something that isn't talked about enough when we talk about the way early trauma can affect you is the lifelong Damage Done when children are ignored now last year I started really tuning into the pattern I was hearing in so many of the letters that people were writing to me where their parents didn't listen to them or really see them and so that kind of treatment and then the kind of problems they were having now as adults in connecting with people and expressing themselves and I made a video at the time that just went viral so
fast so many people related to it so I'm bringing it back from the archives for you right now so that you can see if you show signs that this happened to you if you tend to go into a stress response when you try to communicate your emotions or what you need it may be that you're showing the signs that you weren't listened to as a child when you needed something when you tried to stand up for yourself when you tried to set a little kid's boundary getting ignored and having to figure out everything by yourself
as a child it affects a person and kids are supposed to learn how to be in the world from their parents parents are supposed to model it and teach it how to speak how to listen how to interpret other people's actions and parents are supposed to help their child learn how to express themselves in a way that works that gets heard that's clear that's polite that's assertive when it needs to be you know to say what they need right to ask questions when they're confused or to say no when something crosses their boundaries did you
learn that at home there's a whole lot I didn't learn until much later in my life how it's supposed to work uh you know attentive parents are very connected to the kid they listen and they coach them and if they're giving feedback but not listening that's not going to help some parents aren't even saying anything and they're just not really there or they're literally not there so if that's what happened to you it wouldn't be surprising at all if social situations are really stressful for you as an adult it's hard to have confidence in yourself
when the way you relate to people had to be invented by a little kid not by the well-adjusted grown-ups teaching you but by you without parents who listen to you your Social Development can end up having big holes in it you know chunks are missing and of course you're going to struggle sometimes as a result of that so what are the signs that someone wasn't listen to as a child one is you may get anxious and angry when you try to put feelings into words especially with people who you depend on like an employer or
a teacher or a partner now maybe you've repeated a pattern and unconsciously chosen people who don't listen who don't want to hear you can't hear you or maybe they listen to you but you have so much fear you're going to be dismissed or ignored or belittled or not heard that your voice comes out angry that's a sign and as you've probably noticed getting wound up and angry when you're trying to say what you need tends to ruin your chances of getting what you need walking into interactions you know so sure that you're not going to
get what you need can be a self-fulfilling prophecy you can actually become someone who is in fact hard to listen to and this is a horrible feeling because you're trying to connect and say what's going on but then you're also feeling shame that you can't seem to do it right so it's a double whammy and this is really normal for people with childhood PTSD but you might be someone who goes the other way instead of getting angry or anxious you might lapse into fawning and people pleasing you're so sure you won't be heard or cared
about that you try to manipulate a good outcome by dancing around and proving how nice you are and how helpful you are and how many question questions you ask about the other person and how they're feeling and of course this ends up not getting you heard either fawning feels like you're being nice but to the other person it can feel uncomfortable like claustrophobia like something that's not really real so while it may have helped you survive childhood it could be keeping you in relationships that are superficial your performance of being a nice person isn't really
something someone can be friends with or fall in love with it's it's it's a performance it's like putting a wall up another sign that you may have noticed is that group dynamics are overwhelming for you that happens to people who weren't listened to as kids you feel like you get overlooked you don't get your turn or you worry you're not going to get your turn or you feel like everyone else is taking up all the space in the room and all the opportunities to say something and you get resentful you feel pushed out that's a
horrible feeling too and it's also one of those dynamics that can be made worse when you feel anxious and angry going into that group setting because you can end up seeming defensive or aggressive or not emotionally safe for other people to be around huh it's understandable that you got this way you had to defend yourself and fight to exist and you probably had to hide a lot of anger but the thing is when you're hiding anger healthy people can sense it their nervous system is sensing your anger but you're forcing a smile and saying everything's
fine and they'll perceive you as something's off as untrustworthy something doesn't feel right when you say one thing but feel you know give off a Vibe of another so if you've been having a rough time being connected with people and you feel like you've done such a great job of being cool and nice and agreeable you may want to ask yourself if you're suppressing anger anger both the repressed kind and the kind that's totally out there and you know being expressed is the Hallmark behavior of someone who grew up not listen to it makes people
