A Way Beyond the Rainbow

#44 - On the Effects and Characteristics of Complex Trauma (Part I)

July 12, 2021 Aadam Ali and Waheed Jensen Season 4 Episode 4
A Way Beyond the Rainbow
#44 - On the Effects and Characteristics of Complex Trauma (Part I)
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

*General trigger warning: episode involves discussion of traumatic events and may be triggering to some listeners*

This is part 2 of a four-episode series on understanding the origins and characteristics of complex trauma as well as paving a holistic path of healing.

In this episode, Aadam and I talk about how complex trauma impacts our self-identity and self-perception, contributes to a shame narrative, and leads to a myriad of emotional, cognitive and behavioral effects and characteristics.

How does complex trauma lead to the narrative that "I am unworthy, unlovable and not good enough"? In what ways does trauma affect our coping strategies? Why do we sometimes fear change, the unknown, and even success? Why do we feel chronically empty? Why do some of us escape into a fantasy world and dissociate? What are some cognitive distortions to watch out for on the journey of healing and recovery? These and other questions are explored in this episode.

Resources used in the episode:
- Video series on complex trauma by Tim Fletcher
- Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect by Jonice Webb

Waheed  00:37
Assalamu alaikom wa rahmatullahi ta’ala wa barakatuh, and welcome back to “A Way Beyond the Rainbow”, this podcast series dedicated to Muslims experiencing same-sex attractions who want to live a life true to Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala and Islam. I'm your host, Waheed Jensen. Thank you for joining us in today's episode, and joining me, again, on our second episode on complex trauma is my friend Aadam. Assalamu alaikom, Aadam! 

Aadam  01:03
Wa alaikom assalam, here we are again! 

Waheed  01:05
Here we are again! 

Aadam  01:07
Yeah, I'm looking forward to this episode, inshaAllah. 

Waheed  01:11
Same here, definitely, there's so much to cover today. As you guys know, in the last episode, we covered the definitions of trauma and the difference between simple and complex trauma, in particular. We talked about the causes of complex trauma, as well as how our brain goes into survival mode, we went into detail with regards to the fight-flight-freeze response, and then we talked about different examples of parents and caregivers, and how that impacts our childhood, our unmet emotional needs, the fact that the child feels unsafe, unheard, unseen, as if they're walking on eggshells, and how that manifests in childhood and adolescence. In today's episode, inshaAllah, we will be talking more about the effects and the characteristics of complex trauma. So, last episode, we talked about the origins, now we are going to talk about what happens as a result of all of that, in terms of our own self-identity, self-perception, as well as all the effects that it has: mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, and so on, inshaAllah.

So, a general trigger warning, just like the previous episode may have been triggering for so many of us, given that it involved uncovering a lot of emotional wounds, going back into our childhoods and realizing a lot of things that we didn’t realize or that we were maybe trying to avoid, this episode is going to be uncovering further issues that may be triggering for some of us. The same advice that we shared last time applies here: Please take it slowly, take breaks. If this is triggering for you, don't listen to it alone, listen to it with a friend, your support system, maybe a therapist or a counselor, a mentor, if you have one. Don't feel pressured to process this or internalize any of this, maybe think of it as an intellectual exercise. Just be curious about it and don't feel overwhelmed or expected to attend to all of this all at once, inshaAllah.

Waheed  03:20
Let's start off by talking about how complex trauma affects our identity and our self-perception. Complex trauma affects what we believe about ourselves, it shapes our self-perception, our self-identity, and then that affects everything that we do. As we go into these topics today and in the next episode, we're going to try to learn and to be honest with ourselves and with other people. This is going to be an exercise of vulnerability. I know that part of us, a part of our ego, or the subconscious, is going to try to diminish these things, to say that this is all a bunch of crap or mumbo jumbo, or that this does not apply to me, or let's just avoid this conversation altogether. But we're going to encourage you to be curious about these things, and see what applies to you and what doesn't apply to you. Not everything has to apply to you, but just see what applies to you and what you can take away from it. 

When we talk about self-identity, what are the things that influenced my development of self-identity? Some of the questions that we ask ourselves include: Do I have value? Do I matter? Do I have anything to offer? Am I lovable? Am I desirable? 

These are the inherent questions that have to do with my self-perception. A lot of us who have come from traumatic childhoods would say no. I personally feel that at some point in my life, I would have said no to all of them. I'm not valuable. I don't matter. I have nothing to offer. I'm not lovable. I'm not desirable. I'm not worthy. And anyone who has been listening to this podcast would realize that this is shame speaking. The shame that says “I'm not lovable, I'm not worthy.” 

Going back to self-identity, how do we find the answers to these questions? Like what makes me valuable, what makes me matter? What makes me desirable, lovable, worthy? Some of us would look at culture, what culture dictates or the media or society that we live in. What characterizes the ideal person? Maybe having a specific body (type), a specific look. Or maybe having specific abilities that give me a sense of worthiness. Or maybe having enough money or subscribing to a particular lifestyle. So that, to some people, makes them worthy, their identity is shaped by these things. For others, in addition to this, it can be how significant people treat us, people who matter in our lives, be they our parents, family members, our superiors, famous people, whoever it is. Depending on how they treat me, that gives me my worthiness. For other people, it's what those people say about you in your presence and behind your back. If I am spoken about in a good way, then that makes me worthy. 

Now, of course, as Muslims, we realize that our worthiness is inherent, we are born with our inherent worthiness, which is given to us by Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala, we are worthy creatures, we have been breathed into us by Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala from His Spirit and that makes us inherently worthy, just like we have spoken about in the previous episode and in other episodes as well. But in any case, all of these things actually shape our sense of self-worth and our identity. Now, when it comes to complex trauma, and going back to our childhoods, a lot of us felt that our traumas growing up have been our fault. That somehow, we brought these traumas upon ourselves. So, “I was neglected or abandoned or abused, because I am not lovable, or because I am not valuable, because I was a burden to my parents, or because I was too needy, or too ‘bad’.” Notice that I'm blaming myself here. “Nobody loves me so that proves that I'm unlovable.” “When I was growing up, when I was at school, etc., I was laughed at. I was made fun of regularly. So that means I am stupid, incompetent, or an embarrassment to others.” These are quite common cognitive narratives that we experience, whether we're kids, adolescents, or even as adults. “People call me fat, stupid or a failure, so it must be true." 

Not having emotional attunement with our parents, caregivers, siblings and families that we talked about in the previous episode, can leave children unable to identify, acknowledge, affirm, accept or act on the emotions that they feel. This is very important to know, because if I'm not receiving proper emotional attunement, I am not able to deal with the emotions that I'm feeling. Those emotions are just too burdensome. I don't even know what I'm feeling. I can’t deal with tough emotions. All of this (emotional attunement) is meant to be provided by caregivers, by parents, the ability to identify emotions, to acknowledge that they exist, to accept them, and to process them in healthy ways. This is proper emotional attunement. Unfortunately, many of us are not able to do that, because we haven't been taught by our parents how to do that, who themselves have not been taught by their own parents to do that, and so on, so forth. In the absence of these things, children internalize that their feelings, their emotions, their needs are not important. So, what do we do? We start hiding our feelings, because we need to survive in the home environment. Remember, “I'm walking on eggshells, I'm not safe. Expressing my emotions and needs is not going to be given importance, or I'm going to be shamed for them. So, I might as well just hide all of that.”

Aadam  09:42
Yeah, exactly. That results in, potentially 1000s and 1000s of responses from those around us and verbal messages that reinforce that idea, this idea that we're not valuable, we're not lovable, we're not desirable, we're not good enough, we're less than, we are a failure, we are a burden, we are a pain. We begin to shape an image based on the feedback that we get from our environments and the people in those environments, and this leads to shame. We've talked about this a lot in the podcast. We talked about it back in season one where we discussed the idea of shame and we talked about the works of Dr. Brene Brown in this context. And even throughout the podcast, shame is a common feature, it’s something that's talked about often. 

Shame can become a core belief about who we are, in terms of our value, in terms of us being lovable, and worthwhile. Shame is a negative belief that we're not good enough or lovable, or that we're a burden, and it starts to permeate into all corners of our lives, as a result of the negative affirmation from our environment, or the negative perception that we've had of those in our environment, due to their lack of attunement to us. This belief is shaped by these distortions and lies that we've internalized about ourselves. And as we said, it’s not true. The worth of a person is inherent. As Muslims, we believe this is something that Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala gives to all humans, and we believe that everybody has inherent worth that doesn't have to be earned by an action. It is there by default. The tragedy is that, unfortunately, sometimes our environments do not nurture this. In fact, they go against that, which is a terrible shame. 

If we think about it, like a house of mirrors, something that you might be familiar with if you've ever been to an amusement park or maybe you've seen it in a movie or a TV show. Within these houses, the mirrors are distorted, or they're shaped in a way that they give back a distorted reflection. So, all you see is a distorted image of who you are. If you think about it in this context, if the only mirrors in our home environments were distorted mirrors, then that's all we will know. So, what happens if someone reflects a clear mirror in front of us? Quite often, what happens is that people react and they blame the new mirror for being inaccurate and defective, versus the original one, which they would perceive to be true. And this is just so sad. The false belief that has been ingrained is so potent, that even when the truth arrives or when someone is shown themselves as they are, they can't believe it. They cannot let go of what they thought. 

