Couples That Trigger Each Other's CPTSD Reactions: One-on-One Coaching with Anna

Have you ever wondered what it's like to be trained by me in this video? I want to invite you to a recorded group training call. I'm just going to show you a little mini workout that I did with someone named Sarah and it starts off good. here it is okay, welcome everyone, this is the group

coaching

call. I'm so glad you can join us. What we're going to do on this call is one at a time. I'll answer your

coaching

questions and we'll talk a little. discussion, well, hi sarah, how are you? Hello, thanks for answering my question.

Well, I was wondering, so I think my partner and I were

trigger

ing

each

other

in a very similar way. You know, we both had a difficult childhood and we were

trigger

ed. at

each

other

very quickly and then we argue and then it gets very dramatic very quickly so I want to stay with him, not that I want to leave so I was wondering what you would advise me. That's a good question and I think it's so good. common for

couples

where at least one person, if not both, has

cptsd

and honestly, in my experience, if one person has

cptsd

and there are a lot of fights, the other will start to have similar symptoms to the person who has cptsd, so which is not the same as having a horrible childhood, but we find each other, right?

And often that's who we fall in love with and that's okay and there's a solution to this. There are some techniques you can use when you know you are. someone who is triggered in relationships and so, sarah, a question I had for you is: do you have something like abandonment is part of your trauma? Yes, definitely, he is very, yes, and very strong, and he has that too. Actually, I'm not sure why. It could be because he was abandoned by his father when he was a child, so what tends to cause me not to trigger it?

What kinds of things trigger it? um when I'm just, you know, let's say we argue about who does some cleaning around the house or something and then I say, well, you need to clean too, you know, and stuff like that and then that comes out real quick, so yeah I show some kind of dissatisfaction a little bit annoying, that makes him very angry because he thinks, oh I'm trying to do everything and it's still not right, is it your strong emotions that trigger it or are you just maybe maybe when I'm not totally balanced , so yeah, well, so I'll do it first? direction for you because you have abandonment um that's something that I relate to a lot and I've been through a lot so the techniques that I teach

couples

come largely from my own experience and my own marriage and um , my husband doesn't have what we have but he doesn't like it when my emotions go overboard and that tends to be a trigger for him which is fair and that's because I get cbtsd when I'm upset that's what I do and then it can open up this really bad dynamic for us where you know an argument starts about whatever it is doing the dishes or something and then you know it starts as a little objection and then one of us sounds a little angrier than like that right away. , when someone is angry with me, a part of me that I'm not even aware of is afraid that they are going to leave me and that brings out the worst in me and I start to deregulate and, at best, the people who watch this channel know that dysregulation is a real thing that happens, it's very common for people who grew up with abuse and neglect, our brains become a little bit dysregulated and therefore the brain patterns of brain weight become disharmonized and go into a kind of of this and our heart rate, our breathing, our vital signs, instead of having a regular flow pattern, are starting to get out of sync again and it has a real effect on every part of our being, it affects our blood flow. it affects our cognition and greatly affects how much we can keep the left frontal cortex active.

This is a very common symptom for people like us who grew up with trauma where the left frontal cortex is suppressed and that's where your reasoning is. your right frontal cortex starts to light up if you were doing a brain scan this is what it looks like and there is more emotion and that is exactly what it feels like so people who try to deal with us or have a constructive disagreement with us are Finding ourselves very irrational, you know, it doesn't make sense, too emotional and for them, for anyone, and especially for people who maybe have a bit of an evasive personality and that's sometimes who we end up with because evasive personalities there is a way It works for us, but it doesn't work during arguments where they feel very overwhelmed by our display of emotion, it makes them want to run away and then what causes abandonment is they say, "I'm not going to talk to you right now." .

Hit or hang up the phone and a lot of people would feel like that, like I'm not going to have a conversation with someone who's yelling at me, so, then, the way out of this and we're. I'm just going to assume that you are the change agent here, you are the one who is on this call, so we'll put your tools aside for now, but your tools are to first recognize that your emotional

reactions

are probably too much for most. people doesn't mean you're too much, it's just that when your emotions go it's hard for you and it's hard for everyone, so awareness okay, I'm activated, now I'm going to get into it. now I'm going to get into my reaction to a fight and you know it's commonly called the fight or flight response and in the trauma world we also know there's more, there's fawn, there's freezing, but fight mode comes in and there's all this adrenaline. , there is cortisol. brain changes, we say things we don't really mean, we are seeing the worst in people and those are all things that can make a fight cruel and we know we all know this from experience, having cptsd, uh, it has made many of us losing great relationships that we really love or getting into relationships with people we don't really love, just who could tolerate us and who could tolerate that tough nervousness, but the good news is that you can really change this part of your behavior, which is when I feel upset to realize it and then you're fine now.

