 Hello, Psych2Go viewers. Our guest for today's live stream is Patrick Tien. Patrick is a licensed clinical social worker and a childhood trauma specialist. Patrick is also the host of his own amazing YouTube channel where he discusses and analyzes childhood trauma and mental health. Thank you for being here, Patrick. I really appreciate it. We all do. Thanks for having me. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm good. I'm psyched. Awesome. So your content is so inspiring and empowering. You're helping so many people to heal from their traumas and seek mental health treatment. It's common for survivors of abuse to feel conflicted or hesitant to speak up about their child abuse or traumas due to fear of being judged or stigmatized. So first I just wanted to ask you, no, first I just wanted to thank you for the amazing work you do because it really is so inspiring. And so my first question I wanted to start out with is how do you define childhood trauma and what are the different types of abuse that stem from it? It's a really good question. And I want to say I can't see everybody out there, but welcome. Welcome to the live stream. It's good to know that you're there. I can't see the chat or anybody or anything, but I know you're out there. We have 300 people in here right now. Hello, 300 people. Put a high five in the chat or something like that. Exactly, high five. The question is, how do I define childhood trauma? Yeah, how would you define it and what are the different types of abuse that stem from it? Sure, I think just simply when a child is simply not safe and nurtured. My mentor has this thing that I, the bar I have is pretty high, compared to something called like the ACE study which says, let's say the ACE study, if you took the ACE study questionnaire, it's like you sort of have to have, you have to grow up in domestic violence or see a parent be incarcerated or grow up in abject poverty when there's really all kinds of childhood trauma. My mentor has this phrase that anything less than nurturing is abusive. Exactly. And that sounds like, whoa, that sounds so definitive or black and white or hardcore, but I really think if we wanna progress as a human race, we really have to look at how we raise children in terms of their safety, in terms of setting them up for success in adulthood. But so to flush that out a little bit, what would it mean for a child to not grow up in safety is then we can look at it as where a child's nervous system is very different than an adult's and a child can't handle adult intensity or emotions. There's attachment where they really need to feel like there's someone there that they can emotionally connect with. I never really like, I know what it means, but when they say that you can anticipate your needs getting met, that sounds almost a little bit robotic to me. You know what I mean, like, or something, but I really think that like, not being safe is not being connected to a sane and loving caregiver, you know? Exactly. And there can be poverty, there can be all kinds of stuff going around in the community and the family system, but I really think, I really narrow in on nuclear family. And when a child has simply, just simply a workaholic parent who isn't engaged, I would say is less than nurturing and abusive. I would say having a volatile parent who struggles with cluster personality disorder stuff is another version. So there's all different types, but I really kind of defined it as when a child is not safe enough to develop into the human being that they were kind of born to be. But you know what I mean? So for parents to kind of get out of that child's way in terms of who they are. Because another version of abuse would be like the looks good on paper family where you have to have, you have to be an accountant or a lawyer. It's kind of another version of abuse because it's just, it's like forcing somebody to live an unfulfilled life. Yeah. And so like what you're trying to say is and I agree with this, it's like childhood trauma and abuse is something that's complex and it's complicated. It's not something that's like black and white. Like it has to be something very specific. It can just be someone who's being neglected or emotionally it doesn't have to be like domestic violence exactly. Yeah, it could be. You could have, but you can come from a family that looks amazing, that has a bunch of money, that has a bunch of opportunity and no one knows how to connect emotionally. There's a cold distance between the child and the parent. There's weird contempt because the parents haven't done their work. So that's just one version of it. There's so many versions. And I love that you mentioned that because sometimes people will dismiss certain, they'll dismiss that because they'll say, well, you came from a really privileged background so you must have had an amazing childhood and that's not always the case. It could be the exact opposite. Yes. I will say yes, totally on that, but I will say and never the version of it is that growing up in something like racism or abject poverty is there's just a different type of stress that comes with that as well. Yep. You know what I mean? Yeah, like sort of like the kids who go who are come from affluence or something like that, they may they may be abused at home for lack of connection or being seen, but the child who is growing up in abject poverty and racism can happen that can, the same thing can happen in that family too, just with a different circumstance. And the added stressor of poverty. Yeah. Right. There's just, yeah, there's just, there's a million ways to Sunday that a human being can kind of not get what they need. And so what are some common and maybe some uncommon triggers and trauma responses you've seen from victims of child abuse and trauma? Sure, some common ones. I mean, we could look at it as like fight, flight, freeze. There's two more shame and submit, which is like fawning. And