Isolating to Manage Stress is a Trauma Symptom – YouTube Dictation Transcript & Vocabulary

1.there's an almost Universal symptom that people who grew up with trauma will tend to exhibit and it's a sense of isolation either you feel isolated with people or you literally isolate from them and that's the one I want to talk about because shutting people out may feel like it's the right and best and most self-caring thing that you can do sometimes when you're under stress and feeling triggery but it may be trapping you and keeping you stuck now let's just admit for people with cptsd being around people is full of triggers and by trigger I mean a stimulus or an experience that sets off neurological disregulation where you feel discombobulated you feel off your emotions are kind of hard to manage being around people when you are prone to getting disregulated it's like they're a basement full of mouse traps and there's no light and you don't want to go in there so at first it feels really good to just not go in there to pull back from people and to make an excuse or cancel a plan or end a relationship just so that you can get a little breathing room and you know keep your head together but here's the thing if you keep using isolation to manage your cptsd triggers just about every opportunity to belong with other people will gradually close off to you and if you think that's a good thing that is probably your trauma talking now maybe you're good at tolerating your loneliness I get letters from people like that all all the time I like being alone I hate people people are awful I have everything I need without anybody to help me and I understand that for people who were severely traumatized pulling away from people is sometimes is the most therapeutic thing you can do there's a period of time when it's too much to bear and I think there are a few people out there where they can manage to go their whole life and not deal with people and they prefer it but if you don't have a bank account that will support that if you don't have someone who gets your groceries and deals with you know your bills and things for you well isolating can only work for a short time I wouldn't say that learning to live without people is a virtue shutting people out it's not an accomplishment it doesn't make you the winner of a trauma game or anything it takes you out of the circle of life where where so much of our growth happens where so much of the good that we bring to the world happens and I'll talk about that but let me just say to people who brag about being good at being isolated I don't want anybody to have to be good at isolating when you're doing it by choice when you're doing it to do something productive that's called solitude it's a different thing I'm talking about isolating and it's better to be uncomfortable with people it's better to be sad about the relationships that are lost to you or blocked for you it's better to struggle a bit with the way that feeling feeling criticized feels or being left out after all you've been through and how badly you really just need to be included and supported I mean that's really what's needed right you can push the sadness down but it is sad what trauma does to you forcing you to be alone just to keep your life manageable and that grief and that discomfort that pushes you to isolate is the same grief and discomfort that makes isolation feel not so good after a while that grief and discomfort is the thing that's going to nudge you back into connecting with people once again later if you allow it and this time if you can learn to heal those triggers that make dealing with people so difficult you can start to connect with them one little step at a time and I'll explain how to do that in a minute but first let's talk about why pushing everyone away feels so natural for traumatized people and so energizing and uplifting at least at first so isolating yourself is an instant solution to the stress you feel when your cptsd symptoms are triggered by something an argument um you made a mistake you feel embarrassed you feel rejected or judged or ugly or you gained weight or you feel frazzled now remember when I say the word triggered I don't mean the way some people use the word to mean upset or angry I mean the stimulus or experience or feeling that sets off neurological disregulation your nervous system gets out of sync it throws you off and this is a core symptom of childhood trauma that's underneath most of the other symptoms that you might experience and disregulation is also why getting triggered by other people can cause your emotions to rise up and your mind starts to storting things you feel overwhelmed and honestly when you get that disregulated it can take days to bounce back and feel like yourself so with a price to pay like that there's a huge temptation to just avoid the triggers and stay away from people altogether or to use what I call covert avoidance and those are strategies that can keep you looking good like you are connecting with everybody but really you're just keeping your relationships as Hollow as possible just getting away with the bare minimum of interaction because actually showing up for those relationships feels like a risk you can't take you might not even be conscious of it anymore it feels like a threat to your nervous system so you you find a way to avoid it and get away with it now it might not be conscious but you're avoiding commitments canceling plans not being really present with people when you're hanging out with them this is really common for people with cptsd