childhood trauma: i feel like a failure💔

have you ever woken up not even put your feet on the floor and thought about the million things in your life that you are not happy with that you wish you could change the things you thought your life was going to look like and yet for some reason you feel like you just cannot seem to make those things happen maybe you think screw it what's the Point everything is bad luck for me life is predetermined I'll never get ahead maybe even deeper than that below the surface you think I'm not worthy of good things happening or you got something good in your life and you are terrified of losing it and so you get Frozen and don't know how to do things to keep it while trauma is a part of the human EXP experience it seems that up to what 90% of us experience at least one traumatic event divorce death things like that I would argue that if you're here on this channel you've probably had a lot more than one event in your life there's a good chance you have a lot of PTSD from single event traumas and a really good chance you grew up and or spent childhood and adulthood in relational trauma I just I've noticed that some people seem to be able to move through life even with a lot of difficulty with more resilience with more belief in themselves and with more agency in others and it got me wondering how could I share when I think about my own life what my strengths are and hear what your strengths are and find a way to come to some understanding about the role of trauma attachment resilience and something called the Locust of control we're going to talk about today so at the end of this video my goal is for you to understand a bit more about yourself about the impact of relational trauma and maltreatment in childhood a little bit more about your attachment patterns and how those might show up in your life and about specific steps and how to increase the more internalized part of yourself that feels like they know how to access even in spite of all your pain more control over your life so this is the video for you to watch if you want to learn how to understand yourself and what you can do I'm a licensed psychologist and my goal this year is to create more and more videos that dive even deeper between attachment and complex trauma and things that you do have some control over in your life and some ways to work on healing this video is going to include some research I'll link all of it down below alongside just some more information that I hope you'll find helpful let's start by defining some terms and some of these terms we're going to come back to in future videos the first term is resilience what does that mean resilience is really about our ability to bounce back in the world after something has happened to us that's just the bottom line of it I'm going to read you a definition here it says resilience is generally defined as the ability of an individual to bend but not break to bounce back and to adapt well in the face of adversity trauma tragedy or even significant sources of stress now that is something to keep in mind about how that applies to every individual and the way it's going to work is going to be different so your resiliency is based on a number of factors not just about what happened to you but about your genetic makeup your generational trauma your history and even things like the culture and Society you live in we're going to come back to that the next important term is the term of locust of control so when I started researching resilience I wanted to know in a way that I could share here what factors affect that and it turns out that one of the factors is locus of control and while it is on a spectrum people tend to be you know more wired and more predisposed and or adopt a more internalized or more externalized locus of control location Locus where do you you know find the answer to things if you have a more internal locus of control you tend to believe that you have some control over your life that you can do some things to heal to grow to learn that there's some part of your life you have agency over the flip side of that and the complete other end is the external locus of control and people also a lot of childhood trauma survivors we're going to talk about often have a more externalized locus of control and what that means is that for many reasons like I'm saying trauma is a big one they believe that you know what most things are fate they have bad luck most things are predetermined so I can't really change much now the truth is that both of these belief systems have their advantages of course a more generalized internal locus of control tends to produce individuals who are happier and more satisfied in their lives and relationships people who are healthier and tend to achieve their goals in fact this concept locus of control is also very common in health psychology and in workplace psychology the idea that you are a master to some degree of your fate now if you only believe that but you don't have any of the external space you get into trouble when you reach a point in life where you've done everything you can or you just are you realize that some things in life you just can't control so we want to learn to cultivate a more internalized locus of control but also cultivate at some external locus of control because that helps us when we say look for example I did everything I could and it still didn't go my way I'm going to surrender to that but we don't want to be in oh well why even bother it's not worth it I'll never it'll never happen for example imagine two people that go to the doctor they have the exact same genetic makeup and the doctor says you know what we determined through this series of tests that you in your future are more predisposed to having something like diabetes person a who is more internally focused says okay I get that don't love that but I can work on my diet I can work on exercise there are some things I can do I'm going to try person B says externalize well my grandfather had diabetes my mom had diabetes I've always been someone who struggled with their weight so or risk factors so why bother you can imagine that the outcomes might be very different now let's say person a does everything they're supposed to and they still end up with some form of illness diabetes they would want to be able to say I did everything I could I'm not going to continue to drive myself crazy but it happened anyway so I'm going to surrender to that so that's kind of the idea the problem with all of this is that what the research shows is that attachment experiences in childhood as they relate to Mal treatment especially ongoing cumulative or chronic wounding for children and