September 19, 2022 • 43 mins
If you’ve lived through horrific trauma or abuse, is it really fair of us to say that the ways you’ve learned to cope are “bad,” or to use clinical speak, “maladaptive”? This week on Here After, Stephanie Foo, author of What My Bones Know, joins me to talk about complex PTSD and the ways we pathologize human responses to trauma. You’ll also hear how claiming your own messy, complex coping mechanisms can help you build a community that sees you and loves you.
If you’re haunted by any type of trauma, or know someone who is, this conversation is a great introduction to complex PTSD, and the work of survivorship.
In this episode we cover:
- Why pretending to be a high-performing badass is maybe not in your best interest
- How storytelling can make you feel less freakish and alone
- The real problem with most books on trauma and C-PTSD
Notable quotes:
“People are like, oh, you're so brave to have shared your story. And I was like, I burned down my whole life. There was nothing to lose anymore, so there was nothing to be brave about.” - Stephanie Foo
About our guest:
Stephanie Foo is a C-PTSD survivor, writer, and radio producer, most recently for This American Life. Her work has aired on Snap Judgment, Reply All, 99% Invisible, and Radiolab. A noted speaker and instructor, she has taught at Columbia University and has spoken at venues from Sundance Film Festival to the Missouri Department of Mental Health. She lives in New York City with her husband.
Read Stephanie’s book, What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
Find her at stephaniefoo.me and follow her on Instagram @foofoofoo and Twitter @imontheradio
Find a great conversation about What My Bones Know on Maria Shriver’s Sunday Paper at this link
Additional resources
It’s OK That You’re Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn’t Understand is a book for grieving people, those who love them, and all those seeking to love themselves—and each other—better. (available in paperback, e-book, & audiobook)
For a collection of tools and coping skills related to grief and trauma, check out my illustrated guided journal, How to Carry What Can’t Be Fixed. (available in paperback and for Kindle)
Get in touch:
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of Here After with Megan Devine. Tune in, subscribe, leave a review, send in your questions, and share the show with everyone you know. Together, we can make things better, even when they can’t be made right.
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Have a question, comment, or a topic you’d like us to cover? call us at (323) 643-3768 or visit megandevine.co
For more information, including clinical training and resources, visit us at www.Megandevine.co
For grief support & education, follow us at @refugeingrie
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I think it got too difficult really for me to
pretend to be normal. I just couldn't do it anymore.
Part of me, which as I could have just pretended
like everything was okay and I could be the high
performing Badass that everyone thought I was, and I just
could not. And once I admitted that to myself and said,
(00:25):
you know, I might not be that person, but here's
who I am instead, that's when life got a lot easier,
more comfortable. And yet that's when my tribe came along
and everyone was like Oh, US too, and proved that
there is a different way to to live this life
that is just as valuable and just as viable. This
(00:50):
is here after and I'm your host, Megan Divine, author
of the best selling book it's okay that you're not okay.
Each week I bring you conversations with authors and Divis
and other really cool people, all exploring what it means
to be a fully feeling human in an often difficult world. Now,
if you've lived through horrific trauma or abuse, is it
(01:12):
really fair of us to say that the ways you've
learned to cope with that trauma or abuse are bad,
like bad in air? Quotes here or, to use clinical speak,
to call your coping skills maladaptive. This week on Hereafter
Stephanie Foot, author of what my bones know, she joins
me to talk about complex ptsd and the ways we
(01:34):
pathologize human responses to trauma. You'll also hear how claiming
your own messy, complex coping mechanisms can help you build
a community that sees you and loves you. All of
that and more coming up after this first break. Before
(01:56):
we get started, one quick note. While we cover a
lot of emotional relational territory in each and every episode,
this show is not a substitute for skilled support with
a licensed mental health provider or professional supervision related to
your work. Hey friends, now, as a survivor of trauma myself,
I am really sensitive about asking my guests to summarize
(02:19):
the things they lived through. I've been on that media
circuit where you just talk about some of the worst
moments of your life over and over and over again,
like answering these deeply personal questions about horrendous, difficult things
over and over. It's just it's weird. So whenever I can,
I try to shift the burden of telling the horrendous
(02:41):
story off of my guest and frontloaded here into my
introduction to the show, and that's what I've done today.
