Is It Anxiety or CPTSD? The Real Root Cause of Your Mental Struggles, with Tim Fletcher

All right, Mr. Tim Fletcher, welcome back to the Man Talk Show. How you doing?

Very good, my pleasure to be here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Our first, our first conversation, um, I really loved, and, uh, and people really loved it as well. I mean, I got a ton of comments, and it was funny to read the YouTube comments, you know, it's like the collaboration I've been waiting for. It's always, it's always funny when you like stumble across somebody's work and then you I have them on the show and then people are like, yes, I've been waiting for this conversation to happen. So I took that as a good sign and people really enjoyed it. So we're going to go deeper into some of those areas and explore and traverse some new areas as well. I think where I want to start is just a little bit of a recap of differentiating between PTSD and CPTSD. And kind of helping the average person differentiate, because I think most people, you know, when they hear PTSD, they're like, oh, I don't have, you know, I don't have that. I didn't have like some massive traumatic incident happen. But that's not really what CPTSD is. And so can you just create some distinction between those 2?

Sure. Yeah, I think the 2 key things around PTSD, which is really where the understanding of trauma started, And it's a one-time event and it's a horrific event. So, we call it big T or shock trauma. And so, typically we think of battlefield, accident, rape, and some— so, it's a horrific thing that happens to you that's outside of the normal, that puts you in danger, that overwhelms you, that you aren't able to cope with. And so, you basically have to survive by fight, flight, or freeze. That's typically the response to survive it. So complex PTSD really takes it in a brand new important direction in understanding trauma, and it's really 2 things. Number one, it's an ongoing environment of danger, so it's not just a one-time event, and it's not just a big T horrific event, but it's a little t neglect trauma where the child's needs aren't met. So what should have been happening to them isn't happening to them. So they're not being nurtured, they're not being accepted, they're not being, um, given kind of help and guidance in a very deep emotional way. So it's almost like it's invisible trauma because it's not that anything bad happened to them, it's that The good that should have happened didn't happen. And as a result of that, the child doesn't feel safe. They can't connect to the, the main caregiver. And as a result of that, they feel alone, they feel abandoned, they feel rejected. And that sets them into the same responses— fight, flight, freeze. But now it's not just a one-time safety response to get to safety where you You can then go back to normal living. Because this is happening every day, I got to do that response every day. And so now, you set up adaptations to survive that become subconscious programs about life, about relationships, about how to cope that characterize you long after the danger is gone. And so, The child adapts to feeling neglected, to feeling not cared for, to not being able to get their needs met, to not being able to resolve their emotions. So, they stop trusting people. They stop caring about things. They wear masks. They lie. They whatever. And all those adaptations seem to help. But 30 years down the road, those adaptations make healthy relationships impossible. And so, you realize, oh, those are maladaptations really. But they let me survive. So there's a new piece that comes out in complex PTSD. So in PTSD, it was mainly fight, flight, or freeze. But in complex PTSD, the child is often too little to fight or flight because they— so complex trauma is more relationship-based trauma. It's not so much bad events out there happening to me. It's stuff happening in an intimate relationship. So, the child can freeze, but they still need mom and dad to meet their needs. But mom and dad are the ones hurting them and neglecting them. And so, freeze isn't enough because I need to do something to get mom and dad's attention, to make them want to meet my needs, to make them want to love me, to make them want to like me. So, the child often is forced to go into a 4th F or a 4th survival response. Which is a fawning response where I will take care of you and meet your needs and become what you want me to become. Will you then meet my needs if I do that? Will that make you like me enough to want to meet my needs? And so it's kind of the ultimate survival response that comes out of complex trauma. The problem Connor is that fight or flight often they got perceived or judged for as being bad responses. Freeze, they got maybe validated because they didn't cause trouble, but they also maybe got in trouble for. Whereas fawn, they got validated for. Wow, aren't you a good kid? Wow, you're complying. You're conforming to all our rules. You're doing exactly what we want. And so it wasn't seen as a bad thing. It was seen as, wow, I finally found a gold mine here of the right way to respond to finally get my needs met. The problem is, as soon as I stop fawning and conforming, then I find out all this love is conditional.

Yeah.

And it's not really safe love. I have to earn love. I'm constantly have a a ticket that I have to pay the entrance fee on, which is I got to give up me in order to please you. And so it's sadly a form that many parents tried to instill in their children, validated in their children, but it sets up their children for all kinds of trouble later on.

Yeah, there's, there's a couple of things that I think I just want to touch on there. I mean, one is the The— that CPTSD is really about, uh, it's relationship-based trauma. And, and it really is such a wild thing because it, it becomes in, in sort of like an insidious way, like really a cornerstone part of your identity.

Exactly.

And a lot of the behaviors, actions, choices that people with complex trauma end up making are really rooted in that trauma. And I've— I like to call it the chameleon effect, right? It's like, let me change myself and alter myself to try and be who you need me to be so that there's some type of safety for me on the other side of it.

Exactly.

And the end result of that is, I don't know who the hell I am, which is something I'm I'm wondering if you can maybe just speak to that, because that's something that I've seen in so many men with complex traumas. Like, I just don't know who I ultimately am at my core. And there's kind of a loneliness and a longing and a disorientation and confusion that comes along with it.