then there's another one called cry for help that we could look at. But when we look at that way or when we flush those out, some common ones is in a very simple way, I kind of look at childhood trauma survivors on the spectrum of two extremes. Some of us have energy that goes up where we can fight things, take things very personally, we can rebel, we can kind of make things very much about us. We can kind of rescue people or have big energy or get really, you know, visibly mad at people or visibly brokenhearted or disgusted, you know? So the energy kind of goes up. On the other side of that spectrum, there's like their energy goes down. They're more fawning, they're more kind of taking criticism without thinking it through. They might be seen as more codependent, they might be seen as more sort of selfless and they struggle with having a voice. They can't really say no. And they, in a somatic way, they really can't say no to a project at work because their body freezes up, you know? Yeah. And in one of your videos, I think that you mentioned emotional delay as a symptom as well. Yep, all kinds of things. That's what I kind of, I try to spell these things out in a relatable way in the video. And an emotional delay is like, so those are some, the up and down energy is sort of like, is kind of a common thing for many childhood trauma survivors and we can be combinations of going up and going down, depending on the situation. But then things like refrigerator buzz depression that I talked about in one of those videos, rushing around without really thinking, you know, it's like sort of like always in a rush or always in an emergency. I see that. Like impulsive behavior, perhaps? Or kind of not really rushing around where it's just sort of like the person lives in a bit of hyper vigilance in an unconscious emergency that they're rushing to get to work early for fear of something that might sort of happen. Or they're walking really fast through the mall for no reason. It's just like their energy is up, but they're kind of their motor is up. Okay. And the one that, you know, and not everyone relates to these, I'm trying to more spell out sort of really, really specific, oddly. That video was called oddly specific. I love that video. Thank you. And the delay one is sort of, let's just say you get to work in the morning and you have a weird interaction with your boss. They're stressed out or something like that. And they stress you out because of that. But it doesn't catch up with you until later in the day. I find that many trauma survivors have this hours or days delay of something that catches up with them. You know, like they may almost like lose a, they may hear of a high school person that passed away and they hear about that on Facebook. And then they're mining, it doesn't really hit them in the moment, but then two or three days later, some compounded grief might come up about their own family. Like even if they didn't really, I know that that sounds super specific, but it just things happen later is in a sign of growth is when things are happening more in real time emotionally. Is it like almost like an emotional numbness? Would you say? Yup. It's a, I really think coming back to your first question about how would you define dissociate? I mean, how would you find childhood trauma is childhood? Another way to look at childhood trauma is when the child is more focused on what the adults are doing or what they're going to do than knowing what is going on inherently in our own body in the moment. Is that like a parentified child? No, this is more of a thing of like being in our head as opposed to being in our body. So most trauma childhood trauma survivors, we kind of live a little bit dissociatively in our heads. We might think about our feelings more than we inherently know what they are. So when the delay happens about the friend passing away on Facebook or the fight with the partner in the morning and you're not upset to later, that might tell me that the client lives more in their head than being grounded in their emotions in real time and feeling like they don't second guess their emotions and they're in tune with them. They're attuned to themselves and there's not a delay. And so sometimes some of my experience, these triggers or these trauma responses and they may not know why it's happening. So what would you say, if someone isn't sure that they're experiencing trauma or PTSD in some cases because they're avoiding it due to shame or guilt, what are your suggestions or advice for someone in the situation who doesn't really know whether they did experience childhood trauma? They don't really understand why they're acting the way they're acting. Yeah, great question. I wanna tweak it a little bit in that I think on some level, through our first 20 years of life, we have little clues that we know but we're not getting any help about them. So when the 12 year old who's growing up in domestic violence or with a narcissistic parent or whatever, there might be little shades of like, my mom's different. My mom's different than my friend's mom. So in some ways, there's these little crumbs of knowing. But we're not getting any help at the time with a healthy family member who can confirm, like, yeah, your mom really blows up at you and it's really unfair. Imagine if survivors would have heard that from a healthy parent, the other parent or a healthy aunt or someone who can confirm what they were feeling and what they were seeing. But so there's that. But to come back to your question is it doesn't sound good, but I kind of tell people that our childhood trauma kind of bites us in the ass eventually. Yep, I think we can all relate to that, right? And for me, like I think with most people, for me at like 19 years old, right before I got into therapy, it was because my relationships only lasted about six weeks because I was a mess. And for anyone out there that has had a series of relationships