mad maybe you only express yourself when you're crying the feelings come out as tears that's a sign or maybe you only express yourself when you're so angry you can't take it anymore and you're yelling and banging things around or maybe you just get Frozen in silence shutting people out and I'm not saying you should run around telling everyone why you're so angry all the time but in the long run if you don't find a healthy way to express anger or Express what's bothering you before it becomes anger you're putting a big strain on your relationships
okay there are also non-angry just communication style things that people do when they weren't listened to as a kid what do you do in a conversation where there's a long silence does it make you really uncomfortable and give you make you feel like you need to have to rush in and say something because that often comes from a deep fear that if somebody isn't talking the other person is about to abandon in you and it's this reflex like oh hold on I'll keep talking no wait no pauses don't go away like you have to keep
them connected to you before they get away and very similar to this is talking too fast I used to talk too fast I had to consciously work on slowing that down and you might think I talk fast now but you should have heard me before and I I was just insecure and I was trying to not take up too much of the other person's time basically with my needs which I thought would be perceived as stupid like I'm so sorry I'm saying saying something but I'll make it really fast so you won't have to deal
with me for long and of course it's stressful listening to someone who talks fast it doesn't make you think oh what a considerate person giving me extra time coping mechanisms are always just crap at getting the results you're trying to get right another sign you weren't listen to as a kid is that you you get overly intense when you're saying something especially if you're saying something about feelings that someone hurt you or oh God that you need help with something because you're afraid you won't be helped and you might not even be believed you know
that's the fear so I used to do this every time I got sick and i' I'd say to my boyfriend at the time well I'm sick and he'd go oh okay and I go no I'm really sick look my eyes are glassy I think I have a fever I feel awful my stomach hurts and I go into this big story this big list of problems so that I could be believed and I was already believed and the irony is because I was talking so much about my symptoms and going over and over them making such
a big deal I kind of ended up getting perceived as a hypochondriac and it sounded like exaggeration and actually exaggeration is something that people do when they weren't Listen to As kids also bragging when I was a kid though the one thing that would bring my mother to my side was when I was sick and I don't think I ever faked it except maybe to skip school sometimes I mean who didn't do that right but to this day I can still get very you know weird and prickly when I'm sick because I'm anti anticipating you
know there's just this lingering defensive fight in me about you know what I'm sick so don't even think of ignoring me it's a fight about whether they're going to take care of me or believe me and it's kind of like birthdays I still it's gone pretty well for a few years but it used to be very easy to feel that no matter how much anyone tried I was just so sure they didn't really care and that my birthday was a nuisance to them and first I felt guilty for having the birthday and then I felt
mad that they hadn't made a big enough deal and um you know trying to talk through complicated old fears and resentments like that is what we call processing and you can process some of this stuff to death and it's not a good relationship thing where you're looking to someone else to fix you and they try but of course it doesn't fix you anger and anxiety can also be called fear and resentment and I have techniques for releasing those as you may know if you've tried my daily practice techniques they're always linked below I'll mention that
at the end when you have fear and resentment you might repeat yourself or you might start talking louder and louder kind of verbally bullying someone so that they keep listening whether they want to or not whether they feel that you've answered your concern or not you might start interrupting them because you're so afraid that you're not being heard now if you weren't listened to as a kid you might even get angry or defensive when people ask questions for clarifications like well what do you mean what do you mean what do I mean or you know
they go what could you say that again it's like how many times I have to repeat myself because of the filter of your past trauma that overlays everything you think they're challenging you or maybe because you know your anger is going to create problems you start acting like the class clown like I know you don't want to listen to me but maybe I can entertain you and get my point across with humor and you're thinking then you won't think I'm an angry person you know and along the same lines you might hedge what you're trying
to say and you say well I don't know maybe it's just me but I don't actually like being treated rudely or maybe it's just me but the tablecloth is on fire I don't know where I got that except well Christmas two Christmases ago my brother-in-law um introduced us to the woman he is now married to she's very cool and she came over and it was Christmas time and I had set up this beautiful decorations on the dining room table we ate at the kitchen table but the dining room table it had candles and this like
woven Norwegian table runner that's traditional you know my mom's Norwegian it was beautiful there was all this stuff and little little ceramic houses it was so Charming we're eating dinner and all of a sudden I hear this crackling I was like what I go into the dining room and I look and it's like the dining room is like massively the table is on fire it's reaching up to the ceiling and I was like everybody get in here and I really liked my future sister-in-law because she was so cool about it and she thought it was