Yeah. So there's 2 pieces to this, but let me start with the chameleon thing or the shapeshifter. And so if I'm being neglected, so my parents really don't see me, they're not meeting my needs, they're not hearing me. They don't seem to care about me. They might meet my physical needs, but it's my emotional needs, my deep core relational needs for acceptance, respect, authenticity, connection are not happening. And so I then have to become what they want. I got to become a clone of their belief system, their emotional world. I have to put my needs down and elevate their needs and take care of their needs. So, I attune my radar to being very alert to what their mood is, what they're thinking, and I lose touch of me. So, I begin to abandon me in order to be there for them. So, I'm more attuned to them than I am to what I think, to what I feel. I don't even know what I think or feel. And I don't know who I am. I just know who you want me to be. And I have to be that way to stay safe and survive. And so there's this gradual abandonment of self that takes place as I become more and more taking care of your needs and you, and I give up me. So I get smaller and make you bigger. But there's a second piece that's happening is the fact that you neglect me, the fact that you're not meeting my needs, I'm interpreting as I'm the problem. I'm not good enough. And so, I'm developing a core belief of shame that deep down inside, if anybody got to know the real me, they would treat me like my parents. They would reject me. They would ignore me. They would not see me as valuable. So, I don't like me. So, I want to abandon me for another reason now, and that is, I really don't like the way I am. I wish I was somebody else. I wish I was more vivacious, outgoing, whatever, better looking. And so, my sense of value now cannot be based on my inherent internal value because I'm pretty concerned. I'm pretty convinced I don't have any. I must now create my value through what I do, through my image, through my actions, through my position, my possessions, my looks, my body. All of those different externals now become the basis of what gives me value, because deep inside I feel I really don't have any. So that puts more emphasis on the need to create this new image, to shape-shift, to be a chameleon. So now I can be one person to one person, a totally different person to somebody else, a totally different person to somebody else, because my radar goes in and I go, what do they believe? What do they like? What, what are their passions? Okay, what do I need to become in order for them to like me? Pretty soon I don't have a clue who I am. I just know what everybody else is about, and I lose track of me, and I get to be a pro at switching masks and putting a new mask on depending on the person and the circumstance. So the problem with that to me, partly— there's a lot of problems, but one of the key problems is because of that shame, because of that shape-shifting. I've abandoned me, number one, and I don't— so I feel abandoned by others, but now I abandon myself. So I don't even want a relationship with myself. Um, I don't know who I am, but I don't even want to know anymore about me because I don't like what I've seen so far, the weak parts of me. And so I don't have a relationship with myself. But I've never connected to anybody else, and I don't know how to have a relationship with them. And because of all of the shame, I think I'm inferior to everybody else. So I go into every relationship feeling like I have to earn their love. I'm not good enough. So I go into a relationship saying, don't talk about your needs and what you want. Find out what they want and then adapt to that. Yeah. So, I set up connection or I try to gain connection through making myself smaller, not through seeing myself as an equal to others and expressing that my needs matter just as much as yours. The only way I think of trying to make a connection is losing myself again.

Right.

And that's just tragic. Yeah.

Yeah. I think one of the real heartbreaking— I mean, I pretty much only work with men unless my wife and I are working with couples because she's a couples therapist and sometimes I get brought in for the heavy hitters. But one of the really tragic things that I— whenever I'm working with a man that has complex trauma is just It's almost like the core self gets blanketed and hidden by this false personality that at its core is chronic shame. It's really just rooted in chronic shame. And I really, I mean, I love the way you're articulating it. It's just so, it's really perfect in a lot of ways of what you're saying. And it is challenging because underneath, somewhere in there, is the true self, what Jung would have called the self or the personhood or the sense of self that isn't the personality, isn't the ego. And it's almost as though that individual has never had a relationship where somebody has interacted with them from that core self, from that deeper sense of self.

Exactly.

Of like, you have worth inherently. You have value inherently. And, without that interaction, it does seem like this false sense of self, this personality starts to manifest and gets created that is so riddled with chronic shame. I don't like myself. I don't like how I am. If only I was this way or that way or like that person. And, oh man, it's brutal. It really is a brutal thing. Yeah, I bet. soft, tender place in my heart for the people that— and the odd thing is, I mean, I'm curious to get your thoughts on this. I've noticed that a lot of men with complex trauma become some of the most successful people that I've ever met. Truly, they just become absolutely phenomenal. So can you speak to that phenomenon?

Yeah. So I think it's such an important point for people to understand because they go, how can I have shame? How can I be doing things wrong. Look how successful I am. So what happens with the child that is neglected is they're not just getting a shame that, that must be my fault, I'm not good enough, but they're also— and as they're fawning to try to earn love, to try to get acceptance— is I have to shut down the parts of me that get me in trouble. So, maybe I cry too much. I'm told I'm too sensitive. Okay, let's shut that down. Oh, I get too angry. I got to shut that down. Or— and so, what you're doing is becoming less and less human. You're shutting down emotions that you consider weak, that make you vulnerable. So, I can't have empathy. I can't have all kinds of soft emotions because that makes me weak. So in our culture, all of a sudden you get, wow, you're a man, you are strong. But more than that, one of the things that you do is— what then gets me positive affirmation? Well, if I get money, that gets me respect. If I help people, that gets me pats on the back. So I am now going to gain my value through Doing through accomplishing. So I go to school, I get top grades, I get top of my class, I get awards, I get athletics, I get top athlete, I get awards and validation. So I am going to keep chasing what gives me validation. And basically, it's I have to become bionic with a cape. I got to be no weaknesses. I got to be.

Go, go, go!

Strong, driven, accomplish, accomplish, accomplish. Then I get maximum validation. And so our culture is set up to reward shame-drivenness. So this isn't being I want to work hard from a place of love to help people, but I also want to care for me. I want to be balanced. This is I want to fill up the black hole of shame by getting. validation, validation, validation, but it never satisfies.

Yeah.

And so I just keep being driven to more and more, and it feels good, like a, a drug high when I get the validation, but then it passes, and then I need more, I need more. And so there's 2 pieces there. There's what's driving me for validation, but it's that I've shut down all the things that make me weak, but then I get validated For that, for being oh you're such a strong man because we've defined strength and success as a man as being less human, as being not totally human, as shutting down emotions, as shutting down parts of us that would make us weak. And I just think that is so tragic. So what I always want people who kind of have this great success. Is if I was to look past your success in your external world and look at your intimate relationships and look at your relationship with yourself, what would I find? And often it's a very different story.

Yeah, yeah, it's a, it's a tough, it's a tough thing. Like, I've, I've coined it shame-based motivation or dark motivation. And I think it's wild that so many of us men, that's our fuel source.