that just never seemed to take off or go well or something like that, that's what I mean about it kind of biting us in the ass eventually. Or say there is a good enough relationship and there's a breakup. That's another part where I find that people, take your question, I think it's about kind of, we know a little bit and then it catches up with us through some kind of, we might get laid off, we might have a loss, we might have a breakup, we might have a reaction that is not in line with our values, like maybe we're a parent and we scream at our kids and that came out of nowhere. So that's what I mean about it kind of biting us in the ass somehow, it catches up with us. And then I think we kind of hit a little bit of a bottom with it. So what do we do at that point is where some people might have to hit a series of bottoms before they kind of want to seek out help. It's very, there's a lot of stigma around seeking out help, if there's anything I want my channel to do is just kind of normalize these things, normalize it. And because these families are really, really similar and the symptoms are really, really similar. So I don't know if that answers your question about like what does somebody kind of do is that just kind of know, when it bites us in the ass, we're gonna be at our worst. It's a really terrible feeling, but it's also kind of a golden hour and an opportunity for change. And it's like when those moments were happened, those moments probably were like, there's that coming back to that knowing if you're on, you're like dating your third emotionally unavailable person or trying to get somebody to wake up or dating another moody person again and you're back in that place, which is a very common thing, it's kind of like that knowing comes back. And that knowing is a little bit like, oh my God, I've been doing this since I've been five years old with people that I'm close with. Yeah, exactly. And I think that you mentioned that there is a stigma about seeking treatment, which is so tragic because someone should feel proud of themselves for having the courage to seek treatment. It's empowering and amazing. And for all those who are seeking treatment for it, I'm proud of you and I'm sure Patrick is too. I am, I am, but for me that I think our inner child confuses getting help with really messing up our life. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like it's just, we, you know, speaking from experience, I think when I got the therapy, it was a little bit like, well, I've clearly messed up my life so much that now I have to go do this thing because I'm defective. And luckily I had a therapist that was sort of like, you're not defective, you just come from a defective system. It was nothing about you. So the stigma, and especially in different cultures, I really kind of want to make that known. You know, in America kind of in the West is like, we're kind of therapy happy. Yeah, go, you know what I mean? There's still barriers, but it's still like, you know, it's almost like, what do you mean you don't have a therapist? But in some cultures, sometimes the cultural like sort of expression is only really sick people need therapy. Yes, that's actually very common in a lot of cultures and it's so tragic and counterproductive as well because I mean, I think that a lot of therapists have said this and they, you know, put it best when they say, when you break your leg, you go to the hospital. And so when you're having like a mental health issue, you should go to a therapist, that's, you know, and we've normalized that in our culture, but in other cultures, some people don't have that luxury or privilege. Right, so there's all kinds of barriers, but speaking to the stigma around what would the family say? What would the religion around the culture say? You know what I mean? Like in a way, you're only supposed to talk to your problems with like a religious leader or you keep it to yourself and don't burden the family system that's kind of in survival mode already. You know what I mean? Like, and that happens in a lot of different cultures. Yeah, and that brings me to my next question about unresolved trauma. So what are some signs of it and how can it show up unexpectedly? Good question. Signs of unresolved trauma, let's kind of break this down into some categories. There's our relationship with ourselves like being integrated. That's one way it can show up. It can show up in the social. I often think about, I often talk about what happens to us when we go to a coffee shop in a social environment and we get triggered by the barista. You know what I mean? Or we get, our inner child thinks that everyone is not liking them or something like that. When we go to a party, when we go to a coffee shop, you know, and then the third category being like when we're in an intimate relationship. So let's just say in terms of attunement with ourselves and being integrated with ourselves, some signs of unresolved trauma is where we have really big reactions that come out of nowhere and we're not, you know what I mean? Like for anybody out there that's been working at a place and then you just all of a sudden become enraged and fire off an email that kind of gets you into trouble. It was like an over the top reaction. It's actually pretty common for this stuff. Or the opposite of that coming back to that spectrum thing I mentioned earlier is that, you know, like you're exhausted and you're overworked and you're just looking forward to a weekend off and then you automatically take on more work because that's what you automatically do. So that's a kind of a sign of unresolved kind of like why am I doing this again? You know what I mean? Like it's just like I've just been, I've been working 90 hours for three weeks straight like what's wrong with me. Those are those clues to it, you know? Unresolved stuff in the social setting is just kind of feeling like, I don't know like the barista is, you know