Am I in a trauma bond? Are we ALL in trauma bonds? Hosts Tracy T. Rowe and Cara Pressley find the answers to these burning questions on this episode of Let’s Red Table That. Psychologist, author, and trauma bond survivor herself Ingrid Clayton, PhD shares how her step father’s grooming led to her developing trauma bonds with romantic partners, even after years of studying for her degree. Discover for yourself if you are in trauma bonds on this episode of Let’s Red Table That.
Learn More about Ingrid Clayton, PhD
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Cara Pressley
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Tracy T. Rowe
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LET’S RED TABLE THAT is produced by Red Table Talk Podcasts. EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS Jada Pinkett Smith, Fallon Jethroe and Ellen Rakieten. PRODUCER Kyla Carneiro. ASSOCIATE PRODUCER Yolanda Chow. EDITOR AND AUDIO MIXER Stepfanie Aguilar. MUSIC from Epidemic Sound. LET’S RED TABLE THAT is in partnership with iHeartRadio.
Hey, y'all, Hey, what's up, and welcome to Let's Red Table that I'm Tracy t Row and I'm Cala Presley. How are you feeling about today's episode? Tracy, Okay, first of all, let me say this, I learned what trauma bonding is. I no, no, no. I brought my own narrative. I gave myself its definition of what I thought trauma bonding was. And I'm sure they're probably some other people who believe what I believe trauma bonding was. If you're out there, I'll if you hear me. So I thought trauma bonding was people that had experienced trauma, that had similar traumas and they connected and went through healing and bonded in that way. I didn't understand it to mean that you were in your own trauma bonding experience. You understand what I'm saying, M I do? I do? I do? Like it's more I definitely realized in this episode it's more of a subconscious thing that we are connected to and or drawn to people who have familiar behaviors that weren't as positive and or successful. So yeah, it's uh, it was eye open, and I'll say that it really was before we get into it, let's back up and make sure we know what it is. Trauma bonding is the connection an abused person feels towards their abuser and develops out of a repeated cycle of abuse, devaluation, and positive reinforcement. Healthline says leaving an abusive relationship isn't as simple as walking out the door. So that right which you know they say with domestic violence, with people that have suffered from domestic violence, that they leave seven times and go back before they are gone for good. I believe it, you know. I just feel like any abusive situation that when people here domestic violence of what have you, I think they all automatically think romantic, you know your partner. But I think it happened clearly. The season is showing this is happening more and more. Parent child relationship, any power dynamic, there's something many power dynamic people literally are abusing their power out here. Bless my heart. I really thought people were living the right way. Okay, well, speaking of people not living in the the right way, I'm gonna tell you who I'm sick of. Because this is a common thread. Dr Romney, maybe we can get you one. You can help us all these dog on narcissists. The narcissists are literally the common denominator for a good number of the things we've experienced. Am I right or wrong? They're live in their best life out here. I mean, I'm not sure if they're winning or not, but they're everywhere. They're they're losers because they're winning. They're definitely losers. But it's like, what is that that perspective that they are drawn to, that they have chosen this life of narcissism. Well, I can tell you that once I knew what the definition was, I was like, oh, well, heck yeah, I got trauma bond and which one do you want to talk about? The knee jerk for us is to start laughing, card like land to keep crying friends, all right and well? And as we go through the episode, I had more of a relation in the workplace than any romantic connection. I just was thinking and listening like, oh yeah, oh yeah, wait a minute, So that's gonna be interesting. I can't wait to tap into it. Now it's time to share with our online Red Table Talk community has to say about this episode. So I can kick this off first, right, So, Kristin Morrigan says, my goodness, that last couple got me. I came into my relationship exactly like Brianna. I had major daddy issues and didn't understand why anyone would want to be with me. So I tried my hardest to run my now husband off, but he stayed the course and together we worked through my issues. I got a little choked up on this one. Another great episode. Well thank you, Kristen. We appreciate that. I enjoyed it too. Gretchen Marie meg Guyer said, Wow, I took notes during this episode for real, this one, I think a lot of people can relate to. Gretchen. You are so absolutely right, because I want you to know you weren't the only one taking notes. Our very own car was taking those two weren't your car? Yes, I was notebook and all, So I understand. Tracy Brooke Chapelle said this was so phenomenal. I saw myself and Justin and his wife tears just rolling down my face as a serious truth hit me. Understand you, Tracy, great name, Tracy, and Kim Booie said I was engaged four times before I finally married at twenty nine. I was a mess in my teens and early twenties. Can't even remember a lot of it, totally blocked it out, but all rooted in my parents divorce and the breakup of our family. Glad I put in