the earlier the wounding happens the more likely they are to have an externalized view of the world in terms of locust of control so why is that it's because if you were being maltreated from the time you were a little person you never had the experience that you had any control over anything you were truly a victim to your circumstances and so you're more likely to research shows to to believe that now if it happens let's say some kind of wounding over a period of time when you're a little bit older those kids might have a little bit more internal locus of control because they had some experiences that said okay you know I things were this way and now they're that way it's not like a global view so what role does attachment play it plays a big one when we're talking about trauma and I want to read this to you it says our results present several implications with regard to intervention our data show how Mal treatment especially when linked with cumulative trauma affects the development of self perceived self-efficacy and all the cognitive skills that form the basis of social skills and we're going to make I'm going to make a separate video about this but self-efficacy is is also important to resilience because it is about the belief that you can exact change so even if you own the fact that you need to take care of your risk factors let's say for diabetes if you own it and say I I internally accept that but I don't think I can I don't believe I can I'm not worthy of it that would be low self-efficacy so even though you were trying to own it you might not be successful so we're going to talk in the next video about how to enhance self-efficacy in yourself and therefore to expand your horizons and goals and achievements um and really just healing in your life it says as stated above abuse that starts at an early age prevents the development prevents the development of a sense of autonomy and competence based on the feeling of being in control of events and so the studies show that it was observed that the feeling of having control over one's life is closely related to the experience of Early Childhood so here we are back at attachment that's why we talk so much about childhood trauma and what happens to us it's not about just get over it why why can't you move on it is about understanding that these elements most likely affected you and to really work on healing it has to be at least acknowledge to yourself even if those in your life who created this problem won't do that for you so in other words it says kids who suffered maltreatment really have little confidence in their ability especially if they're younger and it's ongoing they lack the ability to even own their circumstances and especially things that are highly emotional really frustrating really difficult or unpleasant and we know that sometimes we have to endure really unpleasant things in the pursuit of our goals but I thought it was really important to understand that your world lens on the one hand I always think if I'm in a crisis I almost want to look around the room and find one of the more traumatized people because my guess is especially if they had immature eggshell narcissistic traumatized whatever parents and they grew up in chaos many of them and many of us I will argue get really calm in chaos it is how we survived our childhood so on the one hand I think some of the most resilient people I know are frankly the more traumatized people who've had more difficult circumstances but the problem is also the fact that yes they've survived but deep down inside that might they might just be surviving in life they might not know how to take more control to thrive and so that is what this video is about it's like how can you control more things in your life to feel a sense of success so we've looked at what resilience looks like and just to kind of go through some questions to give you an example of resilience let's let's kind of look at this this is based on a 10 item the Connor Davidson resilience scale there a lot of resilience scales just to give you kind of a an idea of the essence of resilience there are 10 questions I'm just going to read them out loud to you and then I want you to think about kind of how you think you respond to these things number one I am able to adapt when changes occur number two I can deal with whatever comes my way number three I try to see the humorous side of things when I am faced with problems number four having to cope with stress makes me stronger number five I tend to bounce back after illness injury or hardships number six I believe I can achieve my goals even if there are obstacles number seven Under Pressure I stay focused and think clearly number eight I am not easily discouraged by failure number nine I think of myself self as a strong person when dealing with life's challenges and difficulties and number 10 I'm able to handle unpleasant or painful feelings like sadness anger and fear now I want to say that it may not be that every single one of those every time but that overarchingly you eventually recover you eventually deal with things I think it's better to think about that scale as like how you respond overall to something not like every single thing you're going to be like oh I can handle everything cuz often times we feel like for me one of the greatest sources of how I get more tapped into my Locus self-control in an internalized way is when I feel the most powerless and trapped and I don't know what to do and one of my best skills is problem solving it it just it just is my therapist is like that's one of the best things you you do I sometimes over try to fix things like with my kids I can't say that's always a good strategy um because they actually said to me Mom Mom you can't fix everything and so so that can be an over coping this is not what that this video that is not what this video is about but the point is that more often than not you you recover you keep moving two things I want to say is if you have chronic mental or physical health issues that's important to honor within within this whole video right there's only so much you can do if you are so depressed you cannot get off the sofa it's really hard to think about all the things you can do in this video so I want to say that but I'm going to come back to that in the list of things you can do later but I want to honor that those things matter if you have physical limitations disabilities health issues all of it this is about finding the space where you can increase that locus of control and the second thing is this that everything I'm talking about this video and the next few videos we have to always take into account not only genetics and each person's