Surviving Trauma, Rebuilding Identity with Tim Fletcher

Foreign.

Welcome to the man talk show. How you doing today?

Very good. Pleasure to be here.

Absolutely. My fellow Canadian in the house, in the digital house with me, I guess you could say we're going to dive deep into complex trauma, which really is your, your area and I'm sure a couple adjacent and, and related topics. But one of the things that I pulled out where I wanted to begin. You said the worst result that comes out of complex trauma is how it changes your self identity. Can you just pull that apart and, and maybe give the listener some insight into that?

Yeah.

Can I back up and come kind of wide angle lens first and then zero in on that?

Let me just start by talking about what is complex trauma, because I think there's a lot of misunderstandings around that. And what typically happens is we start with kind of a basic understanding of something and it grows the more we research it. But a lot of people still stay fixated on that initial understanding. And so the original understanding of trauma was what we now call big T trauma, some horrific event that happened that was out of the normal, that put a person beyond their ability to cope. So they were overwhelmed. And so their only response was fight, flight or freeze. And so big T trauma, that horrific event stuff became kind of the focus. And so a lot of people would say, well, I don't have trauma then because nothing terrible happened to me. But the more we've researched, the more we really realize that there's also a little T trauma and that over 80% of people have that. So it's way more common, does even way more damage than big T trauma. But people don't understand it because it's really the trauma of neglect. Something good that should have happened to me that didn't. So my needs should have been met emotionally as a child. But they weren't. And so you go, well, how can that be bad? It's what everybody went through that I don't, you know, it's not a big deal. It is a big deal. It put your nervous system into high alert. And so what happens with whether a child is abused, big T trauma or neglected little T trauma, whether something bad from the outside happened or something good that should have happened, didn't. So almost an invisible trauma. What the child, from their, their perspective as a child is, it must be my fault. I must not be good enough. So now their self identity is being challenged by their circumstances, what others are doing or not doing to them, they're blaming themselves. And so a child whose needs are met, a child who is loved unconditionally they go, I have value. I must be lovable. But a child who's neglected or abused ends up with the opposite conclusion. I must not be lovable. I must not be valuable. There must be something wrong with me. The only way to get love is if I earn love. If I'm not genuine, if I'm fake, if I do what others want. And so it starts a whole broad ramification spectrum of things that begin happening where a child is drawing all these wrong conclusions and then believing the only way to have relationships and love is they got to change. They got to be something other than who they really are.

What are some of the most common early life experiences that often lead to complex trauma?

Most people will say that as a child, they didn't feel heard or seen, or they weren't able to connect consistently with mom and dad. So they could connect with, maybe, sorry, dad around sports, they could connect with dad around cars. But dad, he'd be in the room, but he wasn't emotionally available. Otherwise. If they wanted to talk about sex, everybody shut it down. If they wanted to talk about their fear, people shut it down. If they cried, that got shut down because, suck it up, go to your room, you're making everybody else sad. So what they found is there are certain areas they could connect, but there's a whole bunch of areas where they couldn't connect. And it was in those areas where they felt, something's wrong with me here. It must be my fault.

I don't feel safe now because I have to handle these problems all by myself. Nobody's helping me, nobody's hearing me, nobody's listening to me. So that lack of connection, not feeling seen and heard, creates a feeling of danger. This is not a safe environment for me. I think the second one for many people is not feeling accepted in their basic personality. So if they were a boy who was not good in sports, they were kind of looked down on and made fun of. If they were a boy or girl who was an introvert, somewhat shy, and their family was all about being outgoing because that made you popular, that made you important, then they were. They felt less than because they were an introvert, or they weren't good in sports, or they had interests in art or music, or all of kind of their basic wiring that makes them who they are. If they didn't feel totally accepted, but their parents were trying to force them into a mold that really didn't fit what they. Who they were, then that's a form of complex trauma. Because now I don't feel accepted, I don't feel good enough. I feel something's wrong with me. I don't feel safe. I can't be authentic, I can't connect with people, with the real me. I can't be vulnerable because then people make fun of me. So all of that then another one and I can keep going here, Connor. But another one that happens for a lot of people is kind of having a parent who's a bit of a narcissist, autocrat, military general, it's my way or the highway. I set the rules, you obey. You, you have to know what I believe. I don't care what you believe. You have to be aware of my emotions. I don't care about your emotions. So the child conforms to try and gain the acceptance of that parent. But they don't feel seen, they don't feel heard. Their needs they have to push down in order to take care of their parents needs. They have to put their wishes aside, all of that. So they make themselves smaller because the parent is making themselves bigger. Bigger. That's a huge form of complex trauma for many people growing up in that. And so you constantly feel judged. If you don't conform, you constantly are put down. So that's another one. Then another type that happens in a lot of homes is if you have a perfectionistic parent who if you come home with your report card with all A's and only one B, they don't go congratulation, they go, how come you got a B? So doesn't matter how good you do, there's always something that's not good enough. And so the bar is always too high for the child to ever get validation.