the work, made the change and found someone who helped me get to the other side. Been married for thirty one years now and enjoying the best years of my life. Oh that's nice, Kim, so good. One of We're gonna take a quick break, but when we get back, we'll be joined by one incredible guest from our Red Tabletop community. We're bringing a fellow RTT community member to the Virtual Red Table. Ingrid Clayton is a psychologist and author who comes at her work with a deeper level of understanding, and she is a trauma survivor herself, growing up with the narcissistic stepdad. Ingrid has worked to break the bonds of trauma in her life and support her patients in doing the same. Ingrid, thank you for coming on Let's Red Table Dad. How are you. I'm well, Thank you so much for having me, so much for joining, so excited for you to be here. Yes, Ingered, I have lots and lots of questions. I mean, I'm first off, you want to start out by saying that we're grateful you're here and we're gonna learn a lot. And we have a segment that we love. This is a out of the show where we reveal which moments made us pause, rewind, and listen again. We call it Wait, What So White? There were lots of white woods in this episode, Like several in this episode. One of the first ones, Dr Alfie said, you know how they used to say to W know was Ben, W don't know. But it's still the devil, right, But it's the devil that both of you are familiar with. Do you find yourself drawn to what you know even if it's bad for you? Well, if you're asking me personally, I'm sad to say the answer is yes. And in fact, this is why I'm so passionate about sharing my personal experience, because I never understood that even though I thought I knew better growing up in a narcissistic family system and addicted family system, dysfunctional, toxic, however you want to label at family system, I knew very young. I did not want this for the rest of my life. I wanted to do it differently, and I saught so much help and guidance and support to attempt to do it differently. I have three degrees in psychology, I've sat on a million therapy couches, I've been sober for twenty seven years, and none of this information gave me the release from what my nervous system learned as a child growing up in this home. And so I've really come to understand it that we almost have two distinct parts of ourselves. There's the conscious rational mind that can intellectually understand, of course I want to be in a healthy relationship. And then there's what I learned in my body through these very subtle, subconscious experiences about oh no, this is what I have to do to be safe, this is what I have to do to maintain connection, this is what I have to do to have a voice. And this experience is what ultimately led me to my chemistry of being attracted to unavailable, narcissistic, actively addictive partners over and over again, even though I was working so hard to try to do it differently. So this idea of the way that I've heard it is red flags don't look like red flags when they feel like home. Hold on, now, that's red flags and look like red flags when they feel like home. So I didn't know that it was the devil, because the devil to me, listen, I learned how to survive in the face of these sort of be devilments. That's I can handle that, no worries. I can do that. Jada said it somewhere in the episode. She's Oh, I can fix it. I can. It was deeply compelling to me because it was so familiar, and so I really had to learn that that crazy kind of chemistry that felt like, oh, there's so much potential here was not healthy chemistry. And in fact, my now marriage, that, thank goodness, the longest healthiest relationship I've ever had, felt night and day different entering into it than every relationship that I had before. That's really something. What you're gravitating to is what feels familiar, Right, it feels like home. Yeah, it feels like home. It's not necessarily that it's a red flag. It's home. It may be red flags for everybody else, but what I see it's home. Do you find that you're conscious of the decisions you make out of trauma in the moment, where do you look back later and see it clearly it's more of a hindsight, especially in the beginning as you start to heal your trauma. So I think, for me, this is I talked about my experiences in the lens of trauma at all because it finally allowed me to make sense to myself. Right. So, if I was going to all these therapists and going what do I keep getting in these relationships? I can't figure it out. The thing that finally helped me was to understand, first of all, the body will always prioritize safety, okay, And we have these trauma responses that are in effort to keep us safe, to help us survive, to maintain connection, even if it's not great connection. They are fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. And this last one here, fawning is not only my experience, but it's what Jada talked about and the eye can fix it. It's what Shay talked about in her people pleasing tendencies. So the fawning trauma response is when we abandon ourselves in order to show up for someone else. It's the heartbeat of codependency. Is what fawning is. When I fawn, it's in service of I'm going to abandon myself and show up for you. And then you're gonna show up for me to write I'm gonna fix your stuff, I'm going to help you along. I'm gonna smile when you need me to smile. But eventually that's gonna come full circle, isn't it? And unfortunately it often does not. And where we lay prosody there, that's right, And so where we end up is