story and their environment but the world in which they grow up in so race economic status right socio economic status culture identity all of these things can have an impact so if you have been a repressed human being in this world and there are a lot of a lot of us for many different reasons it's not so simple as well you don't really have the same opportunities as somebody else may be right so you don't want to just say like oh we'll just fix that but the the world the environment the culture your your city the where you live makes it harder so we always want to also hold those right there are always other factors so this is not about just like disregarding those things okay now let's talk about locus of control once again we're going back to the internalize and the externalize the internalizers says I I can change some things I have some power and control the externalize is like at the end of the spectrum I don't have it at all why bother right and don't forget like I said why bother is a big part of traumatized uh human beings now before I go into the more details of this and I share what I hope will be some helpful tips I also want to say that in an interesting Twist of events one of the most important parts of coming to terms with what with what happened to you especially if you have childhood trauma or any trauma adult trauma as well because I feel like I've had with my mom for example and my adult life adult PTSD adult cptsd in as much if not more than childhood literally from the time I was uh 23 until you know till now still ongoing some things are still difficult so the point is though that one of the important things especially in childhood is that you come to a place where you can say nothing that happened to me in childhood was my fault I was a child I had no power that is not the same thing as you saying so why bother but that's where surrendering to externalized ccus of control is really important so it might be holding you down from engaging and being more like um you know trying to control things in your life but in that space it's really important to honor that there is is and was nothing you could do but survive that childhood period full stop a child's only job is to survive okay all right so now let's talk about kind of what you can do um as it relates to Locust of control and one more really important piece of this is that you become very aware of the things that sabotage your desire to have more control in your life to make things happen it's often the mindset of self victimizing which once again aligns with having a very externalized locus of control so what would that sound like right so if you're in that part if you're like I'm not really sure do I really do that this is kind of what it would look like number one you would often believe that good things that happen whatever happens that goes your way is really like not a result of you but just a chance of luck something out of your control your horoscope like whatever it is you don't feel like it really is about you number two when you have a setback you tend to blame others you tend to not really own your part in things and I always think about Lisa Rena from the housewives if you have ever watched you know Beverly Hills housewives there was this thing she'd always say Own It Own It own it and this is really about owning it this whole video is about owning it like I said with the understanding and love of your childhood trauma self-compassion your attachment patterns and things like that owning it more number three when you are upset you feel like your emotions are out of control you you know you put them on others you lose it and you don't work on apologizing repairing learning to emotionally regulate more it's like everything is externalized onto someone else you don't really have any role in that it's like it just happens to you like those things aren't happening through you if that makes sense when you have an argument or a fight with your partner or your friends you know you you always tell yourself what they did wrong you tell others but you don't really own the part you may have played and lastly when you hit a challenge something hard work family relationships you tend to bail you tend to blame you road block you ston wall you don't really do yourself a service in saying okay I'm going to roll my sleep up look at this problem and try to figure it out what belongs to me what doesn't belong to me right you so you tend to externalize it's almost like nothing is in your control the world people your emotions your story it's like the childhood lens of that little child who who it wasn't their fault can't open up and grow it's like you're stuck in the childhood and you can't look at with compassion both sides of that so like I said we're going to come back to self-efficacy and the role that play play and the traits of emotional resilience like what does it look like to be emotionally resilient in the next video and how to cultivate things like perseverance and uh perspective and all those kind of things okay all right so now let's talk about what you can do if you're like okay I get this I understand before we go into what you can do I want you to be really aware of your attachment style in terms of how that might affect the way you might like do your best here where you might hit roadblocks where you might tend to self-blame or really victimize yourself and fall into a more externalized pattern so we're going to skip secure people because we think that for the most part they could probably you know they could probably grow in their s sense of self too in terms of these things but they're probably a little further along but for those of us who have trauma and who've had a lot of issues and are trying to grow and and really just take more control over our lives I think this is the thing where we we can have what's called learned helplessness and I'm not going to discuss that in this video but it is often a component of all of these things right so these are more terms we're going to come back to attribution theory what do you attribute things to in other words if someone blows at you if you think that they had a bad day you're more forgiving for example and if you believe they have it out they're out to get you or they have a personality disorder something like that right so all these things matter so I'm making this kind of simplify but I want to make sure we honor those pieces so what do the research say about our attachment Styles it says that we're talking about a more anxious attachment style and don't forget that's about a lot of unpredictability in the caregiver and often about overexposure to the caregiver state of mind right so