Hey guys - welcome back to the channel. I wanted to do a follow-up video to my last video which is right up here - it is the six unknown childhood trauma triggers and I wanted to circle back to it to give you guys some resources and give you guys the opportunity to do a little bit of exploratory childhood trauma work and how to deal with those triggers differently in the present when they come up. What I'm going to do with each of those six things, is give you two exercises for each one.
The first exercise is I'm going to have you guys come up with three examples from childhood about how that trigger would have been true and that to be as specific as you can, as best as you can, about sort of memories, dynamics, that kind of a thing and how those things made you feel. You'll see what I mean as I go through each one. The second thing, the second tool that I'm going to have you do, with each one, I'm going to be giving you guys some inner child-based re-parenting ideas about how to, they're like recovery ideas, about how to think differently when that trigger comes up in the present - how to have a better attitude about it, how better thoughts about it when these things come up.
If you haven't seen the video, um, check out the video first because this is all going to be gobbledygook so go through that whole video then circle back to this one um and I'll have everything in the box to the video. If you're new to me and new to the channel, welcome! If you like this stuff, hit some buttons on your screen - subscribe buttons, like buttons can't miss um, if you would like to join my waiting list for therapy, you can go to my website and while you're waiting, you can also check out some of the e-course work that I offer there and if you like these videos if you feel like they're helpful to you, you can consider supporting the work that goes into the channel over at my Patreon.
This is the the worst part of these videos is that spiel that I give so I'll just kind of get through it as fast as I can. So all you need to do for this video is grab yourself a pen and paper and we're going to dive into each one. So here we go.
So back to number six - people who are thoughtless and oblivious. This is when we get triggered to others that we see as thoughtless and oblivious and the trigger is rooted in childhood and we project our parents or our childhood stuff onto people in the present - even if people are being jerks in the present. So the three journaling writing prompts is to give me examples or give yourself examples from childhood about how the parents or the family system had that thoughtless and oblivious thing going on and how that made you feel.
For example, let's just say the pet dies in the family, the dog dies or the cat dies in your childhood, and the parents are just not they're just emotionless about it or they're jerks about it or they're just like you know like "oh don't be so upset about it" like many clients that recount those kind of experiences with really unempathic sort of parents. So that's an example about how people were thoughtless and oblivious to your feelings or to the sort of loss of a family pet in that way or lost to your siblings and then with that example, to try to be as specific as possible, think about how you would have felt. Would you have felt like, like hatred for them, would you have felt like, sort of, um, for the parent who's like that?
Another example is having parents who are super self-consumed and not present. They're not aware that you or your sibling is being bullied, they're not aware of how they treat each other or that kind of a thing. Or did you have super rigid parents who themselves did a lot of moral policing about people who are thoughtless and oblivious like sort of, "we wouldn't do that" like that kind of stuff and then it's sort of what was you were conditioned in the kind of family system or you picked it up from them to try to be superior to people by really observing their behavior.
Like if you grew up in a very like rigid, religious system there can be this like sort of silent looking down on people is what I sort of mean by that. Or were parents and siblings super selfish and there was no sense of fairness and justice? With each of these three examples that you're coming up, about this one it's funny with this one, I really think about it is focused on disgust.
When somebody doesn't like hold open the door for us, we're a bit disgusted, when people drive in a very like sort of unaware selfish way on the road, we're disgusted. So keep focusing on that work. Chances are that's probably how you felt in childhood but you didn't have anybody helping you with it or validating it like all that kind of stuff.
So then the second part is to think about here are some recovery ideas when this trigger comes up about thoughtless and oblivious people. These are things your adult part can sort of get yourself out of this stuff a little bit by thinking someone doesn't hold the door open for us in that just that quick moment people are complex, you know not all people are bad. We don't have to morally police people like we did in childhood or because it's sort of you know, um it's not really necessary anymore.
You know maybe that person had something going on - devil's advocate. Maybe that person is going through a breakup, maybe they're a childhood survivor themselves or maybe they are a jerk but we don't have to care so much about. Another recovery idea is, and this is a little bit tricky, is how are you different now that you're an adult?
What I mean by that is like you're not at the mercy of a very thoughtless and oblivious sort of parent in your life, you can just kind of roll with it or let it roll off your back and a little bit more about that is that this doesn't mean that you're going to become super passive or that you're going to become a pushover is what I'm trying to get you guys to think about is how do you become disinterested and more peaceful and suffer less by not caring so much about what people do and what they don't do - so that's what I mean. Jumping into number five - saying no plus mind reading, some journaling props, write three examples from childhood and how those examples might have made you feel when they came up in childhood. Be specific, be as specific as you can.