Waheed  13:20
I've actually seen this a lot in the recovery community and in the healing community and I think that resonates with a lot of us. We grew up in environments where we internalized this idea that we are unworthy, unlovable, not beautiful enough, not good enough, no matter what we do, we're not going to be worthy enough. This is basically what you're talking about, like the house of mirrors, we received this reflection that we're not good enough. And then someone else comes into our lives, who cares about us, some people come in who genuinely care about us, and they tell us that we are worthy and loved. We're not going to believe them, because we've been used to that reflection of ourselves. We've been looking into a specific kind of mirror that they're holding another mirror and telling us “This is your truth,” we're going to immediately reject that, because our conditioning and our internal narrative has always told us that “You are not good enough.” We have been used to a specific kind of mirror. So, who are you to come and tell me that this is different? 

Aadam  14:12
Yeah, subhanAllah, that’s it. And we would revolt against that. We would we be in opposition to that. We might make excuses and say, “They're just being nice. They're just saying that to be nice. They don't really mean it. They wouldn't say that if they knew the real me.” This is typical, internal chatter of someone who experiences shame. Or perhaps even, “I wonder what they want from me. They must have a secret agenda,” because we're still operating on the notion that we're not good enough, that we're unlovable, that we're invaluable. When somebody does come along, and they see something within us that that is worthy, that is lovable, they find something about us endearing, their comments about us, their praise, and their recognition of those things, we just can't accept because it just goes against who we believe we are and what we've known our whole lives. 

Waheed  15:07
Absolutely. 100%. So how do we respond to this shame? Like you mentioned, we've been talking about Dr. Brene Brown’s work throughout this podcast and the importance of discussing shame and healing from shame. So, when we talk about shame in particular, the way that we respond to it is, “I must hide who I am, because if they see the real me, they will not accept me, they will not love me.” As we recall, Brene Brown defined shame as the fear of disconnection. If I see something or if I do something, or if they see the real me, then they will sever that connection. I will not be worthy enough in their eyes. So, what do we do? We hide as a result. And hiding comes in so many different forms. It's not like physically hiding, which can happen, like some people isolate themselves geographically, for example, they avoid people altogether, or they avoid particular people. Some people hide behind walls, and we're not just talking about physical walls, but like metaphorically. Sometimes they may be very social, even outgoing but they don't let anyone come close to them and see the real person that is them. Maybe they hide behind humor, they use humor as a defense mechanism or too much laughter. They crack jokes all the time. These behaviors hide a lot of pain, because they're afraid of people actually realizing how hurt or deeply wounded they are. This is one example of hiding. 

Another example of hiding is wearing masks, and many of us listening identify with that. We've talked about, the false selves that we create. We wear different masks, depending on what groups of people we are with, to some extent that some people become chameleons. We camouflage our identity and we blend in, and depending on the people we are dealing with, we switch masks. “I will be who you want me to be, just don't reject me.” This is the message that we give out. Now, this seems to work, but in reality, it does not, because it actually makes things worse. Why? We end up hurting ourselves, because we don't know who we are, as a result. Other people don't really know who we are. And this adds more insecurity, because there's always this voice at the back of my mind telling me, “Would people treat you the way that they are treating you, or love you the way that they love you, if they saw the real you?” That's always going to be playing in the back of my mind, creating more and more insecurity, because there's always a facade that I am operating based on. This creates more and more anxiety. So, this adds fuel to the fire, it really never helps. Other people create an image, like for example, you know, the successful image, the perfect family. More often than not, the image that we choose is often tied to our value system, to our culture. So, if our culture reveres this “perfect family” image, then we are going to opt for that, or like the successful doctor, successful engineer, lawyer, CEO, or whatever, then we're going to shift to that, for example. 

Another way of running or hiding is to work hard, to study hard, and to get a decent job or status. There's nothing wrong with working hard, studying hard and having a decent job or income, but if it comes from the fact that I can't fix my internal world, so I'm going to attempt to create a great external world, then that becomes problematic. If I feel that I am not worthy, I am broken, so I need to fix what is external to me, rather than focusing on what is on the inside. Some people are successful in doing that. But if they are not healing on the inside, they will have troubles in relationships, in their careers, they will end up developing particular numbing behaviors or addictions, and cracks in their image are going to eventually start to appear. If they have a bad relationship let's say, or if they go through a divorce, or they're going to go through a major stress in life, whether that's personal, familial, career-related, whatever it is, eventually they will break down. Why? Because maintaining that image takes a lot of energy, and the reason why a lot of people relapse in their addiction or in their recovery journey is because they want to take a break or a holiday from maintaining that image takes a lot of time and energy. Or maybe they want to cope with a constant stress, so they relapse or they resort to numbing behaviors and addictions. 

Ironically, that's when addiction or breaking down is a blessing if we look at it this way, because it actually tells us that now is the time to start working on ourselves. We need to start working on ourselves, we need to wake up. There is something that is wrong here. It exposes a truth in ourselves that we have been avoiding or we haven’t been paying attention to, and it tells us, “You can no longer avoid this. You need to start doing the work.”  

Another way that we hide is by being perfectionistic, and this hits home for me personally. We're perfectionistic. We set unrealistic high standards for ourselves that we cannot achieve. People praise us, they love us, but the problem is, the shame still controls the narrative. We judge ourselves so harshly, that this negative internal narrative, this negative tape plays in our head, because no matter what I do, I'm not going to be good enough. 

Another way that we hide is by people pleasing. We please people. “Whatever you want, just don't reject me. I'm going to do whatever you want to make you happy.” This can work for a while, but then we can't really say no to people. We can’t really set up boundaries, and that's very problematic. Some people end up using us because we're too people pleasing. People are going to start manipulating us, and we're going to end up becoming more and more resentful, feeling smothered, and things are going to blow up in our faces eventually. 

I've met some people who don't even bother trying anymore, because they're like, “No matter what I do, I'm going to fail anyway. So why even bother? I don't want to even please others. I don't want to care about other people. Screw them, I don't need anyone. Why do I even bother trying?” There is this fear of failure that makes them afraid of change, or to try anything new. As a result, all these examples that I've given, there are others obviously out there, but we hide from ourselves. There is a disconnect. We don't want to feel certain feelings, we don't want to confront certain truths, so we tend to hide, and that only fuels shame. It only adds fuel to the fire, that I'm not good enough, which creates more pain. And then, with the pain, we need something to medicate that pain, we need something to numb that pain, whether it's something that I do, something that I take, something that I engage in, etc. Deep down, the message is, “I don't like myself; I need something to avoid living in my own skin.” This explains why a lot of us who experienced complex trauma will resort to addictive behaviors, or constantly being busy and distracting ourselves, because we can't deal with internal pain that is gnawing on the inside.

Aadam  23:18
Yes, SubhanAllah. Certainly, lots of that ring true for me. Going on, other than hiding, some people might find an area of life where they consider themselves having value and worth. For example, in our body or in physical beauty, some people will spend a lot of energy and time looking after themselves, making themselves look good, because it gets them some appreciation from the outside, external validation. People will compliment them. People will tell them how beautiful they are. And it fills, temporarily, the void of feeling unlovable, undesirable, unwanted, and disconnected. So, they overemphasize or become obsessed about that aspect of who they are. 

Another example is sex and promiscuity. So, people might engage in lots of sexual relationships, to feel desirable, to feel connected, to feel loved. And they may even use that as a way to boast. This is probably more common amongst men, but not that women can’t do this as well. They would boast about how many sexual partners they've had, and share inappropriate details about those engagements, which is all about trying to fill the void of emptiness and gaining an appreciation in the eyes of others, albeit based on things that are… These are all crutches. Crutches to our identity, to help us feel better about who we are when we fundamentally don't feel good about who we are. 

Another example would be our intelligence. We would use that and we would double down on it and study hard and get great grades and do all of the necessary things that one might do to invest in that space and neglect other aspects of life. We might also become obsessed about the money that we make, or making lots of money, or the things that we own as a way of showing the world that we're successful and painting that picture. As I go through these, I'm just thinking to myself, so much of this is evident on across social media, subhan Allah. More and more we live in an age where actualizing these insecurities is the easiest it has ever been.

Waheed  25:57
And it's celebrated. 

Aadam  25:59
Yeah, exactly. And it's quite scary, because we all see things across social media that touch on some of these things. We should always just be wary and conscious of what we appreciate within others. Does it actually have substance? And does it deserve applause? Does it deserve praise? This is where our Deen can help steer us right in that regard. 

Waheed  26:28
Yeah, absolutely. This actually reminds me of the verse in the Quran in Surat al-Hujurat when Allah says, "إن أكرمكم عند الله أتقاكم" “The most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous among you” [49:13]. And so, taqwa here, righteousness or piety, is what differentiates us. In the eyes of Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala, it's not about beauty, it's not about possessions, money, status, education, or whatever. It's about piety. So, this is what Islam teaches us. But as you said, social media creates all of these fake illusions and the focus on the external rather than the internal.

Aadam  27:08
Exactly. Subhan Allah. Yeah. Other ways that people will use other aspects of life as a crutch would be through their career, their position in society, they might even use their religion in that way, which is incredibly toxic. They may also exhibit a lot of bad behavior which gets them a lot of attention. It helps people talk about them, and they become the focus of the conversation, that sort of thing. And you'll see that particularly with high profile people who have got large followings.  

