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April 16, 2024 - This Past Weekend - Theo Von
02:18:13
E495 Trauma Expert Tim Fletcher

Tim Fletcher is the founder and president of RE/ACT (Recovery Education for Addictions and Complex Trauma). He is a counselor himself, as well as a researcher and pastor. Tim Fletcher joins Theo to delve into the world of complex trauma, recovery, and healing. They break down what the word “trauma” really means, how to see the side effects in yourself and others, how shame develops during childhood, the lasting effects these issues have on relationships, the powerful connection trauma has to addiction, and more. They also discuss different methods of healing, what Tim has learned as a counselor of 20+ years, how to re-parent yourself for the better, and more.  ------------------------------------------------ Tour Dates! https://theovon.com/tour New Merch: https://www.theovonstore.com ------------------------------------------------- Sponsored By: Celsius: Go to the Celsius Amazon store to check out all of their flavors. #CELSIUSBrandPartner #CELSIUSLiveFit  https://amzn.to/3HbAtPJ  Morgan & Morgan: If you’re ever injured, visit https://forthepeople.com/thispastweekend or dial Pound LAW (#529). Their fee is free unless they win. Liquid IV: Go to http://liquidiv.com and use code THEO to get 20% off your first order.  Shady Rays: Go to http://shadyrays.com and use code THEO to get $20 off each pair of polarized sunglasses. NetSuite: Go to http://netsuite.com/theo to get NetSuite’s one-of-a-kind flexible financing program for a few more weeks. Manscaped: Go to http://manscaped.com and use code THEO for 20% off plus free shipping. ------------------------------------------------- Music: “Shine” by Bishop Gunn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3A_coTcUek ------------------------------------------------ Submit your funny videos, TikToks, questions and topics you'd like to hear on the podcast to: tpwproducer@gmail.com Hit the Hotline: 985-664-9503 Video Hotline for Theo Upload here: https://www.theovon.com/fan-upload Send mail to: This Past Weekend 1906 Glen Echo Rd PO Box #159359 Nashville, TN 37215 ------------------------------------------------ Find Theo: Website: https://theovon.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/theovon Facebook: https://facebook.com/theovon Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thispastweekend Twitter: https://twitter.com/theovon YouTube: https://youtube.com/theovon Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheoVonClips Shorts Channel: https://bit.ly/3ClUj8z ------------------------------------------------ Producer: Zach https://www.instagram.com/zachdpowers Producer: Nick https://www.instagram.com/realnickdavis/ Producer: Colin https://instagram.com/colin_reiner Producer: Riley https://www.instagram.com/rileymaufilms/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Today's guest is a speaker, a counselor, and a researcher in the world of complex trauma.
He has some amazing videos on YouTube.
I really love how he discusses this world and his presentation of it.
I'm grateful to spend time with him today via Windsor, Canada.
He is here with us.
Today's guest is Mr. Tim Fletcher.
Shine that light on me I'll sit and tell you my stories Shine on me And I will find a song I've been singing Almost there!
I've been moving Tim Fletcher, thanks for joining me, man.
My pleasure.
I've seen a lot of your videos on YouTube, and a lot of it really resonates with me about trauma, childhood trauma, just a lot of things in that vein.
I mean, you have so many wonderful videos out there, and I'm just thankful you're here today to talk with us about it.
I know we want to talk about trauma today and that sort of thing, but it's also like a buzzword I feel like people use a lot.
And I don't want this to be like a thing where we're just creating victims.
You know what I'm saying?
Yep.
Yep.
I think lots in the last 10 years as trauma's kind of come on the radar.
Now everybody's talking about everybody's trauma informed and yet people really don't understand it a whole lot.
But a lot of the response has been, no, I got somebody to blame.
Right.
And it's like, no, we can explain now a lot of your behavior, but you got to now take responsibility to change that.
Yeah, that's what, yeah.
And I don't want to create a lot of victims today.
Like that's another part.
And this isn't a judgment against anybody.
I'm just, this is even for myself.
I've had a lot of problems.
I'll get trapped in self-pity sometimes.
So I just, but like you're saying, this is a great place for information.
And how do we go about like not creating victims?
Right.
So to me, what trauma is, is pain happens to every child.
But a child in a healthy home is able to get tools and support and they can resolve and grow through that.
So it's not trauma.
It's pain that gets turned into growth.
But what happens to a child that can't resolve it?
Nobody's supporting them.
Nobody's giving them tools to handle it.
It turns into trauma.
They're a victim.
They're a legitimate victim, a helpless victim who can't fix the problem.
And so they are legitimate victims.
The problem is, is that they still feel like a victim as an adult.
Even though they're not a victim now, they now have tools and support.
And that's one of the hardest transitions is to move from, I was a legitimate victim, but now I got to take responsibility because I can.
And some don't want to do that because they like staying a victim because then I don't have to be responsible.
People feel sorry for me.
I can blame somebody.
I don't have to grow up.
Yeah, it's fascinating.
Yeah, let's talk about trauma.
Let's talk about complex trauma.
So what is it?
How would we say what it is?
So trauma is, so the event happens on the outside, but I can't handle it.
It's too painful.
It's too scary for me.
So it creates this fear and stress that I don't have the tools to handle.
Okay.
And so as a result of that, since I can't fix it and resolve it, it then wounds me on the inside.
And that's the trauma is what takes place on the inside.
What makes why we call it complex trauma?
So it's really mathematical terms.
So there's simple math and there's complex math.
So simple is one number, complex is more than one.
So simple trauma is a one event trauma, a car accident, a rape, whatever.
Complex is ongoing danger.
So a child's in a situation where they're in ongoing danger.
So their stress system is constantly activated.
Like, do I fight flight?
What do I do here?
I got to get out of here.
I can't handle this.
I can't handle this.
So that, when a child lives in that environment all the time where they're constantly activated to fight flight, but if they're too little to fight her flight, then they eventually go, oh, I'm shutting her down.
Freeze.
I can't handle this.
So they go into this dissociative, let's go into an internal world to protect ourselves and create a fantasy world because it's safe there.
And so complex trauma comes out of basically abuse or neglect.
So the two extreme ends of the spectrum.
So the abuse we can easily imagine, that's physical abuse, emotional abuse, that's harsh environment, violence, etc.
But a lot of complex trauma comes out of neglect.
And that's the other end of the spectrum where all the physical needs of the child were met, but their emotional needs weren't met.
So the abuse trauma, something happens to you.
Neglect trauma, something didn't happen to you that should have happened.
Yeah.
And it's hard to find out those, the neglect trauma, sometimes it's hard to locate some of it because it's like almost feeling around for ghosts is what it feels like.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And so that's where we spend a lot of time.
So what we've done with it is that we've broken down kind of the emotional needs that a child has.
So we have a need to be a child needs to be authentic and to connect with safe people and really be able to be vulnerable and open up and to be totally accepted for who they are.
Have somebody who totally gets them and hears them and sees them and values them and nurtures them.
Those Are all emotional needs?
But if a child grows up in a home or I'm too busy for you, or smart enough, get over it, toughen up.
Nobody's getting them, nobody's hearing them, or why can't you be like your brother, etc.
All of that is emotional trauma that's hurting the child emotionally.
So the child's not feeling safe to be them.
So the child then has to adapt in order to try to protect itself.
So I got to be tougher.
I can't be so sensitive.
I got to wear this mask of being outgoing, etc.
But that's also how I'm going to try to get my needs met.
So maybe if I'm different, then dad will give me more attention.
Then mom won't be so angry at me all the time.
So they're adapting, adapting, trying to get their needs met, trying to keep safe.
And they don't even know who they are a lot of times.
And that's what happens.
They don't even really develop.
They don't have a clue who they are after a while because they're so busy trying to be something they're not to get acceptance and love because they know if they're authentic.
So in a healthy situation of you're authentic, you connect and you're loved.
In complex trauma, if you're authentic, you get rejected.
And so then you'll, yeah, then you pull that authenticity back in, especially if you're really young, you don't even know you're still learning so much about yourself or evolving.
Who even knows what happens to when you redirect that river?
Exactly.
It's supposed to be normal.
It just becomes a, it just damn floods everything.
Exactly.
It can get some real sewage going on.
So what happens when the child is neglected is the child basically thinks everything, it must be their fault.
So the reason dad's too busy must be because I'm not good enough.
The reason mom's angry is I'm not good enough.
So they begin to develop this core self-identity that something's wrong with me.
I'm not good enough.
So I have to change and be somebody else in order to get acceptance and love.
Why does a child develop?
Why does a child, because the world revolves around them when they're a child.
They only know themselves, and so they have no one else to blame if something is wrong in the world.
So we refer to it, so the child brain is basically what's developed as the limbic brain, which is the emotional center.
So the cortex hasn't developed yet.
And so it's called egocentric thinking.
So everything they see through their eyes, it affects them, they caused it.
Everything is related to them somehow.
So if dad's too busy or mom and dad get a divorce, I must have done something wrong.
It must be my fault.
If I get sexually abused, I must have brought it on.
So everything is an egocentric way of thinking.
I see, because they're really the only player on the court, kind of.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And so then what happens, though, with that is they make adjustments, hoping to get love and acceptance and get their needs met and stay safe.
But something way back here now goes, you're phony.
So they get the imposter syndrome, which says you're getting love and acceptance.
But if they knew the real you, they wouldn't be giving you that love and acceptance because you're an imposter.
So the solution hasn't fixed the problem.
It's still unresolved.
So that's where complex trauma then, it's still not fixed.
So I'm still in fight or flight.
So I got to come up with a new persona.
I got to come up with a new mechanism.
Exactly to try and get my needs met.
But I never can find a solution that totally satisfies.
So it's more than one trauma that happens to a child.
Yeah.
Right.
And they don't have somebody there to help them process it.
Can children have different levels of trauma or no trauma if they have somebody there to help them process it?
Right.
So there's degrees of trauma, some very severe to very mild.
And so the latest studies, and Gabramate in his book, The Myth of Normal, has published them to say about 75% of Americans have this subtle complex trauma.
And basically, it's a child that, so if a child is always being made teased by parents or ignored by parents, dad's always busy, dad's in this chair next to him, but he's always watching TV.
So he's physically there, but he's not there emotionally.
The child just doesn't feel loved and accepted.
So they don't feel safe.
They don't feel they can totally relax.
They have to somehow earn that connection, earn that love.
And so a child has this inner trauma taking place that's happening that's so subtle, but it's powerful.
And it's really major upheaval internally that's taking place inside the child.
It's forming how they're going to behave.
Oh, exactly.
So now they're going to start these behaviors to try to get attention, to try to get connection.
But is some of that natural too?
Yeah, because a child, and that's it's built off very natural things.
So the child has a natural personality, so they can be like naturally funny, but then they can take that to just, I got to be funny all the time.
They can be naturally very, every child wants to please and love, but now I'm going to be a hero.
I'm going to get straight A's.
I'm going to do all the chores.
I'm going to be a workaholic because that's how I'll get validation and acceptance.
Got it.
So you were just talking about, isn't some of that natural for a child so that being wanting to help with the chores, that's a wonderful instinct that a child has.
But now they're going to turn that into a maladaptation.
So now I'm going to be a people pleaser.
So I got to, or I'm going to be a perfectionist.
Everything's got to be perfect.
Or I'm going to please, never say no to anybody.
But then I'm going to burn myself out.
And I'm going to kill myself.
So that adaptation.
You don't mean kill, you just mean burn yourself out.
Yeah.
Okay.
That adaptation, pleasing people and all of that, has become a maladaptation.
It's now hurting me.
I see.
So a lot of children with complex trauma have maladaptations.
They all do.
They all do.
Yeah.
Okay.
And what are some symptoms of complex trauma that you can see in people?
So very common ones is that they don't know who they are because they've had to wear masks all their life.
And they become people pleasers.
Most have anger issues.
Most have authority issues because all the authorities of their life have not been healthy.
Most have some control manipulation issues that are part of that.
A lot have lying issues.