I feel triggered. I'm in fight mode and the first thing you do after you recognize it is take your speed and slow it down to like 50 percent speed. During the conversation, you need to start creating spaces between what you hear and what you say so that you have a chance to reason and if you're really activated and you're thinking, no, it's urgent, no, I have to tell him. "Give him how bad it is, that's been not just making him just stop, stop, he wants to get out of the conversation, it's because when he gets activated like that and he's talking, it's like someone's drunk ranting, he doesn't know that we." We're drunk, but that's just not ourselves and you don't want the things that you say when you're in that disregulated state and particularly in the state of abandonment, um what Pete Walker calls the abandonment mix where there's this terrible convergence of hard emotions, grief. anger and panic and everything is coming together and it's like it's coming out or regrettable, regrettable threats to leave the relationship, you know or, worse yet, you don't want to say those things, they're very, very damaging to trust and intimacy. , so if you can get it.

Hug yourself and say: I'm feeling it right now. I don't have to stop feeling it, but I have to stop talking. I should stop saying it right now and go process this on my own for a moment and if you have someone. you can call in those moments who is who also knows our tools, that's great, but that won't always be the case, so you walk away, but because a lot of people feel abandoned when someone leaves it, leaves the room in the middle of an argument and that will trigger his fiery dragon words which will then leave you trapped again in the exchange that you want to avoid that makes people feel abandoned and this is something you can also teach your boyfriend to avoid feeling abandoned, how do you you do?

I mean, you know what I'm feeling really overwhelmed right now, I need to leave the room, I need five minutes, or I need 20 minutes, or I need half an hour, something reasonable for you and say, I'm going to come back. I'll see you right here, calm them down. I really want to have this conversation, but I feel like if I talk now I'm going to say things that are terrible and I don't want people to be able to hear that. Usually they will base it and someone you know, when someone won't give someone else space when they need to talk, that's not okay, but this is not the time to fight about whether it's acceptable or not, it's time to just get out of it. the room.

The price we pay for having an argument while we're dysregulated could be days more of dysregulation and loss of the relationship and loss of the living situation and loss of, you know, there's so much loss that flows from the communication that we try to have while we're dysregulated. , so it's worth it. You know, try, when you're not dysregulated, do the math and just see how much it's worth to you to keep your composure while you're in an argument, put those intense feelings aside and then start using your tools now. In this community, as you know, we use this thing called daily practice, it's a writing technique where you can write your fears and resentments on paper, it's a substitute, we're letting them out and then we put it on paper and write it down.

We write a little statement at the end to ask for it to be removed, then we rest in meditation and you can do a mini version of that when you're in the middle of a fight, get out, get out, use that tool. We also have some. emergency tools for re-regulation that you can use and they are stomp your feet and do left right left right and say it to yourself as you feel your feet hitting the floor left right this will start to make your brain talk take your right hand and say : I'm taking my right hand and I'm touching my left shoulder, tell yourself and do it across that midline of your body, you're starting to help your brain get back to communicating left and right back to regulation.

I'm, I'm touching my left shoulder with my right hand. I am touching my right shoulder with my left hand. It's very simple, but try it, try it, you can breathe deeply, but for people with cptsd, this prevailing wisdom is that you can do it. solving everything with some deep breaths is always like, oh people, you know deeply, yeah, like it's right, but that doesn't mean you know that deep breathing is regulating, so keep using that tool, don't abandon it if you really You need a reset, you can do something like a cold shower, something like that, anything that shakes up your nervous system, if you can settle for something a little less than that, try putting your hands under cold water or try putting them in warm water and washing them with soap you can sit in your chair and say I'm sitting in my chair and then you feel your own weight in the chair and you lean back on it you can press your tongue against the back of your teeth you are trying to give yourself body sensations to return to your body, I mean, we don't actually leave our body, but our consciousness goes out, so we are returning our consciousness to our nervous system communicating with us about what's happening, where am I, you can look around. room and you say, okay, I'm in my office, there's the outside, this is my desk and you start looking at where I am in the room, because often when you're in deep dysregulation, you feel like you've flown out of the room. consciousness and I'm trying not to say out of your body because that's misleading you're in your body you just can't feel it and you can't feel it so you want to go back and especially with the writing and If anyone is watching this and wants to learn how to do this technique, I always put a link right below each video, it's called daily practice, it's free, you can learn it and try it in less than an hour and then you can use it and you can.