The result is that there's always something to prove. You're always trying to prove something. But there's also always a danger of someone else overcoming you or being better than you in those areas, and that creates even more insecurity and causes people to see others as competition or a threat to their sense of self-worth. The value that people place is always on the external rather than the internal. As you said earlier, I think in the last episode, we become human doings rather than human beings. So, we're doing and finding worth in the doing rather than in the being. This also shows up in our relationships, shame messes up our relationships, and we may feel like we always have to be in one, because it's the only way that we can feel any sense of self love or desirability. We will jump from one to the next when one fails, in order to sustain that sense of feeling loved and being desired and being cared for and being worthy. People who experienced this type of shame long for intimacy. They're desperate for it, but they're also afraid of it. Because if you do become intimate with someone, you must show some level of vulnerability, you must let the walls come down, and that's terrifying for people who experience shame.

Waheed  29:22
And when we talk about intimate relations here, it's not just romantic. Even platonic, brotherly or sisterly love, that's also intimate, because there's an emotional connection and emotional intimacy taking place. And that also entails vulnerability. 

Aadam  29:35
Oh, yes absolutely. That's across the board. Any relationship you could think of. “If I take down the wall, they will really know me, and if they know me, then they will leave me.” You see this way we’re thinking. In relationships, people who experience shame will fear abandonment.

Waheed  29:53
A lot of the abandonment issues come up.

Aadam  29:55
Loads of abandonment issues, loads and loads. It is as an automatic response, I would say. I think for people, and I speak from experience, a lot of these things happen autonomously. They happen as though you have no control over them to start with. But as you learn more about these issues and become more aware about those responses, you can take back that control.

Waheed  30:21
It's beautiful that you said this right now, because it reminds us of what we spoke about last episode when you talked about the fight-flight-freeze response, because this is interpreted by the mind as what? As a threat. Being vulnerable is a “threat”. Being intimate in a relationship where I am going to lower my guards, this is a threat. So, what do I do? I either intimidate people, I fight back, and I push them away, or I'm going to run away, or I'm going to freeze and emotionally shut down, because my survival brain is taking over. So again, it's very important to put all of these together, so that the whole picture starts making more sense.

Aadam  30:59
Exactly. It's all interlinked. Absolutely. Then we may also feel incredibly jealous, and driven by our fear of abandonment, and try to control others so that they won't leave us. And we may also feel the need to be superior or come across as superior, because we feel inferior, deep down. We always try and oppose that dynamic and place ourselves above others or try our best to do that to satiate that lack that we feel inside.

Waheed  31:35
And relationships as a result are not balanced, right? One has to be superior and the other has to be inferior. And that is not an equal dynamic. 

Aadam  31:44
Yeah, that's a recipe for disaster when it comes to relationships. A sad result is that people who feel this way are attracted to similar people, or people with similar shame. People might find themselves asking the question, why do I always attract the losers, for example. We start off great with masks, but when the masks go down, it becomes ugly. All of these things set up our relationships to fail.

Waheed  32:12
Exactly, absolutely. 

Aadam  32:21
Now we'll move on to talk about complex trauma and how it affects our coping strategies. Coping is a learned skill, which we've touched on quite a lot throughout the content that we've shared so far. In a situation where there's healthy progression or learned coping skills that are healthy, for example, a child will feel fear over some type of situation and panic may kick in over little things, and parents or caregivers will generally sit down and teach that child how to handle the situation. As a result, the child learns the coping skills, so the next time it will take a more stressful situation to trigger the child to be afraid and to panic. Over time, the child learns how to handle stress as it grows up, where parents are in tune with the child's emotions and provide that guidance and they teach the child how to react and respond to their emotions. But if a child is in a home where they experience complex trauma, there isn't really a solution to the danger. In particular, the messages that they get from the people around them is “Get over it, you're such as so and so” (and we can fill in those blanks). We might even have experienced such words and experienced sentiments ourselves. The child has to learn other ways of coping. And if we remember, if we go back, the goal and the priority is to survive without getting hurt. So, these ways of coping seem to work for the child, but they make life worse in the long run. When we're teens, and we get to adulthood, the maladaptive ways that we cope, they're not sustainable, and they cause us significant harm and pain in the long run.

Waheed  34:17
Absolutely, because we used them when we were in survival mode, as kids, and they worked for a while, but then as adults, it's not going to work anymore. If we look back at the brain - we talked about this last time, the healthy response to stress is a temporary feeling, the natural way is to feel danger or a threat, whatever that may be. What we call the “doing” part of the brain, which is the limbic system, the survival brain, is going to be turned on. The thinking part of the brain, which is the prefrontal cortex, is going to be shut down a little bit. Even though it might be shut down for a little bit during the stress response, with proper coping skills and coping mechanisms, it's going to be activated, so that it helps to process and solve the problem that we have. And this is how we learn the coping strategies going growing up, and as you, Aadam, were talking about the ways in which the parents help their children process the pain and the problems and the emotions and the feelings and be emotionally attuned. This is how our thinking brain, or the prefrontal cortex, grows and learns how to solve problems rather than being emotionally reactive. 

Now in cases of extreme danger, we are wired in a way where the limbic system or the “doing” part of the brain, is hyper aroused. It takes over through the fight-flight-freeze response, and the “thinking” part or the prefrontal cortex is kind of bypassed and shut down. This is in cases of extreme danger where the brain must protect the human being. The limbic system takes over. Now what happens, as we said last time, with complex trauma, when more and more situations in our lives feel like extreme danger, the thinking brain is completely bypassed, the prefrontal cortex is shut down, and we are operating on the autopilot of the limbic system, the doing part of the brain. All situations seem like dangerous situations. We can't even think, we're just vigilant all the time. We are emotionally aroused all the time. It's so exhausting. We are overactive, the fight-flight-freeze response is activated all the time, and these neural pathways, those circuits in the brain have been reinforced 1000s and 1000s of times. So, this is our baseline. It's very important to realize these things, because in healing and recovery work, we learn how to rewire the brain. Remember, we talked about neuroplasticity tons of times. We need to build new circuits. We unlearn what we have learned, and then we build new pathways in the brain. Instead of being emotionally reactive, we're going now to assemble a toolbox to help us activate the thinking part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, to be able to make valid decisions and assess things the right way. We build more muscle in the process. Remember, we talked about the HALT acronym. Hungry, angry, lonely and tired. When we are triggered, for example, we build support systems, we reach out, there's therapy, there's counseling, and so on. The fourth episode in this series is completely dedicated to healing and overcoming complex trauma, inshaAllah.

It's very important to note that, even in healing and recovery work, when we go through stressful events, or traumatic events as adults, for example, there is a death of a loved one, or someone gets fired from work, if we lose our job, we have financial problems, if there are relationship problems or divorce or whatever, we will feel overwhelmed. Life is not devoid of stress. There's going to be moments in our lives where we are going to feel like we are brought to our knees. It's too emotionally draining and so painful. It's very important to notice this, particularly when we are on this recovery and healing journey is that this overwhelming stress, it shoots up and it brings our brain back to the most reliable circuits that it's used to. The original circuitry that we have been used to ever since we were kids, which is the extreme danger, the fight-flight-freeze response. Which explains why stress is a major problem with addiction, because a lot of people end up relapsing due to situations of extreme stress, because their mind shuts down. Their thinking brain shuts down and their limbic system takes over. What is the limbic system used to? Fight, flight or freeze, right? So, it's very important to keep this in mind, because part of healing and recovery is making sure that we can handle stress well, that we're not alone, and that we have those coping strategies that can help us overcome those problems. 

There's also another notion that is worth saying here. There's something that is known as the chronological age, which is the “belly button” age. So how old are you? I'm 30, 40. This is the chronological age. Whereas the emotional age is the age where we stopped coping emotionally, when the trauma took over and we were frozen at that point in time. So, you might actually have someone who's 50 years old chronologically, but he is emotionally 10 years old, because his brain is stuck at that moment. Ever since he was 10 years old, he wasn't able to cope with the trauma. He was on overdrive, the trauma responses were over activated, and those neural circuits were taking over. That's why we deal with people who, when they are stressed, they start behaving as kids. They either fight, they run away, or they freeze completely. This is beyond them, because their brain is operating that way. So, what trauma does is it freezes us in that emotional or that coping age. This is another notion that's worth keeping in mind at this point. So, with everything that Adam and I have been talking about so far in this episode, let us now look at the problems and the characteristics that we develop as a result of complex trauma.

Aadam  40:52
So, we're going to move on to talk about the problems and characteristics that a child who experiences complex trauma develops and carries into adulthood. These are issues that a child from a healthy environment wouldn't naturally develop, and many of these characteristics have to do with coping, so not getting hurt, surviving and getting needs met. For those in addiction, reverting to these characteristics often leads to relapse. They become part of the addictive behavior. So, if you relapse to these behaviors, you are on the road to relapse to your addiction. We are going to divide, as Waheed mentioned earlier, these characteristics into emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and interpersonal/relationship problems and characteristics. We will look at the emotional, cognitive and behavioral in this episode, and then the interpersonal and relationship problems in the next one inshaAllah. As we go through these points, try to see which ones resonate with you and which ones don't. Again, consider this an exercise without any judgment or shame. As we've said before, if it becomes too much for you, then please take a break, come back to this another time, listen with someone that you trust, someone from your support network or engage with your therapist or your counselor to help you unpack some of this stuff. 