just abandoning ourselves and staying abandoned. When you say we're abandoning ourselves, is it's the exhaustion of it, like just subconsciously, like I don't think I can fight this any longer. What I mean when you say people abandon themselves, Like in my spirit, I believe that no one wants to really just abandon them I feel like they're doing all they can and they're gonna do all they can for someone else. But when you say they are, we know that the actor now is abandoning themselves. But I think in the moment it's like exhaustion. I think it shows up. It may be depression, it may be the whole entire experience has spiraled them into a sense of I gotta just let go. I've done. This is such a smart point that you're making and so Pete Walker is the trauma therapist to coin the term fawning, and what he says is that fawning is the last house on the block. In other words, when you've tried to fight response, the freeze and flight response and you have found them not to work in these toxic relationships, fawning is the last town. No. Nobody wants to abandon themselves. Nobody wants to say I don't matter. I'm going to privilege you because I don't really want to have any self worth. Right. Trauma responses are not conscious. These are based on our instincts. Okay, so when you think about an animal surviving in the wild, they don't think do I want to play dead when this other animal comes to attack? Do I want to fight back and growl up? They just do it. These are instincts. We have the same instincts. They're not conscious. And again that also allows me to have self compassion, because who would want to abandon themselves. It's so painful to have to look at how many times I personally did that, And a part of healing is going back and grieving everything that I lost every time I couldn't have a real voice or participate fully in relationship. What you just said there too about grieving is important because if you don't see it as a loss, and you see it's possibly still something I can fight for, something that's worth it, then you don't even get to grieve, to let go, to move on. You're still grieving in real time and hurt. You're just hurt. You can't even allow it to be a grief. Like a part of grief is the acceptance that it's over and done and I can't do a thing about it, you know, and you hate to say. It's a little bit easier when it's a person that's passed right right grieving people that are still alive. And that's why breaking these trauma bonds, it's one aspect of why breaking the trauma bond is so hard, because we also want to have hope. We want to believe that this person is going to come around and they're gonna show up and take responsibility and do right by themselves and do right by me. And who doesn't want to have that sort of hope and belief in humanity? And we have to look at the writing on the wall and that all the hope and belief in the world is never going to change another person. So if they are not exhibiting true behaviors, not talking to talk, I'm talking about walking the walk, then I think someone really has to look at maybe it's time to grieve this relationship and stop investing more of myself in it. Okay, So, Ingra we've been talking about trauma bonding. We gave a quick definition of what trauma bonding is in the beginning of this episode, but Angry, can you explain more thorough the what exactly trauma bonding is. So trauma bonding, it does often get confused with this idea of two people that have trauma that are coming together and sort of bonding over that shared experience. I think that's often how it's talked about. But what we're talking about in the literature of trauma is it's a hormonal, chemical attachment between two people that is based on alternate experiences of either abuse and neglect, sprinkled in with some normal behavior some what seems like healthy attachment or even love. And so there are two building blocks to trauma bonding. One is intermittent reinforcement, which is the receiving or giving of a reward rather at inconsistent intervals. Basically, this is Las Vegas, Okay, intermittent reinforcement. I'm gonna sit down to the slot machine. I know I'm gonna lose most of the time, but I'm pulling at lever because i want the big payout. Right, It's worth it to me to keep throwing my money in because I'm like, there's a chance. Right. That's basically intermittent reinforcement. The second building block is a power differential. Okay, So when we see it in apparent child relationship, through employment, through financial situations, all kinds of things. So here's the thing that makes trauma bonding really tricky, I think is that when we are abused or neglected, we are chemically wired Okay, our entire body. The mission again is about survival, So we are wired to focus on getting to the other side. Right. We want to be saved, we want to be free. And when the abuser, the person that's neglecting you or unavailable, when they are the person that brings you relief, the brain now associates them with safety. Here's what I'm understanding. Yeah, I had to jump in here because based on what you just said, every single dog own body that's bleeping has had some type of trauma bonding. I mean, and maybe not at an instagred bible. On some spectrum, all of us have had some measure of trauma bonding. Because what I understand you saying is, even if the person doesn't know that they're inflicting trauma, you could be traumatized by them, and it could still be the very person that could either do one of the two building clocks, that is, to be the person that gives you the