8 signs you're dealing with childhood trauma💔 (sessions #7)

Welcome to the sage sessions I am calling these sort of like therapy starter pack videos But we will be diving even further into all of the topics from trauma complex trauma autism ADHD Parenting styles and dynamics who we are all of the things that I talk about on this channel I'll be diving in more and more and I'm trying to post every day much shorter videos with Really minimal editing so that I can keep showing up for you and at the end of today's video I just want to share I'm gonna call it a little stage advice just from little things I find that are inspiring and maybe they'll inspire you too. Okay, I wanted to share this video right up against the video I posted yesterday on understanding if you might be someone who is on the autism spectrum Especially if you are high masking and why do I say that I say that for two reasons number one that I fully believe That number one it seems the research is clear That separating autism from trauma is almost impossible to do because of the Layering of traumatic experiences for autistic people and what can even cause trauma in the first place Remember even mild stressors can cause trauma and some research is showing for autistic people But that it's important to understand that we have labeled things so much that everything is trauma Just like everything is not trauma. Everything is not autism Everything is not ADHD but a lot of these things are connected and so what I want you to listen for if you're if you want to in the next few videos is about the relational wounding that happens specifically with Trauma and childhood and then when you're not sure about autism, I've made many videos talking about which is it high sensitivity? Trauma autism, which I'll talk more about but to look at autism as a spectrum From the like from the long view looking at all the places that it affects our lives communication repetition patterns It's not just oh that looks like anxiety and that's that's autism or trauma. There's really a lot of Similarities and also differences and we're still trying to understand all of those So I'll be you know talking about autism and ADHD a decade ago I was in Teachers offices arguing about ADHD for one of my boys who basically half the time told me that ADHD wasn't a real thing like I truly believe we are at the same place with autism and There's a lot of debate about autism being a disorder versus a neurotype if we call it a neurotype Does that deprive us of accommodations and supports? I don't have the answers to those things, but I do think it's important so that you can see this as you know Everything is autism now No it's not but it is important to understand that the brain has different ways of engaging in the world and it makes a lot of Sense that we're all not similar and that within family systems We might find something like a path of autism that might help explain a lot of things. We thought were just trauma That's how I got here trying to understand my own self going You know what complex trauma just doesn't explain any of all of the all of these things I struggle with and I have had a lot of PTSD single-event traumas from violence to medical traumas and illness To a lot of complex trauma and as I've talked about a lot of my complex trauma with my mom It came once I was an adult and so trauma just doesn't explain all of the things and that's why I wanted to preload this series Talking about autism for you to hold that in your mind if that is something you want to look into All right, let's get into it. So if you have childhood trauma We're just focusing on that We're talking about really in this video, especially Relational trauma though. It seems quite common if you have relational trauma to also have PTSD For example, if you had really unengaged parents you were emotionally or physically neglected There's a good chance that happened to you. That was a single-event trauma Because you were out in the world and not protected and so it can get complicated but at the core we're talking about Childhood wounding and what that looks like in relationships and keep that in mind relational wounding is is what really is going to separate to a certain extent those nuanced flavors between something like Autism ADHD and childhood trauma even with all their layering. Okay. I know I'm repeating myself, but I just think it's so important All right. So number one difficulty in terms of Relationships if you have childhood trauma You are most likely to struggle with some form of trust issues With some fears of abandonment and or rejection or not being good enough You might tend to find that when you feel most vulnerable in terms of relationships You push people away and or you cling to them in a way that's hard to separate yourself In other words you take your identity and meaning from them and or you find ways often unconsciously or intentionally to sabotage relationships So relationships at the core don't just come with a presumption of safety. They come with a presumption of requiring survival number two emotional dysregulation Meaning that if you have childhood trauma you often may not have had Someone there for you to help you navigate your big feelings your little feelings and so you might find that You struggle to navigate your own big feelings that either you take too much and blow Or you don't speak up for yourself at all and you build resentments or you you basically are You know struggling with some form of an emotional impulsivity because that is what in part your brain is doing and or you're getting Overstimulated or flooded and or that is what your parents did Screaming and yelling and raging