Yes.

You know, it's like we're actively trying to utilize the shame, you know, the fuel of shame inside of us to propel us forward to, you know, do great things, build businesses, become whatever, win awards, yada yada. And it's— I started to notice this pattern several years ago where the men that were coming to work with me were predominantly the men who had used that fuel to get to a certain place in life, won the awards, got the achievements, sold the business. And then this kind of reckoning happened where all of a sudden they're in a deep depression, or they won the awards and they didn't feel anything, you know, or there's— there was 24 hours of joy and then complete existential collapse. And it was— I just kept seeing this pattern. I was like, what is going on? You know, and then, and then I realized that I had done that. You know, I was like, oh, I had done that. You know, I know, I know this pattern. And so it's a, it's a slippery slope, because I think for a lot of men, there's almost like a need to use that fuel to propel themselves forward, to use that shame. And the challenge is that it becomes this reinforcement mechanism where you need more shame.

Exactly.

in order to motivate and push yourself forward. And so you can never escape. It's like the Chinese finger trap, right? It's like you're trying to pull your fingers out of the Chinese finger trap, you know, but you're just pouring more and more shame into the tank and using it to try and propel you forward. So how, how does one start to begin to escape that trap?

So I think part of what happens with That trap is like you say, I need more shame to fuel the fire of motivation. So you develop a very strong internal critic. I got to be hard on myself. If I fail, I got to really beat myself up. I got to criticize myself and put myself down that it's never good enough. I got to keep raising the bar and setting it to Just fuel this, you're not good enough, you're a failure, you're never going to amount to anything. Supposedly, that will motivate me. And so, to me, that really comes out of a shame-based parenting style that the way to motivate a child to do the right thing is to judge them, be hard on them, accuse them of wanting to do the wrong thing. Being critical, etc. And that works in the short term. It does fuel the desire to prove you wrong, to motivate you. But in the long term, it leads to mental health issues. It leads to discouragement. It leads to burnout. It leads to relationship issues. It just begins to snowball into all kinds of problems. And so if you go back to what did that child need that would have really motivated them to do the right thing from the right motive, so they would have helped others, but it would have been from a love motive, not a shame-fueled motive. They needed connection. They needed to have their needs met. They needed to have validation and encouragement and somebody to love them through their failures and to teach them and all of those things. When a child gets their needs met and gets that environment of connection and safety, they desire to do the right things. They begin to connect with people, and that feeds joy. But if there's never connection, there's never true joy. So another way to look at this, Connor, is so important— is when you look at the chemicals in the brain Mainly dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin—they're mainly released in their best mix and supply through healthy intimate connection with safe people. That's when I feel good. That's when joy, when my needs are met, and when I'm connected to safe people, those chemicals are released. But a child in complex trauma wasn't able to get secure attachment. They didn't have those chemicals released, and so they've never experienced healthy joy, but they've longed for it. They've been chasing it, but they've been chasing it through things that give a dopamine hit, an oxytocin hit, but they don't give the right mix that comes from true connection. They get it from an event, an accomplishment. And so It's helping people realize I got to go back to the basics from the beginning, and I got to connect with myself. I got to connect with some safe people. I got to learn what love is. I got to learn how to meet my needs. I got to learn to be empathetic to myself and compassionate to myself, not hard on myself and beating myself up. That just That self-compassion just seems wrong. And so what I want people to realize is this is not some little quick fix you can add to your to-do list today and say, okay, that all of a sudden I'm going to be happy. This is going back to what you didn't get as a child and reparenting yourself to get those deep, deep core needs met that come out of relationships. And then you'll find the joy is there, the right motivation is there. But that's a long process, and it's not an easy process, but it's a doable process, and it's well worth it.

Yeah, I think one of the, one of the pieces to this that I've found to be very, very important and almost, um, I don't want to say it It's very important, but I think it's underrecognized, is just that real, healthy, secure, trustworthy relationship is part of the antidote. And that seems so unassuming, but for the majority of people, when you have complex trauma, that's the threat. That's the foreign Experience, you know, it's like you don't even know what that feels like. So, you know, moving towards that—

Can I just speak to that? Because I think it's so important to expand on that. So if you look at our approach in the West to medicine, to mental health, to trauma, basically we have tried to do it in a kind of a laboratory. Um, what kind of medication does this person need to get healthy? What kind of medication does this person need to fix their depression and anxiety issues. And so it's very much been, here's the symptom, here's the Band-Aid to fix that symptom, has been our approach. What's interesting is it's totally devoid of healthy connection. So our whole approach to healing people has been totally divorced from connection. But what we're learning is that when our nervous system is connected to safe, healthy people, our nervous system is able to heal our bodies quite well all by, by itself. And that over 90% of the diseases we have in the West are all because our nervous system is not in a safe place. It's in a stressed place. And all of our illnesses are stress-related illnesses. And so, what we've tried to do then is create a healing world without the key ingredient, connection. And that just seems so unscientific. Like, you can't put that in a test tube. How do you—

Right.

How can you say that's the right remedy? But that's the way we're wired, that we need connection. And then, once we have healthy, safe connection, Our body heals quite well on its own. Our body does all kinds of releasing of good chemicals on its own. And so, physical, mental health issues all of a sudden begin to find solutions without the medication necessarily. Sometimes you need the medication, but again, it's— when you'd say this to a person with complex trauma, so how I put it to clients is this. The math that you developed as a child was authenticity does not equal connection, though that's the way it should. Authenticity equals nobody wants to connect with me. And therefore, all connection— attempts at connection lead to pain. They are always bad attempts because they never lead to connection. They always lead to—

Pain.