funny and she help helped me get like some blankets and put the fire out and it was fine the table slightly damaged forever but whatever the house didn't burn down that was how I made a first impression on her was causing a house fire anyway one classic childhood PTSD behavior is over self-disclosure was that over self-disclosure no that's a perfectly appropriate story for this but you tell people too much about yourself too soon or at an inappropriate time like mom just died and instead of giving them some empathy you tell a long story about what
happened when your mom died and I know that's intended as a way to feel connected and show that you do understand but it's a Telltale sign that listening empathically was not something done enough for you right in childhood not being cared about not being heard can leave a residue of fear and resentment and sometimes people who are carrying a lot of those feelings just shut down you know just m and this can create a different problem where you feel like you have to sit and listen to someone who's talking too much to you or they're
insulting you or you're interested but you can't see a way to get up and leave and this is a fawn response that turns into a freeze response when what you need in that situation is a flight response just fly out of that conversation yes thanks bye so the irony is that after all this time wanting to be heard it can be really weird when someone does listen to you this used to actually make me feel disregulated and when I think about it it still sometimes does now four or five years ago I got to meet
Pete Walker and he's a therapist he's like such an important person I got his advice he's the person who wrote the book cptsd from surviving to thriving and he's the one who came up with the concept of emotional flashbacks and abandonment mange two names for things that I had been experiencing all my life that having the name was lifechanging like when somebody names something when they give you a name for it you're like it's a thing I'm not crazy it's a common symptom and I talk about these more deeply in other videos but uh emotional
flashbacks and abandonment mange so I was just starting to coach people this was four or five years ago and I needed some help knowing where to set a boundary when people were asking for my help but they seemed to be a danger to themselves you know and I'm not a therapist or doctor and I wanted to know like how you gracefully handle that and his advice was great and he he told me exactly when it was time to refer someone to a hotline or licensed professional and you know let me off the hook like don't
I don't even have to try to do that I don't have to try to like save somebody's life on YouTube or somewhere where I don't even know where they are and I'll forever be grateful for his clarity about that but oh my gosh Pete Walker has presence man when he's listening to you it's intense I mean he is like fully listening and next thing you know I couldn't feel my hands I was totally disregulated now not to Fawn but is it just me do you get disregulated when somebody really listens to you every time I
spot an odd thing like that a trauma symptom it's an opportunity um for me to be able to open open it up you know like what's in that box and face it and free myself from it using my tools or mostly free myself from it I'm always a working part progress so this was back when I first started crappy childhood fairy and if you look at my really old videos not only do they have you know terrible low sound levels and problems with color and Camera Focus but you'll see that I say uh and um
and every tenth word and I'm sort of flopping around screen like this and I'd be editing my own videos and I would just go oh my gosh I can't put this up on YouTube I had to you know but I was dying inside and so what I did is I went to Toast Masters and I got really into it to teach myself to speak impactfully and I got the Insight that saying um and like and SE all the time which I still do sometimes but they're called filler words and it's just another way of trying
to keep someone interested the hard way it's actually okay to hold a silence see what I mean like you stayed with me for that right saying um has the opposite effect of looking unpr professional or looking like whatever I'm going to say isn't that important it squanders people's attention so another thing that squanders the attention someone gives you is not to listen to them because you're so busy thinking like what am I going to say what am I going to say what am I going to say next oh I know I say this and then
you wait you wait you wait for them to finish their sentence and you're like yeah I know and that's a that's a thing people do when they weren't listened to as kids strategizing got to get this right so that they don't leave the conversation so it's all right it's it's not your fault you were neglected as a kid you deserve to have wonderful connections to people now and to become fully yourself and to express yourself so your life can take shape around who you really are childhood trauma can really damage a person's ability to connect
with people and to communicate authentically so luckily there's so much you can do to heal and change even now even if you're in your 50s or your 60s or your 70s or later so if you want to use those techniques to release that fear and resentment that kind of drives you to have difficulty connecting with people and dealing with that wound of not being listened to I've got a free course for you called The Daily practice these are the techniques that I've used for 29 years to keep releasing fear and resentment and continue to heal
and you can download that free course right here click there and I will see you very soon [Music]