in a bad mood with you and they're upset with you or they're literally kind of a jerk to you and you really get into a fight in your head about it or it stays with you for two or three days about what the barista said. But it's always so much deeper. It's never truly just about the Starbucks coffee or the barista, it's deeper. It's, you know, a trigger. Yeah, but then it's showing you like why am I so focused on this? The person was having a jerk or they were having a bad day but the inner child goes back to a place in childhood with the unresolved stuff where it's like, oh my God, they were just like my mother. They were moody, they were aggressive, they were all blamey and shamey and I couldn't even get a word in. It's almost like an emotional flashback. Yep, that's what it really, yeah. That's what I really kind of think. I don't really think, I think we kind of have a Hollywood idea of what flashbacks are but they're really for the most part body memories of a moody person or a person being mad at us or something like that, you know? And the unresolved stuff in the third category of relationships is unresolved trauma. A big one is when the inner child feels like there's gotta be something wrong and they keep checking something out with a partner. Are we okay? Are you okay? How about now? Did you see him upset earlier? You know, like that's a sign. All of these are kind of signs but the wild thing is, I don't know if you would agree with this, is that for the person it's just like, well, this is just normal. This is the way I've been my whole life. I get a lot of that. I've been terrified about what anyone thinks about me. Don't you? You know? Like, I agree with you. Like they've normalized it and it seems normal to them but it's really a trauma response. Right. I thought that's how the world operated. Yeah. That's all they've known. Right. One sign for me was I, you know, I came from a very caustic family system and in my first jobs, how I would connect with people would be through negativity and gossip. Oh, wow. I can relate to that actually. Oh, yeah. And then I thought that that was so normal. And then when I'm kind of out in the world, I think that this was what happens when we leave home. We go to college, we start our first jobs or something like that. And for the childhood trauma survivor, it's very jarring because they think that they're just doing what they're, you know, they are just doing what they were taught. I was just coming from this family system that we would talk trash about people and feel better about ourselves. And I would gossip amongst, like, you know, other coworkers and stuff like that. And then people would be like, yeah, I'm not really interested in that. And then I'd be like, what, what? I can relate to that so much. That would be baffled, you know, about why someone wouldn't want to be that negative when I was kind of what was immersed on it at home. Yeah. And I used to see it as something normal too, but really it truly is so toxic. But I thought it was something that like everyone does it. It's part of life. It's gossip, cheeseme, as they would say in Spanish. Really? What's the word again, cheeseme? Cheeseme. That means gossip in Spanish. Oh, right. Gotcha. Yeah. And so I definitely agree with that. And so we'll normalize certain things that really are just triggers or trauma responses. Mm-hmm, yep. And just as a reminder to the viewers, please ask your questions for Patrick in the live chat. We're about to go into that segment. But before that, I wanted to ask about the concept of the inner child, which you do mention in a lot of your videos. Yep. And I just wanted to know, you mentioned that it's an effective strategy to connect with your inner child. Mm-hmm. You've mentioned that. And so I just want to know, what is, how does one connect with their inner child in an effective way to cope with childhood trauma that they experienced? Let me say a little bit that, to back up a little bit, to define a little bit of what the inner child is. Cause some people have it, some people have a negative, you know what I mean? They kind of go like, oh, that's just so hippie-dippy. You know what I mean? When it's actually positive, the way you approach it. Yeah, it's what, you know, if you struggle with that concept of the inner child or don't like the language, you could look at it as they're, in the work that I do, there are really two parts, which is different than something called IFS, which often gets confused for the work that I do. There's an inner adult, and then there's an inner child. You could look at the inner child as a part of your brain called the limbic system, where childhood trauma or trauma in general is stored, our emotional memory system, and the emotional smoke alarm, like AKA hypervigilance living in emergency, where all of that stuff lives. Hippocampus, amygdala, part of the limbic system. That's all the inner child. A different part of the brain called the prefrontal lobes is our, you know, I'm using it right now because I have the ability to talk emotionally with you in a calm, guided way. And I can think and feel at the same time. When the limbic system is activated, we might lose our words, or we might become really sharp and focus with our words in an attacking way, or we might really shut down or something like that. So these two parts of our brain, we could look at it as the inner child and the inner adult, or we could look at it as a bit of a battle between, until healing, between the limbic system in our prefrontal cortex, prefrontal lobes, which is like our best functioning self. So for the listener out there is that when you've been triggered by the barista and that takes you out for a couple of days and you just can't get it together or get the laundry done or get to those emails, you're in your limbic system, you're activated. Probably some brain fog, that kind of a thing. When you rally and come out of it, that's when the