here we're going to see a lot of emotional disregulation a lot of anxiety worrying over thinking overanalyzing and you can think your way out of almost doing anything if you overthink it right or you just get so flooded with anxiety makes you unable to move or you're hard on yourself and you fail and you overthink that so just hold in mind how that part of you that wants to please that that wants to always get reassurance that feels like you're going to be abandoned and left might show up in you abandoning yourself in these steps and so just keep that in mind if you have a more avoid style the research shows that what these people tend to do is to turn away from what is uncomfortable so let's say you're doing the steps I'm suggesting and you don't do well so you just blow it off you forget about it you bury it you don't let yourself feel about it because you'll think oh I was I I failed that that day I didn't I didn't accomplish my goal so that's going to sabotage you because before you know it you've buried everything you're not dealing with it and then why even bother right so now you're kind of back to a more well that's just how the World works and you're not taking ownership over how to heal your life more your relationships your job your dreams really your dreams are so important and if you believe you have no control over anything then you're so much less likely to make that happen and then at the core and I'm going to talk so much more about this is that for those of us who have had childhood trauma with parents who were really unpredictable at the Heart Right eggshell I use that word a lot because I think it encompasses everything from parents bipolar to trauma to even autism certainly to borderline and narcissism potentially where you just kind of never knew what to expect or things were conditional and or the parents mood and mind really ran the show in your home one or both is you're going to be more likely and the research shows that those of us who have childhood you know trauma often have a more disorganized attachment pattern and so we have this thing where our parents were either safe to approach or we had to avoid them and they were approaching and avoiding us it's like the source of safety approach I want to approach my parent is also the source of fear got to avoid right that is the Dilemma for disorganized attachment and a lot of the work I've done on the courses and stuff that I talk about is about the research on children of like for example borderline mothers mothers who have borderline who struggle with some significant form of emo and relational instability I really do believe that some version of that is why I can post a Tik Tok on eggshell parents and have 4.5 million views and hundreds of hundreds of thousands of likes right and I think people just inherently get the concept of walking on eggshells and there's a lot more to it than that but the point is that the parent is often you know hard to predict emotionally unstable wants you to help regulate their emotions by being a best friend by being a co-parent by being parentified in the house raising other siblings running the home whatever it is and they're often externalizing all of their needs on to you they're looking to you to manage and regulate and as a child you learn to hold that big old basket of of disregulation for parents and you're so much more likely to struggle with those things in yourself and with picking Partners who you think are different but make you feel the same this is really really important because for those of us who have this childhood wound this maltreatment this cumulative trauma we often have this deep desire to not be left to be loved to not be abandoned to believe we're deeply flawed and yet because of the consuming nature of our parents we also are terrified of you consuming us and I really believe that's why I talk so much about silent trauma many of us live in hypervigilance so we're scanning for threat but we're also tending to be more isolators when we feel emotionally flooded right it's like it's too much for [Music] us so what can you really do is it really possible to cultivate a greater sense of internal control the answer is yes and the research really is clear while it might be very difficult for us for so many reasons especially if we have some form of complex PTSD and or PTSD we can still do it we can still change our lives so the following steps and suggestions are all research-based and encouraged by really everyone who says okay these are the things it takes to cultivate a greater space of creativity and thoughtfulness and inspiration and truly control over your life and relationships okay number one is to start small so just pick one thing it might be a big thing in the sense that you want to have more control or work towards managing your emotions in a different way maybe you want to really be able to sit back and assess the relationship you're in and decide if this is really where you want to be in your life this career these friendships this neighborhood whatever it is pick one thing and make sure that you write it down somewhere in your phone in a journal just a place where you're going to be able to remember and see it number two it's really important if you can do this and I know it is difficult trust me I I go in and out of doing this but the research is clear that when you start your morning on your cell phone that 90% of us or so wake up and grab our phones we're on social media we're on the news that we are interrupting the natural state of waking up for our brain waves we are introducing often cortisol you know right rushing through our body in terms of Stress and Anxiety by reading the news I even noticed just going on sometimes like Tik Tok I'll start to compare myself and that will trigger something but I also know that that definitely increases my anxiety so the research is clear that the idea would be to start small maybe it's five minutes maybe you just spend the first five minutes not going on your phone and you work up to 30 minutes or even an hour what I often do is grab my phone but I will only use an app that has music like meditative music I love insight timer and know it's not sponsored I just love their their free stuff and so I'll play a 20 minute 30 minute 15 minute just kind of very soft musical meditation I don't even do like a guided meditation at this point I just do the music light a candle put the fireplace on make my coffee and just try to sit with my blankets on the sofa and just let my brain start to wake up and try to be mindful of what kind of thoughts are coming up the next step is to introduce some form of exercise especially a cardio program and you're going