Rejection, abandonment, more pain. So what you're saying to me, Tim, they're saying, is here I am in recovery, now I have to connect in order to heal. You're saying I have to do the one thing my math says 100% of the time always leads to rejection, pain, and never works. I go, yep, that's basically what it is. So you gotta either challenge the existing math you have and realize that you Form those math equations based on relationships with unsafe people. But if you were to have relationships with safe people, you would find totally different math equations. You would find out that authenticity leads to connection. You find that connection leads to joy. Totally different world. But you have to risk moving out of your old unsafe people math equations into I'm willing to try. connecting to safe people and see if these new math equations work. And that's going to mean you've got to walk through a whole bunch of fear because it's going to be scary to move into this root healing source of connection, um, because everything in you says that's the wrong move.

Yeah, yeah. It's such a strange— I know for myself I'll just— I mean, I've seen this in a lot of men, but I'll speak from my own personal experience. I really, for a long time, internally felt like I was fundamentally broken. And that was my core self-referencing. You know, it was like, I'm broken, something's wrong with me, I have to figure out what's wrong with me. But I also have to, in relationships with people, constantly try and manage This, I'm broken. You know, it almost felt like I was always holding this grenade with the pin pulled that I was trying to protect the other people from. It's like, how do I make sure that this doesn't blow up and hurt them and hurt me because there's something wrong with me and that's going to end up happening? And it was such a challenging experience to begin to relate to people from this place of not only am I not broken, but I'm okay. I'm loving. I'm worthy of connection. I'm worthy of saying what I want, saying how I actually feel, communicating what I desire, communicating what I need, communicating what's not okay with me. All of those things really felt like a threat because at my core, I felt like there was something so fundamentally wrong with me that That was the core reason why I could never say that wasn't all right. I didn't like that. Here's what I'd really love. Here's how I feel about you, or whatever it was. I could never communicate those things because I was always operating from that place.

So just if I can add to that, please. That explains for people why so many people, men especially, often come to, I need help, I need recovery, I need to— because I'm so broken, I, I gotta figure it out. And they think they're gonna solve it by just getting information.

Right.

And, and I really want them to know that information is powerful and important, and it's this self-awareness, and growing in self-awareness is a huge part of the healing process. But you can't heal shame and trauma by information alone. You have to eventually risk connection with safe people. And when you do that, then you, you learn stuff that you can never learn from a textbook because you find out, whoa, I do have value. I do. I'm okay the way I am. I'm not fundamentally broken. I just had a bunch of shame and a bunch of wounds that were inflicted on me. And it just changes the whole script for you once you begin to risk that.

So let's, let's talk a little bit about— there's one piece that I want to get to towards the end, but I want to talk about this notion of fawning. And because so much of complex trauma leads to this behavior, I don't think it gets talked about enough. But when, you know, in the last 10, 12 years that I've been working with men, I've talked a lot about The people-pleasing behavior, the nice guy behavior. Dr. Robert Glover, who's a friend of mine, has come on the show a couple of times. He wrote the book called No More Mr. Nice Guy. And in some ways, all of that behavior is fawning behavior.

Yes.

And so talk to me about how complex trauma produces a little bit more— you kind of fleshed it out a little bit— this fawning behavior, what it is, what it looks like maybe in relationship, and then we'll traverse what it looks like to deal with it.

Yeah, let me start with this. I think that fawning, it's the— so of the 4 Fs of how we respond to feeling overwhelmed and not safe, um, so fight, flight, and freeze we've talked about for years and years. Fawning came late. It's Took the longest for us to understand it. But what I've come to realize is it's probably the most common of the 4 Fs when it comes to complex PTSD. But most people didn't even understand that they are fawners, that they do it because it's so subtle. It's been validated. And what it is— one way to understand fawning to me is it's Me in survival mode trying to emulate what love looks like. So I'm not genuinely loving, but I am acting like I'm loving you in order to get something, in order for you to love me. It's— I'm doing all of these loving actions with strings attached. So it's, it's love Or it's dressing up something to look like love that's really shame, that's really fear, that's really a deep longing to be loved and survive and stay safe. And so what I want people to understand secondly is that to me, fawning, it was what a child had to do. It wasn't something that child says, oh, I'm going to be this way because I think it's Cute or smart. It's, I'm doing this because if I don't do this, I won't be safe. I won't survive. I will be neglected more. And so, it's the ultimate survival tactic and skill. And so, the next step is it's a blend. So, fight, I am going at you. Flight, I am going away from you. Freeze, I am shutting down. Fawn, I act like I'm moving towards you, but really I'm pulling away from you. I act like I want to connect, but I really don't. I'm afraid that you see the authentic me, so I am showing you an inauthentic persona but keeping the authentic me hidden. So I'm acting like I'm moving towards you to connect, but I'm staying disconnected. I am Abandoning myself. And so, what I do that I look like I'm moving towards you is I— oh, you're sweet. I meet your needs. I take you out. I do things for you. I make sacrifices for you. I do all kinds of things that look loving and act like I'm really wanting to connect. But I am so afraid that you're going to reject me. And so, where all of this to me goes, and it's very sad, But it's basically the dating culture of the West. The dating culture of the West sadly has become a fawning culture. The only way I can win somebody and get them to like me is I gotta fawn, I gotta act nice, I gotta not say no, I gotta give them what they want, I gotta make sacrifices, I gotta suppress my needs, I gotta be alert to their moods. Um, and so you set up an attraction device that is a fawning mechanism that is basically unhealthy, um, because you're not genuinely loving and you're putting a mask on and you're putting your best foot forward. What's going to happen After you've been with that person for a while and the mask starts to slip, and all of a sudden you don't have the energy and you don't care anymore about whether you earn their love or not. It's time to get my needs met now. And then the relationship starts to shift, and all of a sudden you get the conflicts begin to happen, the tension that begins to build. And that's where what many men do sadly is. As soon as there's conflict again, oh, oh, oh, I can't go there, can't go there, because that might expose my shame, how inadequate I am. If we start talking honestly and deeply about stuff, they're going to see that I'm not much of a catch and they're going to dump me. So, I got to go back to fawning. So, I'm going to fawn, fawn, fawn, get tired of it. Then we're going to have conflict. That's going to motivate me again to fawn. To get over the conflict. And so, I'm just going to patch up the crisis without dealing with the root issues so that you don't leave me.