prefrontal lobes kind of kick back on. So if anyone out there has had a bad interaction with somebody, that's the barista, poor barista. And then- That barista's attitude. True, from the barista. And then you're in that for the majority of the morning or something like that. But then when you wake up and go, oh, why didn't I say that? That's your prefrontal cortex coming back online. So I want to say that a little bit about those two parts. And a lot of the work is around integration and attunement and learning how to be a healthy parent from yourself from the inner adult place and helping that inner child by validating them or talking to them. And a lot of that talking to them is that, hey, you know what, that barista isn't in our life. They're not really important. We don't have to take them so seriously. We don't have to take it so personally. But our family made it very, very personal. So I think that that's what the trigger is about. Yeah, and it's like assessing why do I feel this way? You know, what would you say, assessing that? And so before we get to the audience questions, you mentioned inner child dialoguing or journaling as a coping strategy. Can you explain for our viewers exactly what that is and how it's beneficial to the healing process? Sure, it is. I don't want to call it journaling because it's really more of a discussion between those two parts that I mentioned, between your dominant and your non-dominant hand. Your dominant hand represents the adult and our dominant hand is like right, catch the ball, do the thing, comb the hair. It's a very guiding focus part of our brain. And for some reason, what gets kind of left over is we kind of have this access to our inner child through our non-dominant hand. So the idea is on paper, you ask your inner child questions as if you were like a loving foster care parent. And you know what the kid went through, but you're asking them, you know, little Patrick, we told them the latte wasn't made with oat milk this morning and they got mad at you. What did that take you back to? Because I sensed you were mad about that. You know what I mean? And then the inner child will answer. People always treat me this way. I'm never respected. I don't know what it is about me. The inner child is telling the truth about what it was like growing up, but they're projecting it onto the barista. So like, for example, for me, I should ask myself, little Michelle, what is it about that, you know, that's upsetting and maybe takes you back to the past. Yes. Sometimes, you know, it's really like having a relationship with a real child. They might not want to talk to you or they might want to talk to you or sometimes the inner adult can name. If the inner child doesn't answer, you could say, well, I know growing up with mom and dad, they were so critical and blamed you for everything. Did it feel like that? So sometimes it's really like a real kid. You just can't bust in and ask questions. There really has to be like a kind of a warm up and getting to know you if you're the first time doing it. I have a webinar on it on my website about how to do it. It's an e-course that people can grab. And I think it's so amazing how you approach it. It's like unique because I haven't heard that before and I think that it's a really beneficial coping strategy. So thank you for that. Sure. And the one last piece about it is every, you know, I still dialogue and if I'm upset, it always regulates my system because when we're doing this conversation between the two hands, it has the same functionality of something called EMDR where it's bilateral stimulation. Anytime the two hemispheres of our brain have an interaction or a bit of a dance, I get this from playing drums as well because it's different limbs at different times. It regulates our system. So it's not just a integration tool. It's really the best thing that we can do when we're triggered is start to work with our inner child on paper and trying to figure it out. And even if you don't figure it out, you've already done interaction between your two hemispheres and it might calm you down or soothe you. Yeah. What do you mean by that like soothe you? Could you explain that? When we're holding a child and we're rocking. Like salt soothing, you mean? That is soothing the child and the child is getting this kind of back and forth action that is a lot like bilateral stimulation. Our brain is made up into these two hemispheres and whenever those two hemispheres are equally engaged, it kind of calms our system down. It's kind of like a neat trick. So in something called EMDR, therapists are having the person follow their eyes onto either they're hearing a ping pong or they're watching something. And that is again, it's a bilateral stimulation between the two hemispheres that kind of chills them out or releases something if they're talking about a traumatic event. And so I'm going to switch to audience questions because there's like 500 people in here and there's like tons of questions. So everybody, what's up into you? So we're going to move to that segment. So someone said, what is the difference between or the interchangeability between coping and healing from childhood trauma? Is there a difference? Wow, that's a really good question. The more coping we learn, I think greatly gives us the capacity to heal more. Let's just say, we've all heard, they're kind of annoying, but when we hear stuff like show up for yourself in small ways every day, like prep your lunch ahead of time or make your bed or something like that or do something or try to get to bed early. Those are like small little wellness tricks. And the more we kind of get into a pattern of being able to consistently do that, I think the inner child trusts our inner adult more or we trust ourselves more. We're the same person. So it makes me kind of think about that, but can you read the question again? They said like, what's the difference between healing and