Rather they always get some type of criticism. So they're always being told in subtle, different ways why they're not good enough because they're not perfect. And so that's again another subtle form of complex trauma. And then I think another one that's very common is families that were almost afraid of emotions.

So everybody, dad could maybe be mad, mom could be sad, but the kids had to be glad all the time. You got to be happy. So what do you do with sadness and anger as a kid? You got to shove it down because if you express it, you get punished. You get.

Told you're a bad kid for having those emotions. And so emotions now make you bad. Certain emotions you can only express a positive attitude. So if you're struggling, if you're sad, if your dog died, what do you do with that pain? What do you do with all of that overwhelming heartbreak, you can express it. So you shove down. It's like trying to hold a beach ball underwater. You just keep pushing, suppressing, repressing all of these emotions, trying to only be happy all the time, put a positive attitude to it. So again, a child feels judged, rejected, not accepted, not seen, not valued for who they are. Subtle, but a form of complex trauma. A form of the child feeling not safe.

Then there's other families where.

There'S almost a set of social rules that. It's about image in the community.

So we gotta act a certain way in public, dress a certain way in public, talk a certain way in public in order that the neighbors don't start gossiping about us or the neighbors aren't going to judge us or condemn us because did you see your kid? And what they did, they. They were smoking a cigarette. They said the F word. Oh, you're a terrible family. And so there's all of these almost unspoken rules that are part of this community. So we call it a shame culture that.

Constantly judge the child unless the child totally conforms. Everybody's looking down on them, everybody's looking down on their family, which then causes the parents to judge the child even more because you're making us look bad. So it's all about image, honor, respect in the community. It's not about what the child needs, who the child is, can the child be authentic. It's about the image that we must portray. So those are just a few of the common ones that are very subtle. And what you see in all of those, there was no abuse.

There was just very subtle things within the dynamics of families and neighborhoods and cultures and communities that begin to make a child feel not seen, not heard, unsafe. Yeah.

It seems like the. Because I really want to differentiate and distinguish the complex trauma from. I was going to say like your run of the mill trauma. But I think one of the main sort of hallmarks is this kind of prolonged and repeated exposure to something.

Yes.

Whether it's, you know, whether it is this prolonged exposure to domestic violence in the house or physical abuse or emotional abuse in the house or this ongoing sort of experience of what you're talking about.

Right.

Which is emotional neglect or the suppression of identity. And so I think that that's a very important.

Yes.

Piece of the equation. Because I think when people think complex trauma, they're like. I think most people often associate it naturally with more. More along the lines of something like ptsd.

Yes. So two things with that. So we. We refer to the two types of trauma as simple trauma and complex trauma. And it's based on math, simple numbers versus complex numbers. And so all that complex means is ongoing more than one. And so it's anytime a child is in a situation from their perception, and this is key, where they don't feel safe, it's an ongoing feeling of danger.

So another piece just with that, I think that's really, really important is. So what we know from the vagus nerve research is that the vagus nerves perceives safety through three different avenues. So there's perception, the five senses, then there's interoception, and that's, it keeps track of all of your organs. If you got a bug on your, on a hair, if you got an itch, if you're thirsty, if you got to go to the bathroom, like it's, it's got all these receptors keeping track of and am I safe? Interoception. And then there's neuroception. And that's your vibes, your gut. That a child goes into a room where there's two strangers, it will run to one and avoid the other like crazy. Why? Because it senses one is safe, one is not. That's neuroception. A huge thing that comes with complex trauma is a child could be in a safe home as far as no abuse. But they sense mom stressed out, dad stressed out, mom's angry, dad's angry, mom's depressed, mom's too busy, mom's frustrated. So they sense their parents stress, they sense their parents anger. And all of a sudden, mom's not safe today, dad's not safe today. So this neuroception piece is the, the child is perceiving not through their five senses, but through their vagus nerve neuroception, safety. And that is absolutely massive. And so that's why we know that some children experience complex trauma in the womb. And the more and more research coming out because they sense mom's emotions, they sense mom's stressed out. And so they're already experiencing feelings of danger. So simple and complex trauma, complex is where all the damage is done. Because what happens in one time event, simple trauma, where we get PTSD is in that one danger, you go to fight, flight or freeze.