They lie when it would just be just as easy to tell the truth, but lying is what they had to do to kind of stay safe because truth got them in trouble.
There's a fear of failure, a fear of change, a fear even of success, because it's like, uh-oh, everything's going too good.
The other shoe's going to drop.
Something bad's going to happen.
So now I better sabotage it.
Wow.
So there's lots.
It's a fear-driven thing, the fear of rejection.
There's a desire for intimacy, but a fear of intimacy, because then you're going to get to know me.
Then you're going to reject me.
Deep fear of abandonment that anybody that gets to know me leaves me.
And so that you can see all of that becomes problematic and relationship stuff and then trust issues.
Oh, God.
Tim, you're, man, a lot.
I can, I can, yeah, I can relate to a lot of those things, you know?
I can relate.
And I have to be careful when I think about, because at certain points in my life, I've had a lot.
I've had those things.
But I have to be careful that I don't immediately attach it to being a victim.
Even when I'm thinking about it right now, I don't want to be like, okay, some of those things I've had in my life, man, what a piece of shit I am.
Because that's what will happen sometimes for me.
And if I can interrupt.
Yeah, no, please.
So what I would say is the core, the worst result that comes out of complex trauma is how it changes your self-identity.
So a child that's loved and accepted is a positive self-identity.
I have value.
I have something to offer to the world.
A child with complex trauma that's felt neglected, it's my fault.
I must not be good enough.
They have a negative self-identity.
And so because of that, I am a piece of shit.
Whoever would want to get to know me.
And so I need to hide who I really am.
So that core identity just affects every decision they make, every relationship response that they have.
And that's probably the most hidden part of complex trauma, the hardest thing for people to see, because who understands shame?
What's shame?
What's that?
But once you understand it, it's like, whoa, that changes everything.
And that's where the healing really has to take place.
Man, it's so funny you say some of this.
I like, there'll be times where, yeah, like if a lot of times I'll take it to relationships, if a girl rejected me or wouldn't look at me, man, it would attach itself to a place in me almost like a thought got into a Ferris wheel.
And I don't even know the Ferris wheel was going, but this thought got into the Ferris wheel, like a person getting into a little Ferris wheel compartment.
And the Ferris wheel was just like, you are just, you are horrible.
You are.
And it was just like feeding this old thing.
But it was crazy how quick it would go from maybe if I'd asked a girl to a dance or even if I just had some interest in my head, but she never looked at me or something.
And I would immediately be like, God, man, what a fucking, you must just have, you must just be gross.
Is that crazy to say that to you?
Not at all.
Because shame, one of the most powerful aspects of shame is that it creates this inner critic in our brain.
No matter what we do, it criticizes it.
It finds fault with it.
And if we fail, especially, it just beats us up.
And like we're in the doghouse for weeks, it's just flogging us.
And it's just loud and it is brutal there.
Yeah.
It would be everything.
You're poor.
Your body's gross.
You're ugly.
You're stupid.
You're ugly.
You're stupid.
Nobody, everybody want you.
You're never amounting to anything.
You're a failure.
I mean, it was like a machine gun.
Yes.
And the craziest part was now I have a little bit more rev, I'm able to see it more.
But man, for 30 years of my life, I couldn't even see it.
Yes.
And that's so what happens, complex trauma for most people begins from birth.
Okay.
And so it's pre-memory time, pre-verbal time.
And so a lot of the stuff that's happening in their brain is all happening subconsciously.
They're not thinking about it.
They're an infant.
It's all subconscious.
So your whole subconscious brain is forming with all this negative stuff.
And that's a real tragedy of complex traumas.
It's shaping the brain in the infant years with negative messages, lies, negative perceptions that you're not even aware of there.
You just think are normal.
And those can be like a parent not looking at its child.
Exactly.
And not interacting.
Exactly.
There's probably countless things that could create trauma at that age, right?
Exactly.
So what we know is a child needs to feel safe.
They need lots of hugs and touches.
They need eye contact.
That's how they learn to regulate.
That's how they learn to feel and experience emotions by picking up on the parents' emotions.
That's how their emotions get calmed by looking into somebody who's calm.
But if they don't have that, then it's like it's me against a big, bad world, and I'm only one week old.
Like it's, it's too overwhelming.
It's too scary.
Yeah, you got to be a gangster suddenly.
Yeah.
And you're only seven days old.
Exactly.
Then you can't even carry a gun.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And so that's a lot of pressure.
Oh, imagine the pressure that a kid starts to feel, like A child starts to feel.
And that's why I say that's your stress system is activated.
And that's what we mean.
That's complex trauma.
So that makes sense as to why, like, if certain things will happen in adulthood, it'll immediately cause stresses in me, even if it's just normal.
Exactly.
Like, I'd have a lot of instances where, like, even in intimacy situations with women, like somebody would touch me and it would make me, I like, would feel, I'd feel overwhelmed.
Yes.
You know, I would feel, yeah, it was just like crazy.
It was just, I don't know.
It was, and then I felt bad about myself.
Yes.
Because again, the second something was a little bit off, it would get into that, back onto that Ferris wheel of, man, you don't, must be something really wrong with you.
Yes.
You know?
Yeah.
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Can I just share some science stuff here?
Yeah.
I think it's really helpful to understand trauma.
You really need to understand our central nervous system.
And so it's really made up of two parts.
So there's the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic.
So the sympathetic is your work energy.
It gives you the energy to fight or flight, to work hard, get up in the morning, go, go, go.
But then you need a parasympathetic, a balancing part.
That's your rest, healing, restoration piece.
So a child has to have that in balance to be healthy, to grow.
But what happens in complex trauma when you're in danger all the time is you're in your sympathetic all the time.
Because you got to be on guard.
You got to be going.
You got to get validation.
You got to prove yourself.
You got to work.
You got to earn.
So you got to go, go, go.
You're driven.
And so the brain helps you with that.
It releases cortisol when fear is and your stress system is activated.
And that releases adrenaline.
So you can go on adrenaline.
That gives you lots of energy.
And you feel, hey, I can pull this off.
And if you're young, you've got the resources to do that.
But the problem is you're not engaging your parasympathetic.
And usually around 30 or so, it catches up with you.
And all of a sudden your body says, I'm not doing this anymore.
You're burning me out here.
And I'm going to start shutting down.
And one of the first things it does to help engage the parasympathetic is to bring on depression.
Because depression brings in the parasympathetic and it forces you to slow down.
It forces you to shut down.
Wow.
And then for some, they keep pushing, they keep pushing, and some go to drugs because drugs will give you the energy to keep going.
And then your body actually just burns itself out and shuts itself down.
And you have a total, not just an emotional burnout, you have a physical burnout.
Wow.
So your body can create depression in order to give the parasympathetic, because then you're at least going to slow down.
You're going to even if there's these other side effects of how you feel about it.
Exactly.
So what happens to a little child is how do they learn the parasympathetic?
They we call a co-regulator.
So mom or dad is regulated emotionally, is calm.
They're in their parasympathetic.
So they look them in the eyes and they regulate their own nervous system to mom and dad.
But if mom and dad are absent or mom and dad are angry all the time, your regulator is not there or they're regulated.
So they're triggering you and keeping you full of fear and anxiety.
So it's messing you up.
Or if you have parents that just are work, work, work.
If you're relaxed, you're lazy.
If you're relaxed, you're selfish.
They're forcing you by this work ethic to be out of balance.
And actually, it's creating very subtle, complex trauma because you're just a workaholic and you feed off it and you're driven.
But what happens is that's normal.
Right.
So then you're creating a normal that is extremely abnormal.
Exactly.
Man, I, yeah, just to have some pert like, yeah, my mother didn't look at me, right?
When I was a child.
I don't remember my mom.
I don't.
Like, and I don't say that I don't need sympathy or anything.
I'm just saying that as an adult, right?
Recognizing that this child wasn't looked at in the eyes.
My mother, like, I love my mother.
I'm thankful for her.
I'm glad I exist.
And, but yeah, she, if there were an emotional thing, she couldn't connect.
Like, she almost had like an emotional autism.
Yes.
Like if it were physical, if I got hurt, she could help right the second I got hurt.
But if I'm sitting across from her feeling a certain way, it doesn't even, it's like there's, she wouldn't come to me.
She can't come to me.
She would hug, she couldn't hug me for more than like half a second.
And I'm not saying that as like a whiny baby.
I'm just, I'm trying to relate to some of the stuff you're talking about.
So one of the things that happened was I noticed as I got older, I didn't know how long, and my father was a senior citizen and he was really absent.
I didn't know how long to look into somebody's eyes, I remember.
So I'd have this weird stuff sometimes where I would like check in with somebody's eyes, but then look away while I was explaining myself, man.
Makes me feel bad for myself.
It doesn't make me feel bad as an adult, but it makes me feel bad that that kid had to do that.
So can I speak scientifically to that again?
You're okay?
Okay.
So the first response to danger is the brain releases cortisol, which is adrenaline, and that gives you the energy to fight or flight.
Okay.
So you can fight harder, you can run faster because you've got adrenaline happening.
But if you're too little to fight or flight, then that's cortisol is not doing you any good.
And if your parents are punishing you for being angry, etc., the brain then switches and produces opioids, natural opioids, and it says we're going to shut down.
And so what happens with that is that you dissociate.
You move inward and all the blood comes from the muscles around the heart because it's basically saying we're going to get ready to get hurt.
We're going to get ready to get cut so we don't bleed as much.
So we're going to put all the blood around here so that if we get hurt out here, cut out here, nothing is, we're not going to bleed as much.
Really?
Your body does that?
Yeah.
No way.
Yeah.
So your body's now gone to that fight or flight don't work.
So now we're going to freeze.
And so then what some kids learn in freeze is, but I still need my needs met.
So now I learn to fawn.
So I will learn to say whatever you want me to say.
Be whatever you want me to be.
Just don't hurt me.
Just put up with me.
Wow.
So that's your four F's that develop.
But what happens?
What are they again so we know them?
Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn.
Wow.
But what has happened is, so fight or flight, you're basically your emotions are out there.
Freeze, your emotions go in.
You shut them down.
And so most people with complex trauma don't do well with emotions.
They shut down emotions.
They don't even know they have emotions.
And so what we say is that most complex trauma families, they have three emotions, mad, sad, and glad.
So dad can be mad, mom can be sad, but the kids got to be glad.
Man, yeah, I remember like I would ask people, how do I feel about this?
Which is crazy, man.
I know it sounds, some of this, I know it sounds maybe crazy to some people, but yeah, I remember I just didn't even have any, I didn't know how like I felt about anything.
I just knew how you felt and how I needed a scene.
Yes.
And so what happens to a child who's fawning is I'm more attuned to how you're feeling than to how I'm feeling.
Oh, yeah, I was fawning.
I was a damn bambi, baby.
You know what I'm saying?
I was like a bambi in Memphis.
So I know your emotions better than my own.
I know what you think and believe more than what I think.
Right.
Because that's how I need to survive is I need to be more attuned to you than I am to me.
Yeah.
For me, I noticed like, well, for a long time, I didn't know what was going on.
And for me, I got into recovery programs in the 12-step and that helped me for the first time have a little bit of a clue.
I heard people share stuff that things I could never put into words.
You know, I mean, that was one of the blessings about being in sometimes recovery in 12-step rooms was you had like 20 people thinking at once.
And so sometimes someone would say what you have to want it to and couldn't.
And so that gave me a first start to look at my, at myself.
I was so like, I was so stuck to me.
I couldn't see me at all.
Well, and so some ways that like things that were having a tough time in my life, huge problems trusting people.
Didn't trust huge problems with that.
One thing I noticed really recently, still unrealistic expectations of myself and other people.
And I've always had them.
You know, it's like, and I realize that it's, I think some of it is like, I want to make it so like if I have unrealistic expectations of myself, then I'm never going to be able to achieve them.
The bar is too high.
Right.
And then I'll always be what I thought I always was anyway.
Exactly.
Which was not enough.
So that's where shame creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Yeah.