coping with childhood trauma? Coping, coping is another way to look at that question. Coping is just coping. Coping is using your tools, like if it was something called DBT and you're doing stress relieving things or really trying to calm your system down, coping is just coping to help you out in the moment. Healing though, is I think coming from some pretty heavy lifting in therapy or some really different, really shifts about looking at what happened to us and coming up with a new belief system, but not just looking at what happened to us but really grieving and processing. What I think with a good therapist being a witness to that or better yet a good group. So it's a great question, the two things are different but a lot of clients are frustrated by therapists who are just like, just be mindful or just make your bed, that kind of a thing. That doesn't lead us to healing, that leads us to better living. But the healing of whether we're a good person or bad person, I think that that comes from a different thing. Great question. Thank you for clarifying that because I did want to know the difference between coping and healing. So thank you for that. And then John asked, is this just blaming everything on our parents? Yes. I'm being facetious, but I get that question so much. Blame is different than accountability. And there's a thing, the elephant in the room is generational trauma. My father probably had, not probably, my father had a worse childhood than I was, but my father was very abusive. And then the type of therapy that I do is that I think the person needs to spend some time maybe getting some distance from their family, looking at what happened, holding them accountable for like a parent not protecting one of their kids from a perpetrator, maybe the other parent or something like that. We need to process that and we kind of need to have our emotional day and court about that. And I think after we've done that in a good enough way and really spend some time embracing that we were a good kid and it wasn't necessary, that kind of a thing, I'm trying to say that after healing, we can look at what happened to our parents. But I find if people are trying to do it both at the same time, they really get stuck. What I mean by that is that let's just say that there was a sexually abusive alcoholic parent. There's plenty of stuff we can blame them for, plenty. And that's okay to do, but we're holding them accountable. Maybe they had a horrific childhood that set them up for that kind of stuff. But I would say that really figure yourself out first and get some healing first before you think about the abusive parent's childhood because more understanding and compassion can come later. But if we're only thinking about what the parent went through and a little bit about us, we're not really gonna heal probably. This is not for everybody. My work really isn't sort of for everybody. And I see what you're saying. And so Rekha asked, I really want therapy, but in my country, they think people who go to therapy are mentally disabled, what should I do? I think if we talk about too the access to healthcare, I have, there are so many barriers. And I would say to try to beg, borrow and steal to really find your way to someone that can help you. Whether that's seeing if someone can do remote sessions with you outside of the country, it might take six months, it might take three months to find somebody, but to really give it a good shot because there are countries that, like I said earlier, that just think that you have to be severely, mentally challenged or disabled in order to see a therapist. And that's, it's just kind of inhumane. So at best to try to look outside your country. And sometimes I know that that's not even possible too. So I want to be real about that. And I wanted to put it out there that seeking mental health treatment is inspiring and empowering. It's not something that should be stigmatized ever for any reason. And so Keon's asked, I need to ask a question, is it normal for every kid to go through a really long phase of being terrified of sleeping in the dark on their own like for years and staying awake for hours every night, even as an adult? A powerful question. No, I don't believe it's normal. I will say it's common. Many childhood trauma survivors have issues around sleep and anxiety at night. I think if someone is getting their needs met from a healthy family system, the family is something that I call child-centric. That in the early years that there is a good night ritual like reading stories in bed, affection, snuggling, safety, that kind of a thing. But when we're raised coming back to that idea about anything less than nurturing is abusive, it's like, here we are again, when parents aren't thinking about the safety development health of their child, kids are just kind of sent to bed. And I look at the sleep stuff as a direct kind of clue or sign that there wasn't healthy attachment, that there wasn't healthy attunement. So I know it's confusing. Is it normal? No. Is it common for childhood trauma? Yes. But don't take that as, oh, good. You know what I mean? I'm just saying many kids are being raised in that kind of neglect. I would say it's not normal. I would say it's severe emotional childhood neglect. And so then Elsa asked, when something surfaces and you feel triggered, how do I know its roots are deeper and coming from childhood trauma? Can you read it again? Elsa asked, when something surfaces and you feel or I feel triggered, how do I know its roots are deeper and coming from childhood trauma? So this is the question. This is the question that I think and it's really hard to articulate. I'm not trying to be bitter or something, but I'll probably be discussing this question for the majority of my career because it's really tricky. The barista, okay? The barista. The barista, if the barista is a kind of a jerk to us and we get really, we really take it personally. There