So saying 'no' was codependency modeled for you. Did you have a parent who couldn't say 'no'? Did you have a parent that sort of enabled?
Do you have a parent that would become secretly resentful in a codependent way and expect people to read their mind? Was your voice squished because of parents who were intolerant or like overwhelming so it was totally unsafe to say no or you wouldn't even you wouldn't say anything, you know, it's like you wouldn't even have that voice to express yourself. Was there absolutely like no room for you in what sort of what you might have wanted?
I have a lot of a lot of clients that had parents who would like um that kind of childhood with a parent is living vicariously sort of through you so it's like you're gonna do ballet or you're gonna do soccer and there's no room to say no because the parent is making it about them. So that's sort of what I mean by those examples and how might those examples have made you feel. Some recovery ideas about this one is to parent the inner child about what's good about expressing ourselves and what's good about saying 'no'.
Do we honor ourselves more when we say 'no'? Sort of like 'no' to the extra project at work, sort of 'no' to the gathering that our partner wants to do but we just don't have the spent headspace for it. When we say yes to those things, I think we feel we start to hate ourselves and feel like we're weak.
Why didn't I say no? I don't want to do this and we're just all sort of suffering and not peaceful sort of within that. So to be thinking about what are some concrete examples about how saying saying 'no' to things is a good thing because inner children don't believe that it's a good thing.
An additional recovery idea is to question is it better to say 'no' than to be secretly resentful and then to be sitting on that all that stuff? Another recovery idea is, can't talk today, does expecting people to read our minds, does that actually work? Does it work in the way that, because usually pick people don't pick up on what we want them to pick up on, and that's almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy which isn't good for the inner child to really explore does wanting people to read our mind work because it's probably not a good thing.
So those are some recovery ideas for that one. Number four - having someone mad at you slash being misunderstood. Examples from childhood - were you shamed unfairly?
Did your parents weaponize things? Weaponize shame where, this is a huge one I find, it's it's really one of the most toxic behaviors in like Gottman's couple's work it's in the toxic family system is the use of silent treatments is a great example. Where like my mom would be mad at me for like a day and a half two days or something that I did that really wasn't that big of a deal when I look back at it and that's how you really wreck a child because those silent treatments are like "you're bad, you're not lovable".
That's a really good example about having people be mad at you because in childhood it's intolerable to kids to not feel lovable or to not feel like they're good kids. Were you not considered to be a child and misunderstood, misunderstood is this other part of one, and you did you have a lot of adult expectations on you and you know, in your present life we probably have issues around expectations - like a lot of my clients feel like they need to be superstars in their relationships at work and if they're not superstars and amazing they're not going to be acceptable. Then if we're not acceptable, people are going to be massively mad at us or disappointed in us and that doesn't sort of feel safe so that's those specific childhood examples and how did those examples made you feel.
If you were given silent treatments, think back how do you think you felt? How do you think you felt when a parent would be doing that to you? Some recovery ideas about this one is that we're adults now and we don't need to give toxic people the power to tell us who we are.
So when someone is mad at us and it's like really unjust and unfair, we don't have to take that in. That's an idea from the adult, it's something to practice. We also don't need people to understand us when we're in conflict.
We don't. We have energy that's like I gotta build a case, I gotta get through to them, I really gotta be explicit and clear that it wasn't my fault and blah blah blah. It's like you know sometimes people just like don't wanna hear it and we don't need to be understood.
We can embrace the truth for ourselves that you did a good job at work - that it wasn't fair that your partner sort of did that and those are things that we need to sort of develop in there because we're giving sort of people who are mad at us so the misunderstanding way too much power. Lastly a recovery idea is that it's impossible to have people not frustrated with you. You know, it's just impossible.
Clients get frustrated with me, I get frustrated with them. It happens in our relationships, happens in our family. It doesn't mean it's unsafe, it's just part of the human experience so that's what i mean by that and it'll also pass.
It's just part of like human nature. It'll get better, um, it'll get better by talking about it. I think when we really value the relationships to talk about it so that's what I mean by that.
Number three - other people's moods. Three examples from childhood - be as specific as possible and think about how those examples made you feel as a kid - other people's moods. The egg shelly stuff with an angry dad, um, sometimes in our family systems there's just like trauma can just simply also be tragedy that one of our parents loses one of their parents and they are totally devastated by that and they're depressed and they're really in a hole for a long time.
