Healing Complex Trauma - A Man's Guide

Over the years of working with thousands and maybe tens of thousands of men, I've noticed that many of these men are struggling with a kind of hidden issue that never has really been identified. Whether it's they've gone to therapy, they've worked with a psychologist or a coach, and yet they can't seem to create the change that they're ultimately looking for. And generally, these guys come into me and they're still sabotaging, they're still frustrated, they don't like themselves, they're dealing with relationship issues, they're sort of a myriad of problems. And one of the things that they report is just being so frustrated with not knowing what's wrong. And this is a very common theme that I've seen in men. And the reason for this is that many of these men, not all of them, but many of these men, are struggling with something called complex trauma. And complex trauma is something that I don't think has gotten enough airtime. It's not as understood as it could be. And there's fewer people that seem to be able to identify this complex trauma. So complex trauma isn't something that most of us talking about openly. It's not a. It doesn't mean that you're broken, doesn't mean there's something fundamentally wrong with you. And it's not what you normally think about trauma. Right. For millions of people, complex trauma is affecting them. It's affecting how they love, it's affecting how they work, it's affecting how they see themselves, how they speak to themselves. And so today I want to break this down into three simple parts. That, that you as a man will be able to use leverage and understand to move through some of the sabotage and the challenges that you've been dealing with. I'm going to break down first, what complex trauma actually is and define it in a very simple way for you with real examples. Second, I'm going to go into how it is created, where complex trauma is created because it's not an acute big event like we would normally think about with trauma. And finally, I'm going to go into concrete and, and scientifically backed modalities and ways that you can actually begin to heal it and work with it. So these are going to be actionable steps that you can take. So let's start with number one, what is complex trauma? How do we define it? In order to work with it, you have to know what it looks like. So most people think about trauma as an acute catastrophic event, one singular big catastrophic, catastrophic event, a car crash, a Violent assault, some type of abuse, those types of things that really do impact us in childhood. And when a lot of men think about trauma, that's normally what comes to mind, right? And usually I work with a lot of men. It's like, well, I didn't experience trauma. You know, I didn't, I wasn't, you know, touched by the priest or I wasn't, you know, the next door neighbor didn't hurt me and dad didn't beat me and mom didn't do this. And, and, and so, and I don't say those things lightly or jokingly. Those are very real things that with a lot of men I've worked with, I've worked with men who have gone through all those things. They've seen a parent die in an accident, they've witnessed a friend die in an accident. But complex trauma is actually fundamentally different. It is not one moment, it is a repeated pattern over time, usually happening when you are young, when your nervous system is still developing. So complex trauma, you can think about it as this reoccurring thing, kind of like, you know, the, the Japanese torture, right? Death by a thousand cuts, or having the water drip on your forehead. Just like having something big and sort of damaging happen that can create trauma. Complex trauma is a reoccurring instance that begins to erode your sense of self. It begins to interrupt your sense of internal safety. So imagine this, okay? Imagine that you are a kid growing up in a home where you have a very unpredictable parent. Some days they're loving, some days they're kind. Some days they're holding you, and other days they are exploding into anger, maybe hitting, maybe not, maybe threatening violence, or maybe they just disappear emotionally and they seem to be vacant and completely disconnected. That child, if that was somebody like yourself, never really knows the version of their parent that they are going to get. And over time, over the years, that will wire the child's brain and their nervous system to live in a constant state of fear and hypervigilance. Fear and hypervigilance. Another example of this, because I've seen there's many different ways that this can show up, is a child who is neglected not because of anyone that was overtly or directly cruel to them, but because no one really paid attention to them. And slowly, over time, even though they had all the sort of necessities, right, they had food, they had clothes, but there wasn't really somebody who noticed their emotions, cared about their needs and their wants. No one really asked them or checked in and how they were doing. This is What a lot of young men experience right by the age of three, the data and the research shows us that a three year old boy will get 50% less physical touch than a three year old girl. So statistically, we can see that young boys will be, at the very least physically neglected, more than young girls. And for a lot of young men that experience this complex trauma, we, what they grew up in was an, an environment of physical and emotional neglect where they just didn't get the, how are you doing? How are you feeling? What's going on inside of you? You know, how was your day? What did you learn at school? None of those things really transpired. And so in the absence, and this is the important part for these men, in the absence of that consistent care that tells a child and tells their nervous system, you are okay, you're safe, your needs matter and you matter. What it's replaced with is your needs don't matter and so neither do you. So complex trauma is really an ongoing emotional, physical or relational wound that begins to shape the foundation of how you perceive yourself, how you identify how you think of yourself when it comes to being in relationship with, with other people. So how is complex trauma really created and how does it show up today? This is going to be part two and then we're going to talk about what you do about it. Okay. Because