is a present issue going on and that present issue is the jerky barista. All right. You know? But what the barista triggers or brings up of a body memory is the thing to focus on. And I would say that 80% of the energy of the trigger around the barista situation or the moody partner or the weird performance review that we get at work or just the world. The world is a mess right now, that's a present issue, but it might take us back to our younger world, you know? So I love the question so much because it's how do you suss out what belongs in the present and what doesn't? And coming back to dialoguing is your inner child will tell you through how they talk about the barista. Like I mentioned earlier, like I always end up as the jerk in this thing. I'm always wrong. That is your inner child telling you what the everyday life was like growing up. I'm always wrong. No, that's powerful. And then that tells you that that child had no reciprocity or shared power. So it's really, it takes a long time. It took me a long time to figure out my triggers. You know, you could be dating a sociopath. You could be dating a very unsafe person, but they are like a present issue taking it, taking you back to an early volatile person or a very unprotective person. Parent. And that's why that, yeah, go ahead, Sarin. Really appreciate that question because it's just, it's- Thank you. It's more, there's a practice in trying to figure that stuff out. But I will say this. When anyone is triggered, don't ask them if they're triggered because that makes it worse. Yeah, yeah, it does. But when we're triggered, there's a practice around it's really hard to figure out because, you know, if anyone else is leaving the Starbucks, that person might be like, wow, that person was a jerk to you in line. You should talk to the manager. That can feel really validating about the present and even furloughly confusing you. Yeah. But if we go dialogue with our inner child, and you know what I mean? Like that's where the content of childhood comes up. And then what's the answer? When we grow and we progress and we heal more, by the time we've left the door of the coffee shop, we're like, wow, that person was a pain in the ass. I'm not coming back here. And then we're done with it. It doesn't stay with us, you know? No, that makes sense. And then Casey asked, how would you recommend interacting with in-law family members, specifically sister-in-laws, that are really activating to be around and or very intense towards myself and my partner? This one is super hard. And I won't spend too much time on it, is I have, I don't know, I don't really know if this is actually correct. But how I advise people is to say, I think the partner should be setting boundaries with the family, not the spouse trying to make something happen. So the other piece to that is that, when say a young couple gets married, and then he is, I'll just do that in a traditional gendered kind of marriage, heterosexual marriage, he is really triggered by his mother-in-law, who's really aggressive, intrusive, and that kind of a thing. And his wife doesn't set boundaries, gives the mother still a lot of power. Do you follow me on this? Yeah, this is tricky. I really think it's up to the wife in that situation to really kind of set the boundaries. So there's more of a couple situation going on or a couple's problem. So it's a really powerful question in a way, but the other side to that too, coming back to what I said earlier is, so you have a present problem, which is your sister-in-laws. But do they take you back to your own family system in some way? About kind of being a pain in the ass, about being aggressive, or about being overly opinionated. Who might that take you back to in your own childhood? And that might actually help you with your feelings and how to navigate it too. Because when people like that really trigger us, if we're not aware of what it triggers us to, we're kind of up the creek a little bit, because our inner child is gonna make it all about those sister-in-laws. Yeah. So it's just always that self-assessment, right? Like analyzing what, where is this? Cause it can be both. It can be that maybe- It can be both. Yeah, it can be both that the person is insulting you or being rude, but it's also like triggering as well. It's both. Yep. And so last question from Grant. Is it dangerous to use, to use the feeling of unconditional love you develop for yourself through healing from childhood trauma as the framework for love in a relationship? Can you read it again? I don't know if I understand the question. So is it dangerous to use the feeling of unconditional love you develop for yourself through healing as the framework for love in a relationship, like a romantic relationship? I don't quite know. I feel like I would want to know more, but I will say this. The relationship with our inner child and the unconditional love there is if we can get to that place, your life will change, I think. That's for everyone, not just the author of the question, but how we approach our partners. I don't really quite know. I will say this, is that when it comes to our partners, there's a difference between self-love that we have and then how we love our partners in a way that here's what a really healthy benchmark is, is that our partner enhances our life, not completes our life. Exactly, that's such a message. Because the inner child often, and I spent years in this, I think that when we don't grow up in safety, this is why it's so important for kids to get what they need. We grow up into adults looking for parents in the wrong person or abusive people. In a healthy relationship, any time we can help our partners out with their inner children, but if we're dating from a place or loving from a place of like, please love me, you know what I mean? That's about the missing parents in our lives from childhood, not so much about a partner. Unconditional love is great, but