Hmm.

And so, what I want people to understand often with fawning is underneath that, not only is there shame, but there's a deep fear of abandonment. And so, I don't want to be alone. I can't be alone. I need a relationship to feel that I have any value because If I'm alone, that proves nobody wants me. But if I'm with somebody, at least seems like proof that I'm desirable. So, I need a relationship and I hate the loneliness of being alone. So, I will continue to be what you want me to be as much as I need to do that so you don't leave me.

Hmm.

And it's that fear of abandonment, the shame that's underneath all of that, that I'm not much of a catch that just keeps this cycle going. And so most fawning relationships end up in cycles where you go kind of through that fawning. It's almost like a honeymoon. Everybody's on their best foot and it's, it's all lovey-dovey, but then your needs aren't being met. And so you're, you're getting frustrated. You're What about me? I'm meeting your needs, you're not meeting mine. And, and this anger is building, and then conflict comes, and then everybody feels bad about the conflict, and then everybody goes back to fawning. And so it just keeps going around and around. Um, but the bottom line is you don't get true connection.

Right.

Because you keep playing The roles and the acts. And so what, what I say is it's 2 shame-based people doing a dance, trying to get their needs met but never being satisfied. Um, and so I'm looking— so this is the next piece, Connor, that's to me so significant. What happens in fawning is a child had to fawn to try to get their needs met. But if a child's in a healthy home, they grow up and learn to meet their own needs, and they learn, yes, I needed mom and dad when I was really small, but now I know how to meet my needs very well. But what happens if you didn't get that? You're still stuck at that 4-year-old thinking others have to meet all my needs. They got to validate me. They got to accept me before I can accept myself. And so a fawner is still operating by I can't meet my own needs, you got to meet my needs. And so I got to influence you to make you want to meet my needs because I don't know how to meet my needs. And, and so part of the whole driving thing is I'm outsourcing the meeting of my needs to everybody else and giving them the power instead of, hey, I can meet my own needs. I want a relationship with you not for you to meet my needs, but for us to connect and have a good friendship. But now the relationships aren't built on that. They're built on my needs need to be met, so I got to figure out a way to develop a relationship where they'll want to meet my needs. And that's the wrong way to build a relationship.

Yeah, it's really, um, It's fascinating because part of it, as you're talking, is like there's a lot of control and manipulation that goes into it. And you get to stay in this place of, you know, it's like that self-reinforcing shame loop. You get to play the victim. But also, it's what I've noticed in— I remember working with a couple and the guy, you know, was sort of very much this archetype. And he said something that I thought summarized a lot of what we're talking about. And we were in a session, he said, well, our relationship only works when I'm doing what she needs and what she wants. That's when it works best. I was like, oh boy, here we go. And you could hear the bitterness and the resentment and the frustration. And it's tough because I think for people that are the fawners and that oftentimes have that complex trauma, that relational pain, there really is this deep frustration and quagmire that they're in, which is, I have these needs, I'm aware of them, I have no idea how to get them met, and I simultaneously feel as though I'm not deserving of having them be met.

Exactly.

And so, yeah, can you just speak to that?

Yeah. So what I think is so important is a fawner is the one person in the world you say, oh, they're not an angry person. They're such a sweet, kind, loving person.

Right. Yeah.

But the reality is, is deep down underneath, they're full of anger and resentment. Yeah. Because nobody's paying attention to them. Nobody's meeting their needs. They're being treated like they're invisible. They've had to give up all their needs. So there's a deep, deep anger that slowly over time, the longer the person's in a kind of a committed relationship, starts to come to the surface and, and come out on a regular basis. And so I think for so many people, they don't even recognize that they're kind of fooled by their own narrative that they, they're trying to create, that they're unaware of the deep fear and emo— and anger and longing that, that is down there, um, and that they're trying to earn love, they're trying to earn getting their needs met, um, and it just keeps them very, very stuck in this place that they then feel like a victim because nobody's cooperating with their program. So one of the things, like, to me, when I— guys, think of it. Let me give you a very practical thing that this might help guys when it comes to fawning. Um, just take the money aspect. And how do many guys approach dating? Well, I'm gonna buy her a meal, I'm gonna give her flowers, I'm gonna buy her this gift. And they use Money, not as a genuine, I care about you, and I— no, when you back away and really get down to the underlying stuff, it's, I'm doing that so you'll be impressed with me, so you'll like me, so that you'll want a relationship with me. So money is one of the things that guys often use as they're starting fawning tool. And then some think that then entitles them to sex because after all, I did all this for you, etc. And it leads to all kinds of issues. But I like to ask guys sometimes, if you had went dating and you didn't buy the meal, you didn't do any of that, you just showed up and you were authentically you, they panic. Like, well, why would she want a relationship with me then? Like, I gotta kind of buy my way. into them wanting a relationship with me. And I go, right there up front is part of the problem. Um, you're still believing that you have to earn their love, and you're going to use money as a way to do that.

Yes, I've definitely seen that. Um, a couple things that I'd love to just touch on. It sounds like part of what you're saying is that Because I can hear the guys listening to this that are like, okay, that's me. I got it. You know, heads nodding, like checks being, you know, check, check, check, check, check, me down the list. What are some of the steps or the actionables that a man can take? You know, is it being transparent about what he's not all right with? Is it being able to express what he desires? Is it Like, what are some of the things that he can start to action?