So that's this, that's like why, and I, now I'm able to see that a little.
But before, I was just stuck on that Ferris wheel.
Yeah.
You know?
And I still, it still happens.
That's a tough one recently for me.
Oh, self-pity.
That was a huge one.
That was my biggest drug in life that I never realized was self-pity.
And I reframed it for myself.
I was like, oh, if I just keep trying, I'll get everything.
I have to work harder.
I have to be better.
I can't go do something fun with my friends.
I need to stay and write a book.
Or it was just like these unrealistic expectations, but I was always keeping myself in a place of self-pity without realizing it because that was a side effect of having unrealistic expectations.
And man, that self-pity was, but it looked like on the outside I was trying to better myself.
So it was, I was always, does it make any sense to me?
So can I ask you with that?
Because what you're describing is very common in the world I work in.
So a lot would say unrealistic expectations.
So you're always setting the bar too high for yourself, which is always leading to failure, which is self-pity as the aftermath.
But what you're thinking is, but I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying.
But what's happening often with the self-pity, and so here's my question, is there's this growing sense of helplessness and hopelessness.
Did you go through that?
Or was there always I can somehow rise above if I just dig a little deeper?
That was me.
Okay.
And that's what I was talking about with the sympathetic nervous system.
I'm getting tired.
I'm starting to burn out.
But if I dig a little deeper, I can push, I can push, I can keep going until you eventually do burn out.
Yeah, that's where societal, the society affected me because there was always that you have to grind harder, the 70-minute work week or something, or like, you know, the four-minute relationship.
There's all these books like, wow, this is unrealistic, man.
You know, the 50-second life.
And you're like, why would I want to do that?
Exactly.
And so that's where society even pushed me even further.
And about four years ago, I had like a breakdown.
It was like I was burnt out.
I couldn't even listen to somebody talk because there was no concentrate.
And it made me, it physically exhausted me to listen to somebody in a conversation.
And I kept working.
Yes.
There's an episode of this podcast where I felt it was just, man.
And this the fact that I, then I start to feel bad that I treated myself that way, you know?
Anyway.
Can I share a little bit from me?
Yeah.
So please, man.
I got into this work over 20 years ago, but that was after seven years of burnout.
Wow.
So I had worked for till I was 32, and all of a sudden I was just tired all the time.
I couldn't sleep.
I was just, and my eyes were getting, like, my wife would go, something's wrong with you.
Your eyes are really looking weird.
Yeah, you're looking big.
You're about to eat a lot of stuff.
Oh, it's just about to get dark.
And then I went to doctor after doctor and eventually put me on disability.
But I went through seven years of depression and hell and anxiety.
And when I came to the end of what the government would give me for disability, I had to go back to work.
So I just worked on farms.
I milked cows.
I took care of horses.
Oh, yeah.
And that was very healing for me.
It was very therapeutic.
But then a lady I knew, she came to me and said, Tim, we really need help with this treatment center.
And I think you'd be the perfect counselor.
And that cow's out of milk.
And I said, I think you got the wrong guy.
I can't go back to that world.
And she came back about three months later and she said, Tim, I think you're the guy.
Please give it some thought.
And I said, okay, I'll go for the interview.
But when I went for the interview and I said, okay, I'll give it a try for three months.
But I told myself, if you don't make some major changes in how you go about working, you're not going to make it.
So you got to radically change your boundaries in life and people pleasing and all of that.
But the first week, as I was working with these people with trauma and addiction, I was like, this is what I was made for.
These are my people.
And I fell in love with it.
But it came after all of all of my work came after seven years of hell burnout that I brought on myself because of my trauma.
But you didn't know it, though, right?
No.
I thought I was doing the right thing by pushing myself.
I was being a responsible father and husband.
And so I had a four-year-old, a three-year-old, and a one-year-old.
Oh, wow.
So you guys were really making love on the soul.
And all of a sudden their dad just was sick and in bed all the time.
And they basically all went through abandonment trauma because their dad disappeared from their life for seven years.
And were you using drugs?
Did you use pills and stuff?
You didn't.
You were just depressed?
Yeah.
Wow.
Well, one of the toughest things I found when I was struggling was when I was physically struggling, right?
Like I had gotten so depleted that all the doctors I would go to, they couldn't really diagnose it.
Exactly.
You know, they would take my chronic fatigue syndrome.
Yeah.
And you're looking up all these crazy things.
And then you're wearing, you know, like at one point I was just like, I had on like one of those, I bought like a posture organizer from the thing.
And I just had like a couple, like some shake weights and some like, some weighted anklets on.
And people are like, what are you doing?
And I'm like, they say this words, you know, like, try the bracelets.
Oh, my woo.
Oh, just like that.
I used to have people bring me little mason jars of their home concoctions.
I'm never going to carry me.
And yeah, and one of the toughest places for me, too, was relationships.
And it still is.
You know, it still is a really tough space for me.
That also goes to unrealistic expectations.
You know, I don't, if things get tough, I'll leave.
You know, I, you know, I heard you talk about fake intimacy once.
Do you know what I'm talking about?
What were you talking about about it?
I resonated with that.
So, every child longs for connection.
Yeah.
Just built.
But if you can't get it, you try to connect with dad, but he's always too busy.
Mom's always depressed or angry.
You can't connect.
So you assume it's my fault.
I must be something wrong with me, but I'm still driven for connection.
But I don't want deep, genuine connection now because that's always led to rejection.
So let's try barroom intimacy.
Let's try fake intimacy.
Let's just have fun all the time and sports.
Pervert and yes.
Yeah.
Pornography, that sort of thing.
Yeah.
Because it gives the feelings of connection without the true intimacy.
Yeah.
But it doesn't satisfy.
No.
But it and it sets up addiction.
And that's where most people end up sadly straying into that fake intimacy world.
Yeah.
Like, do you think it's safe to say that complex trauma makes having a healthy relationship impossible?
Like, like, it's got to have a huge effect, yes.
Yes, very much.
Impossible even?
No.
Makes it almost impossible for a healthy relationship.
Yeah.
So everybody that I deal with, as long as they're single, they don't think they need to work on their trauma because just me.
I'm surviving.
As soon as they get in a relationship, then they start damaging the other person.
Then they have kids.
They're damaging their kids.
And all of a sudden they go, I got to start working on my crap.
But then they go, okay, I'll just change this.
I'll change this.
But it's not working.
Why is it not fixing the relationship?
And it's because you're trying to fix the symptoms.
You're not dealing with the root issues, that deep shame, that deep lack of trust, that deep fear of intimacy and fear of abandonment.
And as long as those are still there, they're going to keep getting in the way of true healthy relationships.
And so a lot of people, as long as the relationship's going along smoothly, it looks pretty good.
But as soon as there's the slightest thing that triggers their fear of abandonment or triggers their shame, big explosion, they go back to old behaviors.
All of a sudden, they're in fight, flight, or freeze mode.
They're lashing out.
They're running away.
And that's when all the damage happens.
And after a while, there's so much baggage from all the damage that you just can't repair it.
Yeah.
I mean, personally, like I would, yeah, I've had problems, I mean, certainly problems with not cheating in relationships.
I've always, I think I've cheated in every relationship I've ever been in, sadly.
You know, let me think.
Oh, like, like, would have problems with sex and stuff.
But if the person was going to leave me, then I could have, it was like my body would then entertain it, you know?
But otherwise, like, yeah, if it was with a stranger, it was easier, you know.
Not a complete stranger, like somebody at a mall or something, but like a, you know, somebody you, you know, a bar sex or somebody like that, or just somebody you met at a service area or whatever.
But yeah, that kind of stuff.
Oh, staying with somebody.
Man, this is this is this staying with somebody because I didn't want them to have somebody else who would really care about them or that could care about them better than me.
Even though I knew I was doing a bad job.
Man, it makes me feel I'm not proud of that.
And I didn't know, but a lot of it, man, I didn't know until later.
You know, I just couldn't see it.
But yeah, stuff like that.
Oh, thinking that my partner, a woman, my girlfriend or whatever, if they did something wrong, then it was me doing it wrong.
Like, oh, gosh, if they're a little off or something or they do things a way that people don't like, that's a reflection of me totally.
You know, those are some symptoms that I had, you know.
So can I talk scientifically again?
100%.
You can talk in any aspect you want about it.
So to me, it's so interesting, especially living in the West, is so much of our dating and attraction in relationships is really what we've come to understand is the limbic or the emotion part of the brain and the chemical oxytocin, which is what makes me feel in love.
And so that's released through when I see somebody pretty, when I touch them, when I kiss them, when I have sex, all of that releases those feel-good chemicals.
And I feel in love.
I feel it's going to last forever.
I feel intimacy, though it's not true intimacy.
It's the feeling of intimacy.
So that's a great starting place for a relationship.
The problem is you can't sustain that just through sex, just because you still got life.
You got to communicate.
You got to learn to accept and love and respect each other.
But if you've never been taught how to do that, you don't.
So you just keep trying to have sex, keep trying to have fun, but the feelings are dying.
It's not releasing the same oxytocin.
And so the relationship is designed to start there, but it's designed then to move to the cortex, which is the thinking part of the brain, which then releases all of the serotonin that comes through safety, through connection, through acceptance.
Wow.
And that's through building a life, working through issues, resolving problems, really respecting, trusting each other.
That takes a lot of work.
That takes time.
And most people from complex trauma are scared to death to go there.
So the sex is just, that intimate connection up top is just like a fuse kind of.
Exactly.
And then the other part is like a fire.
Exactly.
Yeah, man.
I just, yeah.
But most tried with complex trauma, just think, I can live up here on the fuse.
Yeah, I'm a fuse monkey.
I'm up here, yeah.
And that's going to be great, just never satisfied.
Yeah, never.
And then it's, yeah, I just.
And then the second piece to me is what comes out of complex trauma?
Are you familiar with the term gaslighting?
Yeah, but what does it mean?
I always hear people say it, but I'm just too bored, just too lazy to look it up, I think.
So if dad is angry, instead of him being honest and saying, I'm sorry, I'm having a bad day.
You didn't do anything wrong.
It's all on me.
He goes, you're a bad kid.
It's all your fault.
That's gaslighting.
He's twisting it and making you believe a lie.
And so what happens in complex trauma is constant gaslighting of a child so that whenever any parent or authority is having a bad emotion, the child is made to feel it's their responsibility to fix that emotion.
No, it's not.
They can't fix their dad's anger.
Only dad can fix his own anger, but they're made to feel if they just did more chores, if they weren't making noise, if they were more agreeable, more obedient, then dad would never get angry.
But dad always gets angry, but you keep believing the gaslighting lie.
So now when you go into relationships, as soon as your spouse is a little bit sad, what did I do wrong?
Oh, maybe I should do something here.
Maybe I should do this.
You still take responsibility for everybody else's emotions.
And that sets up relationships to be codependent.
Yeah, I think I, there was a point I was like, well, I have to be perfect.
And you know, I was like, if I'm perfect, right?
If I'm absolutely perfect somehow, then there's no way I won't get what I need as a child, because even in the laws of the universe, that wouldn't make any, you know, it would feel like that wouldn't make any sense.
So can I ask you a question?
So what happens often with a child is they go to that perfectionism where I set the bar too high for myself, that I can be perfect.
I will have no limitations.
I'll do everything perfectly the first time.
But it also can create a fantasy world where I'm going to be a Superman.
I'm going to do everything wonderfully.
I'm going to save everybody.
So did you have that fantasy thinking begin to develop in you?
Not that much.
I think when this podcast started getting busier and you have a lot of young guys who were the same, who had a lot of the same thoughts and feelings that I did about stuff would reach out as if I knew more than them, really.
When I really didn't, I was just kind of just have been kind of a late bloomer, you know, and just learning in front of people, I guess, because I talked about more stuff like that over the years.
And then that for a little bit gave me a fear of like, well, do I have some greater responsibility?
Like, is God thinking like I need you to help?