was part of the norm. That is how you learn to express yourself And so you do the same thing you might overreact to little things and and things that should be just like no big deal Are very upsetting for you because there are roots to your childhood trauma Like someone cutting you off in traffic as opposed to them being just a mindless jerk That becomes a trigger for everyone in your life who is selfish who doesn't respect you and I think a lot of us have these Feelings is why driving triggers a lot of things for us We project a lot of stuff onto people not that it might not be true in terms of their behavior But it's usually not about that that moment that they were not paying attention in the car, right? It's about all the people that disregarded you and don't respect boundaries. Don't respect you You might like I said earlier struggle with man managing anger and and or you shut down feelings you numb out You will get to dissociation But you're just not able to be present and I want to say this is so important in number three as we talk about the third category, which is you struggle with a lot of hyper vigilance and anxiety is that Chronic stress is what fuels so much of these traumatic responses. And what do I mean by that? I mean that when you are walking on eggshells, or you are always alone and fending for yourself everything from emotional abuse to emotional neglect and everything in between and even and additionally I want to say even more because Emotional abuse in some ways can be even more difficult and more harmful than physical abuse but the point is all of those things are harmful is that you're you never feel safe and your body and your brain are Constantly awash in those toxic stress chemicals and hormones that are telling you fight-or-flight like it's it's go time and so you're your This is why we see with the aces the adverse childhood events So much chronic illness and long-term health consequence is that living in this state of chronic stress? Which plays out often in high anxiety and chronic hyper vigilance, which leaves you feeling on edge? Overreading people over assessing them fearing getting hurt People-pleasing being easily startled or scared like expecting the worst to happen, you know feeling like you're unsafe Even when you're safe, that's the heart of chronic hyper vigilance hyper vigilance says there's danger Chronic hyper vigilance says there's danger even when there isn't danger And so you are being washed in that all of the time and that becomes the template for relationships That is one of the most harmful pieces of childhood trauma the next area is low self-esteem so it's hard to feel good about yourself when you didn't feel prioritized when you were yelled at or blamed or people raged at you and So there can be a lot of that classic complex trauma. You're a harsh. You're harshly inner. You're harsh You have a say that's right. You have a harsh inner critic you are harshly critical towards yourself in the pursuit of being perfect and therefore being loved and You're also often harsh on other people. So I always say this It's like I'm not good enough and you're not either which acts to keep you in that trauma you often feel shame and worthlessness and Just like never you you never feel good enough Even when someone tells you you're doing great or you win the award you get the promotion Inside it doesn't it's like there's Disintegration about but did I really deserve this? Am I really good enough? It's like the lingering wound of childhood trauma leaves you always in doubt and questioning The next issue is around your more cognitive and and signs around your your the way your brain works So you might dissociate you might have difficulty remembering childhood Remember that childhood memories can be fleeting for many different reasons It's not only if you don't have good memories But we do know that that can definitely create gaps in memory that trauma can You know that this idea that being able to focus and staying concentrated on tasks It's really difficult when you've had a lot of trauma to sort of like be in the present right going back to survival mode and All of those things can also change the way your brain functions and so we can see memory issues For memory formation and recall and sort of like cognitive management in general. The next area is around sleep It's really common for those of us with childhood trauma to not feel safe and or to use sleep as a way to deal What do I mean for many people literally going unconscious is how they deal with everything they sleep but for other people it's the opposite because of things like insomnia and nightmares and Never feeling safe that that makes things quite difficult And so let's not forget that all of that can affect just our sense of safety and letting ourselves go unconscious but like I said it might also be the opposite where you just like literally disconnect from the world and that is one of your coping mechanisms and Many of us were in our rooms a lot alone And so whether we slept in there or not, we often monitored the rest of the house from our rooms So that goes to that being, you know in your bedroom often there can be issues associated with safety there, too And all of that the next area of Common difficulty if you if you have childhood trauma is that you have some form of chronic illness you have chronic pain You have autoimmune disorders you have, you know, any kind of collection of these adverse childhood events Diabetes heart disease high blood pressure, you know all kind of traumatic brain injury risk from maybe risk-taking things like that And that is not in this list, but I will say that Risk-taking and the