Where I'd want to start with that is where many men go to is all-or-nothing thinking, that my motive is either all bad or it's all good. And so where they struggle with all this talk about fawning is they know that some of their motive is love, but some of their motive is very self-serving. So it's a mixed motive. And so they, they, they are afraid that we're framing it that it's all bad motive, it's all shame-driven. And I go, a lot of it is, but yeah, there is some genuine— because we all have genuine love inside of us as well. And so don't think we're putting this in all bad or all good categories. This is a mix. And so part of unfawning is learning to distinguish when I do something out of a loving motive versus a self-serving motive. That is so important because I don't want to throw out everything. I want to find out when I'm doing the right thing for the right reasons and the right thing for the wrong reasons and learn how to stop the one and not the other. But the second thing is this: Our approach again to health issues, to behavior issues has been: Here's the symptom. How do we stop it? And we start at the outside, and we put band-aids on. Stop stealing. Stop going to jail. Stop taking drugs. Stop being homeless. Stop blah blah blah blah blah. And so we set up all of these agencies, government agencies to fix all of these symptoms. And so guys come into recovery and go. Give me 4 things I need to do to stop this behavior. And I go, yeah, that's kind of the old way of doing things. You got to heal the shame, you got to heal the trauma, you got to heal the self-abandonment. Um, so if you're looking for a starting point, don't start at the symptoms, start at the core issues. Um, yeah, you're going to eventually have to stop, make choices to stop doing some of the things that feed the symptoms. So start with, I want to learn about my shame and how to heal my shame, and I want to learn about my abandonment issues and how to heal those, my connection issues, attachment issues, and how to heal those. But then secondly, look for your patterns, how you had to adapt as a child. to try to gain connection. So how your fawning shows itself, how you abandon yourself in order to please others. So begin looking for your pattern. So some people will be perfectionists, some will be people pleasers, some will be manipulators, control freaks. All kinds of different patterns will begin to show themselves. Because once you begin to understand your pattern, as soon as you see the first step within that pattern, you can stop it. Because right now you don't realize you're doing something until you're about 10 steps in. But if you understand the pattern, you can stop it a whole lot sooner.

Yeah, it's interesting because I think part of the Part of the salve in, like, a general way is transparency. It's transparency of wants, desires, needs, boundaries, and bringing that into relationships, friendships, family members, your intimate partners. And because that really does feel like the thing that is dangerous, it's like, well, I can't do that. I can't be authentic. I can't be real. I can't be transparent about what I'm thinking or how I feel or what I want.

Yeah. So what I say to clients is one of the things I look for as the first sign that a person's healing shame is when they go into a new relationship, for the first time they stand up for themselves. For the first time they express their needs. For the first time they set boundaries. Because shame is afraid to set a boundary because I need you to like me. And if I say no, you're not going to like me. Shame is afraid to be authentic because then you're not going to like me. And so what I'm looking for is practical ways to heal shame, is that I go in and I say, here's what I would like to do tonight. Here's what I think should be the guidelines for how our relationship progresses, about how much we text each other, about how often we see each other, about what we talk about. Um, then they go, whoa, whoa, whoa, you're freaking me out here. But that is where the rubber meets the road. That's where— this is what healing shame looks like. This is what not abandoning myself looks like. This is what respecting myself looks like. Because if I don't respect myself enough to meet my needs and to set boundaries, well, nobody else is going to either. And I'm going to attract people that keep abusing me and mistreating me.

Hmm.

So, the healing really has to Start with changing my attitude to myself and saying, I'm worth doing this. I'm worth meeting my needs. I'm worth setting boundaries. I'm worth standing up for myself. And then beginning to do that one step at a time in relationships, starting small but building up to, I'm prepared to be as big as you are. Not afraid to be.

You're saying that we can't do it all at once, Tim?

Why?

Why not, Tim? Why not?

Many will try, but they'll find a way to it.

I just, I mean, it's, I laugh because it's just such a common theme. You know, it's like we have all, I've used the, I don't know, I think we're different ages, but I played this game growing up called GoldenEye. on Nintendo 64, and there was a cheat code that you could put in. It would give you the golden gun, and the golden gun was a one-shot kill. And I've used that analogy on the show before where I'm like, every man comes into this work regardless of what he's dealing with, whether it's shame or attachment trauma, whatever it is, and he's looking for the golden gun. He's looking for the one shot. Let me just do this one thing, and in the next week, it'll all be taken care of. And it really doesn't work like that. And it's, it's almost like that needs to be let go of in order for the real change and transformation to take place.

Yes. Yeah. So actually, I'm thinking of filming something on this because what I've seen over the last 25 years is most people come into recovery treatment with magic thinking guiding them. And until they give up that magic thinking and abandon it, they're not going to get recovery. But as— so by magic thinking, it's that there is a golden gun, there is some magic fix out there that either if I take this program, I'll be magically fixed. If I get this therapist, they'll magically fix me. If I have this experience, I'll be magically fixed. But they're looking for that one event, one something that's going to take all the struggle away, the length of time, the difficulty. And, and so they're looking for a bypass to true recovery. And what I want people to realize is there's no such bypass exists, only in fantasy. And as long as you keep chasing it, you just prolong the waiting for recovery. It's, it's not going to happen until you realize it's going to be a slow, messy, step-by-step process. So an illustration is if you think of the tools and skills necessary to ride a bike. So we all wish there was a magic golden gun for riding a bike where we could just get it and go and ride a bike the very first time. But riding a bike, you gotta balance, coordination, muscle coordination. You got to be able to pedal, steer, balance all at the same time. It is multifaceted. It is very complex, very difficult. And that's why it takes weeks and weeks and weeks of a kid practicing before they're able to do it. And so, with that is hard work, concentration, failure, repeating, repeating, learning new skills each and every day until your brain finally is able to master this complicated set of skills. So, that's why when we talk about the person that developed a reverse bicycle and they changed how the steering wheel went, if you turn left, the wheel went right, everybody can understand that in a millisecond that, oh, okay, turn left and the wheel will go right. I— yeah, no problem. Got it. You got the concept, but it took 6 months to a year before they could master a reverse bike after they've been riding a normal bike for most of their lifetime. And so what you're doing now in adult life in recovery is you've been operating off your normal bike and its programming for years, and now somebody comes and says, do it this way. And you can get intellectually the concept, but it's a year or 2 or longer before you're going to be able to master the skills involved. And there's going to be a lot of failure in the process that you're going to learn from. And so I just wish people could go, I accept that recovery is not the way I would like it to be. And I'm going to accept the reality of it.