Like there was moments of not grandeur, but questions of like, I could easily see that thing like start to get in, you know, of like, oh, then I must know everything, you know?
It didn't sprout in me, but I could certainly, there were times where I, shit, even when that started to happen, I was like, I, I would be a failure at that.
So there was, thankfully, at that point, there was some of that Ferris wheel that brought me right back down to the shit carnival, you know?
But there was some, that, that, some of that kind of nothing, none of it as a child.
Like if I'm perfect, I just set out on my own.
I remember thinking, I'm never going to let anything define me in this whole world except for me.
Right.
You never, and I mean, even when I say it now, I can feel like, I mean, I can fucking feel it in my, like, no one is ever going to define me again.
Right.
You are not going to have a say in how I feel.
And it comes, dude, it comes from a place that's so deep in me.
Yeah.
I can't even.
I can barely.
Sometimes I can.
It's like the weather changes just enough where I can see into the window of it a little bit.
But the clad, whatever it is, can I speak to that just for a minute?
Because part of my concern has been a very popular term these days is ODD or oppositional defiance disorder.
So kids are getting diagnosed with ODD all the time.
And it's really been pathologized like it's a bad thing.
You're a bad kid because you've got ODD.
And what you're describing in yourself to me is ODD.
I'm never going to let anybody define me again.
That's oppositional defiance.
But really, it starts out in complex trauma.
And it's a healthy thing.
And it's a child who's nobody's accepting me.
Everybody's trying to make me something I'm not.
Everybody's trying to control me.
Everybody's, I got this rigid rules, all of this harsh discipline, etc.
That's not right.
That's wrong.
That's hurting me.
I need to be able to have some freedom.
I need to be able to be myself.
And so we rebel against what's unhealthy.
But people don't see that we're doing something healthy.
They just say, you're rebelling.
And they pathologize it.
Oh, I see.
Right.
If you're a rebel when you're young, they're like, oh, look at this rebel.
Exactly.
But for you, you're trying to figure it out for yourself.
You're trying to fix what's wrong and make it right.
You're not trying to be a rebel.
You're trying to develop something loving and healthy.
But what happens for most kids is then they gain it, that just gets into their soul.
And now, even if somebody wants what's best for me, I'm not going to let anybody define me.
So now I'm going to rebel against good and bad.
And that then becomes a maladaptation.
Right.
Yeah.
A lot of those old safety mechanisms, a lot of those old survival techniques become, it tips over the other side of the seesaw.
Right.
Exactly.
Yeah.
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Yeah, and a lot of this, I don't want to get into that self-pity place again.
You know, a lot of it is just looking.
I'm trying to look at some of this stuff with you, you know, because it's interesting and it's amazing how much still comes to the surface because a lot of it I haven't resolved.
I think I've taken care of some of the stuff and I have a much better understanding of a lot of it now.
And I'm able to see, I'm able to see what's going on a lot of times, but some of it is still unresolved for me.
So let's go into the just kind of the very basics of healing.
Yeah, yeah.
No, I think that's good.
Yeah, I don't want to be like we've had some of the experience, we've had some of that.
So yeah, I want to get into a part of, yeah, how does one locate their complex trauma so they can begin to heal it if it's possible.
Yeah.
And that's the huge challenge is that so much of it exists in the subconscious mind.
So we're not even aware of all of these mechanisms and kind of subconscious brain templates and programs that have been operating our life.
It's almost like we're an autopilot.
And because it's been normal for us all our life, we don't see it as being abnormal or unhealthy.
And so that's where taking a program or watching videos where you begin to grow in self-awareness, to understand trauma, to understand the different characteristics of trauma.
So we talk about 60 different characteristics, the patterns in your emotions, the patterns in your thinking, the patterns in your behavior, in your relationships.
And once you begin to grow in self-awareness, then you go, oh, wow, okay, now I'm starting to see it.
But then that goes, okay, now I know what unhealthy is.
Now I can define it.
What's healthy?
I don't know what healthy.
And that's where we talk about healing from complex trauma requires reparenting.
You need surrogate family that can begin to model healthy for you, teach you healthy, and begin to help you learn healthy.
But that requires the third piece, and that is connection.
And that's the thing I fear the most.
If people get to really know me, they're going to reject me.
But what I've been craving all my life is true connection with safe people.
And so trauma requires safe people to heal.
It's got an academic element of self-awareness, but it's got a connection reparenting element as well.
Yeah, it's so hard to notice.
Yeah, I would just think I was bad at relationships for a long time.
I would just think that, you know, and I was.
I mean, I was just thinking that I was a philandering man, you know, kind of deal, gypsy, whatever it is.
I don't even know what they call it, gypsy boy or whatever.
And then, but yeah, I was like, and I still don't know how I'm going to do it.
Like, if I think about like being in a marriage long term, I don't know how I could do it.
You know, I mean, I know for a while I resorted to pornography for a while, and, but that lost its, you know, I just learned through other 12-step just how negative it is for you.
And so that's not a solution.
I mean, I still date and everything, but I don't know if I, when I think about that, it's like, oh, that feels harrowing.
But it used to be like, if I saw a family that was functioning, I was like, what the fuck is this?
This is fucking the dumbest thing I've ever seen.
That's where I started at.
And that's exactly, that's a real thing.
And to even get to the point now where I can even think about being in a marriage or something, for me, that's, it's been a while, you know, it's been a, it's been a, it's been a ride, you know?
And that to me is a common defense mechanism of people with lots of trauma and shame is I need to disparage anything that's healthy.
Yeah.
What the fuck are you doing?
Who are you?
Who do you think you are?
And it's like, I got to look down on everybody to feel better about myself, even if I know I should be aspiring to what they've got.
Man.
And it hurts people so much when they're behaving that way too.
That's the toughest part is, man, I don't know.
Oh, you hurt yourself.
So to me, what I say with complex trauma is others wounded me when I was a child.
I develop maladaptations.
The longer I hang on to them, the more I just wound myself.
I don't need anybody to wound me anymore because I just do a great job myself.
Yeah.
And I keep the Ferris wheel going.
You have a program, REACT.
It's right?
Is that it?
React?
So it stands for Recovery Education for Addiction and Complex Trauma.
Okay.
So what we found was that 97% of addicts have complex trauma.
I see.
So a lot of this is addiction focused.
Originally.
And so I started in the addiction world, and we were the only treatment center in Canada that saw addiction as a symptom of deeper problems.
And the lady that trained me said, Tim, your job is to find those problems.
And complex trauma wasn't even on the radar then.
It was called adult children of alcoholics, adult children of dysfunction.
Then it became known as developmental trauma disorder.
Then, excuse me, then complex trauma came in on the radar.
But basically what it's saying is that we always see addiction as a problem, but to an addict, it was the solution to their problems.
And so until we begin to realize what problem are they trying to solve by turning to drugs and alcohol, that deep loneliness, the deep pain, the deep emptiness, that deep longing to feel connected, all of those drugs seem to solve that for them.
And so we can't really help people with addiction by just working on the symptoms.
We've got to get to that root issue.
So I was in a part of Canada where all the treatment centers were talking about trauma and we got to be trauma informed.
And so I asked them, like, is anybody willing to change their program?
And none of them were.
And I had started, some addicts asked me to start a Friday night thing where I started teaching this stuff.
So that's where these videos started.
So I started 17 years ago teaching around what I was learning and started with 50 addicts coming out and it grew and grew and grew.
Yeah, your channel's fascinating, man.
Yeah.
And so what came out of that was when there were like 10 treatment centers, nobody would change their program.
Wow.
Though they all said they needed to start dealing with the trauma.
So I said, well, I guess I got to start.
And I didn't want to start a treatment center, but I did.
So REACT started as a treatment center for addiction and complex trauma.
And it spread to three different locations in Canada.
But then COVID hit, and so we put it online.
And then once people heard, and we called it Lyft, just to give it a different name because it was online.
And once people heard about it, now we have people from 30 different, over 30 different countries that are.
So that was a blessing, huh?
Yeah.
And so now like thousands are taking Lyft and it's much more intense.
It's a 15-week program, but you get a deep dive into understanding trauma and then learning what a healthy life looks like and connecting with a group of people in the journey.
Wow.
That's incredible, man.
So in the days when treatment centers just basically worked on symptoms, so relapse warning signs, triggers, people, places, and things, HALT, all of the hungry, angry, all of those different things.
What they saw was their success rate was less than 10%.
Once we started React and we've kept statistics, our success rate is over 50%.
Oh, Tim, that's great.
Yeah, because you're dealing with helping people deal with that core stuff that's been the issue.
Yeah.
Well, one of the reasons that I loved being an AA, I didn't even know sometimes if I was an alcoholic, right?
I still question the alcohol part.
I don't know.
But I know that I would sit in meetings and people would get to share how they felt.
And I never got to do that.
Exactly.
You know, like I never, no one ever asked me how I fucking felt.
You know, it was just like, if I had a feeling, whatever it was, I didn't even probably know what it was for years.
I probably thought I had indigestion in my brain, you know, like my nose.
But if I had a fee, I just, I had to figure it out myself.
And yeah, I mean, it just, so when I got into the rooms and people could share how they felt and nobody could say anything, there was no crosstalk allowed.
So somebody got to share how they felt and it just got to sit there.
And man, I didn't know how much in my life, my whole life, I'd needed not even to maybe say something, but to even be in the environment of that.
To have an idea or a feeling or thought be spoken into the world and have it not completely rejected, you know?
Because sometimes I felt like I, yeah, I don't know.
I got to be careful sometimes not to always take things back to how I feel because my feelings sometimes, it's like a secret.
It's like, you know, when somebody puts a dollar on a string, I'll go get that dollar, right?
To see how I feel about something, but I'll be, they'll pull me back into all that old shame.
Yes.
So I have to be careful of that.
So what are some of the mechanisms you guys use in React?
Like, what are some of the things that help people get to those core issues?
So it's divided into two phases.
So part of what you realize with trauma is it's healing trauma means reprocessing it.
That doesn't mean just going into the pain and sitting in the pain as if there's benefit in just feeling pain.
It means I'm going now with tools so that I can learn from it, so that I can heal it, so that I can grow through it.
That's reprocessing it.
But there's a risk in taking people to reprocess it because you are opening a can of worms.
It is going to take them to some pain and trigger them.
And so they need what we call agency.
They need a certain amount of tools before they ever get to the trauma or else the trauma is going to overwhelm them.
I see.
So you guys work on that.
So phase one is self-awareness, basic tools, emotional regulation, what to do if you're triggered, building a safe community for people so that they can share emotions and not have anybody judge them where people hold space for them.
So that's phase one.
Then phase two, we start digging into shame.
We dig into anger.
We dig into emotions.
We dig into boundaries.
We dig into grief and loss.
And so we start getting into the kind of the main areas of trauma and really help people begin to heal.
So the first half of the week is really digging deep into it.
And then the second half is practical tools and what does healthy look like?
Shame is such a huge magnet, huh?
It's huge.
How does shame start?
Is that a fair question about shame?
I think it starts with the parent-child relationship not being right.
Is shame originally a positive thing?
Is there a certain value to a little bit of shame?
Like, what is a little bit of shame called?
Right, okay.
But to me, healthy shame is actually guilt.
Okay.
So guilt is if I do something that violates love.
I tell a lie, I hit somebody, I cheat on them, I should feel guilty.
Right, that's natural.
Because that motivates me to get back to a loving, healthy situation.
Because as long as I stay in stuff that violates love, I'm destroying relationships.
I'm making a worse life for myself.
So guilt is a good thing, and I can resolve guilt.
So it's about what I do that violates love.
Shame is about who I am.
It's nothing about what I do.
Wow.
So that's huge to notate those two things.
Like it can be okay to feel some guilt about things.
It's important.
That's me getting a sign like, hey, man, this is a, it's almost like a U-turn sign.
It's like a good road sign, really.
Exactly.
Even though it hurts some, you need that because it helps you recognize you're going against love.
Exactly.
You're doing something against love.
But then shame is unhealthy.
And I can do nothing about it.