We're really aware, children are very heart based, they're really aware of those feelings and we just want them to sort of feel better and get better but if no one's helping us while we're watching that happen, that's just a simple example of sort of like it's like non-fault childhood trauma that stuff can happen too. When we grow up with anger, when we grow up with toxic parents or really shaming parents, we are vigilant about how we are making them feel. Other people's moods can just drive us sort of crazy and we are vigilant.
We'll watch, you'll watch your partner - you'll watch it's sort of like, why are they so quiet, you know what I mean? That's the inner child really sort of watching. So those three examples and how they made you feel.
Another thing about adults mood is that it could cue that something bad was coming up, that a quiet parent could go into a rage so this stuff is there for really good reason. Other people's moods and not being aware of them, you know, divorces might have came up, rage, violence, abandonment um being shamed or told you were responsible for those moods - they can just like, you know, like parents can be so volatile that it just happens that way. So the recovery ideas about this one is, um and again this example is other people's moods, is the recovery idea to the message to give to our inner child is everyone is responsible for their own feelings and how they communicate about those feelings.
That's one idea. Another tool that I give you guys is journal about what I call the doom fantasy and the doom fantasy being something like Tim is going to say that I did something and he's going to break up with me or I'm going to lose him or he's cheating on me and that's why he's so quiet and I know you guys are probably like who is Tim, why is he cheating, how did we get here? It's just sort of meaning like a hypothetical about what you know we do that with our partners - we're worried about what they think about us, if they are sort of cheating and sort of that's an abandoned vulnerability kind of thing and we'll take confirmation from those moods about stuff happening in that way, which isn't sort of fair to them and it's not good for us that's what I mean by that.
To journal out the doom fantasy, write it down how what the inner child thinks how it's going to go down, and then to really examine, to really read it, and is that true? Is it really going to go down like that? Is that fair?
It would probably not even be a good idea to maybe sometimes bring it up if the inner child is projecting that doom fantasy on somebody. The adult can be the gatekeeper for that so that's what I mean about that one. Number two - ambiguity.
Three specific examples from childhood and how those examples made you feel. I think in the original video, I gave the the example of like waiting, waiting for parents to come home, waiting for parents to come home safe because they were drinking. That's an example of ambiguity.
Another thing - family secrets and like you might be aware but like waiting for it to come to light - I know that that's kind of tricky. I had clients told as kids that a move was sprung on them, a divorce was sprung on them and you probably sensed that something was up. This is probably the biggest one about what I mean with ambiguity in childhood is about waiting and relying on external things for an inward sense of security - getting picked for the play, getting picked for the team, getting the grade, um getting the attention from the teacher or the coach and sort of waiting on these things and being obsessed with them because we're not getting that stuff sort of at home.
So in your present life, aside from normal we all need a job, we're all anxious about hearing from that job, but for some of us there's a marked trauma response to that waiting and that's what I mean about that. So some examples from childhood where you did have to rely on those external things and that could have been for a lot of us is like waiting to hear from our our friend about a sleepover because we just wanted to be apart of but maybe even that sleepover might have been sort of safer than what it was like going on at home. So recovery ideas - I really think on this one is to have some kind of meditation practice or spiritual practice - I'm not trying to sell spirituality or some kind of religion, but some kind of idea about getting good at and practicing and practicing like scales if we were a musician - the the process of letting things.
There's a trick that I learned when I meditate - that I can visualize like the 15 balls in the air that is my life, sort of like, like the tune-up on the car and the thing and the thing with the client and you know all these like sort of things and that are in my mind taking up as like a million browsers you know that we all sort of have going on. When I meditate, I'm visualizing them all drop to the ground because at the end of the day like those things really don't sort of matter. That makes me feel amazing about when I have the, uh that's, like the ability, that's what I mean by practicing letting something go and those balls up in the air might be like waiting back to hear about a date, waiting back to hear about a job, waiting to see if your friend is mad at you or not, that's what I mean by that - ambiguity, things in the air.
Then the other last recovery idea is to write out the pattern. The pattern that you guys have about trying to manage the ambiguity like you invite people over, there's a delay, they're not getting back to you, the inner child is popping up and feeling vulnerable. Your friend doesn't get back to you or they do maybe they like oh "I didn't get your text, I'm so sorry" and you put yourself through all that unnecessary suffering and all that rigamarole because your inner child is triggered about care and safety.