If we start off with the emotional characteristics. The first one is that we don't handle stress very well. And we've talked about this already throughout this episode. But typically, people with complex trauma have an overactive alarm system. Many things trigger a trauma response in people that don't handle stress very well: A lack of power or control, feelings of overwhelm, and feelings of vulnerability, feeling threatened or attacked, conflict in relationships, and separation or loss from something important. Loneliness even, or a transition or a change in some aspect of life. Even disruptions of a normal routine or schedule can set people off, as well as reminders of past events. This can also result in anxiety or difficulty focusing and trouble sleeping. So, the difficulty in managing stress can have some serious and far reaching consequences.

Waheed  43:16
Absolutely. This is a very important point, and another point under the emotional characteristics is that a lot of us are afraid of change or we are afraid of the unknown or we are afraid of failing. If we go back to all of the models that we've described when growing up, and all of the dynamics that we've had, this makes perfect sense, because any change, any failure, any unknown has a lot of potential for me to get hurt, and my survival brain wants me to not get hurt. That's its main priority. Because I'm afraid of all of that uncertainty that comes with change, or with dealing with the unknown, or the failure, then I'd rather stay in a sometimes dangerous or unhealthy situation, rather than risking to change that situation. If I am in a situation that I'm comfortable with, it is predictable, it's not uncertain, it will not set me up for further hurt, because I've grown accustomed to it, versus if I'm going to change even for something that is healing or much better, where there's a lot of fear anticipated, because I don't know what's going to happen. And this is another reason why people are afraid from doing the healing and recovery work, because there's a lot of uncertainty. There's a lot of shedding that involves the narratives that we've been used to. It involves stepping out of the comfort zone and trying something that is uncertain, and that is very difficult for a lot of us. So, I think that realizing where all of this comes from kind of humanizes this issue, and it just makes us realize that all of us are in the same boat, and there is a chance for us to understand each other and it doesn't have to be lonely. You're not doing this alone. There's a large community of people doing this with you.

Aadam  45:15
I agree with that, and it's something that I've experienced in my life and sometimes still experience it. The next one rings true for me: the fear of success. People might wonder, “What do you mean fear of success? Surely that's what everybody wants!” But success is new territory. There's the potential that you could get hurt. It’s uncertain, it's unknown, and there's always a fear that the other shoe might drop. So life, if it gets too good, then it's pretty certain that something bad will happen. So, either we are afraid of what new situations success will bring, and then the expectation that will be placed on us to maintain that success, or the fear that if it gets too good then something bad will happen. We're anticipating, pre-empting something negative.

Waheed  46:08
Absolutely, and I think that many of us can relate to that. You and I relate to that, and I think a lot of listeners would relate to that, because if we are living life and things are going well for some time, then “Oh, my God, the alarm system is activated! Something bad is definitely going to happen soon!” Why? Because our brain has been used to that. We're always anticipating danger, danger, danger, that's our comfort zone. When danger is not there, and everything is fine and dandy, then “Oh, dear Lord, something so bad is going to happen soon.” If you trace it back, it goes back to shame, because “I am unworthy of good things in life.” This is what it basically says. And part of healing is internalizing the idea that “I am worthy, and life is full of good moments and challenging or difficult moments. And that's fine. That's life, and we deal with it as it comes. But it doesn't have to write my own narrative. It doesn't have to dictate how I feel.”

Another point is, we want to hope, but we're afraid of hoping, which follows what you said, basically. And as we touched upon earlier in this episode, sometimes we internalize other people's feelings, or we blame ourselves for what we have experienced as kids. So, for example, “Dad was mad at me because of me,” or “Mom was pissed at me or she was so angry because of something that I did.” So, what we used to do, we tried harder, we did extra chores, we got better grades, because we felt that they won't be angry anymore. That's our hope. It felt nice. Our parents were okay. But then they got angry for other reasons. The original reason may have nothing to do with us. They may have been angry at work or other things, or maybe they were just angry. And we did good things, it felt good, because they were no longer angry. But then something happens, and they become angry again, they might become abusive, and then all our hope crashes down, and then rinse and repeat. We start having new hopes, we start getting better, we improve. We go up, and then we crash down again, rinse, and repeat, rinse and repeat. It's up and down, up and down, cycling, lots of cycling. So, the automatic response in our brain becomes something like, “Don't get your hopes up, you will be hurt.” We see this in relationships. In adult relationships, whether we're having emotionally platonic relationships, or romantic relationships. We see this with recovery. People who have been sober for quite some time in their addiction recovery, or with jobs. “Don't get your hopes up, because if things are going well, that person is going to leave you.” “If things are going well, you're going to relapse soon.” “If your job is going well, you are going to be fired.” This sets us up for so much sabotage and a lot of hurt. “Don't get your hopes up, because if things are going well, you are going to crash soon.”

Aadam  49:21
Yeah, subhanAllah. It's that sense of trying to control every aspect of life before it happens, but doing it in the most detrimental way. Subhan Allah. Another point we want to make under this emotional heading is false guilt. You may wonder what is false guilt? This is where we're made to feel guilty for things that we did not do, and I know this rings true for me. Caregivers and parents will make their children feel bad about things that they haven't actually done or they're not responsible for. Some examples might be, parents say that they're divorcing because of the children, because of their bad behavior, for example, or the father blames his drinking on the kids. Or mum says her life has been hard since she had children. Things like this, and these are quite overt messages, but it could even be quite subtle as well. And, subhan Allah, children are like sponges. They take in what they're given from their external. So, they're made to feel responsible for things that they absolutely are not. 

In addition, and we've touched on this before, but the sense of feeling responsible for the emotional states of others. If someone is angry or upset, we assume that we've done something to bring that about. And in relationships, if our partner or a friend or someone that we are close to is angry or sad, we might start feeling responsible for them feeling that way. In other words, “I must have done something wrong or said something wrong. I need to try and make them feel better. This is my fault.” And the problem is that, once others learn about this characteristic, unfortunately, not everybody is kind and sincere and loving. People can use it to manipulate others, and they can use this against you. They can say things like, “You're not very loving, look at everything I do for you,” “You're not appreciative, you're so ungrateful.” “After all we've done for you,” “You're going to really hurt your mother by this,” for example, where parents might say this to kids, and the permutations of this are endless. 

In my experience, I've seen this being used quite a lot from parents in the Muslim community, in particular, where they would guilt their children in this way and blame them or make them responsible for how they feel like. “If you don't do x, then I'm going to be so upset, I'm not going to talk to you,” for example. These things are said, and it's just wrong. It's so wrong, subhan Allah. And I really wish that, as a community, the new generation of parents could learn this and not pass it down, because it's just so detrimental to children’s development.

Waheed  52:23
Indeed, subhan Allah, absolutely agreed. And another big topic is anger. We've touched upon this earlier in the season, when we talked about anger being a secondary emotion. There's always pain and hurt that is lurking underneath anger. Anger doesn't come on its own without any reason. For some of us who might actually be living with anger, or irritability that kind of bubbles away below the surface, we're just ticking time bombs. Something is going to just poke at us, and we're going to explode. Some of us may have been angry for as long as they remember. That's kind of like “baseline”. But we're not sure why we're angry, but it's just there. Some of us would deny that we're angry, but it's their normal. People would say that this person is really angry, but he’s in denial, he doesn't even realize or she doesn't even realize that they're angry. Others are afraid of their anger, because if they ever gave into it, they are afraid that they would go into this black rage. They're afraid of what they might do. They feel like they may turn into the Hulk and destroy everything and everyone. That is bubbling inside, it is repressed, and it’s been repressed for a very long time. 

Ironically, some are addicted to their anger, because it gives them energy, it gives them a rush. Again, if we think about those pathways that we talked about, cortisol, adrenaline, the stress hormones, the high blood pressure, this excitement that's going on, people can become addicted to this and the energy, the rush and the anger that's all associated with that. Speaking of addiction recovery, as we said, stressful situations are very risky, because they can cause a person to relapse. Anger is something to take into account, because anger can actually be a very big trigger. It is a very big trigger for me personally. And some people, when they get angry, they might explode, and they would throw away their sobriety altogether. If we don't deal with anger, it gets in the way of healthy recovery. So, this is very important to take into account. And for many of us who come from homes of complex trauma, we have been punished if we expressed anger, it was always looked down upon. Parents were the only ones who were allowed to get angry, and anger was considered “bad” for anyone else. We were punished if we got angry. So, the only option that we had when we were angry was to stuff that anger, to not let it out. We know what happens to anger when it's repressed and repressed, it will eventually explode. We don't know when, but we know for sure that it will. 