So shame is about who I am that I'm not good enough.
Shame I then attach whatever I did immediately and that feeling.
And that's where the two then feed each other.
So as soon as I do something wrong, that proves my shame.
Right.
That I'm useless.
And that goes back to that child, that child doing something wrong.
Something's wrong in his world, in her world.
And they don't know how to solve it because they're a child.
And the only person in the world is them.
So if something's wrong in their world or they're not getting what they need or their needs met, then of course it must be their fault.
So that's where shame builds.
Exactly.
So that's where we say that a key part of complex trauma is false guilt.
So you're made to feel guilty, though you've done nothing wrong, which then feeds shame.
So dad says, I'm mad because you're a terrible kid.
Well, no, that's not why dad's mad, or I drink because you're a terrible kid.
Yeah, dad's mad because he's a Lions fan.
Exactly.
And so it's, you're now feeling, I did something wrong, therefore I am wrong.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
Man.
And so to help people heal, they got to deal with legitimate guilt, and they can fix that.
They got to correct all the lies that led to false guilt.
So every time that somebody's impatient with them, they go, what am I doing wrong?
You're not doing anything wrong.
That's the other person's problem.
Or somebody's upset with them because they said no.
No, you set a good boundary.
You shouldn't apologize for that, but they feel guilty.
Or they relax for a few minutes.
I'm lazy.
No, you're not.
You're relaxing.
You got false guilt from lie after lie after lie.
So you got to reprogram that.
Then you got shame that I'm therefore not good enough, which is all based on lies.
And that's all got to be reprogrammed.
And that takes a ton of work.
Does it?
Yeah.
What does some of that work look like if you've been.
Yeah, I would say shame to me is the biggest healing journey that comes out of complex trauma.
And it takes the longest and takes years because there's so many thousands of subtle lies that people develop that they don't even realize.
And the problem is they get triggered easily and then all of a sudden they're spiraling downhill that I'm a piece of shit and they don't know why.
But something's triggered an old lie that's led to, that proves that I'm useless.
And so there's a big journey in self-awareness and beginning to understand the lies that I believe that are below the surface, that are subconscious, beginning to understand the things that trigger that, begin to understand the patterns that take place once I'm triggered and where I spiral to and stopping those patterns.
That's the work.
And so if I can give one other piece of teaching.
Yeah.
Okay.
So it's so key with complex drama to understand the two parts of the brain that are kind of the main things that motivate our behavior.
So the limbic system, which is the emotion center, that's the child's brain.
That develops first.
Yes.
Then the cortex that keeps growing to our 35-ish.
The thinking, the executive function that gets called, that processes information.
The key thing about the limbic brain, the child brain, is its instant gratification focus.
So a child, do you want to do your chores or do you want to sit here and watch TV?
Well, whatever makes me feel good.
So that determines what I want to do.
And then whether I want to do something, I don't feel like it.
I don't feel like doing that or I want a new puppy.
I feel like feeding the puppy until I don't feel like feeding the puppy.
So emotions guide my behavior and everything is instant gratification focused.
Wow.
And a lot of that, if you had trauma as a child, then you're still, even that could be a pattern that you still continue.
Because yeah, that's a lot of addicts.
So the key with that is that when fear is triggered, that's limbic brain.
So if you're in complex trauma, you're in constant fear.
So you're constantly in your limbic brain.
So your cortex doesn't develop properly.
So an adult or a teenager, they're going through gradually switching to their cortex and learning to think stuff through.
Complex trauma, you're still in your limbic brain, still thinking only of instant gratification.
What do I feel like?
Everything is about emotions, even though you're not aware of your emotions.
And so a huge part of what happens with shame when it's triggered is I could be living as an adult today out of my cortex, making good decisions, healthy decisions.
When my shame gets triggered, it triggers my limbic brain again.
And I go back to a child.
And I think like a child and I believe the lies of the child.
And so what you realize is the battles in your brain between your cortex and your limbic brain, they believe two different things.
Depends on what gets triggered.
Wow, it's almost like you have a heaven and hell right there, kind of.
Exactly.
Oh, my God.
And so that's where people with shame, they can be doing wonderful, great in relationships, and their shame gets triggered, and all of a sudden they're destroying everybody, calling their kids terrible names, calling their partner terrible names.
Yeah.
And it's like, what just happened there?
Well, you went to your limbic brain and you acted out of that shame lie.
That's when the damage gets done.
Those triggers, huh?
Those things, it's wild.
You had to go back to that.
Yeah.
So you can imagine, though, how long that would take to heal.
Because when that trigger hits, like it hits with an intensity of a locomotive.
Because it brings with it cortisol.
It brings with all the chemicals.
Drugs, yeah.
And how do you stop that?
Like the train's out of the station here, buddy.
Oh, yeah.
If somebody pulls up with a train full of drugs, dude, it's gone.
I'm getting on.
Exactly.
I was going to tell you that right now, and I'll probably sit in business class.
But yeah, my brother sometimes would say, trying to locate that shame and stuff, it was like taking panties out of a bathtub.
That's what he talks about it like sometimes.
Some days you get a couple and some days you just, you don't even know you're in it.
So as a person grows in healing, so let's say you would get triggered and you start spiraling, but you've got enough self-awareness, you'd catch yourself.
And you go, I know what's going on here.
Then you ground yourself, you regulate your emotions, and you get back to your cortex and you go, hey, I'm believing lies there.
I'm not that useless person.
And I don't have to do that.
And you get, and so what you find is all of a sudden that spiral just stopped.
So instead of being in it for four days, you're now only in it for 15 minutes and you caught yourself.
Now there's going to be a bit of a hangover effect as you kind of keep working through emotions with it.
But within a day, you're back to being in a pretty good place and you've grown a little bit.
And then because of that, you probably won't get triggered as intensely in that area again because you've grown.
So that next time something happens, the trigger won't be intense and it won't be as frequent.
And so over time, you're growing with greater infrequency and less intensity until you don't get triggered there anymore.
But that can take a few years.
But it can happen.
It can happen.
Wow.
It's really possible.
It is.
Man.
Yeah, do you get a lot of people who feel like they're at their wit's end?
What are like things that you're seeing people doing outside of drugs patterns that I would love to, if it's okay to hear about some of those because I would love for people to know that these types of things are repairable?
Yeah.
I would say some of the main ones that I would see right now are mental health issues like major depression, Anxiety issues that just make life unlivable, really, and are really getting in the way of relationships, family, stuff like that.
Secondly, is anger issues that just the flare-ups and the outbursts and the damage that it does that just brings them to a desperation point that I got to get help or I'm going to lose everything.
Then with younger people, there's this greater and greater kind of self-harm, suicidal ideation, deep in their thinking that's going on, eating disorder stuff that is slowly getting to a point where they go, I think I got a problem.
So that's big.
But I think maybe the biggest one right now is the number of people burning out.
They just are like working 60, 80 hour weeks and they're getting to a point where they're just can't do this anymore.
What's going on with my life?
But I think to me, the biggest one that probably gets people is relationships.
Especially when they have kids.
I can't, I got to be a better dad than my dad was.
And right now I'm, though I said I'd never be like my dad, I'm becoming like my dad.
I know.
I can, man, that's got to be tough, huh?
Yeah.
And it's just a wake-up call for them that rocks their world, but that's what they need.
And what they, so that's one of the biggest pressures you see with people in just that, having to be better than their parents?
Or is it like, what do you mean with relationships with kids?
Things just start to get tougher or they fall apart?
Yeah, so you get their kids start rebelling or their kids are getting into drugs or their kids are cutting and they're going like, I'm failing as a parent.
Why?
What's what?
Then they start to think about it and they go, yeah, okay, I get it.
I came from crappy upbringing and I'm passing it on.
And they, I think what they realize is complex trauma tends to be generational.
Really?
If I don't deal with it, I pass on what I've learned.
Oh, of course.
And I do it to my kids.
Because to me, that's all I know.
Those are the only tools in my toolbox.
I'm going to use them.
And so it becomes a generational thing.
And when you see what you're doing to your kids, you go.
Oh, the proof's too real.
I can't do that to my kids because I know what it did to me.
Wow, that's interesting.
Yeah, when you have a child, you really get to see the proof of the recipe you made.
And then you realize you're the damn ingredient.
Well, exactly.
And the other piece to that is what happens for a lot of kids is when you're living in constant pain that you can't resolve, you go, how do I make the pain go away?
Well, I can escape or I can not care.
So don't love anybody.
Shut down love and not care.
Just get hard inside.
And they can do that and pull it off and look like they're successful until they have kids.
And all of a sudden, love takes.
Love wins, huh?
Yeah.
And all of a sudden they love again and they go, ah, everything matters now again.
And I got to do something.
Wow, that's got to be scary.
Yeah.
I got two things, actually, Tim.
So is it possible for parents to do a good job?
I don't want to get just stuck in this place where it's like we're just contributing to this thing in the world that everybody's damaged and that we all need help.
That's one question.
And just so I don't forget, when we say like things are generational, do you think that where we are now and like people, there's a lot more mental health issues and stuff like that?
Is it because just how we've gone through time and this is where we're ending up at as humans?
Is it because, you know, I've had theories that maybe it's because we don't have to have fear of the, like a bear in the woods as much anymore.
So now that fear turns inward.
And so we're hunting this bear inside of us or this lion in the shadows all the time, you know, like, but yeah, those are, those are my two questions.
Like, why do you think it's kind of coming to a head in a lot of ways?
And is that just in America too?
Is it just in like Western culture?
I would say probably Western culture about 10 to 20 years ahead of a lot of cultures in understanding this.
I think to me, what's happened is the research scientifically that's been done on the brain and trauma in the last 10 to 15 years has really started to open people up to understanding stuff.
And what we've begun to realize is you can't heal trauma just with knowledge.
You need safe connection.
Oh, yeah.
You've got to have an environment where people can talk about it.
And people have started to create those environments and people are starting to talk.
And so in some ways, it's like it's a new phenomena, but it's the way it should always have been that we could talk about what's really going on.
But we're getting there gradually.
But I think it's really been fueled by a lot of the research that's been happening and the growing understanding of how magnificent our brains are and how they develop and all of that.
And how childhood used to be all about like nurture versus nature.
And it was all about, you know, your genes, et cetera, et cetera.
Really, all the evidence is that, no, it's nurture.
It's what's happening in that child's life that's shaping them and forming how they look at the world and think about themselves.
That's the key thing.
And epigenetics is all about nurture.
And it even determines how our genes fire.
And so it's really beginning to understand more scientifically what's been happening.
That's been so key.