I want to give you some specific examples of how you can start to identify that this is showing up in your life. So complex trauma is almost always rooted in childhood because that's when your neurology and your development and your nervous system, your brain, your sense of self, that's when all of those things are forming. So when you grow up in an environment where, as I was talking about before, chronic neglect is present, no one's tuning into your emotions, right? Maybe it wasn't. I worked with a guy yesterday and we were having a session and he said, you know, my parents just literally never showed emotions. They never talked about emotions. I didn't get hugs, I didn't get told I love you. I wasn't asked how I was feeling growing up. Those things just literally never happened. So he's now married, he's got his own kids, and he's obviously, you know, more caring with his wife and with his children. But it is foreign to him. It's become challenging for him to just express himself because his emotions and what was happening inside of him was never invited out into the world. The other piece is that inconsistent parenting that we talked about. Inconsistent or unsafe caregivers, Right. So Maybe parents were abusive and that was sporadic or it was just consistent. Maybe they were addicts. Maybe they were addicted, right? They were. They grew up, you know, you grew up with an alcoholic. Or maybe they were just extremely emotionally volatile and they'd fly off the handle, they'd shame you, they'd punish you, they'd shut down, and you would just never know when that was going to happen. And the last piece, and this is very, very important one for a lot of men is, is that there's a repeated boundary violation. So you had a. Your physical boundaries, your emotional boundaries, your psychological boundaries were just reoccurringly pushed through. And that might be a father who is, you know, sort of physically invasive. It might be a mother who continues to tell you how you should be and pierces through your boundaries. And every time you say, you know, I would really. I don't want to play that sport anymore. I want to play this one. She guilts and shames you and forces you and manipulates you. Manipulation usually plays a big part. And for people that have had complex trauma, it's very common that you've had a parent, quite often a mom who was emotionally manipulative to try and get you to be obedient, to comply to what she wanted. And so what you wanted was constantly shut down, pushed through. You know, you wouldn't want to talk about things. I've. I've worked with a lot of men where they grew up with a mom, divorced family, and their mom would be talking about their dad, right? Her actual husband, in ways where he would say, you know, I don't want to talk about. I don't want to hear that about dad. It's not. That's none of my business. And she would just keep going anywhere. She would talk about her sex life, or she would talk about other men, you know, and she would talk about, you know, her ex husband in the finance. So there's this kind of like penetrating through the boundaries of like, I don't want to emotionally share those things. Or she might guilt you chronically to open up and share when you're saying no. And she might get emotional and sad and cry and how come you won't. And she guilts you. She pushes through and manipulates through your boundaries consistently. And what this does is it teaches you as a child, which you then become a man. It teaches you that the world isn't safe. Neither are relationships. My wants and needs don't matter, and therefore I'm less relevant. So here's the critical part, okay? Because I want you to be able to identify how this is showing up in your life. The critical part is that as adults, we often replay these old survival patterns without even realizing it. So the boy who was once neglected finds himself in a relationship with somebody who, you know, is very avoidant, doesn't really pay attention to his wants or his needs. Anytime he tries to bring them up, it creates a problem in the relationship. So we end up replaying these patterns and inadvertently, unconsciously, in a way to try and heal them. So someone with complex trauma will likely struggle with the following. They will struggle with trust. They will not trust people, period. It will feel like a threat. It will feel dangerous. It will feel foreign. Or they will constantly expect betrayal, right? They will expect to be manipulated. They will expect to be abandoned and neglected. They will likely be people pleasers. You, if you have experienced complex trauma, you will likely be a people pleaser. And because as a child, staying agreeable is oftentimes one of the ways to stay safe, this is very common with people that have complex trauma, right? It how you found safety and security growing up with a highly volatile parent, how you found safety and security with a parent who was very neglectful, how you found safety and security with somebody who's constantly pushing through your boundaries was by trying to people please. Maybe if I'm just agreeable enough with you, then maybe I can be safe. Maybe you'll prioritize me and my needs. So the other thing and how this will show up in your adult relationship is that you are very likely repeating that pattern. Very common that people have complex trauma. They are people pleasers in their adult relationships, right? They kind of feel, you might feel like a pushover. You might feel like you never stand up for yourself. It might be something that's really terrifying for you to just say, here's what I need, or I didn't like that, or I don't want that. And people that have complex trauma very frequently will disconnect from their own emotions. So a lot of the men that I've worked with, they are completely disconnected. When they have complex trauma, they're completely disconnected from their own emotions. And so you might find that you're disconnected from. From your grief, from your sadness, from your frustration. You're disconnected from most of your emotions in a kind of way where you feel chronically numb most of the time because feeling too much as a kid was not safe. It was overwhelming. There was no one there to support you in being able to regulate. Right? Because as a child is developing, one of the very important Pieces of going through adolescence and going