reward or the person that is the power. This start this started to school. I'm just listen. I'm listening like this started to school. One too plus to is pick me and pick me, pick me, like the too plus to is four for me, Like I know that I enjoyed the attention of school and getting things right and it was a stellar student, right, So then when that started falling off, Hello middle school, it's going on here, you know what. But it translated into different ways for me, including like work. So when you said workplace, if you're dealing with a terrible manager and you and all your coworkers are all, that's a bond, not romantically. I think we often see it, and of course we're talking about romantic settings in this conversation here, but I can see that in the workplace. Yeah, it's definitely not just romantic relationships, right like the building box for mine were with my stepfather and then my mother. And so if we look at how the brain latches onto the positive experience right about, oh, I've been chosen, I've raised my hand and now I'm the favorite student or whatever it is. Once we're chosen, the brain does not hold onto this long term experience of every single time that you weren't chosen. Okay. It turns off the part of the brain that can think long term. And this is what creates the feeling that we need the abuser to survive. It's why leaving trauma bonds are so hard. It's why so many people go, why didn't you just leave? Right? They don't under stand what's happening in these deep dynamics in terms of a really hormonal connection. And so if you look at this intermittent reinforcement and go, okay, so the brain is only latching onto the part where, oh, thank goodness, we're back. We're good, right, I'm feeling good again, the relationship is good, and you're looking at these power dynamics where oftentimes someone's self esteem is so whittled away, right, so their sense of themselves has become so small that they genuinely do think that they need the other person in order to survive. It feels like annihilation to leave these relationships. It is bigger than devastation. Yeah, my life, My life, that's a common phrase. That's a common phrase I hear, whether they're leaving a job or relationship. Have you never heard someone said even no mind, it's probably in a moment of just exacerbated exhaustion, but my life is over. What am I going to do? We talked a little bit about Cheryl's story, but now we do want to really hear from you, Ingrid. How did your stepdad as narcissism affect your life and cause you trauma specifically? First of all, the building blocks for trauma bonding are right there when you have a narcissist, because narcissists intuitively know how to exploit this intermittent reinforcement right there, just masters at giving you just enough and then ripping it all away. So for me, I would be given the silent treatment in my own home for weeks, sometimes months at a time by him, where I'd come out to breakfast and my brothers exist, Oh, good morning, and how are you? And it was literally like I I didn't exist in my own home where the brothers, the sons of his or you all stepped there. He was stepped down to all of you. One was my iological brother, one was his son, my stepbrother. But he only ignored you. He only ignored me. So I was the scapegoat child. And what I now know, which is what I finally pieced together only very late in life, unfortunately, is that my experience with my stepdad was one that he had created many times before me in terms of grooming a young girl in the hope of really for me being he was grooming me to be his girlfriend. And so in order to try and achieve that, he was engaging in these trauma bonding techniques. Again not consciously, I don't know, and had that language back then anyway, But he would ignore me, ground me, steep punishments for the tiniest little things. And then one day he'd say, Hey, there's a new restaurant in town, and you love Italian food. I'd love to pick you up from school and take you to lunch, and then we'd go to lunch, and he'd say, you know what, there's this jewelry store across the street, and I have to do some business there. Why don't you accompany me? And suddenly I'm walking out with this ring that I've been coveting in the window. Right. So it's these types of highs and lows that contribute to this trauma bonding. How did you get to the point where you learned about his kind of pattern behavior with grooming and bread from me and really pedophilic behavior. Yeah, well, so there's two things. There's the story that I've always known, which was just my experience as I understood it at the time, and the experience I shared on every therapist couch that I ever went to. But two things never happened in my journey. No one ever named narcissism or narcissistic abuse, and no one ever named trauma. And so it was about five years ago when my stepdad died and I was suddenly called to do this writing and I wasn't even sure what I was writing, but it was stories from my own life. You know, I'll just make a long story short that I ended up for five years writing these experiences. What happened what they did to me, the trauma responses. And it was only then that I could see my own story through the lens of trauma as a trauma therapist, and finally give myself proper names and diagnoses for these things that I had been living with my whole life, and I didn't know, and you didn't know. Cheryl said that she was just not attracted to kind men. I just was not attracted to the nice guy. I'll never forget my very first competitive dance