I think when it comes to parenting, so a couple of thoughts.
the danger is every parent wants to be a perfect parent and it's really important to go it's all about good enough parenting nobody's a perfect parent but we can be good enough parents and that means we're going to fail we're not going to we can't be super man to our kids we have limitations we can't be awake 24 7 but we can be good enough so
a child needs parents who are attuned to them and who connect now you don't connect 24 7 with a child but they need a few minutes a day of just really safe connection with the parent to feel okay this is my rock this is i'm secure everything's okay with the world and parents can provide that good enough connection and so what's been so important i think for parents to understand is our whole focus in the west
as parenting is you got to meet their physical needs physical needs you know you got to make sure they get their milk at this time and they get to bed and they have safety and all what we're realizing is the child's biggest needs are emotional needs and there's acceptance and that attunement and and that connection all of those needs are so important for a child if they're going to develop normally and healthily and if parents can learn how
to meet their emotional needs of their kids that's what they can do so the other piece to that is we often talk about dysfunctional family and we think the opposite of dysfunctional is a perfect family but there's no such thing as a perfect family right so the word dis is actually a greek word that means pain and so it's a family in pain is a dysfunctional family so it's a family that's inflicting pain on each other but
is never resolving it so it's a complex trauma family so the opposite of a dysfunctional family is a functional family which is a family that inflicts pain once in a while but they resolve it and by resolving that pain then the child isn't traumatized because it's getting resolved right yeah that processing is so huge exactly i think when i think back on my own life um and not to just talk about my own life i guess i just want i'm trying to have share like just
so i can try and relate you know um i'm not sitting here trying to be like oh my my life but uh yeah i would i if somebody had been there to be like hey this is what's happening and this is why it's happening oh man because otherwise yeah i was just trying to figure everything out for myself and uh there was never just any information there was no i felt that's what i felt like when i was a kid i felt like i worked at a restaurant right that i
had to work at every day and i never got paid and i never knew what was on the menu and i never even knew if we were open or closed you didn't know where the pots and pans were but i had to be there every single day yeah and i had to show up to work that's how i felt and it um yeah i don't know what that means or anything well i think for a lot of kids in complex trauma they feel like they're chasing their tail running in circles in a fog
um they just know they're supposed to be doing something that nobody's showing them what to do so they're running around hoping that they're going to figure it out but they're not sure if they're figuring out so there's just this constant haze of confusion yeah that's there and so unsafe man i remember i mean i wet to bed till i was probably 27 probably yeah i mean i remember at when i would go to bed at night it felt like i was literally clocking in for a job as like an orderly at a hospital because i knew in a couple hours i was
gonna have to get up and change my sheets and sometimes i wet to bed three four times a night to be honest and um that's very common with complex trauma i would pee around my bed i thought that something was going to come get me and i'd heard that like animals will pee and prevent other animals from coming i mean it's crazy when i think back on that some kid doing that a fucking nine-year-old kid doing that i mean i was like the pattern i had to go through to look around my room to make sure there was nothing in there was going to get me it must have taken 12 minutes
each night to do it all the exact same way so that i could then get into my bed man i was and then we get children that um kind of sleep with their back against the wall facing the door um so that they're not gonna have anybody behind them and they can see anything that comes in some even sleep with a weapon nearby in case something happens that's crazy yeah and yeah and i think of my stuff my my child
is pretty light when i think about what some kids could go through yeah you know mine was really more neglect it wasn't any abuse you know um but it was just wandering around in a fucking yeah at an empty costco with a fucking name tag on wondering where the manager was you know um anyway sorry sometimes i'm still i still have a lot of anger about it it's been hard to process over the years yeah no but to me you should and
if i can just speak to that yeah because to me what happens in a lot of complex trauma families is anger is seen as bad you're always punished for anger but when you think about anger anger is actually designed to be something good if something violates love so somebody lies to me or somebody cheats on me i should get angry because what they're doing is going to destroy the relationship if they don't fix it so anger is actually a healthy thing that motivates
me to act to say hey this isn't right this is this is wrong but in complex trauma that gets knocked down never validated judged and so part of the healing journey for a lot of people is being able to validate their anger yeah i should be angry because that was crap i shouldn't have been neglected like that now i'm not going to stay there i'm not going to feed it and turn it into deep bitterness but i need to let that anger be honest if i'm
going to heal yes sometimes i've as an adult i feel like i've i'm healed from it sometimes but i still feel like that kid is not happy exactly that's literally what it feels like sometimes yeah Like he comes up to the surface of my fucking throat.
Yes.
Literally, he'll be just playing in the distance and he'll run up and yell out, fuck you.
Exactly.
Just right out of the, I can all, it's like.
Exactly.
And I say, okay, that's where he's at.
You know what I'm saying?
We're going to keep trying to work with him.
But yeah, I think a lot of my anger now is from I have unrealistic, realistic expectations of people, of myself.
I didn't even realize it literally like three or four days ago.
Somebody brought it to my attention, man, my brother.
And I was like, oh my gosh.
I've had him since I was my whole life.
I've had this to-do list that I don't even know.
I feel like every day I'm already behind schedule and I don't have a schedule.
That's what every single, I'm running behind.
Got to do this.
What is it?
I don't know.
But we better get, I got to do it.
And that's how I am.
Like, no, and nothing, no one can ever do anything perfect enough, you know?
So to tie that in with what you just shared, what we found with most people with complex trauma is what they begin to realize is it's like there's a part of them that got left behind that's still a child.
So some refer to it as like their inner child.
But the little boy, that's still down there.
And some have a whole bunch of little boys that are different ages and different.
Well, that person is a politician.
Exactly.
But anyways, what they've realized is there's a part of them that kind of hates that little boy and wishes you shut up and then quit bugging them and grow up and all of that.
Kind of treats them like they were treated.
And they have to learn to love and nurture that little boy because that's part of them.
And just welcome them, make space for them, be curious, what's going on?
Why are you upset?
Like, I'm not going to judge you.
Just help me understand.
And then help them process through it because nobody helped them process through it.
And eventually that little boy can heal.
And so that's a useful tool for a lot of people is beginning to go, let's welcome that little boy and parent that little boy, even though it's me, but it's part of me and it's a part of me that got wounded.
So if somebody's sitting there right now is listening, right?
And they're like, how would you start to have some of that conversation with yourself?
And is there a certain setting you would kind of do it in?
Just to even try and get us some awareness of that inner child, as people say.
It's different for everybody.
And so you got to kind of find what works for you.
What some people do is they can go in their imagination to kind of a safe place in their house that they liked as a kid, or a safe place in the backyard, or a tree, or something in the woods, whatever.
And they can go there and kind of picture that little child and connect with that little child.
Others can do it through going through like picture albums.
See when they're four years old, when they're seven years old, I remember what I was feeling then and what I was thinking.
Or the other one is when they get triggered and that voice in their head and they go, whoa, okay, how old do I feel right now?
And they go, I feel three.
I feel eight.
And it's like, okay, let's connect with that part of me.
And that's that part of your limbic brain that's been triggered, which doesn't keep track of time.
That's still stuck at that age.
Wow.
Yeah, that's a great point.
When that's happening, that part of you is showing up.
Exactly.
So that's as easy as it is.
It's a great time to connect.
What I say to people is a trigger.
Don't get down on yourself if you get triggered.
Go, a trigger is my little boy saying, ouch.
And be curious and go, it's trying to get my attention saying there's a wound here that never has to be.
What's going on, buddy?
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah, I went to this center for a week.
It was in, this was in Scottsdale.
It was about like sexual health.
Not necessarily about actual physical act of sex, but like emotional health, emotional wellness, all that.
And we had to go get a doll from a dang baby.
Oh, Bilde Bears.
So we roll up in Build-A-Bears, dude, a couple.
I mean, we got out of a white van and went in there.
So obviously we look like politicians, you know?
Definitely perpetrators.
Like one of us, definitely a peeping cop, you know.
Give it up candy at the back.
We look like flashers that had gone on a field trip.
That's what we look like.
We look like definitely.
And then we're in there buying dolls.
And there's like these other, there's other people, like there's kids in there getting, it's just like the whole thing was just so bizarre.
But then you'd have to sit with this dang doll and just talk to, you know, like, and every now and then there was some moments of like, you could almost feel a doll just be like, hey, man, just sit here with me for a little bit.
Yeah.
You could almost feel, it was like a feeling you would get.
Like, hey, just stay with me for a minute.
Like, man, if I was, when I was a kid, if somebody had just stayed with me for a minute, it would have made a big difference.
Fuck, man, I can't even.
I mean, a minute, you know?
It just would have had a, ah, it would have made me feel like.
You know, like somebody wants to be there with me, you know?
I just never.
I can't believe I even, you know, I'm not trying to have self-pity, but I just can't believe that shit, man.
And I'm fortunate that we had food and stuff on the table.
I can't imagine in places where kids don't have that or don't have a sibling to at least like come in the room and make them smile or something.
Man, it's heartbreaking.
It is.
They should have a program when you leave the hospital with your child that they're just, you know what I'm saying?
Like, even a basic, like, hey, look in your child's eyes.
This is how you do this.
These are the, these are four things, you know, like, do they have anything like that?
They're starting to.
What's her name?
She's out of San Francisco.
She just wrote a book called The Deepest Well.
No, it's a good book.
Yeah.
And she's been very much involved with ACE, which is adverse childhood experiences.
Is that a test you take?
Yeah.
Oh, I think I did.
I did 10 questions or something?
Yeah.
And she was a pediatrician in San Francisco.
Nadine Burke Harris is her name.
So she's moved up the ranks in San Francisco and she's started parenting courses for people.
So Desmond Tusu said, we've got to stop pulling people out of the river.
We've got to go down river and stop them from getting pushed in the river.
And that's what this is all about.
We got to start working with parents.
So we're actually developing a parenting course that we're piloting right now just because it's great work helping people get healthy in their 40s and 50s, but we got to help parents not pass this on.
Yeah, we got to fix it and try to help at the beginning some.
Let me think.
And what were we just talking about before?
Yeah, the ACES quiz right here.
This is a fascinating.
I took this test in a treatment facility, and it blew my mind.
Let's go back just a little bit, Ryla.
I just want to read the top.
Okay, what to know before you take the quiz?
Research has determined that 10 specific traumatic childhood experiences or ACEs could be linked to a higher likelihood of health challenges later in life and that the likelihood of these negative effects increased with the number of ACEs a child experienced.
Tim, you want to take us in a little further?
So these were really developed with a focus mainly on abuse.
And so we still use it because it's very effective.
But it's that hidden neglect stuff it touches on, but it doesn't develop.
And so most professionals now use this test, but then we add other stuff to help people capture some of the neglect stuff.
But what basically has come out of the ACE stuff test is through years of tracking people with it, is if you have two ACEs or three ACEs, more ACEs you get, the more your chances of depression, mental health issues, the more your chances of drug alcohol addiction, the more your chances of violence in the family, like abuse, partner abuse, the more your chances of suicide attempts.
It's just, and then your greater your chances for heart issues, diabetes, health issues.
It just messes everything up in your body.
It's fascinating.
It says here the 10 ACEs, and we'll get to the questions in a second, were defined as the following childhood experiences, physical, sexual, or verbal abuse, physical or emotional neglect, separation or divorce, a family member with mental illness, a family member addicted to drugs or alcohol, a family member who is in prison, witnessing a parent being abused.
It says still there are variables that the quiz doesn't account for, including stressors outside of the home, as well as the important role positive influences play on buffering the effects of trauma.
So let's see those questions real quick.
Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often, A, swear at you, insult you, put you down or humiliate you, or B, act in a way that made you afraid that you might be physically hurt?
Did a parent or other adult in the...
So there's 10 questions here, and the more you get right, the odds of countless tougher pastures in your life.
Yes.
The consequences, the ramifications just grow.
Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often push, grab, slap, or throw something at you?
Or B, ever hit you so hard that you had marks or were injured?
Did an adult or person at least five years older than you ever touch you or fondle you or have you touch their body in a sexual way or B attempt or actually have oral, anal, or vaginal intercourse with you?
Four, did you often or very often feel that A, no one in your family loved you or thought you were important or special?
Or B, your family didn't look out for each other, feel close to each other, or support each other?
You want to do these, Tim?
Yep.
Is that okay?
Yep.
Did you often or very often feel that A, you didn't have enough to eat, had to wear dirty clothes, and had no one to protect you?
Or B, your parents were too drunk or high to take care of you or take you to the doctor if you needed it?
And number six, were your parents ever separated or divorced?
And I would just say that lots of research is starting to happen around the effects of divorce on children because often we think it doesn't affect them that much because they still see both parents, but it does.
And it's just very subtle, but it's powerful.
Was your parent caregiver A, often or very often pushed, grabbed, slapped, or had something thrown at him or her?
Or B, sometimes, often or very often kicked, bitten, hit with a fist, or hit with something hard?
Or C, ever repeatedly hit over at least a few minutes or threatened with a gun or knife?
Did you live with anyone who was a problem drinker or alcoholic or used street drugs?
Number nine, was a household member depressed or mentally ill or did a household member attempt suicide?
And 10, did a household member go to prison?
So those 10 questions right there, the more you answer, If you even get three of those, yes.
Your odds of addiction, I think, are above 50%.
Yeah.
That's unbelievable.
Because I don't know, I don't think I know 10 people that don't have at least two of them.