So, what happened to this anger as we grew up? This anger had to come out in some way. So some of us may have resorted to bullying other people. If we look at bullies, particularly the kids who bully other kids, or teens who bully other teens, there are traumas happening that forced them to bully others. We see kids or adolescents who are cruel to animals, for example, or even adults who do that. But that is a form of anger coming out. There is a reason why people do that. They're venting their anger onto weaker people, weaker creatures or weaker things. They might feel guilty afterwards. But with time, what happens is that once they're used to that anger cycling, it becomes very hard to let go of that, and the heart hardens as a result. We get to a point where we don't even feel guilty anymore, it just becomes our new baseline 

And, again, anger is not good or bad. It is just an emotion. It's a secondary emotion and lets you know that there are things that are not going the way that you want them to. It's just a signal. It's coming there to tell you, “Hey, there's something going on!” Why are we usually angry? Maybe someone is being selfish, and they're denying us something that is our right. So, we might be angry at that. Other times we are angry because something is morally wrong, and by morally wrong, there are four things that we need to take into account: Here, we're talking about love, respect, truth, and justice. 

When we talk about love, we're talking about faithfulness. So, if there's any unfaithfulness going on, we're going to be angry. Unfaithfulness is morally wrong. When we talk about respect, anything that violates respect in the form of disrespect is going to cause us to be angry. If I'm disrespected, or if someone that I care about is disrespected, I'm going to be angry. Or if anything violates truth, meaning dishonesty or lies, I'm going to be angry. Or if anything violates justice, like anything that is unfair, that is happening to me or to my loved ones, or to the community, the global community, for example, what's happening in Palestine, in Syria, all over the Muslim communities, all over the world, this is going to make me feel angry. Anger kicks in to help us change the circumstances to help us make a difference. In this case, anger with the energy that it comes with, it helps us fight for change, so that life becomes healthier. But when we don't channel it in healthy ways, then it becomes destructive. 

Focusing on these things, respect, justice, truth, and love, these are important to highlight, because for people who are on a journey of healing and recovery, usually the opposite of these things - the lack of respect, lack of justice, lack of truth, lack of love - these are triggers. For people who have come from backgrounds of complex trauma, many of us have stuffed down our healthy responses to anger as we grew up, so these issues have themselves become trigger buttons. We can go from zero to 100 in nanoseconds, and it can do a lot of damage when we are angry, because of these matters. As you, Aadam, were talking about false guilt - when we are guilted into things that are not our fault, it often results in anger being directed towards ourselves. We beat ourselves up, “I am wrong, I must have done something wrong, I am not worthy.” And it can manifest in self harm, like self-mutilation and self-destruction. 

It's important to know that not all anger is explosive. Not everyone who's angry is going to explode and damage and what not. A lot of the anger is actually sneaky. Most of it is sneaky. So, it manifests itself as passive-aggressive behavior, as underhanded actions or words or whatever. And that creates more anger for other people, and then those people are going to anger me, and then I'm going to anger them, and it becomes a vicious cycle. So, all in all, what we're trying to say is that all of this anger stuff, it hinders healthy coping and recovery. And that is very important to navigate and be able to manage in healthy ways.

Aadam  59:52
I agree with everything that you've said. I have personally experienced lots of anger. At the end of it, it just makes you feel really bad. For me personally it’s always made me feel like it's not who I want to be or how I want to be. So, if I react from that place, oftentimes the results or actions that I've taken are not how I want to be or how I want to behave, subhan Allah. So getting this under control is very, very important. And being given some type of outlet to express the anger, or rather express the hurt that sits beneath the anger, because anger is the surface level emotion. Let's get to the real hurt and pain that's beneath it. And if you can do that, then it's so much easier to dissipate that anger. 

Waheed  1:00:42
100%. InshaAllah. 

Aadam  1:00:45
The next characteristic that we want to talk about is being unstable emotionally. This might be characterized by frequent mood changes, emotions that are easily aroused and intense and sometimes even out of proportion to an event or circumstance. I can attest to having felt this at times, where normal things are happening in life, but you feel like you're being swung like a pendulum from one emotion to the next. The events seem normal to others on the outside, but you just don't feel like you're in control at all. There's a real sense of a lack of control, and sometimes we don't realize that’s what's happening. All we know is we just feel out of sorts. It can also make us feel antsy, fidgety, restless even. It can often even result in depression, frequent feelings of being down, and miserable, hopeless, pessimistic about the future. Wondering whether life is worth it, and having a really hard time recovering from those types of moods. 

It can also fuel anxiety, so intense feelings of being nervous, or tense, panic, all of these things being over the top and out of proportion to what is happening in life. We can absolutely flip out or zone out under stress, and it becomes impossible to reason with ourselves or others that are experiencing it in those moments. It can also make us fear change and the unknown. We can feel panicked about things that we can't see or control or aren't familiar with. There is a real fear of falling apart or losing control or doing something embarrassing. 

Also, the worry about the negative effects of past unpleasant experiences and the future negative possibilities, this constant fear of what has passed and how that might influence our present. And then the fear of what has not yet transpired. So, we're never actually here in the now. Essentially, we're either worrying about the past or berating ourselves for the past or we're worrying about the future. The present just gets lost, subhan Allah. As you'll see when we go on to episode four (in this series), we will talk about how we can heal some of this. Being present is one of those key things that we'll talk about, and how you can cultivate that in your life.

Waheed  1:03:34
Absolutely, beautifully said. Another point under the emotional characteristics is known as alexithymia, which means that a person does not have the knowledge or the awareness of emotion in general. This comes from people who have experienced emotional neglect to some extent. In a very extreme form, a person who has that is one who doesn't know how to name emotions, doesn't know what he or she is experiencing. Like, what are these different emotions. They live life without any willingness or ability to experience emotion. Those people can be very irritable, they can struggle to control their anger, they can snap at people for no apparent reason. And it keeps people at a distance, but they themselves do not know what they are doing and what they are experiencing. They cannot label these emotions. They cannot process them. And as we know, any unexpressed and acknowledged emotions, they eventually merge, and they appear as anger, as we have talked about before.

Aadam  1:04:48
Yeah, absolutely. Following from that, feelings of emptiness are another characteristic at an emotional level of complex trauma. Some people experience this physically, so like a physical emptiness in the stomach, and others feel emotionally numb, so they can't feel anything at all. And there can be a general sense that something is missing or not quite right. It's elusive. It's invisible. You can't quite touch it. It's intangible. You might even feel like you're on the outside looking in. So, life is happening around you, but you're not really a part of it. Emotionally neglected people or people who have got complex trauma will often come to therapy because of other troubles from a mental health perspective, so things like depression or anxiety, which are very common and they appear across the spectrum. So, if you have other mental health conditions, depression and anxiety are almost universal in some cases. But underneath that is neglect, which feels like emptiness. People who have complex trauma or childhood emotional neglect, the emptiness is chronic and it can vary in intensity throughout a person's life. The feelings of emptiness can show up as an inability to remain interested in hobbies, relationships and careers. It can manifest as using material things in relationships to try and fill that void but failing to do so. Difficulty maintaining relationships with romantic partners or even just friends due to the lack of ability to feel anything as we've already talked about. Having suicidal ideations due to the numbness and indifference experienced. So, “I can't experience life in all of its wonder, so what's the point of living it?” that type of thinking. Ultimately craving a connection to other people, but just not being able to find it. Loneliness and all of these things can make someone feel alive, but not alive, subhan Allah.

Waheed  1:07:00
Subhan Allah. And this is very common, honestly, like feelings of emptiness and just going about life feeling like you're in the gray all the time. I've seen this more times than I can actually count, subhan Allah, and I've experienced this myself as well. This is something that is quite common. 

And it follows from everything that we've said, another characteristic is having a very low self-image, being very critical of ourselves, and having those ongoing feelings of emptiness that you just mentioned. We put ourselves down regularly, we feel inferior. “I'm ugly, I'm stupid, I'm dumb, I'm not worth it,” and so on so forth. “No one wants to be my friend. If they know the real me, they would run away from me,” and so on, so forth. Some of us even feel that we deserve to be abused or punished. That we don't deserve to have good things happen to us. And that, again, is all because of the shame narrative that we've been accustomed to. If you think about this, in the long run, what's going to happen is that there is a lot of instability in our lives, even when it comes to our goals and our career plans. Because “I can't do this.” This is this is our narrative. “I really cannot do this,” even though you can. But you have led yourself to believe that you can’t, because of this ongoing narrative in your mind and your self-perception.

Aadam  1:08:27
Yeah. And lastly, having compassion for others, but none for yourself. I've experienced this, and I know that lots of us have also experienced this as well. We know what it means to be compassionate. When we witness something within other people that deserves compassion, we would offer it. But if we see the same thing within ourselves, we wouldn't do that. We would probably be harsh and berate ourselves. People who have been neglected and have complex trauma can have immense amounts of compassion for others, and they can even become the friend that others rely on to talk to for advice or for counsel. But they have no compassion, or very little compassion, for themselves. This can result in becoming angry with ourselves for mistakes and flaws that would be quite easily tolerated in other people. These people are also prone to perfectionism. Anything less than that, in their eyes, in their view is considered a failure. This all comes back to all of the conditioning, the messages that have been received throughout the early years, and the narrative that's playing here. “You're not good enough,” shame, essentially, the scarcity mindset or voices that have been ingrained.