Write out those sort of patterns to sort of really be aware about to be more aware of how those patterns might run you. Coming back to the last one is feedback. Three specific examples and ideas from childhood and how they made you feel.
An example from my childhood - my parents were very self-consumed, very coping people so they were really mad about the stuff that I brought home from school. They would have been 'meh' about drawings, they would have been 'meh' about music they would have been 'meh' about my ideas because they were just totally checked out and that's some neutral feedback that is sort of examples from my childhood and I just sort of felt, this is what I mean by the feelings, when a kid goes through that, they feel worthless, they don't really feel loved, they don't really feel special, they don't really feel seen and that becomes their inner voice. So that's what I mean about these specific examples.
Positive feedback - how was it when you did receive positive feedback from your parents? Was it icky? Did it have an agenda?
Um was it, did it just seem like kind of like blowing smoke because they were just going through the emotions or like did you get positive feedback because love was conditional? Could you perform and get the 'A' or get the get the spot in the play and that also doesn't sort of feel good. I think when kids recognize that they're only good if they get these things, the feelings are just so anxious and sort of chasing those things.
Negative feedback - was it fair given your age, like you know um given your age, um I don't know, we could have oh you know in the seventh grade or the fifth grade or sixth grade you might have done dioramas and like you know you put the polar bear cave diorama and your parents are like "oh there's not enough snow" I don't know, you know, like negative feedback, unnecessary sort of feedback. Those are some examples. Then to think about how would you have felt?
Again like sort of feeling overwhelmed or worthless or just feeling like, you know, the reality is your parent isn't helping you or you're doing it on your own but they're criticizing you anyway. So those lead to a lot of really hard feelings that stay with us. Some recovery ideas about this.
. . to think about how to normalize feedback in our adult lives, that positive feedback is someone is actually seeing you, it doesn't always mean manipulation.
Chances are it's not, you know, manipulation the way it used to be or even manipulation at all. I tell people to surf the discomfort of taking in a compliment or taking in positive feedback. You know it's to try to be as present as possible when it does come up.
It's like sort of like "Patrick, you did a good job on that project. " As trauma survivors, we've been like, "oh it's really Sally did all the work" and we just sort of dismiss it and we get out of it or whatever but I have to force myself to just sort of say, "hey thank you, really appreciate that" you know and not add anything else to it - not add like sort of, "oh it wasn't really that much of a challenge you know or some BS that we don't even know what we're saying but we're uncomfortable in it. So surfing and being present for positive feedback when it comes up because when we get positive feedback our inner child just wants to get out of the room, it's just like that's what I mean about feedback getting wrecked.
Neutral feedback. . .
um this is going to sound weird, um sometimes spaghetti is just spaghetti. Sometimes as trauma survivor we make a meal for our partner and we just ask, "how is it? Is it good should?
I should've added more mushrooms" and there's an example where we don't need to necessarily do that anymore and try not to do that. Inner children can be extremely needy for attention and care - not everyone is wired that way but some of us are and the adult can be the gatekeeper to that and sort of just say, "say spaghetti is spaghetti. " You know what I mean?
We don't need to sort of seek additional compliments and that is like what we didn't get from childhood. We don't necessarily need that from our partner. Negative feedback.
. . our adult part can put pride and shame away and ask, "is this negative feedback warranted?
Could I actually have done a better job on that project? " from a place of really being sort of subjective about it and not going into a shame hole about it. Or is the negative feedback warranted, coming from a person who maybe is maybe toxic or we don't really respect that person and they maybe have an agenda.
Or negative feedback doesn't have to define us. It did growing up, meaning that sometimes you know like it's impossible to be like 100% amazing all the time but inner children think they can be a superhero that way. So sometimes you get negative feedback at work.
Sometimes it's warranted and it's like, who cares you know it's just sort of like, you're not going to nail it out of the park every day so that's what I mean by that. These are ideas for your adult part and a lot of this work is to kind of be in a battle with ourselves. Usually the inner child is usually winning that battle with our beliefs and our reactions and our freakouts and whatever but getting our adult in place is like real parenting.
It's actually pretty hard to do. It's a lot of inner convincing but to get the adult in place, to be really kind of more confident and be able to kind of do it it makes that battle so much easier. So I wanted to follow up on all that.
I hope that was useful to you guys and as always may you be filled with loving kindness, may you be well, may you be peaceful and at ease and may you be joyous. Take care guys.