And then it's kind of resolved, you get to safety. So if you think of an animal, that is a deer that's chased by a wolf, it will go into flight and it will run until it's safe. And what happens when it's safe is all of the adrenaline and the cortisol in the brain stop. They get quiet, they take a Deep breath. And then they shudder. And that releases all the cortisol from their body. And then they can return to a normal state again where they're not in danger, they feel safe. They go back to all their healthy coping tools. What happens in complex trauma, and this is where it makes it so different, is the child tries fight. Flight doesn't work. They're too little to run away. They're too little to fight back. So adrenaline and cortisol aren't working. They cannot resolve the problem. They can't find safety in the external world. So the brain then releases opioids, opioids naturally, and enables them to go to freeze to a dissociative state where now they can retreat into an internal world where they find safety in the warm fuzzies. Internally fantasy, just disconnecting.

And that is a huge thing for people with complex trauma is they need to dissociate. But for most kids, they got to go further. Because I still need these two people that are neglecting me and hurting me, make me feel unsafe. I still need them to meet my needs. So I can't just stay frozen. Now I gotta fawn. Now I gotta be a people pleaser. I gotta conform. I gotta be what they want me to be to try to earn their love, to try to earn getting my needs met. So fawning becomes the ultimate way of trying to survive for a child. So what. What people need to realize is because the child can't do what that deer did and resolve the problem and then release all of that trauma from the body. But they're constantly in this unresolved danger state.

Is that they are adapting, adapting, adapting. If I do this, maybe dad will love me. If I do this, maybe dad will meet my needs. If I do this, mom won't hit me. If I do this, maybe mom won't be so sad. So they're doing adaptation after adaptation. And it's their brain going through a thousand different options trying to find a solution. But they don't work. They just.

Lower the danger a little bit. They let them survive a little bit better than without the adaptations. So if you look at those adaptations, what do you do? While I learn to. To not trust people, I learned to shut down my emotions. I learned to not care about anybody. Because if you care, it hurts more. I learned to manipulate people. I learned to be a control freak. I learned to be a people pleaser, perfectionist. All of those things seem to be helping. They let me survive. The problem is, 30 years later, you're trying to have an Adult relationship. And you don't trust, you manipulate, you're a control freak. You just destroyed your chance at a healthy relationship. So the very things that let you survive now destroy adult relationships. So what's key to me is you don't see the results of all that conforming and adapting until 30 years later. And all of a sudden you realize, whoa, what I thought was such a good adaptation.

This has messed up my life. This has messed up my chance of healthy relationships. And so people don't realize there's a very much a delayed consequence component to complex trauma. And all of those adaptations are really maladaptations. And now you have to relearn life, but as an adult, and that's very hard.

You were kind of touching on some of them there. But I think it'd be helpful to maybe just elaborate a little bit more on some of the core symptoms or patterns that, that you often see in people who have this complex trauma. Like how does it show up in. In adult life and in relationship?

Yeah, so we've got over 80 different ways that it shows up in people, and people can get that on our website. But. So we talked about the shame that core identity gets changed. Tolerate the dogs for a second here.

Mailman's dropping off mail.

Dogs are angry.

Or a bike just drove by, who knows? I think the second thing is when a child's needs aren't being met and a child is not feeling seen or heard.

They'Re experiencing a lot of anger. Nobody cares about me. This is not fair. This is unjust. But they can't show that anger. If they do, they get punished. So they usually have a ton of repressed anger that once they get bigger in adult life, their anger starts coming out. So they usually start having anger issues. And that is a common feature, especially within with men. Another one, though, for many is they don't go to the anger, they go to the people pleasing. So if I please everybody, they'll like me, they will accept me. And so that's where some men, as soon as they meet somebody in a relationship, they become the people pleaser. I'll buy you gifts. I'll. I'll attend to your every need. I'll listen to you for hours. I will say sweet things to you. They lose themselves to try to win the other person. And basically they set up the relationship to fail. Then there's learning to manipulate. I can't express my needs. I gotta learn to somehow get people to meet my needs. So I'll learn subtle ways of manipulating people, hidden agenda stuff. Or control freak stuff we talked about. Then there's trust of authority. They just have authority issues because all the authorities in their life have been bad. Then they typically, once they become an authority, they become a bad authority themselves. Because it's like nobody gave me the tools to know how to be a good authority. So I'm the boss now. I guess I can do what I want. And they end up being their dad all over again kind of thing without even realizing it. Then there's tons of fear issues. Fear of failure, fear of the unknown. Anytime things change, fear kicks in. Because I don't know what's happening here. Something new might come along and I might fail and then I'll get judged and. And so failure was never a good thing that you learned from. Failure always meant more pain because now you get criticized and judged even more. So fear of failure then fear of abandonment. Everybody in my life basically has neglected me, rejected me, abandoned me. And so now I'm afraid in every relationship that they're going to eventually see the real me and abandon me. Then wearing masks, I can't be authentic. So I have to be fake. I have to have a false Persona. I have to be what other people want me to be. So some become a chameleon. I'll be whatever you want me to be. And they get quite good at that.