Yeah. Yeah. And I've found that recovery is a path and not an outcome. You know, I think that, I think that a lot of, especially men, we get in this place of like, okay, I've identified what the problem is, I need to fix it. Here's what the end result is. I want to get there now. And a lot of the times it really is a path. And it's a, it's an evolving path. I'm chuckling at your analogy because my son, I took him to the park yesterday and he rode his bike. And, when he shifted from those balance bikes, have you ever seen those? They don't have pedals on them, they don't have training wheels. It's just 2 wheels, no pedals, no training wheels, and they use their feet to kind of push themselves.

Yeah.

And then, they balance. And, he crushed it on that bike. He was a little zipper. He'd just rip around on that thing. And then, we got him a pedal bike and the reorientation to having to pedal his feet and having to use the brake and the fear and the discomfort that came along with that, it really has taken him a while to orient to it. But, I took him to the park yesterday and he rode the bike and he hadn't rode the bike in I don't know, like a couple of months. And, he was just so elated because it finally clicked.

Right.

I got it for him last year. And, multiple times, we took him out and I helped him. And, he was very averse to it. It was like, no, I don't want to do that. I want my old balance bike. I want my old bike. And, it's such a good analogy because it really is what happens inside of us where we're just like, I know how to do this, even though I don't want it, even though it doesn't feel good for me. It's just familiar. And it's so wild how the brain, for lack of a better term, just fucks with us whenever we're trying to move towards health and stability and connection and healing, simply because it's just unknown. It's foreign.

Exactly.

I wanted to touch on one thing before we close out because Well, I've— how do I want to enter into this? I think more and more I'm noticing— I did this piece recently about the rise of mental health issues and how I made a prediction that I think in the next few years, we're going to see more and more— we're going to see a rise in psychosis. We're going to see a rise in just people really struggling with more and more extreme mental states, which we're already seeing. All of these things are on the rise. And I think part of that is because of social media and the extremism that we're seeing in politics and in the media and yada, yada, yada, and other ideologies and whatnot. But I do think that part of it is that we've lost the tether in being able to have healthy, secure relationships. And so that as people enter out into the world and they're faced with all this extreme content, extreme experiences, extreme ideologies and belief systems. It's very disrupting for them. But one of the things that I've also seen to kind of tie this back into what we've been talking about is that extreme mental states can be a result, a downstream result of complex trauma.

Right.

And oftentimes, Because some of the symptoms of things like BPD or even other things like mild schizophrenia, some of the symptomology can be somewhat similar. And so I'm curious for you, 2 things. Number one, how do you distinguish those 2 things? Why is it that some more extreme mental states or challenges are downstream of complex trauma. What's happening there?

That's such an important question, Connor, but it's a big, big question. And I would say it's not as controversial as it was 10 years ago, but it's still got an element of controversy. To it. And I think how I would explain part of that is that the mental health world and designing the DSM were basically pigeonholing people based on symptoms. And there was, to me, a lot of valuable help in really kind of defining what's outside of the realm of normal. And And kind of pathologizing some of it. So that happened, but there really wasn't an underlying exploration of what's causing this. It was almost kind of assumed you're just born that way. But I think as the research has developed over the last 10, 15 years around trauma, we're starting to realize is that a lot of nervous system states because of being in danger and being in survival mode end up mimicking the symptoms of what has been called a mental health diagnosis. And so, what is it then? And it's like, well, I don't know for sure, but I think we better explore the trauma aspect. So, just for example, when you look at a child who is with complex trauma, who's abused or neglected, so they can't connect, they aren't getting their needs met, and they're feeling in danger because they're getting hurt regularly, that creates anxiety. Um, because now you're in your sympathetic nervous or vagal state in survival mode where you're constantly on alert, constantly looking for danger because you don't want to get hurt. anymore. And so the, the on switch gets stuck on on because you're constantly in that fear-based emotion of, I'm in danger, something bad's going to happen, I don't have the tools or support to handle it, this is awful. And so anxiety becomes the normal thing. Well, then that can look to a child like ADHD when they're at school because they just can't focus. So now they get branded with ADHD. Then it can look like ODD, oppositional defiance order, because they just— they're not going to trust anybody. They're not going to go along with anything because every time they go along with something, they get hurt. And so they're getting branded with all of these pathologies when they're just trying to survive in their trauma. And then they're depressed because they have shame. They don't like themselves. They don't like their circumstances. So now they're Getting depression medication and anxiety medication, all of those things. And it's really a heightened, stressed-out nervous system that doesn't know what to do. And then some go out of their sympathetic vagal state into their freeze or dorsal vagal state where they just start shutting down. And now they don't care about anything. Now they're just— they just Check out of life. They spend all day on video games, all day on their computer, on social media. Now they're getting into pornography, and they're getting branded with kind of all kinds of addiction issues, etc., because they just want to check out and not feel anything. And then you get a kid that's in their sympathetic state that becomes a bully because they just want to let all their anger out on other kids. So all of that is going on. Nobody's diagnosing the root issue. They're just labeling it and giving the medications for it, and the child's not getting help with the root issue. So over time, it's growing, not decreasing, but they're so disconnected from themselves, they're not aware of the depths of it in their subconscious world. And that often starts coming out. But just to add to it, there's degrees of trauma. So you can get a kid that has kind of mild anxiety, but you can get a kid that gets beat up every night by a drunk dad, and mom's always playing manipulative games on them and playing with their mind and backstabbing them and betraying them. And, and They're paranoid, and rightly so, because their world is so unpredictable and unsafe that it's much wiser for them in every situation to go to the worst-case scenario than it is to look at reality, because there's a good chance the worst-case scenario is going to happen. Well, now you got a person who's paranoid, a person that's coming up with conspiracy theories, and then— They just start hearing all these voices in their head that are arguing, and, and now they're not sure who to listen to because different parts of them are trying to protect them and keep them safe, and they're giving them all these messages, and now they're hearing voices. So trauma can work out in ways that look like every one of the mental health issues.