Exactly.
And you notice it's talked about neglect just a little bit, but it doesn't go into workaholic dad, narcissistic dad, all the subtle little types of neglect.
Interesting.
Yeah, this I just remember reading.
I remember in this facility, we all went over this and then people read theirs.
And half of the class, and some of the people in the class were like mayors in their towns and stuff.
And some of them had really beaten some unforeseeable odds.
And then it made sense to you when you looked around back around my high school when certain kids are like, oh, yeah, it makes total sense why that kid's not alive anymore or why that guy's in prison or why that guy's in a rehab facility.
Pretty wild.
Pretty wild.
But I don't want to get into that downer mentality, but it is just fascinating.
There's a lot out there, you know.
And that just supports like so much of the research that's happening right now just in understanding the effects of childhood on a – This is all well researched and continues to be researched in great detail.
And it's just growing and growing in our understanding of this very important topic.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that's what I think I was just curious about.
I just want if people are like, because here's where I found myself.
I found myself in a place for me where I couldn't understand why I wasn't able to do certain things, like, especially like with relationships and stuff like that.
I kept thinking that it would change.
And it just hasn't.
It's gotten better.
Things have gotten better.
I'm a lot more aware.
I don't make a lot of the same mistakes as I used to.
I don't get people into situations that I'm leading them to believe that there's something that, you know, if there isn't something, you know, like, but I still have just a severe fear of a lot of it.
And as you get older, it's like, well, how the heck am I ever going to have a family then?
You know, will I ever be able to have that?
Or should I just, you know, keep to myself more?
You know, not in a negative way, but in a positive, you know, it's like.
So I would, and I say this all the time to people that come to our program.
There is hope, but be prepared.
It takes a lot of work and it's not a quick fix.
This is going to take a lot of time because this started in childhood and you don't undo that overnight.
But there is hope.
Yeah, I heard you talk on one of your, thanks.
Thanks for saying that to me and just to anybody that's listening, you know, and I believe that.
I believe that when I go into meetings and you see guys that like two years ago were like addicted to prostitutes and now they're getting married and they're having children.
It's like you see people change their lives or guys who had never even been on a date in two years and were just addicted to pornography and didn't even realize they were addicted.
It was just a pattern of comfort.
I remember when I found my wiener dude when I was probably, I don't even know, once I found something that could make me feel good.
Yep.
Sounds soothing.
Yeah, you could play all the you could play all the Madden you wanted.
I was like, I had my own game.
Exactly.
You know what I'm saying, dude?
And I was two-point conversion and all the time, bro.
I was doing it.
It was like, that was unbelievable to me.
I would bike across town to go look at pornography at my buddy's house going and digging up pornos over there.
Man, it was just, because it was the first time I also had a relationship with a woman, even who was just on a damn page or drawing.
We had a dude who would draw you some ovaries or something for the weekend.
So can I speak scientifically to that again?
Yeah, I don't want to go too long here.
Okay, cool.
Yeah, and sorry, I know I'm just talking about a lot of stuff, Kim.
I just, sorry, we're doing our best.
So what we know is when you look at the brain chemicals, the brain only produce is designed to produce positive chemicals.
So you got dopamine, pleasure, chemical, then you got serotonin, that feel-good connected, what you get ecstasies part of.
And then you've got oxytocin, I'm in love chemical.
So those three chemicals are designed to be produced all the time in the brain of a child because they connect with the parent.
So they feel good.
They feel a deep joy.
They feel a deep contentment.
And their needs are being met.
And that's so connection and the meeting of needs causes those chemicals to be released.
Complex trauma, you're not connecting and your needs aren't being met.
Zero chemicals.
Wow.
So what's your brain feel?
Cortisol, anger, hyper, pain, rebellion, all of that is happening.
So what do you then find?
The first thing that gives you comfort.
And part of what we know is your parents are supposed to soothe you when you get dysregulated, when you have negative emotions.
But if you can't connect to them, then you're not being soothed properly.
So you find the first thing that self-soothes.
And so some people rock.
See, we would rock.
My brother-in-law's beds were on wheels, and in the morning they would be in a corner of their other corner of the room.
Yeah, exactly.
Because we would rock all night like that.
And so what we know is when you cut, it actually releases opioids in the brain.
And so you don't feel the pain.
You feel the relief of the good feeling.
Wow.
And so guys find their wiener and all of a sudden they get a good chemical in their brain.
Well, that's better than no chemicals.
So let's go back and let's get more.
Serving up that wiener sauce.
It was horrible.
But that's crazy.
So it, yeah, it's like, oh, this is a good feeling.
Exactly.
Of course, I'm going to do it again and again.
Exactly.
Why else wouldn't I?
The second something triggers me, I feel bad.
I'm going to make myself feel good.
Now I have the ability to make myself feel good.
That was the first time in my life I had the ability, any like method.
You know, that's why I think it's so important to your child just doesn't know how to make themselves feel better.
So if something is wrong with your child, you have to sit and teach them.
I'm not trying to preach at people, but I wish somebody for me had sat and said, hey, right now you feel this way.
This is going to how you, you're going to be okay.
It's everything you're going to get to hear.
Everything's going to be okay.
And I'm going to sit here with you while you do it.
Exactly.
You know?
And yeah, man, stuff like that, just so crucial.
Before you go, Tim, and thank you so much, man.
Really, really appreciate it.
I really kind of think of this as a service call in a way.
My pleasure.
And just grateful, man.
So many of your videos, you have the one that's like, you're leaving.
Can I, will you take, what is that video title?
It's the codependency one.
Yeah.
If you leave, can I come with you?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's just so like, get out, can I come with you?
It's like, that was like, God.
Yeah.
What's kind of is, it's this, it's complex trauma isn't a one, there's not one fix, really.
Right.
It's, what is there, how do you view like the repairing process overall?
And I think it's great to emphasize that there's not just one fix because so much of the focus in the West has been around let's just do this one program and then like you're magically going to be fixed.
So we're always looking for almost like a magical solution.
Oh, even with treatment centers, it's like here's a 30-day treatment center.
Exactly.
What are you going to do on 34th day?
Exactly.
You know what I'm saying?
That's unbelievable that it's a third 30 days doesn't really, it'll help you detox.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Anyway, sorry.
So what we teach our clients is we are intellectual beings, we're physical beings, we're emotional beings, we're relational beings, and we're spiritual beings.
We have to learn to meet all five, the needs of all five of those areas if we're going to be healthy.
And that's what parents were supposed to do is meet the needs of all five of those areas.
But now we got programs that just try to do a spiritual only solution.
That doesn't work.
Others try to do just, let's do this one little emotional gimmick.
No, you've got to learn to curl your way to freaking completely.
And so it's learning.
We're biopsychosocial spiritual.
We've got to learn to meet all those needs and get healthy in all those areas.
That's the bottom line.
It seems like a lot of work sometimes.
It's not a magic solution.
It's hard when people's lives get busy, too.
I can't imagine once people have a family and stuff and a father or mother has to leave away from their family to go get wellness.
So if I can ask you, and this kind of almost, I don't know if it's off the record, but you can decide what to do with it.
So we've got a UFC fighter that's approached us about taking our program, Boston Red Sox, Detroit Lion, Detroit Tigers, some movie stars.
But they've all said, we've kind of got celebrity status and we're not, can't fit a program into our schedules, plus we're not sure we want to be in a group we're going to get adored, kind of.
I'm not sure we're going to be able to share freely.
So we've been giving thought to kind of what do we do to kind of people in your status of life that...
Yeah.
Or make the pattern might feel different.
Yeah.
And then has maybe some restraints around their schedules that doesn't allow them to commit for like a 15-week program.
So we've been giving some thought to just some things we can do that might enable celebrity type people to take advantage of the program and still have some connection with people, but maybe not the full connection daily.
Any thoughts on I would love to help you think navigate it or get up because that's where we're at.
It's so funny you say this, man.
I'm just talking with a buddy of mine.
We just had a group last week trying to maybe build something, you know, or just not build something, but yeah, I would love to, you know, think about it.
Or I wish there were more meetings that some people could go to, you know, and what that looks like.
Yeah, I'd love to talk with you about how I can be a part of stuff or if there's some meetings that I can join or, you know, I have friends that would like to be in meetings.
I think sometimes they're maybe afraid to be in some meetings or whatever, but I'd love to talk about that with you a little bit more.
Because I would value that.
Yeah, Tim, 100%.
Because we just see like we're getting more and more requests from celebrities, but it's a special niche with special needs.
And it's like we almost got to custom make something here.
Yeah.
That's going to need a lot of wisdom to do it, but it's doable.
Well, you know, it's so funny.
I thought that if I could get everybody in the world to see me.
Right.
That would fix everything.
That it would, that it would like make up for whatever, you know.
I didn't know that's what I needed, but it was like, that's what I wanted so much.
And I was like, oh, if my mother sees that everybody thinks I'm okay, she'll have to then see, oh, he's okay.
You know?
For years, I think one of the reasons I was having trouble, I didn't even realize is getting into a relationship.
I was still in this relationship with my mother.
Exactly.
I was still literally, I felt like somebody standing on a dock waiting for their mom to come.
Yeah.
And validate them.
Yeah.
You know?
Just literally just to hold.
I hear that all the time.
Really?
It's unbelievable.
And I don't mean it as a shade to my mother.
My mother did.
I have a lot of really cool memories.
There was just that part she didn't even know it existed.
If you'd have showed it to her as a color, she wouldn't even be able to see it.
what types of things can people notice in their life where they maybe have had complex trauma that they didn't realize it's affecting this place?
Is there any way we can put some light on that or is that too broad of a question?
Well, I think, again, for many people, workaholic, people-pleasing, never able to say no, perfectionism, nothing's ever good enough, control freak issues where they have to control everybody and everything, or image always got to look good and try to impress people all the time, or just lots of relationship problems, rifts, damage being done now.
mental health issues that...
Yeah, well, exactly.
And so what we've, we started with the React and then the Lyft course, but not everybody can do that.
So what we've started now is some self-study courses that people can take on their own time.
And then they have an optional group they can go to once a month just to kind of share and talk about stuff.
Oh, cool.
Have a one-on-one coach if they want to process through stuff.
So that's now available.
And then we are doing some workshops on narcissism, inner child stuff, internal family system stuff, shame issues.
So we're trying to do more available stuff to busy people.
So can I tell you one of my favorite stories to tell people?
There's actually a video now on YouTube where a guy's actually built a bike that operates backwards.
So when you think of a bike, you learn to ride a bike at four, five, six years old.
And at first, you got to concentrate a lot to get your balance to turn the steering wheel.
Oh yeah, remember how loose the You're falling, but you keep working and concentrating.
Oh, yeah.
You fall.
Somebody's dad calls you a G-A-Y every time.
You're like, what?
And then pretty soon you could be talking to your buddies and you're not even thinking about riding, but you're – And now you could go without riding a bike for 30 years and jump back on and you'd ride it without even thinking.
You'd just pick it right back up.
So this guy built a bike where if you turn the handlebars to the left, you actually, the wheel goes to the right.
Oh my gosh.
Why did he do it?
Was he angry at somebody?
He wanted to test how quickly could you relearn to ride a bike.
Wow.
You know how long it took?
Six months to a year.
No.
Yeah.
So you're just saying to relearn things, it takes a while.
It takes some time.
Exactly, especially when you learn it so young.
And if somebody's just going to therapy, right, what can they go talk to?
How can they start a conversation with their therapist that could help them create more ambiance around maybe some of the stuff that may have happened and how it affects them now?
Yeah.
So a lot of people go to therapy now because of a crisis in the present.
They need to be able to understand that crisis is probably a symptom of something from the past.
And so a lot of therapists just try to give you practical tools.
Well, try this, try this, try this.
And they're just putting band-aids on cuts on the symptoms.
If you can get your therapist to go, like, why am I doing this?
What's underneath that's driving that response and begin to look at shame, begin to look at fears that are there, fears of abandonment, fears of intimacy, fears of rejection, fears of failure.