Wanting intimacy but afraid of intimacy. Because what happens with intimacy is they get to know the real you. And what happened in my life is every time people got to know the real me, they rejected me. So authenticity equals rejection, not authenticity equals true intimacy. So what they don't realize is authenticity with safe people equals intimacy. Authenticity with unsafe people equals rejection. They didn't get the safe, unsafe people part because everybody was unsafe for them. But now they try to find fake intimacy. So let's do things that make us feel close without truly being vulnerable. So that's bar room intimacy. Everybody's laughing, sports intimacy. Everybody's got this common interest. We're going to win or lose and then we're all buddies. Then you got kind of foxhole war intimacy where we're fighting together, but it's. It's one topic. It's superficial. It's not open deep vulnerable across the board. So there's all kinds of issues around that. And then there's just. Yeah. So I don't know if that's enough to stick. It is going. But the. Yeah. There's over 80 that are. Yeah. Very common.

Yeah. So it can really have a wide ranging effect. But I think one of the Major pieces that you are outlying is outlining is that it really distorts the sense of self.

Yeah.

And the, the, the identity. This sort of like core identity needs to kind of shape shift. Chameleon Fawn is quite disregulated. There's a bunch of different malad adaptations that end up emerging all within the sense of how that individual views themselves very much.

And that's to me, again, core. So let me just add another piece. So if my core belief is that I'm not good enough, I'm not lovable because I've been abused, neglected, abandoned. People have not had my back, been there for me, truly love me. So I now fear abandonment because there's nothing more painful than being abandoned and feeling like a total zero.

But my, my shame, my core identity now says that anybody gets to know me will abandon me. So I don't want to be abandoned, but I believe that I'm going to be abandoned if I enter into a relationship. So what people then do is they go into relationships, but then they start becoming hypersensitive to criticism, hypersensitive to what they perceive as disrespect. They start looking for signs that you're going to abandon me. And that means they start reading into danger where there's no danger. They start reading abandonment in where there's no abandonment. So they're almost setting up abandonment when they're trying to avoid abandonment.

And that to me just becomes such a huge thing in relationships. So if some, like, if their spouse came home and just had a really tough day and didn't ask them kind of, how was your day? Like they might normally do, they just, hi. And one sat on the couch and turned on the tv. Their spouse goes, oh, have an affair. Why didn't he do that? They're starting to read worst case scenario into this. Instead of asking, are you? What? What's going on? Why? What? You seem a bit off. That's too scary. Because they might get the full truth. So, so they start this little mental game where they're starting. Then they start testing them well. Or they get dysregulated, they lash out. You're, you're, you're cheating on me. You're having an affair. And it just goes absolutely bonkers.

And so it's just typically what happens with people in relationships that come out of complex trauma is they're attracted to each other. So both people have their own wounds and baggage that they haven't dealt with. Then they get into a relationship, they're afraid of being seen and Being rejected, but they haven't dealt with their wounds. So their wounds keep getting stepped on by the other person and then they get dysregulated, which then adds baggage between them because they never resolve it, they never sort it out. And so now here's another topic we can't talk about. Here's something else that was unresolved. Here's something that's creating more tension and so it just gradually starts kind of a ripple effect, repercussions where it's breaking down slowly, lack of trust, lack of closeness, which then leads to more feelings of they're cheating on me, something's going on here, something's wrong, they don't really love me. And it just snowballs more and more until it often gets to a point there's point of no return that, that they hit.

Yeah, well, I want to talk a little bit about how we recover from this, how we deal with it, but I think there's one thing you kind of touched on it a little bit. But I want to just go deeper into that in terms of how does complex trauma affect a child's developing brain because it's such a formative time of life. So how does it affect their sort of neurological development and then how does it affect their nervous system development?

Yeah, so this to me is where tons of the research in the last 10 years has just opened up this world for us and it's just been given so much insight. So let's start with the brain. So if you look at a brain, it develops. The first part of the brain develops is the brain stem and that's responsible for your organs, basically all of your automatic things that your digestion, blood pressure, heartbeat, breathing, etc, etc, it's your ultimate survival. Part of your brain then above that is the limbic system, which is what the child has and that is an emotion center, that is a survival center as well. But it's important to understand that the limbic brain is very much emotions are greater than thinking. So a child is basically makes decisions based on how they feel, not based on what they've thought through is healthy. So I don't feel like feeding, walking the dog today. I don't feel like doing my homework, I don't feel like cleaning my room.