Mm-hmm.

And borderline personality You get a person who's been abandoned, a person with deep shame, has such a fear of abandonment that if you trigger me by making me look stupid, that you're going to abandon me, that I'm not good enough, I will explode. I will tear you apart. Oh, you got borderline personality disorder.

Right.

No, they just have a deep shame, fear of abandonment. So I love— I think there's great need for mental health professionals, but I think we need to start to explore, is trauma part of the symptomology and what's creating the symptoms? Because if we can heal the trauma, what I've seen in thousands of people, a lot of the symptoms start to take care of themselves. Yeah, not in every case, but in many cases. And so I'm not saying it's all or it's one or the other. I'm saying it's probably both, but we got to give equal fair time to exploring the trauma stuff.

Yeah, yeah, especially, especially attachment-based trauma, you know, where, where it's, you know, and I think, I think what's, what's I mean, I'm sort of outside of the therapeutic industry because I'm not a licensed therapist. And so, I don't pretend for an instant that I sometimes shoot arrows at the industry because I think that there are certainly things that could be much better. And, I think especially with some of these pieces, we've sort of medicalized things like BPD and we've moved to prescribe medications that the side effects sometimes are just appalling. And, I think what's challenging is that when from a lot of the men that I've worked with over the years who have that attachment-based trauma that's leading to intense mental states, A lot of the times, it's because at the root of it, it's what we've been talking about this whole time, where that sense of self internally has really been covered by chronic, almost debilitating shame, and a deep loneliness of, I can never trust any other human being. And I mean, any other human being. And when your psyche is so removed and isolated from everybody else around you, there's going to be side effects to that. And so, I've just seen relationships from in a therapeutic setting do things that medication hasn't. And, it's not to say that medication isn't necessary sometimes. I think that that's probably needed in a number of cases. But, the treatment for some of these things Rebuilding trust, helping that individual have a sense of worth and value, not infantilizing them. You know, I think so often when people move into those more extreme states, they really are treated like children, and it reinforces the, the core challenge, which is deeply disheartening. And so, anyway, I feel like the field needs to have a different conversation. I think that it is starting. You know, that I think that's— that pendulum is shifting a little bit more back to relating and relationality.

Um, can I just add one piece to this, please, Connor? Because I think it's important. So complex trauma is primarily relational trauma that takes place within the intimate relationships of a family and starts in childhood typically. Um, but I, I like to talk about the spheres of complex trauma. So the home is sphere number one. But then you can get complex trauma within your community. So if you're a Black kid within a white community that's racist, well, it's not a safe environment for you growing up. Or if you in your school have a bully teacher, then it's not a safe environment, or a bully kid. So your community can also create complex trauma. It's not as frequent, but it's there. And, and often it's systemic stuff. Um, Within within a community, but then you get a culture. So if you got a misogynistic patriarchal racist culture, well, it's not going to be safe if you're a woman or or certain ethnic group or certain um gen certain whatever you're gonna get kind of backlash on and not be safe. And so to me, what you got that's a sphere. Then you got beyond that to the world and what's going on in the world. So. What I think is when you get people in power, so complex trauma always comes from an abuse of authority, that the people in authority aren't using their authority to care for the weaker people, but to kind of help themselves, take care of their own needs. So there's an abuse of authority and oppression of those weaker. So when you get a culture where the people in authority have deep shame issues and they're starting to abuse and oppress people, you're going to get a culture that gets more and more polarized, more and more extreme measures are necessary to survive. And I think that's what we're seeing happening, is the world's becoming more unsafe, the West is becoming more unsafe, and so that's resulting in We got to do more extreme things to survive, but that then leads to the consequences of more extreme things, and that's what's starting to happen.

Um, hey, are you saying that we're heading to Mad Max Thunderdome? 2 men enter, one man leaves.

Well, I'm just joking. Some would actually like it to go there.

Right, right, right, right, right. Yeah, yeah, we've got the— there's There's a whole episode that you and I could do around prepping. You know, it's like, I mean, I think, yeah, I think there's, you know, you should be ready for any event. But, you know, there's some extreme things. Okay. I'm going to, I'm going to pause us there before we get too deep in the weeds. We'll have to have round 3 because I think we just, we're starting to touch on some things that I think would be very interesting to talk about. And I have been— I had Francis Weller on recently and we kind of traversed some of those things, you know, what's the cultural impact on the individual? And, and I think it's an interesting conversation and the sort of powers of oppression and, and, you know, governments and people in power. And I think I'm always of like two minds of that because I think on the one hand, things in some ways have gotten much more extreme. But on the other hand, You know, there has always been a crazy imbalance of power.

Oh, I agree.

And, throughout the course of human history. And, you know, I think that in some ways, that oppression has been so severe in different periods of time. So, it's a very interesting conversation, you know, because it's not like 500 years ago we had psychologists and therapists to talk about these things. Maybe we had shamans and whatnot that were were sort of supporting, but we also had community and so it looked different. But anyway, maybe we should have a roundtable at some point.

Yeah, a lot of fun.

We'll have a couple of us in here. But, thank you so much for joining me. And, we'll have the links in the shownotes to your YouTube and your website, but anything that you want people to know about what you're working on right now or where you want them to go specifically?

No. I just was in France and filmed for the Mentor Show a masterclass that's going to be coming out in September.

Cool.

So we'll be posting that and it's going to be around relationships and how complex trauma sets relationships up to not be healthy. And then our LIFT online course is— we're just seeing like it's spread around the world. And have amazing results. And so to me, it's— you can watch the YouTube videos, but it's once you get into a class and a course where you're working with people day after day and forming connections that the real healing at a deep level takes place. So wonderful. People can check that out.

You bet, you bet. We'll have the links to that in the show notes. For everybody that's out there watching, listening, don't forget to recommend it forward to somebody that you know could use this, would like this conversation, enjoy it. And, as always, thank you so much for tuning in. This is Connor Beaton signing off, and we'll see you next week.