partner, so sweet. I was so disgusted by how sweet he was. And I was only attracted to chauvinistic man. This is because as the relationship she experience, we're unhealthy. That's right, angry. Have you found yourself re enacting your own trauma, whether in relationships or other ways. I re enacted it so many times. I lost count. I re enacted it so many times it makes me emotional to think about it. Even now. I genuinely thought I was broken. I thought there must be something so deeply wrong with me because I cannot get into a healthy relationship to save my life. When Cheryl talked about the kind person, I understand that so completely available kind people. It was a little repulsive, and I also thought, if you really knew me, you would not like me the way because my body was so unaccustomed to that kind of available, present and kind attention. And so after I left my first husband, I did a ton of work on myself. And what ended happening is I will never forget it. Sitting across from my now husband on our first date, I thought, he is so lovely and we are having such an interesting conversation, and he's so present. He had all of the makings of this kind, present, available type of partner, and so I thought, I think we're just meant to be friends, right, Like, there's no way we could be together. I totally get that. I totally get that. Great. I mistook that kind of crazy chemistry that had happened with all of the narcissist and addicted people before. I mistook that as a necessary ingredient to enter into a relationship, and so when it was missing, I truly thought, well, we must not have that kind of chemistry. What I didn't know is that kind of chemistry is unhealthy chemistry. It's a sign I should be running in the other direction, and so right it for rights, Yeah, So I finally figured out I need to stick around long enough and try on this thing that was so foreign to me, and I'm so grateful I did because it is a night and day experience. How long have you and your husbandmen together? We've been together ten years? Beautiful? Let me tell you. I know for me and Grid, my wife and I have been together for twenty eight years, and like you, because I had been in so many relationships, and interestingly enough, it really started for me the whole trauma bonding now that I better understand what that was or is. And me was with my weight and the negative, harsh treatment that I received from my father, and I didn't think I was worthy, right, I had this whole issue with image, and Sweetie accepted me, and even when I gained even more weight than I did when we met, and it was weird to me, I was like, are you are? Is this real? Are you sure you like what you see? Are you unconditionally loving me? Is this true? So much so that we've literally just got married on our twenty five anniversary Because I didn't believe it was real. It took me that long, you know, to be able to trust it. Oh my gosh, congratulations on getting married and staying together for so long. But I really identify with the like are you sure? Like I will say things to my husband on a weekly, if not daily basis where I'm sort of explaining myself for questioning him, and he'll be like, you don't have to do that, and I'm like, what what are you like? Really, you're really not judging me. I can tell you I feel better now that you have fifteen hundred degrees and you're burst and trained and you still suffering just litto me is having the same trouble you're having. I feel much better Car, what about you? No, Yeah, I have experienced some of these feelings, but as you gotta speak, I'm more so thinking about the workplace and just the my worthy. And I knew I was because people would steal my I knew I was because I would always get the promotion in the workplace. I knew I was because I was always the top rated instructor in the workplace. But when it came to this one taking a manager, she just couldn't quite understand why I was always being accelerated, to the point that someone called one time and requested that I teach a class because I'm just that successful. But she made me teach it to another girl that she trusted to try. Well, that's just flat out manipulation. I mean, it's not that she couldn't see it. It's not that she couldn't see it. She couldn't see it. She couldn't stand it. And my optimism space as I'm in learning, as I'm in learning these things, I couldn't fathom that somebody would think that deeply to hold someone back, and they definitely will. That's so painful. It's painful. But I'm glad that I've experienced that because I can now affirm myself over and over again and I'm aware of it. Yes, for the self affirmation, I'm that I'd love that's huge. Moum all about self affirmation. It's the healing, it's the healing, it's real time, it's real time. Jada and Shay both shared about feeling the need to fix people and people pleasers ingrid. How does this play out as a trauma response, Well, these are perfect examples of the funding trauma response. This idea that if I see a broken bird, I go. It's as though it gives me some sort of credibility or reason to be in the relationship. It's like I feel like I don't have any power. But if my power is I'm gonna help you, I'm going to be of service to you. That's fawning. That's the funding trauma response. Yeah, and same with the people pleasing. Shay talked about that such a great deal where she almost you could kind of sense it was like she had no sense of herself at a certain point, like no, of course you're gonna run in and I'm only going to confront that I don't want you here when we