All of those can start getting down to the core root issues that come out of trauma.
Yeah, sometimes I can ask myself, like, what's going on, you know, and try to answer myself, you know, like try to legitimately answer myself.
Because my first thought would be like, oh, nothing, nothing.
But then it's like, well, sometimes I get a feeling first, and that's a clue.
Yes.
A feeling is just like a, yeah, it's just like a little bit of a, like you saw something, but you don't really know.
Sometimes if I feel something, I try to feel it more.
Like, how can I feel this more?
So there's a new term called compassionate inquiry.
And so it's when you get a feeling in the past, we get that critic, you stupid, why are you feeling that way?
We judge ourself and get really hard on ourselves.
Oh, yeah.
And so it says, instead of condemning yourself, be curious, compassionate.
So you be kind to yourself and then go, what's going on here?
And inquire.
And you change the whole way you respond to feelings and triggers, which is huge for a lot of people.
And you give yourself some grace, too.
Exactly.
That's the compassion.
That's it.
Give yourself some grace, man.
Quit beating yourself up.
Give yourself.
Just give yourself some grace.
It's the least you can do right now.
You can do it.
You know, just give yourself a little bit of grace.
That's one thing I've had a tough time with.
And I would say probably for most of the people we work with, self-compassion is the hardest thing for them to learn.
Why is it hard for us to have self-compassion?
Because shame says, I deserve to beat myself up because I'm a loser.
And Often, complex trauma parenting is the way to motivate a child to want to change and be better is to beat them up and put them down and punish them, and then they're going to want to prove you wrong.
But that doesn't work in the long run.
Eventually, you start to believe you are a loser and you just give up.
But you still got all those things in your head that you keep putting yourself down.
And then for many people, there's that justice piece that if I commit the crime, I got to do the time.
And so I did something bad.
I'm a bad person.
I got to punish myself before I can let myself out of prison.
And so there's that sense of justice that has to be served in their mind.
And even, and so if they're too hard on themselves, then they're going to be punishing themselves for crimes that are real.
And you're in prison forever because you never let yourself out.
Yeah.
Gosh, the crazy thing is I can't even remember some of the ridiculous patterns I used to have inside of me.
I used to have this belief that I had to, I know it sounds silly, but sometimes it feels like you can swallow on different sides of your mouth.
I had this thing, I had to swallow constantly back and forth or the world wouldn't be even.
And it was this constant thing all the time.
It was like this constant thing.
Man, sometimes when I think back on some of the crazy stuff or little patterns, I think a lot of people haven't.
Some of us just being.
So to me, what you've really shown me this aft is this.
It shows the child's amazing ability to think there's got to be another way to fix this, another option available.
If I try this, if I try this, if I try to, I'll swallow different.
And you start to believe that if I only do something a little bit different, that'll resolve and fix the problem.
But pretty soon you're rocking in your bed, you're peeing around your bed, you're sleeping with your back to the wall, you're swallow, like you feel you got to control every little element of life, but it's not fixing anything, but you're still doing it.
Yeah.
But it's the brain just keeps giving one more, let's try this, let's try this then, let's try this then.
And you can keep going until you're in your 30s, but eventually you're wearing yourself out and you go, it's hopeless.
It's not fixed anymore.
Man, it took me so long to see that.
It's like, yeah, it's the hard of the sea when you're, it's hard to see the water when you're the fish, you know, whatever they say.
Or hard to drink the water or something if you're at the aquarium or whatever.
But yeah, that was, God, man.
I wish I had gotten a little bit of perspective earlier.
But yeah, that's one of the toughest parts, man, is just seeing that thing, recognizing that, that pattern.
I used to think if I was a girl, maybe if I was a girl, my mother would love me, you know?
Or that I would be loved.
I don't want to always just pin the tail on my mother.
Yeah, just some of that stuff, man.
And it's not what-is-me stuff.
It's just fascinating what a child can, they'll create so many realities.
And with you, you're always thinking, if I just set the bar a bit higher.
Yeah.
A bit higher, a bit higher, then that'll surely fix everything.
Oh, if I could get the whole world to see me, I didn't even know that.
If I could get, then my mother would, of course, would have to see me then.
Exactly.
How could she miss me?
Exactly.
You know, if I could just, yeah.
And those are just operating systems.
And they were running my life.
I didn't even know it.
We still have clients in their 50s and 60s.
So they graduate, let's say, from our program, and they go running and telling their mom, I graduated.
Do you want to see my diploma?
Wow.
Still looking for mom's validation to actually see them for the first time in their life.
And they get their hopes up.
And mom doesn't.
She just finds something to criticize.
Or it's just still the same thing.
Minimizes.
Or she cares, but it's not the way you need it.
Exactly.
And so they just get hurt, but they're in their 50s and 60s, still chasing mom's validation.
Yeah.
And I was hypersensitive as a child, too.
So I think that was another thing.
Like, I have to always say that I was hypersensitive.
And I still in, but it was like, yeah.
So it was.
And those are the ones that the neglect affects the most as a sensitive child.
That's what I think it was for me, probably, you know, and my siblings.
Yeah, even with relationships.
I mean, I went through this therapy recently and I was like, if I can't be in a relationship because I'm still in, there's a huge part of me still waiting for this fucking relationship.
The first one I was ever supposed to be in.
Dude, when my first girlfriend broke up with me, I said, you can't break up.
This came out of my mouth, Tim.
I said, you can't break up with me.
You're my mother.
Wow.
Because I just did, it was the first place I'd attached any care.
Damn, I sound like a crazy person, do I?
Nope, that's, but see, that's so normal.
You still are chasing that primary connection.
Yeah.
And you change the face to a young woman that's not your mother, but you're still chasing your mother's.
Well, she was the first girl that I really loved, so I think it just awoke all that stuff.
Yeah.
And when you love, you can, then you're like, oh, this is, it was, yeah, this was supposed to happen a long time ago, but now it's happening.
And this, there's probably a part of you that's like, this was supposed to be our mother.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I can get in all that stuff.
And also, some of it is like the more I look at all that old stuff, it's like trying to find a snake that bits you or whatever.
It's like, you know, it's like, it's like a snake bit you and goes off into the, and then you chase it for years.
Right.
And you want to ask it why it bit you.
You know, it's like, I just got to heal it.
What about forgiveness?
How do, what do you, what's your, what do you, what do you think about, how do you help people with that, Tim?
How does React help people with?
I think it's been a, it's such an important concept, but it's been a badly mistaught concept.
So a lot of people have seen the value of forgiveness.
And so all of a sudden when a person comes into recovery, you need to forgive your mom.
You need to forgive.
I go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
You can't forgive until you've actually validated how badly they've hurt you, until you've got honest about it, until you've grieved It until you've been able to really make space for all the emotions around that, then you're going to get to the point where your limbic brain is sorting out all of those painful emotions and it can come to a point where it can let them go.
So, forgiveness isn't something you're forcing, it's something that's going to naturally happen as you allow yourself to process through all the pain and anger connected to the wound.
Man, it's wild.
I had this thought that there's like this weird thing where it's like there's part of me that's afraid to not be angry at my mother because it's the only feeling I've ever had towards her.
And if I let go of that, then I won't have any connection to her as a child.
Exactly.
As an adult, I can see my mother differently.
And, you know, I love my mother and I want her to be happy.
I don't want her to have to work anymore.
She doesn't want to.
I wish she was a good person.
Can I ask you a question?
So a lot of kids like you that had a mother that just couldn't connect emotionally, often the only time that mother would connect emotionally is when they were bad or when they got angry.
Then mom would jump in and stop that, stop that.
And they go, a little bit of connection is better than no connection.
Oh, interesting.
So I'll be bad more.
Or angry.
I would find other people's.
I found other people's moms.
The second like.
Dude, I keep going.
I went to my friend William's house like 20 times a weekend.
His mom's like, he's not here.
I told you every time.
And they're like, you're here.
I just keep knocking just to see her look at me for a second.
You know?
Just wild, man.
The things that you'll, little ways you'll survive, little things you'll do.
It's fascinating.
The longing for love and nurture.
Yes, it's a lot of it.
It's fascinating, you know, getting to be human.
Yep.
It's quite a ride.
Tim, people can check you out online.
You have so many great, so many great digestible videos on YouTube.
So many just well, just really awesome stuff, man.
Thank you.
Yeah, thank you so much.
My brother saw you and he's like, God, this guy is great.
And he introduced me to you.
Oh, good.
And it's been cool because you're just saying things in a way that I can just, I could hear him.
And that's the hardest part.
Sometimes it's so hard for us to hear things.
Why?
Partly for a lot of people because of shame is I don't want to stop and look honestly at myself because it might be too painful and overwhelming and I don't want to go there.
So there's so many defense layers that you have to get by before you're even open to.
And so a lot of my years of kind of learning how to teach this stuff is how do I get by that defense layer?
How do I get by that defense layer?
How do I make people feel safe to challenge that area of their life and not feel that they're bad because they're doing that?
Man, it is quite a Rubik's Cube.
We're complex, huh?
Oh, I know.
What I'd be fascinated by is just kind of what response you get.
Yeah.
Because I think that's going to tell us a lot about what we could do differently, whether we need to add some other podcasts with more focused information.
Specific stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm curious about that too.
I think because I know you have so many like, you know, there was a like shame we touched on, which I think was important.
I know that there's a ton of stuff about guilt.
You just, there's so many little universal codependency.
Oh, God.
I can't even.
Boundaries.
Codependency for sure.
For sure.
As soon as you get into the relationship stuff, then it's just like everybody's ears perk up.
But I think we touched on some good understanding, though, right?
Of complex trauma.
People can understand maybe that they could have some things that they didn't realize, but also that you don't have to be a victim.
Not everybody has to have complex trauma.
You could have had just simple trauma that was just one thing or some instances, but you could have also had good parenting that was there to help you process it or somebody, even if it wasn't a parent, that could also be there as a fixture to help you process.
Exactly.
And I think your bits of your personal story just filled in a lot of that for people.
And I think to me, the big picture is everybody needs to learn not necessarily all the trauma stuff, but what does it mean to be healthy?
That's what a child is supposed to be learning as they're growing up.
And even if you had pretty good parents, we all still could learn more about fine-tuning being healthy.
And that's really what I try to do a lot of is, yes, define the trauma in great detail and the ramifications, but really to define what does healthy look like.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And if you never thought about this, to maybe say, oh, some of that, that could be something I should look at more.
I heard something that made me think or feel something.
That is good clues.
A lot of time I couldn't get a clue until I felt, it would have to be a very strong feeling, and then that would be a clue.
But yeah, I think, yeah, it's important, man.
It's important for people.
And yeah, it's important.
It's not important to sit there and dwell and swim and the shit like I'm an otter.
I have to remember that.
But it's important to sit on the side of the bank and look at the water, I think.
Yep.
You know, and see what's caused some of the ripples.
You know, and see where there's some waves and see where things are clear and nice.
So cool, man.
It's been a wonderful experience.
Thank you.
Yeah, Tim.
Thanks, bro.
I appreciate it, dude.
I got to get back up there to Windsor.
You've been there?
Yeah.
My tour manager.
You're at Caesars or?
It's from there.
Yeah, over there at Caesars.
It was pretty good, man.
We had a nice time over there.
And then did you go across to Detroit as well?
Nope.
Oh, just did Windsor.
Yeah, we did Windsor, and then we went over there to Lake of the Niagara, yeah, Niagara Falls.
And then we went somewhere else too.
I can't remember where it was.
Toronto's right up in there.
We had a great time.
Huh.
It's beautiful over there.
Yeah.
Canada's great.
Yeah.
We're grateful that you are part of North America.
I want to let you know that.
I'm grateful too.
There you go.
All right, Tim Fletcher.
Thank you so much, brother.
Thank you.
All right, cheers, brother.
Now I'm just floating on the breeze, and I feel I'm falling like these leaves.
I must be cornerstone.
Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this piece of mind I found.
I can feel it in my bones.
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