putting yourself out there feels like it's going to be exhausting it feels like it's going to be just a you know a marathon that never ends so it's very tempting to keep everyone just at arms length or to cut yourself off altogether and by the way if you feel that childhood trauma has affected your ability to connect and feel comfortable with people I have a quiz you can take and um you can check your symptoms and see if you've got some of the common ones there's a link to that down in the description section below if you ever want to take that also on the free tools page of my website it's called The Connection quiz so you might want to check that out so this is the third reason why isolating is so tempting is that social situations stress you out and it's just so easy to cancel if you're a little bit avoidant I'll bet that you've told every story in the book to get out of plans tell them you're sick tell them you have to work tell them there's a family emergency and then people go oh okay well you go do that and then you feel like oh you're off the hook now you feel a little piece of your integrity fall away but the relief feels like it's worth it or it feels like that in the moment and you might tell yourself that this is actually empowering to have that control over your time even though you're kind of being controlled by your triggers but in the moment it feels good to have that breathing space just to get people back out of you you know just leave you alone now honestly it reminds me of when I was a two- pack a day smoker when I couldn't deal with something I just step outside and have a Sig changes the scenery you get to take a break you breathe deeply the illusion of self-care you know is very compelling right hey I'm just you know I'm just breathing so we all want to have a little space when we feel overwhelmed and to have control over our time and our boundaries but the problem is when you're using isolation as your go-to strategy to achieve those things then it doesn't work not in the long run so the fourth way that isolating tricks you into thinking it it deserves to consume your life is when you tell yourself that yes you're isolating now but it's only temporary and you just need a rest you just don't like this one person or you just need a little bit of self-care time and in fact it feels like self-care it's like a little luxury Retreat right with some Hulu and a bunch of carbohydrates and ah this is the life and a little of that I'll be the first to admit is very very nice but if it's not balanced with getting out in the world some of the time moving interacting earning contributing admiring people supporting them being supported how does that feel actually how does it feel after you've done it for a couple of days in a row or a couple of weeks or a couple of years if you do it enough times there's a dread feeling that kind of takes hold of your life that can be really hard to push down you can try by blaming people or Society or what happened in the past you know that's common but you're human you need love and inclusion I know it's hard sometimes and I know you've been through so much already and it's hard it can be hard to fit in especially when you here like us you know we don't always fit in easily but there's this huge fact that you still have time to connect with the world you're meant to be part of this world you're meant to be part of the web of connection and yes trauma robs that from us but healing gives it back we don't have to let life pass Us by and just tolerate the days until what until our lives are over there's still time and it's stressful dealing with people but it's also stress ful not having them in your life so when you're promising yourself that soon soon you'll get back out there make the day that you keep that promise today and take a step toward connection again remember the longer you aren't out there the harder it gets it does and sometimes the isolation will cause you to go deeper into behaviors that trigger the urge to isolate so I totally understand that it can be kind of a downward spiral at least at first if you're not actively supporting yourself to stretch your connection skills a little bit the gravity of isolation can just sort of suck you down it can attract you to life experiences that generate overwhelm or exhaustion or anything that gives you a reason to pull away because you can then give yourself permission to keep isolating if everything overwhelms you that's when you know you're in a bad spot it's not going very well for you it will feel like the world is against you but usually the real problem is in here it's a trauma wound it should never have happened to you what happened but here we are we're banding together to heal now even if your trauma is telling you otherwise it's so important to heal the urge to isolate and to come out of loneliness even when it's hard and the first reason is you need people in your life I know you know that but and some of you are going to argue with me no I don't well we do we need people in our lives somebody's got to grow the food somebody's got to build the road even if you didn't have emotional needs for people your immune system needs to be around people your mental health needs to experience people your physical health needs to be around people and when you're connecting with people and it's not generating trauma for you it has powerful balancing effects on all the parts of your life being stuck in trauma makes us self-absorbed and enjoying some interaction with people can take us back out of that