talk about a dresser, and it's like wait a second, because we don't know that we're fawning, right, So even just having this language, I think can alert us to you know, I think you said before, do you know when you're doing it? Or do you know more in hindsight? So if I don't know what a red flag is because I grew up in a house full of red flags that I was meant to have for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every single day. Part of how we know that we've experienced trauma, that we're engaging in trauma responses is to look at our history and go, what are my patterns? What am I repeating what am I doing again? That makes me crazy that I'm doing it again. And when we can put those patterns in this lens and language of trauma, it's like we can suddenly see it for the first time when we go out into the world and we go, oh, wait a second, I'm people pleasing here. I also think that word codependency has become so stigmatized. It's hard to see yourself in it. You're like, no one wants to be codependent, and people are like, why don't you just love yourself? As though it's just this choice. Our body is fawning for survival. But when I can identify it as a trauma response, I can remind myself in that moment, I can put my hand on my heart, which is a self compassionate position where I can go okay, ingrid, you are safe right now, your past is not happening. You are allowed to have a voice, it's okay to have an opinion, but I genuinely have to pause and attend to what's happening in my body because part of a trauma response is you don't know if it's happening right now or if it's happening thirty years ago, right, these things get fused. Trauma knows no time when it's living in your body, so it's us feels real. Trauma too is trying to just let me just skate past it, versus, like you said, stop at just what did that thing feel like? What was that that trigger? What should my response be? And giving yourself the option of responses versus just what I always do. So challenging that narrative in your head, right, Tracy, I know you mentioned that you've followed into being a people pleaser, So how did you break this habit for yourself? I was a people pleasing queen. Did you hear me? I had? I was? I really was. I'm so grateful I can identify that now. I'm happy to say that I was able to break that habit, but it took a long time. Part of it was I had this unbelievable sense of unworthiness. I would compare myself to other people and not feel like there was any value that I added unless I was making them happy with what I was doing for them. That it was the accolade I wanted to get that. Yes, that at a girl, that way to go, your special, your gift to me. I'm so grateful for you and have that acknowledgement. And I finally had to acknowledge for myself that after pouring into so many other people, as Jada said it, fixing other people and seeing the potential in other people and shoring them up, I was pouring out and I was empty. There was literally nothing left for me to have for my own goals and dreams. Okay, I likened it to this. I was paying rent for other people and I was homeless, right, That's exactly right. And I had to just stop and look around and say, let me get my stuff together and get in this house that eyeball and take care of my own stuff and get my own house shored up and cleaned up and ready, and then pursue some of my goals. I mean I literally put going and getting another's degree on hold and doing stuff for family. I don't regret it, because it was all part of a lesson, but I had to take stock and inventory and say, I'm fifty years old now, the majority of my life has been lived. What am I going to do when I look back and say, gosh, I regret this, and I hate that I didn't do that and have these different dreams and realize it's because I've been people pleasing and those people have moved on with their own lives. They didn't know what they thought. I enjoyed it because I made it. I made myself look so happy, Dawn. You wanted to Yeah, everybody breakfast, everybody breakfast. And I learned that no was an answer and that it was okay, and people would be okay with no, and if they weren't, they would have to move on. Some people will be okay with the no, and those are the people that get to stay in your life. But there's another saying, which is when we stop people pleasing, people will not be pleased. Well, let me tell you what I can say to that ingrid a man in Hallelujah, because the people that were not pleased blocked me and blessed me. That's right. But that's a huge transition and your nervous system to go from literally living for people's validation to suddenly not only are they not giving you validation, they might be mad and that can feel terrify. Oh gosh, I was so uncomfortable for a I mean because this was one that happened recently. This happened like within the last year. And when I stopped people pleasing for this particular person who is, now I know, a narcissist. I made a choice and did what Katie Morton calls the hug and roll. And I said, Okay, I'm creating these boundaries for myself. So now here's what I'm not gonna do anymore. And the minute I did that, y'all, I got cut off. I got blocked from every time. It's amazing how they do it. But I just made a good, healthy decision for myself. I'm taking care of myself. How are you angry? And I was. I had to sit with that. I was so uncomfortable, and I kept saying, do I reach out? And then it was kind of this duality of a girl. No, you don't call them. Don't call them. You get to live your life, you get to make a