through your childhood and the developmental stages that you go through is that you learn that it's okay to express yourself emotionally. It's okay to express your needs and to have those things met or, you know, to somebody to support you in teaching you how to regulate your emotions instead of just dominating you into compliance or ignoring you for days because you became too emotional. The other thing, the last piece, that is very much an indicator, and I see this specifically with men. For some women, this does show up as well. But for men, this is a big one. It's a big indicator of complex drama. Is the. The real big mood swings, right? Going from. In going from sort of calm, cool and collected to like a big emotional outburst or a. A really intense anger that comes forward almost out of no nowhere for something that seems so small, that kind of hypersensitivity. And this happens because your nervous system is still stuck in fight or flight mode. And so these little things that trigger you or cause duress in your system, there's no 55 miles an hour. You go from zero to 100. And that's your nervous system saying, I don't know how to calibrate. I don't know how to regulate. I don't know how to be in duress. And for many men, this is a repetition of what they witnessed growing up, right? Witnessing this kind of sporadic display of emotions that were volatile and hostile, right? Dropping a glass on the ground and having dad just like, lose his mind. And you're like, wait, what just happened? Like, all I did was was spill some water. You know, like, what's going on? So that's your nervous system kind of stuck in this fight or flight mode, and it shows up. How this will show up in your relationships if you have complex trauma is usually a pretty good fear of intimacy. So generally, men, you know, if you have sort of identified that you have, like, fearful avoidant tendencies, there's. Or if you have a really type of an anxious attachment, or if you have a fearful attachment or disorganized attachment, what you'll notice is that there's a very deep fear of closeness and intimacy. Very common that men that have this perfection, that have this complex trauma are perfectionists, and they really work in a way where everything has to be perfect, but it constantly sort of leads you to burnout. A lot of people internally that are dealing with complex trauma, they have a lot of anxious energy. They might struggle with depression. But what is really at the core of all that is a kind of ever present Sense of not feeling enough, not feeling good enough, smart enough, lovable, but not feeling enough. This is very, very indicative of complex trauma. And that's there again because of either the neglect that told you there must be something wrong with me, that my. My parents, who brought me into this world, won't give me the care and attention, the physical affection, the emotional connection that I actually needed, or there must be something wrong with me that my parents are so volatile and sporadic, or that they constantly push through my boundaries. Maybe I'm not allowed to have needs, wants, and desires. So to summarize this all up, and we'll get into what you do, how you start to manage this. Complex trauma creates a kind of invisible script inside your mind and inside your nervous system that will run in the background of your adult life, constantly telling you, you're not enough, it's not safe, don't express your needs, some version of that. So let's dig into the actual steps. What can you actually do to begin to heal this, to begin to work through this and move through this? And what I want you to know straight out the gates is that complex trauma is not a life sentence, right? You're not stuck in this mode for the rest of your life, okay? Because complex trauma, it can be healed sometimes for some people, it's not quick, it's not always easy, but it absolutely is possible. So let me give you some tangible steps that you can take to begin to move through this, okay? Number one, honestly, one of the most important things is beginning to build a much deeper connection and awareness to what is happening in your body. It's very common that people that have complex trauma have disconnected. Some people have almost disassociated, but they've disconnected from senses, emotions, energy in the body. So for a lot of men that I'll work with, one of the markers, one of the identifiers that a man is really maybe dealing with complex trauma is he doesn't really have any understanding of what's happening from the neck down. Because for people that have had complex trauma, they, growing up, had to move their emotions to the side, move their internal felt experience out of the way in order to either prioritize another or because they felt like theirs wasn't valuable. So trauma isn't just in your brain. It's not just in your thoughts. It is stored in your nervous system. It's stored in your body. So beginning to develop a very deep awareness of your breath, of the energy centers in your body where you carry stress, where there's strain, where there's maybe heaviness or anxiousness or fear and joy, excitement, how those things actually light up in your body and how you personally experience them. It's very important to be able to start to gain some more awareness about what's happening in the body. Because for many people who experience complex trauma, they are unaware of what's happening there. Number two, is beginning to develop safety in relationships. One of the things that I see men do constantly who have complex trauma is they be they continually choose. I use, I like to say, and this isn't a slight to you because it's not necessarily your fault, but when you have complex trauma, your picker, your sort of choice mechanism for choosing a partner is usually skewed. And so what we end up doing is we end up choosing partners that are going to repeat the pattern of what we experienced growing up. And this is one of the really unfortunate things about complex trauma is that we get into relationships with people who almost always will inevitably replay the pattern that we experienced growing up. So because complex trauma happened in relationship, healing often requires relationship as well. This is why, you know, platforms like the Man Talks alliance, where you have other men to build relationships with, to build trust, to express