So feelings guide decisions, feelings. So you, you didn't say hi to me today. That feels like you don't like me. They don't care about the facts. Their feelings make their decisions. And the other part about the limbic brain is it's very much instant, it thinks very short term. So it's instant gratification, focus. So if you offer a child a very healthy food that doesn't taste very great versus a chocolate bar, they'll take a chocolate bar every day. Because it's instant gratification. They're not thinking 10, 20 years down the road, they're just thinking now. And that's important in survival too, because I need instant protection. I don't need to think through 50 options. I need to get safe now instantly. So then above that, you go to your cortex, your cerebral cortex, prefrontal cortex, and that's your thinking part of your brain that should become the manager. The adult part of the brain that doesn't finish developing into until you're into your 30s. And so your teenage years is a child transitioning from their limbic to their cortex. And that's why teenagers are often really smart. One day, dumb as a bag of rocks, the next day, fools wise, they're back and forth because they're transitioning between their two brains. Who's going to be the manager? What's critical to realize is.

That complex trauma danger puts you into your limbic brain. You're into your survival brain. So if a child grows up in danger until they leave home, let's say at 18, they haven't transitioned into their cortex very well. They are still dominated by their limbic brain because they've been in danger. And so most people coming out of complex trauma as adults still are very often instant gratification focused, can be very impulsive, don't think long term very well, very much reason based on how they're feeling, not based on how they're. The facts are. So emotional reasoning. So a huge part of recovery for most people coming out of complex trauma is not letting their limbic brain be in the driver's seat. And that is a lot harder than it sounds because they have let their limbic brain run the show for years. But that's, that's a key part of how complex trauma changes the brain. It changes your center of who's in control. Secondly is when you're in danger, you got cortisol pumping in your brain. So a child in safety basically has four good chemicals happening in their brain. They've got dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and endorphins. All of those make you feel connected. Loved, pleasure, all of the very good happy emotions.

They only are released when you are connected to safe people and your needs are being met. Then you get all those four chemicals. What happens to a child in complex trauma where you're in danger, you don't get any of those four chemicals. So automatically you have this absence of good chemicals. Rather, you get cortisol or opioids in the brain. Cortisol releases, gets the adrenal gland pumping adrenaline, get your energy to fight or flight. But what happens with all of that is you now have an absence of positive emotions. You have an increase in fear and anger because of the cortisol. Cortisol is designed to be released only short term in the brain. So you get the fight or flight like the deer, then it stops and you return to homeostasis. But what happens in complex trauma is you get cortisol pumping constantly. And what that does is it actually begins to hurt the brain. So the corpus callosum, which is the bridge between your left and right lobe of the brain, gets burned. And that now affects memory. So what happens with memory is memories are stored in. Parts of the memory are stored in the right lobe. Parts of the memory are starting the left rope. One's details, one's emotions. So if you smell something, the bridge connects it to the details of that smell. The full memory comes back. What happens when cortisol is pumping all the time and that bridge is burned is now you walk into a neighborhood and you smell something, and all of a sudden you're panicking, but you don't remember why.

Because you have memory gaps of the details. It's blank. Years can be blank because the bridge is burned. Or you get a person who can remember details, but they have no emotions connected to it. It's like they're reading a phone book. Yeah, I got raped. This happened to me. Zero emotion because the bridge has been burned. So cortisol really messes up the memory system of the brain. But cortisol also messes up your autonomic nervous system, your immune system.

So cortisol, so heightened stress system. So you got your, your vagus, your autonomous nervous system. And so you've got a sympathetic nervous system and a parasympathetic nervous system that work in balance. So your sympathetic nervous system, if you're in a safe relationship, connected, your needs are being met. You're going to have an autonomic nervous system that's imbalanced. You get up in the morning and your sympathetic nervous system gives you energy to go to work, to be productive, to perform. You come home, you switch to your parasympathetic. You rest, you have a good sleep, your body heals in that parasympathetic nervous system. They are in balance. Complex trauma you go to your sympathetic nervous system all the time because you're now in danger. You're now on stress alert. Your body doesn't have a chance to heal. So you push yourself until you burn out, basically. Or if that's not working, you go to full, and this is the ultimate, the freeze. You go to full parasympathetic opioid induced, where you shut down, you don't feel anything, you go to this internal world of self protection. So your whole autonomic nervous system is out of balance, which then causes your immune system to get messed up. Cortisol begins to affect your.

