One of the biggest reasons why people who grew up with trauma struggle to maintain good relationships is because of our own behaviors. Whether we want them to or not, we do things that push people away. I'm Anna Runkle, also known as the Crappy Childhood Fairy and I teach people how to heal from the effects of abuse and neglect in childhood.
I teach a lot about triggers, the way people and experiences can just totally dysregulate us and throw us off neurologically, physically, and emotionally. Now triggers are important but what's also important are the ways that we act when we're feeling triggered or when we're triggered and don't even realize it and we end up hurting or alienating other people. And this makes me so sad, it's why so many of us have suffered so much loss and we've often gone through our lives longing for connection and not finding it or alone and scared to even try anymore.
And i'm here to say, there is so much healing possible and I can show you how, because if you want to change any negative pattern everything depends on your ability to see and change, to find the little spots, where you have some power to change how your life turns out. And this can happen when you lovingly courageously shift your focus from what happened to you, to how you're handling life right now, when you have a choice in the question of what happens next. Okay behavior number one that can push people away, our loneliness gets "leaky.
" Loneliness is like the number one symptom of early trauma and sometimes it spills out into the way that we relate to other people and it makes us seem, I hate this word, but needy. Some ways that this can show up when we're first getting to know someone, we dominate the interaction with our stories and our feelings. For friendship to blossom there's got to be some give and take: talking, listening, talking, listening, caring about the other person and being genuinely interested in them.
Here's another thing our loneliness makes us do, we sometimes confuse being open with other people with just you know spilling our pain. Have you done that? If you're just getting to know someone and you're bringing out all your trauma stories, and let's face it we have lots of trauma stories and they've kind of crowded out a lot of the other possible stories we could be telling, but if you're talking about that stuff as soon as you meet someone, you might want to catch yourself and decide to just pull back and set aside the sad stuff and then measure it out in little increments over time.
It's totally important to share this part of ourselves with people close to us but unless it's an established relationship with someone who cares about the totality of you, you run the risk of overwhelming people or freaking them out, I know I did, and then they close their hearts to you it's just too much. Now one exception to that is when you're talking to people who are very traumatized themselves or who are in an altered state from drugs or alcohol or who don't care what state you're in because they're trying to get something from you. So pouring your heart out in that situation might lead to a connection of a sort but this is exactly how we so often end up entangled with inappropriate or destructive people.
We get very intense, the people who can handle it are the very people who are not good for us to be around. So, be measured, little bits of your story shared over a slow time frame will help you start to build authentic friendships. Now you might also be leaking your loneliness when you do too much of the initiating of get togethers.
You call them, you text them, you've got fun ideas they might enjoy, but it's always you doing the asking. Now if you know someone who's been depressed and wants a little encouragement, there's no problem with doing this but in an equal relationship where no one's trying to help the other person, it's better to allow for reciprocity. You invite them to get together, then wait for them to invite you, maybe they'll happily surprise you and be right there with an invitation very soon after the last time you got together or maybe you won't hear from them for a while.
When people don't make an effort to get together, that is information, it's good for you to know about what kind of a friendship they're interested in and what you can expect, like maybe not much of a friendship in that case and definitely not a romantic relationship. So when one person doesn't pan out into a reciprocal friendship, it's just time to meet some extra people some new people, not to keep pushing invitations on the same person. Okay second behavior that pushes people away, we get overly "other-focused" do you know what I mean?
We get very wrapped up in what the other person is thinking and feeling at the expense of what we are thinking and feeling and this is one of those things where it always feels like no one should be able to tell that you're doing it because hey you're trying to be a good friend right? But think about when people have done this to you asking how are you doing, trying to read your mind, trying to fix problems that aren't even there, they're always kind of like pecking at you with this? It feels yucky right?
This is a classic fawning behavior that's one of the major expressions of CPTSD, fight flight freeze or fawn. And with fawning it's like our whole beings get taken over by trying to read another person and yes this was a survival tool for a lot of us when we were little and trying to gauge our own safety in unsafe situations but now, the mode of behavior completely kills genuine connection. It's a form of being in our own heads, of not being present, of giving all our power to someone who has not even asked for our power.
The relationships you want never require that you shut down or mentally flee the situation or give them all your power and this is similar to another thing some of us do, when we feel rejected and hurt but aggressively covered up by being cheerful helpful agreeable no problem, this is what people who were abused as kids get way too good at, I call it "crap fit. " And i'll share a video with you about that at the end of this one, but going right into people pleasing when you're attacked that's what it is. If someone's not treating you well, you can say something or you don't have to and of course you can always leave but if some old hurt part of you responds to mistreatment by jumping in and doing a song and dance to show that hey you're not hurt you're fine you're cool, is there anything you can do.