self-absorption which has a funny way of taking up all our mental and emotional space when we soften that a little that fear of people it creates an opening where friendship can form we forget that everything feels so black and white with trauma but there's a tide of connection that goes in and it goes out it goes in it goes out we put ourselves out there a little and we pull back a little and rest then we reach out again and it's a healing Rhythm connect protect make an effort rest another benefit of connecting is that being with people helps to keep your thinking grounded and I would just like to point out some people have felt a little hurt when I say this but if you've ever known people who aren't into people and they're hiding out and they're avoiding everyone maybe when you were younger maybe you saw people who had been doing it for a long time it's often older people you know because they've lived long enough for it to have been a long time and they've been avoiding life we had a guy in our neighborhood when I was a kid who would rage at us from an upstairs window for roller skating on his driveway it was just so smooth and nice and it was a little bit sloped and the rest of the sidewalk was really bumpy and it was the only you know we had those little like metal roller skate wheels that that was all we had so we needed a smooth driveway to experience anything like roller skating and so we would try to get away with it and so I understand he didn't want us there we he didn't want us messing up his driveway or I don't know getting hurt or something but he was so mean and so miserable just banging at us and I I can see now that he had lost his ability to be you know he just wasn't socialized anymore he was so shut down that he' become very rough on the edges you know a little feral and he probably wasn't as awful as he seemed but his emotions would come out like like glass shards you know just and I've been there there are fears that can get the better of us our negative thinking can keep escalating and escalating when there's nobody there to push back on you or give you a reality check and that's one big way that people like us can get weird I'm saying it we get weird and not in a good way I believe strongly that our happiness is not just a feeling it's something that develops as we grow into being our real selves and becoming useful to other people being of service to them helping them out a little bit not like being codependent not doing too much but as a participant being connected enough that you can show up for people you can say hello to people who pass you on the sidewalk you can check on a neighbor you can run an errand for somebody you can take a phone call from someone instead of just letting it go to voicemail you know if it's someone you know you can be kind to people even if it's just a marketing call actually doing this is a kindness not just to the other person but to you you need to be playing this role for your continued development or it traps you it's like a developmental barrier you can't mature if you're not having those interactions with people a little friction with the world as we get older but maybe even now we depend even more on other people to look after us when we're sick or hurt or need something and I've been in that place in the hospital with no one to visit for weeks not having anyone to drive me home when I was discharged and wishing I could stay longer in the hospital just cuz I didn't feel like I had anywhere to go for me that was a wakeup call that I needed to change and maybe you do too so think about making this comment just say as best as I can I'm going to make an effort to connect a little better with people so that I can help them and help myself when you do this you've laid the groundwork to begin becoming your full and real self because of course to do that you need to grow as a person and to grow as a person you need that connection in your life a little friction something to react to We need other people so that we can flourish and so that we can experience ourselves and therefore become more fully ourselves now it might not feel possible to you right now to step out of your comfort zone whether that is deep isolation or the kind that looks like it's functional but it's actually isolation because no one really knows you this is the secret when you learn to notice and heal your triggers your need to isolate is less and if you can start to get Mastery over those triggers those emotions and situations that set off your nervous system and make it hard for you to focus or function or feel okay or act normal you can then gently open your life up to more connection you're so not alone with this remember I told you this is an almost Universal symptom for people who were neglected and abused when they were growing up and it's not your fault that happened but now that you're grown you can be the one who heals it you can learn to spot the people who are hurtful and who don't belong in your life and you can attune yourself to the kind of people you do want in your life you can take it slowly you can you can be yourself that's what we do here and it works we're all works in progress right now and it feels good to start facing the habits that we formed to protect protect ourselves so that now we can become the people we really are it starts with seeing the spots where trauma might still be affecting your ability to connect now if you want to see a list of common ways that happens I have a free pdf that you can download right here and I will see you very soon [Music] [Music]