Your organs. It begins to affect your ability to fight off disease because you're not in your parasympathetic nervous system. So the body's not able to heal itself. So more and more research is showing cancers, heart issues.

Autoimmune issues are coming out of a heightened stress system where the parasympathetic can't come in and heal the body.

So it's just got massive repercussions. So what I want people to realize is complex trauma affects your brain, it affects your immune system, it affects your autonomic nervous system, it affects how you see yourself, it affects how you relate to others, it affects how you cope, because now you have maladaptations. So bottom line, it affects every area of life negatively.

Yeah, I think one of the things that's interesting about it is that it's, it's very.

I think for most people it's kind of like this hidden thing.

Exactly.

You know, it's, it's sneaky, it's laying in the grass, you know, lying in wait. Well, let's, let's shift a little bit and talk about recovery and how people can begin to work with this. So what are some of the key elements that are really required for beginning to heal from complex trauma?

I like to take people back to.

If a child. So let's think of an infant. So if they're afraid or their need isn't being met, they're afraid. So what does a child do? They get dysregulated, they cry, they panic. So what does that child need? They need a regulated person who cares for them to come in and connect with them, soothe them and meet their needs. So there's three components to that. Number one, it has to be a regulated person who connects with them. Then they have to soothe the child and then meet the child's need. But what they're also doing in that is they're teaching the child. So the child basically originally Needs a co regulator, somebody that's going to co regulate them. But they're teaching the child to regulate themselves because they're doing things that the child's going to learn and then they're teaching the child how to meet their own needs. So when the child runs into that again, oh, I know how to feed myself now, I know how to tie my own shoes now, I know what to do now. And I know how to regulate my emotions now so that I don't lose it. So that eventually they need their parent less and less to do all of those things for them. They can do it themselves. And then that's when we say, okay, you're a mature adult, you can now take care of yourself. So it's beginning to realize that when a child is in trauma, it's because nobody came when they had a need, who was regulated and safe and soothed them, connected to them and met that need. So what do they need now? Safe people regulated who they can connect with, who will teach them tools and help them begin to learn how to meet their needs. So ultimately recovery is.

Healing the wound. So I got to go back and be. So what did that child need if they got scared by a dog? They need mom and dad to hug them, but they need to be able to talk about it. They needed to know what to do next time. They needed to be able to kind of release the cortisol and just be hugged, have somatic type exercises. Let's go for a walk. Let me just hold you. Let's play some music together. That'll let you calm down. That'll let you kind of get all that cortisol out of your body. So there needs to be that initial healing of the wound, regulating the emotion, releasing the trauma, talking about it in a safe environment. And that becomes key. It's got to be safe, people. You can't heal trauma if you're still in danger, if you're feeling unsafe. But that means the child is willing to be vulnerable. The child is willing to express their emotions, the child is willing to ask for help. The child is willing to be real. All of those things. The child, that's just part of being a kid. You're authentic. What you see is what you get. So for an adult, what you have to do is relearn how to be a kid, how to be authentic, how to ask for help, how to talk about stuff, how to express emotions and not judge yourself for that. Not look down on yourself as being weak for doing those things. No, that that's actually strength that's reaching out and getting the help that you can't provide for yourself. No child feels shame for doing that. That's part of being. That's okay. But then.

So that. That's the basics. But what. So let me come at this a couple of ways, Connor, because if a child doesn't have that, what a child has to do to survive is they do all these maladaptations we've talked about, but then they have to provide a belief system that makes them feel strong. So only weak people show emotions. Only weak people ask for help. So they develop this whole system to try to convince themselves that I'm strong, to deny what's really going on inside of them. I'm afraid I'm hurting. I don't know what to do.

So that becomes part of what they do. And then they tried. I'm just going to become independent. I don't need anybody who needs people, who needs emotions. So what they begin to do is shut down parts of themselves that they think make them weak. And basically they become more robotic. I'm going to go to my head, I'm going to be an intellectual. I'm going to just solve problems. I'm just going to get information. I don't need people, I don't need emotions. I don't need to care. That's going to make me strong. So I'm going to become a soldier. That's just this. I push everything down. I'm just tough. I don't. Nothing bothers me. And they think that strength, when really what they have become is less human, more robotic and actually weaker, controlled by fear. But they spin it in a way that convinces themselves that this is strength. So for many people that have lived like that for years, to heal means you got to let go of a lot of lies about what strength is. Well, being a man is you got to be willing to be that vulnerable child again and not judge yourself for that as that being weak. And that means you're resurrecting parts of yourself that you've killed. You've got to go into emotions again. You can't heal trauma just with information. You got to connect with people. You got to become fully human again. You got to meet all of your needs again. So the ultimate healing goal is learning to meet all 12 of my needs, learning to connect with others, learning when to ask others for help and when I need to meet my own needs, learning to be vulnerable.