Waheed  1:09:48
Absolutely agreed. And I remember when you and I were back in episodes two and three, back in season one, we were talking about self-compassion, and one way to address this is, “Treat yourself like you treat someone you love and care about who is going through a difficult time.” And that is self-compassion. Unfortunately, would we speak to others the way that we speak to ourselves, or the way that we treat ourselves? We'd be like, “No! Heck, no! We would never do that.” So why do we do that to ourselves then? That becomes the issue. But when we put everything in the context of how all of this came about, the shame patterns and the origin of complex trauma, then things start to make sense. 

1:10:38
After we have covered the emotional characteristics, let's now talk about the cognitive characteristics. What happens to our minds? One major characteristic is that a lot of us don't handle criticism well, but we criticize ourselves very harshly. And this is understood, because we talked about shame. And anything that smells like criticism or disrespect, we are very hypersensitive to it. This is a problem, because we end up rejecting positive feedback and constructive criticism that can actually be helpful. This can be understood, because we are building walls. We want people to see the good sides of us. Anything that smells of criticism, or disrespect, actually means that “Oh my God, they were able to see through my armor.” So my survival brain kicks in and I'm going to try to either fight, flight or freeze, right? 

Some people go to an extreme extent of becoming paranoid, because if someone criticizes them, they sometimes think that that person is out to get them, they have ulterior motives, they are out to destroy me, they feel that they are being watched, that people are not trustworthy whatsoever, and everyone has an agenda. And that becomes very problematic as we can imagine. One effect of this is, because we are not able to recognize the feelings or the needs of other people, we end up having a lack of empathy as a result. My primary concern is not to get hurt, as we said, so we start scanning our surroundings and scanning the people that we interact with, to read them for any signs of disrespect, but we also start missing the feelings and the needs of other people, their genuine needs and to connect with people on a genuine level. When we feel safe, we can have empathy, because my survival brain is kind of calming down, but when things trigger my trauma, when I am in that survival mode, empathy goes out the window, powerful emotions take over, and even my conscience shuts down. So, that's just an example of how things might manifest. 

Aadam  1:13:01
Yeah. And another characteristic of our cognitive function for people who have complex trauma is focusing on the negative aspects or critical aspects of life or being overly critical about life. So, we're very alert and hypersensitive to things that are negative. Things that are not going our way, things that we wish were otherwise. And whilst there might be lots of good in life, we are very skilled at pinpointing perhaps the one thing that is going wrong and making that the sole focus. I heard a saying that says what you focus on expands, and I think that that is true, because where we focus our energy, our thoughts, that thing will then become part of us. It consumes us, good or bad, subhan Allah. In this case, focusing on the negative clouds us, veils us from any of the good, we can't see it, we’re unable to witness it. So, it's not to say that there might not be negatives in life. There are always those, but this hyper focus on them to the point where the negative thinking just leads to a downward spiral, and then you end up becoming anxious, depressed even. And then everything else starts to unfold, or come apart, as a result.

Waheed  1:14:28
Absolutely. Another characteristic is escape to fantasy. I think this hits home for a lot of us, and it can manifest in so many ways. For example, some of us create a fantasy world where everything is perfect, and everyone loves each other. The happily ever after stories that we create in our minds, because the reality is nothing like that. Or sometimes, physically, we create that environment. So maybe as kids, we used to have that in our room or our section of the room, which was organized in such a way that it was just ours, away from all of the chaos that's going on around the house. So it makes life for a little while seem safe and happy. So that kind of a fantasy world. 

Another example is dissociation and in particular this happens in sexual abuse incidents. And we'll talk about this later in detail when we get to the episodes on sexual abuse, where when the actual event was happening, sometimes people dissociate completely, they're out of reality, it's like their mind separates from the body altogether. So that's an example of escaping to fantasy, and dissociation does not necessarily have to involve sexual abuse, it can actually happen with any trauma, where we dissociate, where we feel like we're not in the present moment, our mind is completely elsewhere. 

Some people escape into the fantasy world of novels, TV shows, romances. Romance addiction is actually a thing. They're addicted to particular romantic interests, or that “Prince Charming” who’s going to come and save me, and they build their entire lives and narratives around that. Some people escape into artistic or mystical worlds. Sometimes even excessive religious or spiritual preoccupation is alarming, because that is a way of escaping, so that needs to be taken into account, because you're escaping into a fantasy. I'm not saying that religion or spirituality is fantasy, but rather the over fixation on that becomes too much, because it's a form of an escape at the end of the day. 

Some people live double lives: One in which they escape into the fantasy, and the other one where they have to go about their daily lives. Extreme procrastination, and this hits home, extreme procrastination is a form of escape, because procrastination is not always about (time) management skills. There is an emotional aspect to it as well. Many of us have trouble living in the here and the now. We have trouble accepting specific circumstances, so we dissociate. We're no longer in the moment. We avoid particular stories, parts of movies or any reminders of any traumatic experiences. Many of us experience forgetfulness, there are gaps in our memories, because we have dissociated a lot of times in particular events, where we cannot really recall what had happened. Sometimes we have confusion or difficulty concentrating. So that may be because of that. 

Now, this is not exclusive. It doesn't have to necessarily be like, “Oh my God, every time that I can't concentrate, it's because of that!” No, obviously not, there's tons of other reasons. But this is one of the things to take into account. And that can actually impact - having this escape into fantasy, we become too immersed into that perfect, idealistic world that we lose touch with reality. For example, when we are on this journey of recovery from addictions, whatever those addictions are, we might hold on to the idea or the belief that there is a magic pill in recovery. Or if I want to heal from my wounds, there is a magic pill or magic potion, and once I take that, everything is going to be okay. Where everything is perfect, everyone is fine, we escape from the real world, everything is going to be just the way it should be. But that's not life. Another way that manifests is called “splitting,” whereby everything is black or white. We can’t really tolerate shades of grey in between. “I can appreciate you, I can love you, you are the perfect person in my mind. But if you do something wrong, a tiny thing that is wrong, you are going to be the worst person in the world.” It's either this or that. I'm either going to put you on a pedestal, or you are full of crap.

It's very difficult to see people accurately, to see the spectrum of human emotion, to realize that we are all made of strengths and weaknesses. We have our own wounds, our own mistakes, our own faults, etc. And a problem that arises with this is that, particularly in relationships with someone who escapes into that fantasy idealistic world, is that when someone shows interest in them, they start romanticizing that person. That ‘knight in shining armor’ who’s coming on that white horse to save me. With that facade, we're not able to see that person accurately. We idolize them, and that's why a lot of people go into bad relationships, thinking that that person is going to be the most perfect person ever to exist, but then they realize that that person is actually abusive, for example, because we failed to recognize those red flags before or we neglected them altogether. Some people have “fantasy revenge”, which means that “Okay, I can't retaliate against my bullies, or abusers or parents who have really hurt me, so I'm just going to create those scenarios in my head where I am the hero and I save everyone and I retaliate against them and I deal with this, this and that.” I think that some or all of these ring true to some of us. So that's one thing to take into account as well.

Aadam  1:20:29
Yeah, absolutely. Another cognitive distortion that some people who have complex trauma may experience is having unrealistic expectations. This does make sense when you think about it, because people who have been living in trauma don't really know what normal or healthy looks like. So, because they start at one end of the extreme, they then might believe that, in order to correct that or counteract that, we have to go to the other extreme. And that's just not true. To bring this to life a little bit, some things that people might say to themselves is “If I do recovery well, I will always be happy, I'll never have a bad day.” And then when a bad day comes, it becomes a reason to give up or a signal to give up or a sign. Clearly, I believe that if I do it well, which I think I was, then I would have been happy. But I've had a bad day, and I would never have a bad day, but I've had a bad day. So, it's this really toxic cycle thinking that doesn't allow a person to accept that life will never always be perfect. There will always be challenges and trials, and a setback or a bad day is not a sign to give up. You accept it for what it is, and then we move on. But obviously, people who perhaps haven't had that type of nurturing, they wouldn't know that. They might cling to that belief or that expectation. 

And for someone who's perhaps on a journey of recovery from an addiction, on that journey, it's inevitable that there will be setbacks and trials and ups and downs. Unfortunately, and particularly people who are close to them, they may be adversely affected by that person's habits or addiction and their behavior, so it can be incredibly challenging even for the people who are around that person and are there to support them. It's inevitable that they become frustrated, they might even lose hope. Or they might feel like, we've been here before with the person who's going through the addiction. For example, the person who is experiencing addiction might say, “Now that I'm going back and I'm trying again, and I'm getting back on the horse, people will trust me right away. I'm changing now.” And this might be like the 100th time that this has happened, but the people around them are witnessing it the same as it was before. If and when the person who's experiencing addiction sees this, they might get frustrated. They may not be able to handle that, and question why other people are not as optimistic as I am, for example.

Waheed  1:23:27
We need to have realistic expectations that things take time, that they're going to need some time to readjust and for them to trust me again. Give them time and have realistic expectations of how other people are going to behave, as opposed to us wanting them to behave a certain way, but then being disappointed when they don't.

Aadam  1:23:44
Yeah, exactly. In other examples maybe, “People will validate me. Look how well I'm doing.” And then when that response isn’t received, then we fall back. So, it's very similar to the previous example, when we haven't received the external praise, validation and recognition, it can set us back. And when we're going through our own process of healing and change and growth, we might begin thinking, “People close to me will want to change too.” And we might even impose that on others, thinking things like, “You should all work on yourself now. Let's all work together,” these types of thoughts, and having the expectation of everyone to work together and be excited, and forcing everyone to change can be unrealistic, because everybody's at a different point in life. And some people may not feel like they have anything they want to change. And that's their prerogative, so it's something that can set people back. 