our partner should really enhance our life, but they don't complete it the way that an infant and mother would be completed. Exactly, and so you're saying like, sometimes people will try to compensate for what they didn't get in childhood. Sure. In a romantic, wow. No, that is so true. That's a powerful message. One last thing is that, when we fall in love with people, it's just magical. A beginning of a relationship is just totally magic, and there's a lot of chemicals and a lot of just beauty and soulmate kind of stuff going on, but then the rubber really hits the road in intimacy. Once that wears down a little bit, there's a new version of love, which is trying to do conflict. It's, I call it the, you know, marriage or partnership or whatever is the final frontier, I think, for people to really grow with somebody and grow in intimacy. So those two things are really kind of different. Yeah, I agree with that. And so that is the end of our audience segment portion. Thank you guys for that. Love those questions. Right, amazing questions. Very powerful, yeah. Exactly. And so my final questions are, how do we support victims of child abuse, especially since children are the most vulnerable community? Yeah, and are we talking about adults who have gone through childhood trauma? No, like current abuse. I mean, we need to support them too, but I just want to know, like, how do we, it's almost like, how do we prevent it and support, you know, victims of child abuse who are enduring it as we speak? Oh, this is always a heartbreaking question. In the U.S., our system is broken about keeping kids safe. There's Department of Youth and Families, Department of Children and Families. My experience is they don't have a lot of power in terms of really keeping kids safe. Let's just say the cops are called in on a domestic violence call and they're mandated reporters, so they file Department of Children and Family Service to do an assessment. And from what people tell me from my experience, if they show up and they interview both the parents and then the house looks okay, they're fine. They might recommend getting into therapy or something like that, you know? Things, the bar I think about things going south in a child's life is way too low for the community or society to kind of step in, you know? But that's coming from my experience of 10 years ago when I worked in that world and agency settings and stuff like that. I hope it's changed. I don't really hear a lot of sort of changing there. So I would just sort of say the system is broken. But if you have that nephew or niece or if you have that neighbor's kid that you know isn't really, or it's just sort of like, or if you're in a blended family and you know that your partner's ex is really abusive, I think to be able to say to a child kind of something like, I see you, you know? And I see what you're going through and it's not okay. And someday you can talk to me about it if you want to. That's the best I got to be honest. And it bothers me that I don't have more than that. But thinking in our own stories, if anyone identifies as growing up in abuse, what would it have been like if you were 13 years old and you're growing up in your own mess and then somebody, a neighbor or somebody outside or something like that said, whatever you're feeling is totally right on because I have a feeling like you're not fully getting what you need or you're not listened to or you're not believed. The kid's probably going to be freaked out. They're not going to know what to do with it but they'll remember it. And that memory of it, I think is going to be huge for them. Sometimes I'll have a client that had a teacher who did that for them and they never forgot it because like in the beginning of this live stream when I mentioned these little crumbs of knowledge, when you're 13 years old, you kind of know that something's off. You just can't name it. Yeah. So we need help from healthy adults. And what I'm suggesting is really hard because it'll feel like you're really overstepping. And I don't think that people realize or they might underestimate the power of just a helping hand, of just talking to someone, of just sitting them down and saying, hey, I care. And I just want to know what's going on. Right. When I have clients who are in the situation of they might be an aunt or an uncle and they know that their niece and nephew is just growing up in a mess, you know? I have a weird Star Wars analogy and I say you kind of have to be Ben Kenobi for a while. And Ben Kenobi was in the proximity of Luke Skywalker, kind of watching him a little bit or being available for him when he needed him one day. So that's kind of what I mean about, it's heartbreaking where for that, your niece or nephew is 13 years old, they may not be able to take anything in for another 10 or eight years about what's going on with them. So I just kind of say, you know, be available maybe when that moment happens. It's just like a sane person. I agree with that. And I think that is the best advice to give because sometimes it really is like you can't always, you know, sometimes you just have to intervene and sometimes you can't intervene but you can at least provide that emotional support. So I agree with that and it's powerful. Right. And it's a lot of grief and letting go because we don't have a lot of power. That's what I don't like about society. We don't have a lot of power over keeping kids as safe as we would like. Yeah, exactly. And so thank you so much for being here today. This information is so valuable to our viewers and helpful. So thank you so much for that and the amazing work that you do. Thank you so much. I love this. Thank you. And so I hope everyone has a good day. I hope that everyone got something valuable out of this. We're doing it for you guys for mental health awareness month. So thank you again, Patrick and everyone have a good day. Thanks for tuning in. Be well. Bye. Bye.