what's going on inside of you, to communicate some of your challenges and frustrations, some of your triumphs in that space is so, so, so helpful. But one of the things that you're going to want to do as you date, as you get into relationships, maybe you're already married to somebody, is to prioritize what safety and security looks like, sounds like and feels like in your relationship. So if you are single, what I usually tell to men who have complex trauma is start to choose women that you actually genuinely feel safe with. And this will usually feel a little bit inverted from what you would normally go after because for a lot of men that have complex trauma, they usually have a lot of charge around a woman. It's like, whoa, she's super. There's a lot, oh my gosh, I'm so enamored by her and I want to be with her. And there's this kind of intoxication and there's like big intense energy that can show up. And then they get in a relationship with that woman and what they start to realize two months, three months, six months in, is it's replaying some of the neglect or the avoidance or the volatility or the boundary pushing that they experienced growing up. So let safety and security be the compass, be the north star in your relationship. Whether you are dating, whether you are in a relationship, whether you are married, being able to start to prioritize that. And what you'll want to ask yourself is, what do I want safety to look like, sound like, and feel like in my relationship? Number three is name the patterns. So begin to write down the survival strategies that you notice yourself moving into. When do you shut down? You know, if conflict arises, what does it look like when you shut down? How do you close off emotionally, physically, mentally? What do you do that moves you into these people pleasing patterns? Are you chronically trying to fix everybody else's emotions? Name those patterns so that you can begin to see them in action and interrupt the pattern by not engaging. Okay, by not engaging with those patterns. So name all the patterns that you do for survival strategy, Whether it's the people pleasing, the avoidance of conflict, avoidance of speaking your needs, shutting down, emotionally, disconnecting. And be as specific as possible. Like, when do you deploy that survival strategy? What exactly does it look like? And you might even if you're married or you're in a relationship with somebody that knows these patterns, that's seen these patterns, you might want to get them in on the game. Like, okay, what do I do? What have you noticed about my shutdown, about my people policing? What does it actually look like and feel like to you on your side? Number four is practice regulation. You are going to have to develop a very healthy level and sort of tolerance for stress, for disconnection, for conflict, and being able to down regulate yourself, soothe yourself, calm yourself, ground yourself when you feel triggered. So start to practice small regulation tools, right? Slowing your breathing down. This literally is one of the best tools that you can use. In through the mouth for a count of, in through the nose for a count of four, out through the mouth for a count of seven or eight. This is going to flip, force your heart rate to slow down and that is going to send a signal from your body to your brain to actually reduce the release of things like the stress chemicals, you know, the adrenaline, the cortisol. The cortisol isn't necessarily just a stress chemical. It's also, you know, sort of a doing chemical. But you'll want to have some techniques that you can deploy. Breathing techniques, grounding techniques, right? Feeling your feet on the floor, being able to connect to the body, breathing in to your pelvic floor, the bottom of your torso, so breathing lower into the body. A lot of people that have complex trauma, they breathe right up in their collarbone. They have very shallow breaths. So you are going to want to practice breathing deeper into the body. The last piece, and this is probably going to be frustrating for some of you, the last piece is practicing patience and self compassion. For a lot of, a lot of the men that I've worked with who have struggled with complex trauma, two things happen. Number one, they want to get out of it immediately, right? They start to recognize the patterns and it's like, get me out of this as quickly as possible. And so you're going to need to have some patience as you move through this. It's not going to go away overnight. Through some of these practices, you can begin to, you can begin to heal it and work with it in a, in a, you know, in a quick way. But you're gonna need to have some patience with yourself and you're gonna need to have some self compassion because for a lot of men, they have a history of beating themselves up, of expecting perfection and healing. Complex trauma is not about erasing the past. It's not about negating the past. It's about learning your body, your nervous system, having a deeper sense of self, and being able to bring your needs, your wants, your desires out into the world in a way that is safe, that is measured. And so progress with complex trauma can be measured by really the sort of small incremental shifts. The moments where you would normally just like explode and blow up, and all of a sudden you're able to just be calm under that stress and duress. The moment where you would normally shut down because you feel unsafe, but you're actually able to engage and stay in the conversation in a grounded manner. These are these, these moments that you need to celebrate because that is what the progress looked like. Okay? So as Carl Jung said, I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become. I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become. So it's not about the stuff that happened to you. It's about what you decide to do with the awareness of what you are now and what you are becoming that's at the heart of this work. You are not defined by the neglect, by the manipulation, by the sort of volatility that you experienced growing up. You're not defined by those things. You are defined by how you move forward from it. So if this resonates with you, don't forget to man it forward. Share it with somebody that you think needs to hear it, that you know will enjoy it. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.