Another example would be, “Everybody else in recovery will be healthy and treat me perfectly.” So, the experience of being in recovery, we idealize or think of it to be perfect, expecting everyone to treat us in a specific way. But the reality is, is that if you're in an environment where other people are going through a recovery process, then it's likely that they will deal with their own issues, probably similar ones to yourself. So, people won't be as we want them to. Again, we can't control how people are, and it's not necessarily a reflection of how we are or who we are, which is typically characterized by this way of thinking. 

Another example is, coming from living in an angry household and expecting that healthy relationships will have no anger. The belief that we come from an environment where there was lots of anger and in our future relationships, we want to make sure that there isn't, and then taking that into relationships. The problem with that is that everybody gets angry. Anger is a part of life, it's an emotion everybody experiences, neither good or bad. It just is, and how we deal with it is what will define how that will affect our lives. So, if anger shows up in a relationship, then we will take that as a sign to say, “Oh, this was never going to work anyway, all this is too bad.” “This is not the right person for me.” Or you might become incredibly frustrated and angry with the other person, and almost set rules that say, “We can't ever get angry. Anger is not allowed. We have to avoid it at all costs.” Which is not realistic, again. 

Waheed  1:26:24
Right. Absolutely. And those are just examples of unrealistic expectations. Obviously, like when we look at our cognitive processes, we can uncover a lot of these expectations. Like once we start looking at our own thinking, which is known as metacognition, when we start thinking about our own thinking, we will unravel a lot of these unrealistic expectations as we go along. 

Another point under the cognitive characteristics we want to talk about is called “distorted thinking”. There are so many examples of these. So, normally, as we talked about complex trauma, a lot of familial dysfunction involves distorting reality. And we said this might look like, “My dad is or my mom is smoking, or is stressed, or is abusive, because I am a bad kid.” Blaming myself. Or “My parents are getting a divorce, because I am unlovable.” These are the narratives that many of us have been used to. Now, what does this distorted thinking create? It creates so many things, like one of them is called “faulty logic”. The idea is, like, for example, “It has rained for four days, therefore it will rain every day for the rest of my life.” This is how we operate. How does this manifest itself in my life? “Nobody so far has been trustworthy in my life; therefore, nobody is ever going to be trustworthy in my life.” This is a generalization. Based on my limited experience, I generalize that on to everyone and everything. “I've had two stressful hours on my recovery journey, on my sobriety journey; therefore, every moment in sobriety is going to suck. It's not worth the effort,” and so on and so forth. You can extrapolate that to virtually anything. 

Another thing that we fall into is called “emotional reasoning”, which means “What I feel determines what I believe is true about life.” Let's take some examples. People who were abandoned as kids, let's say they develop new friendships. That friend sets a boundary, a healthy boundary. Let's say for example, that friend hasn't responded to your text, or he tells you “Well, after 8pm, I'm spending time with my family, so it's better that we call during the day instead.” Those are healthy boundaries. Our mind interprets that as, “They're going to abandon me, because I've been used to abandonment, I've experienced abandonment.” This feels like abandonment; therefore, it is abandonment. This is emotional reasoning. Whatever I feel makes it true. “It feels like abandonment. This is abandonment.” If my spouse leaves on a business trip, “It feels like abandonment, if they're not answering their phone; therefore, it is abandonment.” “It feels like they're having an affair; therefore, they must be having an affair.” You see, our emotions are dictating the reasoning. Another example is disrespect or what we interpret as disrespect. For example, you're walking into a room of your colleagues or friends and they are whispering. “It feels like they're talking about me behind my back, so it must be true.” They could be whispering about God knows what, but I am going to see it that way. Let's say someone had a previous relationship where his or her spouse cheated on them. The current spouse says he or she has to stop at a place after work and they're going to be late. “It feels like cheating; therefore, they must be cheating on me.” Another example is love. And I think that many of us have experienced the notion that this feels like love, so it must be love. “He or she is giving me attention. They love me. They say they love me, so it must be love.” So, if something feels like something, then it must be that. This is emotional reasoning. Just by talking about these things, I think that many of us will be like, “Okay, hmm, I can start pinpointing things in my life where I actually use emotional reasoning.” It's healthy to actually talk about these things, because, otherwise, we wouldn't even know that we're falling into these traps. 

Another trap is black-or-white thinking; we go on extremes. Like I said before, there are no shades of grey in between. “You either love me, or you hate me, you're either with me 100% or against me.” This is a problem, because, honey, if I'm there for you, it doesn't mean that I agree 100% with everything that you believe or do. But to us, it feels like, “If you disagree with me on one thing, then you are against me.” That is black-or-white thinking, and that is never healthy. We will never get to a certain point where we agree on 100% of everything. 

It becomes difficult, because the expectation is that you will never do anything that goes against me, or that hurts me, and that is problematic. There's another idea of black-or-white thinking, which is the success or failure, this idea that I define success as perfection, especially for us who come from perfectionistic families. If I define success as perfectionism, then it's going to be black or white, because I’m never going to achieve that perfectionism, that “success” that I define. If I don't do something perfectly, then I have failed. It's either perfectionism or nothing. And that is problematic. 

Another example of cognitive distortions or distorted thinking is catastrophizing. And this is very common. Predicting worst-case scenarios. Whenever something bad happens, “Oh, my God, I'm spiraling down, my life is falling apart.” Or I jump into conclusions. If I send someone a text, and they don't return that text immediately, “Oh, my God, they hate me. They don't want anything to do with me, this relationship is over.” It's very common, unfortunately. We jump into the worst-case scenarios. I received an email from my boss, “Oh, my God, I'm going to be kicked out.” And so on and so forth. This relationship, something bad happens in the relationship, “This is going to end, they're going to leave me,” and so on and so forth. We can explain all of this through, again, going back to the survival mode of the brain, the brain is looking out for danger. It's always anticipating worst-case scenarios, it's very difficult to identify the shades of grey in between, to look at hope and to look at different scenarios, when we are stuck in that mentality of preserving ourselves from not getting hurt. 

Aadam  1:33:16
For the last part of the episode, we will be looking at the behavioral characteristics of complex trauma. And the first one is the feeling or need to be in control, that being in control is the only way that my needs will get met, and I won't get hurt. I do identify with this, to some extent, I've had these thoughts, that if I just control things enough, then I can avoid a bad situation. I can make sure that everything goes well. And the challenge is that people around us can get annoyed, because no one likes to be controlled. It can fuel the shame that the person who is doing the controlling can feel, as a result of other people perhaps making distance, because they feel like it's too much, it's toxic, it's not appropriate.  

And following on from this, we have the point of counter-dependence. So, we've probably all heard about being independent and codependent, but we've not heard about counter-dependence. This is the fear of being dependent, or the drive to need no one. People who experience this will go to great lengths to avoid asking for help or being perceived as needy. And they will avoid relying on other people for fear of being a burden. Typical things that people who feel like this will say include, “I don't need anybody, I'm just going to do it all by myself, nobody can be relied on. I can't trust anyone.” These types of sentiments where they feel like they're in the world alone, and people can't be relied upon for support, and they must do everything themselves. Of course, this isn't true. We all need someone. Humanity is designed to live in societies and have social circles and communities, and those communities are built to help and benefit each other. This type of thinking and manifestation and behavior can keep people away from that which, in the cases of people have complex trauma, is absolutely essential to help heal that. 

Waheed  1:35:30
100%. And it also points you towards the idea that, because we grew up feeling like we can't rely on anyone but ourselves, then it just manifests itself later in adult life. “I don't want to be dependent on others, because people always disappointed me, or they hurt me. So, I might as well just rely on myself.” But, again, a coping mechanism that worked in childhood is no longer working in adulthood. Another point under the behavioral characteristics is learning to manipulate to get the needs met. Sometimes, we had to resort to that as kids, because our needs were not met. And so we had to manipulate others to get what we need. In adulthood, when we feel that we can't control people, or we can't get them to do what we want for us, we start manipulating them. E.g. being passive-aggressive, silent treatment, subtle games playing with them, but that doesn't work. People are going to eventually discover this, and they wouldn't want to be around us anymore, and that fuels the abandonment problem. “Oh, my God, look at them, they're leaving me!” So, it becomes a vicious cycle. 

Aadam  1:36:43
Exactly. That's it. One thing feeds the other. That leads on to honesty issues. So, people will be dishonest with others, they'll lie when it would be just as easy to tell the truth, perhaps, just to be able to get things to go the way that they want them to go. There'll be overt lies, perhaps omitting certain facts, or hidden agendas, all because people who do this perhaps did not experience honesty at home, or perhaps experienced dishonesty at home, and perhaps in the home, dishonesty was rewarded or praised or venerated, even. For some of us, that might sound alien, but there are people that do that, that would praise these types of behaviors. In the mind of someone who has this type of approach, they would feel that it's better to lie in order to have my safety plan. And that's the only way I know how to meet my needs, to have my needs met by others. 