to be like oh my God we know this but it really is important and one of the things I've been doing which as I combine this step with another step which is creating this is number four a practice of quiet time so what I will do is I'll put my earphones on my headphones and I'll walk down by the beach but I will not listen to music for the first half an hour to an hour I will just have it be quiet and try to observe the sounds but what happens is my brain often gets flooded with ideas and creativity about all kinds of things that if I listen to music which can also be really great for your nervous system but it doesn't often allow as much space for True quiet thoughts and just a peacefulness to occur so you can do those separately or together but moving your body if it's just outside the door putting you know your shoes on on the treadmill going to the gym doing Pilates whatever it is but you do want to get your heart rate up ideally and for those of you who aren't able to move your body trying to find whatever the equivalent is for you whatever you can do that helps you a move your body or get going in some way and B ideally for anyone create a a period of quiet time a reflection time every single day the next thing is to prioritize sleep and everyone knows this but it is such a profound part of mental health and wellbeing and physical health we know from so many studies that many of us are sleep deprived we have poor quality of sleep and that we're often pushing it right we're buying ourselves extra time at night to be alone after the kids are down or whatever's going on but we're paying the price for it and so really investing in sleep hygiene temperature materials sounds timing of sleep incredibly important the whole goal of all of this is to get you in a space where you're actually open to being able to be more controlling over the things in your life and you're not just reacting to everything and just trying to manage you know spiraling out of control exhaustion fear things like that the next one is to cultivate a practice of internal versus external challenging of your thoughts this is kind of the idea behind the whole you know challenging cognitive distortions to recognize that your brain is going to have all kinds of reasons and answers why you can't do something why it won't work you should do something it's going to catastrophize right all of that black and white thinking but that when you boil it down what you're really challenging yourself on every day when you have this idea about something that you think never mind what's the point why bother is to say really is this an internal or external thing I can control so maybe you put like a pros and a cons sheet and you write it down okay well what could I control alongside this is the next step which I really love to do is just a brainstorming so maybe it's you can't stay in your same apartment the rent's gone up maybe it's you want to change your job is to sit down and write it out and brainstorm what are all the things I could possibly do and control what can I not control but you're forcing yourself to engage in an exercise of mindfully approaching what you can control and what you can't the last few things are to be okay with sometimes not getting it right to have self-compassion for when you don't get it right when you could have tried harder but you didn't right to have a very kind of um reparenting experience where you go to yourself and say you know what I gave up too soon this time I don't feel good about that and the loving parent says it's okay you've got tomorrow try again or hey you know what this all sounds great is there anywhere else you could try to think about or brainstorm where where you could create some change in your life in some way or like I said just really meeting yourself from a place of this just didn't go well or I just wasn't I wasn't motivated and I couldn't do it this time and to lovingly say that's okay there'll be another chance for you to try again again it's really important to keep in mind that what will sabotage you is often your attachment system clearly things where you self victimize and don't realize you're doing that because part of self-sabotage is part of your childhood or your your story in life and if you have any mental or physical health issues which most of us have both or some that trying to find ways to deal with those are extremely important don't neglect those things and I know especially for like autoimmune disease fibromyalgia a lot of those very trauma related IBS illnesses it can be very difficult to even get a diagnosis and so that can take years certainly mental health since you know in the last several years has become even more difficult to access so maybe you can't afford you know right now a therapist but you can save up or look for one through your job if you have insurance that can take longer to get to get on a list for I know maybe take a course listen to a podcast read a book just do something that every day ideally or even every other day helps carve out a focus on healing and dealing with and getting support for those issues so like I said in the next few videos we're going to talk more about what if you don't believe in yourself what role does your trauma and childhood attachment patterns play and how you can sort of do all of these things it's incredibly important and we don't want to just make it sound like oh just check this box and get some sleep and and do a meditation but it is truly about creating and cultivating a new experience in your life and in your brain where the possibilities are even allow to emerge so many of us are just spending our time going from one distracting activity and numbing activity to another right our phones work parenting relationships the news our shows and I mean I'm you know I do a lot of binge watching I love those kind of things but it doesn't help me when I have no quiet space to really challenge how I'm approaching my life just like these videos I was like God I really I just I just feel like I need to offer more what else can I do and so over the break because I gave myself a break I found myself watching a bunch of YouTube videos watching creators that I really admire and thinking how can I improve what I'm doing what else needs to change but last year I just couldn't do it I just struggled with a lot of health issues and I just wasn't motivated and so sometimes we have those Seasons where it's just not going to happen and that is okay it really is the goal is just to move a little bit forward each time that you are aware and each time that you can so thank you so much for being here please stay safe and well and I'll see you soon [Music] bye [Music]