the clerk and you say, this is really hot, it's burning my mouth. Rather than punching that person in the face or throwing their soup on them, just replace the soup. Or wait till it gets cool and just accept it. But, that whole idea of like radical acceptance.... I don't like it. I wish it was another way. And I'm kind of paraphrasing in my own meaning here. But like, the idea of radical acceptance. Sometimes things are going to be shitty. and you just have to go with it. Shit happens. And you can't get bent about all the things.
Yeah.
My dad died in 2015 and that was like the hugest blow. We'll talk about a grief and loss episode where we sort of go through that for ourselves to share with you guys. But they, the idea that he used to say all the time, I'm almost going to cry. I almost hit that emotion piece from like, Mm, I'm gonna sob, but I have a little napkin here. So it's okay if that happens, I guess. But he used to say, don't sweat the small stuff. And most honestly, everything is small stuff. There's very little that happens in human life where we're like, that's going to absolutely take me out and I can't cope with it.
Right.
But I think people decide up front because any amount of discomfort pushes them into that place that I can't handle this. Whether it's a hot soup or your order being wrong or missing whatever...
I feel like as you were talking about, especially let's go into the soup scenario, I feel like that part of the issue can be a lack of compassion.
Yes. Not thinking about what the other side, other person, situation, what else is going on here. Looking at all the moving parts of any given scenario and then evaluating would just have become very reactive. Yes. The, the idea of people not having control of their situation.
Lack of control. Cheers, right? Nobody loves that, but do we have to be in control of all the things all the time?
Oh, I know!
Life is so much easier when you don't try to control everything. Just let go. Especially when it comes to controlling other people.
Oh yes. Stop. Stop it.
It's not worth it. It's not going to fix it. And you can't make people change unless they want to change. I've learned, if I've learned one thing from counseling, people will change when they're fucking good and ready to do it.
Exactly. But we can change how we react to somebody's behavior.
That's right. And that makes all the difference in the world.
Absolutely.
And coming back with somebody who's like, yelling in your face right here and saying, and being compassionate, being able to pause, halt, hungry, hungry, lonely, tired (HALT), just pause for a second, take in, realizing this has helped me tons.
When somebody's like, just grrr, like, okay, they are obviously dealing with something. I have no idea what's going on in that person's life and pausing enough to remember that to respond accordingly. I'm not perfect. I will still get my feathers ruffled, but it sure does. Oh, it makes going through life.
Everyday life. A whole lot easier. Just be like, that's it. That's not my thing. I know, I know. I don't need to worry about that right now. I love the phrase, the not my circus, not my monkeys. I was just thinking about that. Yes, that's exactly it. And for a long time you remember the barrel of monkeys game?
Yeah, I know. I used to have one.
I think I got rid of it when my kid grew out of it. Because he was like, fuck these monkeys. I was like, fine. And I'm sure we were missing several of them, but that image often came to me, not my circus, not my monkeys, and I would think of that every time, and I'm like, oh, all the monkeys on the chain here, that has nothing to do with me. I may be sort of a bystander and witnessing the monkeys throwing bananas and throwing turds at each other, but I'm going to remove myself from the situation because that's not my business to shift or change.
Have fun with that!
I'm going to be over there. I know.
Yeah. So well, we've hit about our 45 minute mark.
Yes.
So I think that was sort of our goal today.
I think we've done really well. I mean, I'm hoping that we don't need to edit a whole lot.
Yeah, me too, me too, because that's the part of this that's going to suck is the production and all of these. So we're doing our best. We really hope you stay with us.
I would encourage you to say challenging instead of that it's going to suck. It's not going to suck, but it's going to be a learning curve is what it is.
Yeah. I did want to mention that we've got our Instagram and we've got a Facebook page. We've got our website the cloak tatters.com. What else do we have?
We have Threads, we have YouTube, and this is work in progress. We're like, you know, we just need to do it, and we'll figure it out as we go.
So, not everything is like up and running yet, but we're working on a Patreon site and a Ko fi site, and I feel like I'm forgetting something.
I don't think so. Well, we will have, we'll figure it out.
We'll all figure it out together. We'll get there. We'll get there.
But, oh, Discord! You did forget something, lol.
Okay, because I, I blocked it out of my mind.
Right, right. I'm working on setting up a community through Discord...we're not gonna guarantee that we're always gonna be able to respond immediately, but where people from the community that we're creating here can talk to each other, talk about certain things. I want to have channels on there where we can talk about really heavy shit. And maybe even share artwork.
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think eventually if we're putting together like viewership packages and memberships and things like that, that's going to include some of Candy's art because she's fucking fantastic. So and she's just generally a magical unicorn. So expect, expect to see some goodies, especially if you become members. But we really do hope that you'll hang in there with us and consider the sort of go with the flow of us just being real and showing up. Because we don't know any other way to be at this point in our lives.
Anything else I feel like is a waste of time for sure. Yeah, for sure.
Okay. Well, we were really glad to have you join us today and you meet us up at the cloak tatters. com and that's the C L O A K E D T A T T E R S dot com. And Candy designed our lovely logo and we're both in love with it, so we'd love to hear your feedback and we'd love to see you again soon.
So, hopefully when we get this first one posted, we will see you guys for repeat business.
So, thank you for being here.
Peace out. Take good care. Bye!