Waheed  1:37:58
Especially in a family environment where we felt unsafe, and we felt that if we spoke our truth, or if we did a mistake, and we came forward, we're going to be punished for it. Or if we failed, we didn't accomplish a specific task that was assigned to us, according to the standards set by our parents, we're going to be punished for it. So, we learn to lie to protect ourselves. Deep down, it's that survival brain that is activated. 

Another characteristic is oppositional defiance. And this is something that makes sense. Children are dependent on their parents, particularly during the earlier stages of development. And then, as children get older, the parents normally would give their children greater freedom and independence, according to their developmental level, in order for them to make decisions, to feel that they are independent. Now, if a parent is too controlling, too domineering, overbearing, authoritarian, that is not going to happen. So, the child who has this natural tendency to seek independence is going to push back, he/she is going to rebel and try to create more space to make their own decisions. They realize that they need their own freedom, they're suffocated, it's just too much. So, eventually, what happens, the parent is going to push back, the child is going to push back, and there's going to be a lot of tension. So, easily, they get to a point where every time the parent tells them to do something, they will immediately do the opposite. That is oppositional defiance, “I am defying you, because I'm rebelling against you.” Now, what is the problem here? They are rebelling against an order, even if that order is very wise. The issue in their mind is not whether the advice or the order is wise or good. It's all about who is giving the order. So if their parents say anything, then whatever that is good or bad, I'm not going to listen to it. They stay in that self-destructive mode. And people actually grow up and still remain stuck in that mentality. So, if there is an authority figure, if they're married to someone, if they're in a relationship, whatever, if that person tells me to do something, “I will not do it.” They end up finding themselves making bad decisions or finding themselves in difficult situations because of that. That follows that some of us may have issues with authority because of that. Because the original pain was from an authority figure who was a parent or a caregiver, then I'm going to rebel against every authority figure out there, right? Especially when those authority figures are abusing their power, and that would get us into like legal problems and behavioral problems as well. 

Aadam  1:40:52
Yeah. And that leads us on to the next point, which is on instant gratification. People may seek immediate pleasure. Generally speaking, in the culture, we are more inclined to immediate gratification, with the quickness of deliveries and having information at our fingertips, all that type of thing. This is more of a maladaptive type of behavior, where we constantly want an instant fix to problems. For example, we're impatient, and we don't want to actually sit in discomfort that is necessary. And we can become easily irritable or angry if we do. If life has been experienced as a constant pain and emptiness, there's a tendency to just grab any pleasure that is available, because of the fear that the opportunity to experience pleasure or joy just won't be there for very long. Essentially, it's this desire or focus of avoiding discomfort and pain and wanting a quick fix to problems. And that sets people up for becoming impulsive. They will act before they think and have poor self-discipline, as a result. They act on the spur of the moment without a plan or even consideration of outcomes. They may rationalize that by saying things like, they're being spontaneous or fun or going out with friends and doing things “off the cuff”. 

This might include things like, you know, excessive spending, quitting jobs, moving around frequently, not being stable or steady in one place, reckless driving, binge eating even. And, also, you know, these people may have difficulty establishing or following plans, predominantly because plans require time, effort, patience, things don't happen overnight. And, you know, these people who are looking for instant gratification and are impulsive, will have the sense of urgency that they need it now. Everything needs to happen straight away, and everything else must be put on pause for this thing to take place. It can also result in them just ping ponging from one thing to the next, because they're not actually spending the time that's needed to see a thing through to the end. And that's quite tragic. That will have lots of consequences in many aspects in life. And particularly, if you think about careers or interests that people might have or hobbies, things that they might actually even be talented at, because they just cannot focus, they're unable to spend the time investing in it, they just jump around from one thing to the next. And they don't have that healthy inhibition that keeps us committed to a task for a long time to actually see it through. 

Waheed  1:44:08
Absolutely. When you look at the community of people dealing with addictions, for example, or particularly like the SSA community, being impulsive is very common. Having poor self-discipline, seeking instant gratification is very common, because once we're triggered, we need something to numb or we need something to give us this instant gratification. We're impulsive. This is very common, I would say almost everyone that I've spoken with, including myself, we struggle with this. And so, dealing with our impulsive behaviors, dealing with our self-discipline is very important. And, again, going back to the complex trauma, how do we explain that? When we are triggered, we go into that survival brain mode, we need to numb, we need to resort to things that kind of decrease that pain. Or we are addicted to adrenaline, to the rush of stress hormones, we need that fix. We need to stay on that “high”. I need to engage in those behaviors to just maintain that high. Any sense of stability and peace is not going to work. I need to do things constantly even without thinking. So that needs to be disciplined. Otherwise, things are not going to be working right. 

It follows, from what you said, that a lot of us may be drawn to chaos or risky behaviors, some people may engage in dangerous activities without taking care of any consequences that are happening. We lack concern to our own limitations, and we deny the reality of being in danger, for example, in particular situations. The dilemma here is my brain wants to avoid getting hurt, as we said, but there is something in us that draws us towards that chaos, because it's kind of like that familiar and attractive feeling, it gives me that rush that I'm seeking. It kind of feels normal to be in that situation. It makes me feel alive. The problem is that I have stuffed all of my emotions for so long, I've repressed my anger. I need to channel that. And the only way that I can feel alive is by going into risky behaviors or dangerous situations, because it gives me that fix. And if we operate based on that mentality, or that paradigm, then we see that life is boring. So, I need excitement. I need excitement to kind of counteract the boring life that I'm in. But we don't realize that the reason that we see life as boring, or meaningless, or we can't really feel our emotions, is because we have stuffed our emotions for a very long time that we can no longer feel them. That's why we need something to pacify that or to add excitement or flavor to our lives. So we engage in these dangerous or risky behaviors, and we go into chaos and sabotage. Another reason is that if we are busy experiencing that chaos and rush of adrenaline and everything, I don't have to feel the other painful emotions. So, at the end, it's kind of a numbing behavior on its own. “If I am busy experiencing that fix or that rush, I don't have to deal with the pain.” 

Aadam  1:47:24
Yeah, it's classic avoidance. And just following on from what you said, about sabotage, people will sabotage good things, as a normal way of being. They might have really good relationships, they might be doing well in other aspects in life, they might have a great career, great hobbies, whatever it might be. Unfortunately, the voice of “Something bad is going to happen” might resurface, or it might even be dominant. And, as a result, people might sabotage those things that are going well in life as just a normal way of being, which is incredibly sad. 

Waheed  1:48:12
Absolutely. And I've seen so many people, subhan Allah, break up beautiful relationships, even proper platonic brotherhoods or sisterhoods that are very fundamental to our healing journey, because they felt that “It's going so well. It just has to break down, because something bad is going to happen, and I really cannot deal with the uncertainty. So, I might as well just call it quits right now.” Or their sobriety, they've been sober or recovering for so long, and “It's been going well, and it's causing me so much pain, because I'm anticipating that something bad is going to happen. But it has not happened yet. So, I need to sabotage this thing, because the anticipation is killing me,” and so on and so forth. If we sabotage good things, it all goes back to the idea that “I'm not worthy. I'm not lovable, I’m not capable of doing good things or feeling good things.” That's one thing to add to the list. And, in addition to what you said, a lot of us are great starters but poor finishers. And this is very common. We have trouble persevering, because of that point of self-discipline that we spoke about, it's boring, to actually finish that thing is boring. I can start it, because it gives me that kick. But then because it's going to take a long time, I'm just going to ignore it altogether. If life is exciting, it's honeymoon-ish, it's great. That's wonderful. And that's usually the start of every project, every recovery journey, every good thing, every relationship, etc. But then comes the period of hard work. And that's when we bail. Because it's not exciting anymore. It's boring. Or it takes a lot of effort. It takes a lot of self-discipline. I might as well not do that. 

Aadam  1:49:55
Yeah, exactly. And having went through what we have in this episode so far, it makes sense that people would do that. The last thing on our list today is the need to want to be treated like an adult but not behaving like one. A lack of taking on responsibility or commitment and seeing that through. Always having an escape route in life. This is quite sad, because we can't spend our lives by avoiding responsibility or commitment. I think particularly people who have complex trauma will feel like they are incapable of maintaining the responsibility or commitment, because perhaps you've not seen that in your home environment, or perhaps they did see the way that their environment didn't cope when there was a responsibility or a demand or a commitment that was placed upon it. So they don't know how to do that. So, they may do all the things adults do, and when I think about this, you do see this. You see these people who are adults but have childish tendencies in their behaviors. And it's a very sad life where there is very little consideration or commitment or responsibility. And people are always avoiding that. Yeah. Subhan Allah, may Allah guide us all.  

Waheed  1:51:32
And with this, we have come to the end of today's episode. So far, we have covered the emotional, cognitive and behavioral characteristics that come with complex trauma, and in the next episode, inshaAllah, we will cover the interpersonal and relationship aspects. Aadam and I look forward to continuing this discussion with you, inshaAllah, in the next episode. Until then, stay safe and healthy. This has been Aadam and Waheed Jensen in “A Way Beyond the Rainbow”, assalamu alaikom wa rahmatullahi ta’ala wa barakatuh.

Episode Introduction
Shame, Identity and Self-Perception
Coping Strategies
Emotional Characteristics of Complex Trauma
Cognitive Characteristics of Complex Trauma
Behavioral Characteristics of Complex Trauma
Ending Remarks