That is a relearning of life for most people. And so it's important to realize that for many people, the healing model that they think of when it comes to healing is really the medical model of physical ailments. So if I break my arm, what do you do? You get it reset, you get a cast, you wait six weeks and it's healed, you're good to go. And so people think, oh, I got trauma, I'll go to a program, six weeks, I'll be good to go. And what you realize it took you 40 years of living out these malaptations. They are thousands of programs in your subconscious brains that are faulty. You got to relearn how to live life. You got to relearn thousands of programs. This could take you years of slow progress to do this. This is where I like to use the illustration of riding a reverse handled bicycle.

So we learned to ride a bicycle. And at first we got to really concentrate. We're in our conscious brain. We're trying to get balance, all of the different movements of hands and arms. And we practice and we practice until we get good at it. Then it shifts to our subconscious brain as a program that just runs automatically there. Now we can talk to others, we can look around. Because the subconscious brain is now riding the bike. We don't have to consciously think about it. So 40 years later, you decide you're going to ride a bike where if you turn the handlebars to the left, the wheel turns to the right, it goes the opposite direction.

It takes people 6 to 12 months to begin to learn to ride a bike. Why? Because you got to reprogram a deeply trained subconscious program. So that's one program. Now you expand that to complex trauma, or you got hundreds of maladaptations that you've reinforced for years. So it's just accepting this as a slow process that's often messy and you're going to need a lot of help. You're going to need more than just information. You're going to need connection and becoming. Entering into your emotional world again, looking at stuff you've tried to deny and avoid.

And there's going to be an element of pain that you just cannot bypass. You got to walk through it. But as you do you, if you do it correctly, you're going to heal and the pain will get less and less and less.

What do you say to the person who hears that and thinks, oh my gosh, that's daunting. That seems like a lot of work. Where, where do I begin? You know, like, where do. What do I even start with? Because I think for men, you know, we do like things to be linear and logical and, and you know, I often hear a lot of men that reach out to me saying where should I start? And so maybe just give them a bit of a starting block.

Yeah. So it is daunting in one sense. It's like climbing Mount Everest. But if you're doing it with guides, the more you climb, the further along you get and until all of a sudden you're getting to the top.

So it's that daunting feeling doesn't last forever and it doesn't remain as daunting. The more tools you get, the more you grow, the more you heal. But where to start to me is always key because everybody's different. But for many men.

They need to start with information because they are logical thinkers. But they have to be willing to accept.

This is just a starting point. I can't just stay with information only. I got to be willing eventually to go to connecting within a group, opening up, beginning to look at painful stuff. So.

We have, we have kind of a bunch of different options for people on Tim Fletcher company so our in depth program is called lift. It's online where you're part of a group of six to 10 people for 75 modules of really understanding and working through your trauma. So you're getting information, self awareness, but connection, openness, vulnerability, coaching, all of those things. And then after you're done that we have ongoing stuff that you stay connected, you keep learning, you keep working on stuff and that can go on for years. Some aren't quite ready to start there, some are, but some aren't. So we have some self study stuff on just what are my 12 needs? What are, what is trauma that you can do on your own? You can just begin watching videos or some people just want to go to YouTube and watch Tim Fletcher videos and begin learning on their own. All of that's fine. But what we have found is for most people, if that's all they do, they, they grow and heal only so far, then they stop. They got to get to that next level of connecting and opening up and then really getting into the healing mode.

What, what are some of the signs that it's working, that someone is beginning to recover or build that resiliency, build that sense of self and identity and, and sort of working through it. What are some of the signs that.

People can look for? I think a lot of people find that their in inner view of their self changes. They start feeling better about themselves. That internal critic that's always putting themselves down, judging, finding fault hard on themselves. That Begins to change. They. They just have more respect for themselves, even kind of pride, because they see they're learning tools, they're applying tools. Then they're starting to see differences in their relationship with their kids, with their partner that are positive. They're not responding to triggers in the way they used to. And so instead of flying off the handle, they're pausing and saying, what's going on here? What am I afraid of? What would be a better way of responding than just getting angry or withdrawing and withholding love? And so they're starting to see changes and positive things coming out of that. More than that, I think one of the things that I see a lot is.

If you look at complex trauma, it's really.