outcome whether it's using substances or driving recklessly or whatever there can also be physical effects from that in terms of accidents and stress and those things and Then the last one goes to these more behavioral patterns we can engage in and that can look like self-sabotage and self-harm substance misuse and abuse Really engaging like I was saying in really risky behaviors that cause difficulty for you actual trauma Emotional trauma things like that and then living in a state of chronic avoidance and or anxiety where like that behavioral pattern of trying to manage your anxiety and or shutting down and Isolating and avoiding people because you only feel safe when you're alone is another common sign of childhood trauma And so as I've talked about I made a video about a couple weeks ago There are lots of reasons why we might isolate when we have childhood trauma But if you find that you're you know, you're like, yeah I I didn't I didn't think I have childhood trauma because remember for many people it doesn't always look like You know the Hallmark movie where the mother is like a monster It can look like all kinds of things that can create relational wounds and each of us are going to receive those differently I'm not talking about being an imperfect parent all most parents make mistakes and yell and scream and rage and have bad moments Hopefully not all the time but no parent is perfect But we're talking about chronic repeated patterns of emotional harm emotional neglect Physical mental psychological abuse all of those things that can affect it So I wanted to really share that that I think it's important to start to get grounded on understanding the difference between how trauma affects the relational parts of our lives and Something like ADHD and autism are going to have these additional layers that don't just involve the people triggers but our own selves in the world and how our literal brains and bodies interact with the world and it is not until I was able to fully understand that and integrate my experiences of PTSD and autism and complex trauma that I was able to make sense of a lot of the things I struggle with and Also to create accommodations to have more self-compassion to lean into who I am and be okay with that because it's not all trauma and If it was it wouldn't it just doesn't explain a lot of the things that so many of us when we really unpack The way our bodies interact with the world that do tend to fit potentially things like neurodivergence Remembering to like of course, there's a range of normal But when we talk about the difficulty it's it's important and the last thing I'll say about trauma and autism is like if you are If you are high masking and you have lots of trauma and autism It's not like identifying as autistic Especially if you don't get a diagnosis and you just start to set up your life in a way That's helpful is going to necessarily harm you a diagnosis could be harmful at this point There could be places where you can't adopt where you can't, you know qualify for the military and things like that So it is important and it is not just a label It is a way to understand our brains that I think makes understanding our trauma and our brains in terms of things like neurodivergence so important and Empowering because I don't feel bad anymore about how I isolate in my bed I don't feel bad about how I look at friendships and say people show me who they are I'm tired of making excuses for them or you know what? I don't have it in me I don't have the bandwidth and it's nothing personal But it's just where I'm at and I'm going to honor that and stop pushing myself Until I collapse and I hope you can do the same. All right, the last thing I'll say is And it's like so cheesy, but I was well I was listening to tick-tock as usual this morning and Mel Robbins was talking about this and I've heard this before but it was a clip from an interview or a conversation with the woman who created Spanx who's like a billionaire now and I mean, I've actually never worn Spanx because I can't handle that kind of sensory issue on my issue on my body But I know that lots and lots of people do love them But when she first started out someone said to her Mel Robbins was saying that she said this it's so true someone said early on she got her product of Spanx into Neiman Marcus, which was like this massive win and She was doing an interview and they said how did you you know? How did you get your product into Neiman Marcus and she goes I called them and Mel's point and my point was I asked I asked I think that just to remind you that With all these videos on how broken we all feel like we are and how overwhelmed we all are That there's still a lot of resilience and power and that you can do things to heal your life your trauma Your journey your dreams. It's like just put one foot in front of the other and sometimes it just takes you Raising your hand and saying I want that or I'm gonna risk making a cringy tik-tok or video or going on YouTube I'm going to ask for that position. I'm gonna ask for that promotion. I'm gonna tell my spouse I'm not okay with this issue anymore. I'm gonna I'm gonna lean into my real voice I'm going to raise my hand and ask to be seen and heard and I just think that's you know I don't know that just inspired me because I have a lot of things I want to do too And I want to start doing interviews and it's like, okay now it's time to reach out to people And I have some mixed experiences with that. How's it gonna go? So maybe it was just me today, but I thought it was a powerful thing to share So anyway, thank you so much for being here. Have a lovely day, and I will see you tomorrow. Bye