I lived my life in a trauma response and didn't even know it!

21 Jul 2025 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:39

In this monologue, Jodie Louise explains how childhood trauma can shape lifelong coping strategies that many people are unaware of. She outlines three primary trauma‑response patterns: (1) self‑soothing that can manifest as addictions, (2) internalized messages of unworthiness that lead to chronic people‑pleasing, suppression of healthy anger, and boundary violations, and (3) overworking as a way to prove personal value. The speaker emphasizes that these behaviors are unconscious attempts to manage deep‑seated feelings of not being good enough, and she invites viewers to recognize and break these patterns.

Chapters

When children are traumatized, one of the ways they cope with it is to soothe themselves, and then that's where addictions come in. But another way to cope would be is if you get the message that you're not good enough, that you are not worthy enough, then you might spend the rest of your life trying to prove that you are. And how do you do that? By being very nice to everybody, by never saying how you feel. Because they might not like how you feel, by never expressing healthy anger when somebody's crossing your boundaries, by working too hard to prove that you're worthwhile.