When you can write down what makes you afraid and resentful before you talk about it, it will begin to become clearer. Some of the things you feel will feel much better once you've written them down. You will still need to say what I have written, but you will be in a slightly better frame of mind to choose what really needs to be said and when you are regulated you will not only be aware of your surroundings but you can be aware of another person's feelings and then you will do it. you know like a hurt child in you it's not just like screaming I don't need you I don't need anyone you're not saying things like that you can start coming back and leaving okay I can see you very angry I didn't mean what I said you can even apologize if there is something you need or you can ask again for what you were asking for and this time you have done it. an opportunity to obtain better results.

I just learned over and over again that when I have intense emotions it shows in my voice and on my face and that body language scares other people and tends to harden their hearts. against or taking a step back or not wanting to cooperate with me and that's been like not rocket science, but it's been very helpful for me to understand, so it's about teaching myself to control what I'm going to say. It's an overreaction to just not throw it at someone. Never in my life have I obtainedgood results with that and I get much better results when I can process the feelings at once.

It takes away a little bit of the trauma and then communicates what I have to say, so that's my piece for you Sarah, what do you think about that? Does it match some of the experiences you had? Definitely, yes, definitely, I mean, he tried. She said okay. You know he's threatened to leave and is now living in the guest room, which triggers my abandonment issues. Yeah, yeah, I bet how it feels when your abandonment increases. It's like a physical sensation. Yes, I feel really helpless. um and so extremely sad and crying for hours so yeah, yeah, a lot of us have felt like prisoners of that abandonment reaction because I mean, I don't know about you, but how many times have I been left in a bad situation? because I couldn't face the feeling that came up because of endings, even when I wanted it to end, it would trigger the old feelings of abandonment and it would be debilitating and I couldn't deal with it, so I stayed. around I had this or I had I had an unconscious unconscious incentive to stay alone so I wouldn't have to go through all that or you know I had to go to work tomorrow I can't deal with this right now and it's like that thing that you're carrying on your back it's this reaction that you have and then it all depends on learning to calm that reaction because when you can you can be closer to people and you can have the option to leave when you feel like leaving when you feel like it's okay, yeah, I don't want to leave, like that That's the question.

Have you been able to talk to him about your

reactions

to cptsd and let him know? you're aware of it and you're working on it yes, I definitely have and what's that like yes, that's why I'm on the course yes, so, well, yes, slow, I mean, I'm not that far away yet, I think it just makes missing Well, I guess I have some videos on YouTube. I'll put the links below this video where I have videos that are for partners to talk about strategies that they can use when they feel like their partner is regulating all of this and then if they're willing to work with you a little bit.

I always say you know no couple is expected to put up with abuse. That's not all, but when you know when you can spot the signs that someone is dysregulating, you can modify your approach. a little bit, you know, like taking it down, putting it in the kindest language, creating opportunities for breaks, breaks are really important for both people, but they have to be done without a threat of abandonment in them, that's it, I'm leaving furious. I'm going to a hotel, I'm not talking to you, that's going to trigger a worse fight that will make everything more difficult.

Everyone needs it, but people do need it. You need to be able to express yourself. You need to be able to do it. So that's what we're working with as cptsd is learning how to learn how to deal with our dysregulation here and then coming back with our communication with the person, so I hope that helps. Yes, yes, thank you, thank you, thank you very much. you and that's a glimpse of what it's like to participate in member group coaching calls. We do group member coaching calls twice a month and there are usually 20 to 40 people there and usually five or six people raise their hand on those Calls and I give you a mini coaching.

We would love to have you in the membership program. If you want info, it's under the shitty childhood fairies membership. You can find out what the benefits are because you have conversations with me. You can be part of a community and you have access to all my courses for a whole year there is another way you can be trained by me this is something completely new that I am doing and they will be mini recorded training sessions to share here on youtube this is a recorded session done remotely by you at your house, me and my studio, but we both appear on the screen side by side in front of the camera with voices and you have a mini workout.

I can't guarantee that I can offer a space to everyone who sends me a question, but I would love to see your questions. If you are interested, you can send me a short video by email. You can do it over the phone or whatever is easy for you and tell me what your coaching question is and specifically which one. What kind of help and changes do you hope to get from that training session? Please attach your video to an email and send it to me at hello crappychildhoodferry.com with any information you think I need to know if you loved what I was talking about with Sarah. about how couples can get along better and support each other when one or both have cptsd.

I have a video here that talks about that and I'll see you very soon.