On a spectrum from mild to severe, but there's another spectrum. There's always some form of dissociation. So what is complex trauma? I can't resolve the pain that I'm feeling right now, my unmet needs, my being hurt and neglected. So I'd rather be anywhere but the present. So I don't want to be present to the present. But then what comes out of that is, if I'm the problem here and it's my fault, I don't even want to be present to myself. So I just want to dissociate. I want to escape. I want to be anywhere but the present. And so what happens that they come into adult relationships, and all of a sudden they're told, you're not very good at being present. You're not present to yourself. You've abandoned yourself. You're not present to your kids. Your mind's somewhere else. I'm talking to you, but you're not listening. They just don't have a good skill set at being present because they're not comfortable in the present. They've always escaped the present. And so they find themselves being better able to be present to their children and that or their partner. And that is so meaningful. Because what causes a child to feel unloved? Well, dad's in the same room, but he's not present. He's physically present, but he's not here. He's somewhere else. That feels like rejection. That feels like I don't matter. That feels like he doesn't care. And so a dad being able to be present is one of the greatest gifts you can give to your kids. So what I tell parents, dads do all this all the time. My kids struggling. How do I fix them? And we go, let's send them to a counselor. Let's. Let's do this, this, this.

Just be present to your kids, listen to your kids, understand your kids, get your kids, see them, hear them, that's all they want. And that.

Will somehow just fix them. You don't have to be fixing them. You got to fix you and you got to learn to be present and meet your kids needs. And then your kids aren't going to be struggling the way they are. And so it's getting out of that fixing man, man set that we have in our minds to I gotta fix me and learn to be safe with me. Present to me, present to others, meet my needs, meet their needs. Makes a huge difference. Yeah. Yeah.

I think it's one of the reasons why so many guys struggle to let go of, you know, somewhat addictive behaviors. Whether it's porn or drinking, you know, a little bit too much, having a couple glasses of wine or a couple beers every day, smoking weed or whatever it is that I noticed for myself. When I started to take those things away, I couldn't, I couldn't hide anymore, you know, I couldn't not feel what was going on inside of me. And so, you know, as all of those things fade away and there isn't, there aren't all of these distractions or these escape vehicles, what you're left with is just what's happening inside of you in the moment. And I think that's the hard part that so many men face when you know, they're trying to shift, you know, a quote unquote bad habit or a behavior that they don't want anymore. Is that what they have to come into contact with is the. They've been running from inside of them for God only knows how long.

Right. So exactly. So if I can just say that another way, Connor, because I think you're on to such a core key issue. A child comes into the world and their strongest need and drive is to connect because they can't meet one of their own needs. So if they don't connect to somebody, they're going to die.

So that connection need is primal.

But what happens when they can't connect? They feel pain. They feel emptiness. I'm not good enough. I'm bad.

So there's a ton of pain. And those four positive chemicals aren't being released in their brain. So they're driven to connect even more.

I need to connect with somebody. If I can't connect with mom and dad, I will find something. So they will connect with, with a gang. They will connect with the neighborhood kids. They'll try to fit in, they'll do whatever to try and connect, sports, whatever. But then if they can't connect with people, they're still driven to connect. Now they'll connect with an activity, a video game, something that. What, what happens when as soon as they start playing a video game or eating food or having sex or looking at points, porn. It releases those chemicals so they feel the feelings of connection without true connection. So it takes them out of their pain without solving their pain. That's the lie of it. It's a fake feeling of connection that doesn't truly satisfy. But that's what kids in complex trauma are left with. I can't connect with healthy, can't even connect with unhealthy people. I will connect with something. So drugs, activities. So we call it chemical addictions or process addictions. And process addictions is any activity related stuff. But it's. I'm escaping my pain and I'm trying to create the feelings of connection. But as soon as I stop and this is where many addiction treatment centers just stop doing it. But now I just sitting with this emptiness and pain.

You got to replace it with true connection. You got to get the chemicals the right way. You gotta heal the pain and the wounds underneath. So that's where true healing always has to have that connection to save healthy people. Because without it you're just left feeling emotions. You've been running from your own life.

Well said, well said. Well I think that's probably a good place for us to, to pause. Where can people go to learn more about you? We'll have the links for it obviously in the show notes, but where can people go?

Yeah, so there's our YouTube channel just put in Tim Fletcher and there's about 500 videos you can watch and they're all for free, most of them. And then there's our website, Tim Fletcher CA and it has all of our self study programs, our online programs, just who we are, what we do.

Tons of information there for people.

Beauty, beauty. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. For everybody that's out there, don't forget to man it forward and share, share the episode with somebody that you know could use it. Maybe this is something that you listen to within your men's group or something that you listen to, you know, with your, with your significant other. But as always, thank you so much for joining us and tuning in until next week, Connor Ben signing off.