. this is not connection, this is you playing a role and if this is familiar to you, ask yourself if that's something that you're doing with any people in your life right now. Real friendships never require taking crap or abandoning yourself as a means to cope!
Real friendships are made of you being present, you are present. That presence is one of the most remarkable things that begins to show up, I love watching that with the people in my programs. So many positive changes flow from there.
Okay the third behavior that pushes people away, it's having a lack of clarity about when it's just you. Meaning you have trouble accurately seeing your own role in problems, either blaming yourself too much or denying any responsibility or in fact the thought that you play any role just like makes you angry. Have you dealt with people like that?
Either way black and white thinking, i'm totally responsible i'm never responsible, it's a way of checking out of reality and people who are not in reality are very hard to connect with. So some signs that you might be doing this include, you apologize too much, have you ever had someone do that to you but for something they only imagine had offended you and you're saying please you don't need to apologize but they keep doing it and they keep doing it and they feel so ashamed and it's not a good feeling to be either person in that. So if you're profusely apologizing all the time, and key indicator here is that the other person keeps insisting that you don't need to or seems uncomfortable, let it go, just let it go.
The same goes for putting yourself down, saying "oh my gosh i'm such an idiot I look awful I don't even belong here," you don't mean it this way but it can come off like like you're begging for something. What's really going on is you're drowning in fear of course and healing this, that's what I teach in all my courses, but telling everyone the contents of this like trash can in your mind, it just can be off-putting. Now sometimes people who already have a trusting relationship might confess to each other the doubts they have about themselves but blurting your fears out every time you make a mistake is, consciously or unconsciously, it's an attempt to get other people to make you feel less fearful.
They probably would help you if they could but they can't, so it just makes things awkward. Now on the other side of the "Is it just me" syndrome are behaviors where we're oblivious to the fact when something really is our fault, which happens right? And this shows up when someone says they're bothered by something we did and we skip over hearing it or caring how they feel and go right into defensiveness or even blaming them.
Everybody knows what this feels like and absolutely no one likes it. Now it's true that sometimes people are going to blame you unfairly for a problem but the thing about having CPTSD is, our judgment can be a bit slow or off so it pays to listen. Now i'm not talking about listening to abusers here, that's a whole different thing when someone gaslights you or attacks you for imagined offenses and they can't be reasoned with, those are not friends okay?
We get really fuzzy on determining "Is this person's criticism right now something that I need to hear and take seriously? " And the answer is, as a rule, yes. If you like and respect someone, it's only fair to hear what they have to say.
Now healing our childhood PTSD involves a balancing act between being open to hear things like criticism but not instantly taking it inside our innermost heart and making it our truth. There's this place I call a front porch in our emotional world where we can listen and consider what we're hearing and take a moment to decide if we're going to let that inside our emotional home, our place of truth. Listening on the porch allows us to respond, and responding- it's not the same as reacting is it, reacting is how we end up lashing out and running away from people- responding means considering another person's feelings, showing courtesy even when you don't see truth in what they're saying, not yet anyway, and making an effort to understand the spirit of what they're saying and responding to that.
You don't have to fawn and grovel and you don't have to annihilate them, you can say "Wow I didn't realize you felt that way, let me think about that and see if I can improve on that. " Now notice all you said was that you'd think about it, that you'd see if you could improve, you didn't invalidate them, you didn't collapse emotionally right? Sometimes during considerations, it's magical, the right words just come to you so you can be real and tell the truth and still be a caring friend.
Those two things truth and caring, that's what allows friendships to deepen and that's how healing works, little changes made over time. So don't give up! With small steps in your overall healing you can learn to connect better.
Better connecting, it's like jet fuel for your overall healing so it's this positive cycle that just keeps getting better, one thing leads to another, sounds good doesn't it? If you want to get going on your own positive steps toward healing trauma, better connections, i've got courses for you and they are linked as always in the description section below. I've also got bunches of really good videos coming out in the next few weeks and to make sure you get them right away, you can subscribe by clicking right over here and if you like that positive cycle we talked about in this video, you're going to want to watch this video right here, it's super practical and it'll help you keep going on this good direction where you're moving and i'll see you soon!