choice. You're grown. And then it was like, but they're upset, but they may be. Hadn't that right? And I had to just get myself together and I see, you've been hurt. You you go on, You go on with that, you have that, that's your phone, you hold onto your phone. I'm good us life changing, life changing, it is, and it gives me so much anxiety. Just hearing you talk about it, I'm like, oh no, I know that feeling so now. The women at the Red Table talked about how difficult it can be to choose yourself, and that could be society tells us we need others to feel fulfilled, or that as women we exist to serve. Oh my god, see societal norms. Not angry. You wrote an entire book called Breaking the Cycle of Trauma in Your Life and you called it Believing Me. I love the title, by the way, so you know what they're talking about. Okay, how has choosen yourself transformed your life? I mean, it's almost too big of a thing to try to contain in a couple of sentences. But for many years, as I was writing the book, it was not called believing Me. My working title was maybe it wasn't that bad, because that's the spaced in for so many years of minimizing what happened, minimizing what it did to me. And when we minimize what happened, we can't see the repercussions, and then we can't get the real support. And that's why this believing in ourselves, our own stories, what happened, What we're actually experiencing and giving it a voice is such. I mean, it blows the door open on trauma healing in my experience. And the more that I have a voice, the more that I am not hiding my experiences because they might hurt other people's feelings or all that people pleasing stuff, the more I am getting to know who I am honestly for the first time in my whole life. Like when you said, I'm fifty years old and I'm still doing this stuff. I think they're also just comes a time where it's like, yes, whose life am I living? It is mine? And when am I going to put yourself in the center. And that was a huge part of this writing journey for me was I kind of started on the surface with certain things, and then I just had to keep drilling down to what's true, drilling down to what's true. And there comes a point where I am no longer willing to abandon myself to sacrifice myself. I just I literally cannot do it anymore when I have the conscious awareness of it. And so by the end of the book, I was like, no, no, no, no, this is not about Maybe it wasn't that bad. The whole arc of the story is about believing me. It's amazing to me because it reminds me of what Dr. Susan Gleason said about taking on an archaeologists perspective with your own life for your own self, that you literally have to kind of dig and carve out some of what is in the way of you getting to the true core and essence of who you are. That you have to kind of dig, dig deep find what working you know, what is not going to be possible for you in your life, that isn't nurturing you, or something that you need to get out of your life. In the way that one of my former sociates, who I thought was a friend blocked and blessed me. You just never know, blocked and blessed. I'm taking this with me today. I love that so much. But can I just say one thing in relation to trauma bonding, because that block was designed in a way to see if you were going to go no, no, no, no, right no, yes, that is the cycle starting all over again. Right, that's the load, and that's the I'm not getting you the payout now, I'm going to block you, and it's designed to make us go no, I need to be rewarded by you. I need to know that you're okay, to know that I'm okay, and you broke that trauma bond by saying, wait a second, this feels terrible, but I'm going to hold my boundary anyway, because healthy boundaries and we're not used to them. They don't feel good, they don't feel like a victory laugh. They feel terrible, like you're talking about going Am I doing the right thing? Am I just being a jerk? Like maybe I went too far? That's what it feels like. But you said, even if it's all of those things, I'm still going to choose me. And over time you got more clarity and felt better about yourself. And I mean it's a perfect example of breaking a trauma bond with a healthy bound right. Yeah, look at you more for the blocked and blast. I love it. And we could talk to you for hours. I mean, this has been so amazingly therapeutic. What a normal gift. Thank you so much. This was an amazing conversation. I love what you're doing. Thanks for having me as a part of the conversation. Absolutely, thank you so much. Thank you so much for coming to the Virtual Red Table. We want to know how you're feeling about this new season a Red Table Talk. We are open to talk about anything with you, so please send in your questions at Let's Red Table that at red table talk dot com, or there's another option, leave us a voicemail at speak pipe dot com slash Let's Red Table that. Yes, we want to hear your voice. Leave us one will We can't wait to hear. We love that, and you know what else we love. We love our listeners. Thank you so much for listening to us. We want you to make sure that you subscribe on I Heart Radio app and please rate this podcast on Apple Podcast. Y'all know we want to five. We'll be back next week for another episode of Let's Red Table Back Special. Thanks to executive producers Jada Pinkett Smith, Falon Jethro and Ellen Rapington. Thank you to our producer Kyleigundehru and our associate producer Yolanda Chow. And finally, thanks to our sound engineer Stephanie Aguilar. Tape for Let's Let's Sear It's Taste for that pag