Stephanie Foud grew up in San Jose, California, surrounded by
manicured landscapes and high achieving immigrant families. From the outside,
her family looked like that coveted American dream scenario, but
(03:02):
on the inside it was very much a nightmare. Stephanie's
parents regularly beat her and emotionally abused her before eventually
abandoning her when she was sixteen. In two thousand eighteen,
Stephanie was diagnosed with complex PTSD, a little understood and
little studied form of post traumatic stress disorder that can
(03:24):
occur from repeated, long term trauma. Stephanie's Best Selling Book
What my bones note tells the story of that intense
childhood abuse and the coping patterns that helped her survive
what she had to survive. The book is also a
story of intergenerational trauma, immigration and understanding the roots of violence,
(03:44):
while not excusing the violence itself. Just that last bit
is such a super important point and I'm really glad
that we got to talk about it a little bit
in this conversation. Now, books on complex PTSD, like many
other diagnoses or or can additions that we have books
on complex PTSD can be really dry and, honestly, kind
(04:05):
of clueless and cruel in their descriptions about people who
carry long term behaviors or patterns of behavior due to
the trauma and abuse they survived. So you'll hear it
in our conversation today, but Stephanie really wants you all
to know that her book is written by a trauma
survivor for other trauma survivors, not just child aboost but
(04:28):
war and other kind of repeated, horrible experiences. She wants
you to know that the book focuses on healing, but
the kind of healing that can only come when you
respect the ways that each person managed to survive what
they went through. I promise you that's going to make
more sense as you listen to the show. But if
(04:48):
you're haunted by any type of trauma or you know
someone who is, this conversation with Stephanie Foo is a
great introduction to complex PTSD and the work of survivorship.
So let's get into it. Content notes everybody. This episode
contains non graphic reference to abuse and trauma and it
includes a small amount of swearing. Well, hi, hello, thank
(05:15):
you for having me. Absolutely I sat down and read
your book like cover to cover, over the course of
eight hours on Sunday fast. So one of the things
that I would really love to talk about. Throwing it
out there, it's like you write a lot about how
we pathologize responses to trauma, no matter what happens to you.
(05:36):
Like the healthy responses to be completely unaffected, rise above
and always present as really chill. There's Um, there's a
section I particularly liked in your book when you talk
about meeting Joey for the first time and you're like,
I am pretending to be completely non anxious and chill
and all of these things, and he's like okay, but
tell me what's actually happening. So can we talk about
(05:59):
that like that, the ways that we pathologize responses to trauma? Yeah,
so I think you know, just the word trauma itself,
I think, is pathologized. I think there's this understanding that
trauma itself, experiencing it, makes you broken. I remember reading
(06:20):
this Fox article where they were saying, you know, be
careful about how you use the word trauma, because if
you describe yourself as traumatized that is saying like that
you are broken and helpless and like you're robbing yourself resiliency,
because you're basically admitting that you know there's no hope
(06:44):
for yourself and your giving up. Oh my God. And
I was like wait, what, like, why would you define
I mean, yeah, I mean I guess it's a problem
to say that you are traumatized if that's how you're
going to define trauma, but I don't think trauma needs
to be defined in that way. I think the fact
of the matter is that we all experience some form
(07:06):
of trauma, and trauma is scientific adaptation to keep us alive.
Like if you're bitten by a snake, you're going to
be afraid of snakes. If you touch a hot stove,
you're going to be really careful around a hot stove,
like it's basically your brain wiring threat and saying like hey,
this is something that's really dangerous that could kill you,
(07:28):
so be vigilant around the thing that could kill you.
And you know, for some of US those triggers, like
being afraid of snakes, are maybe more sensible than others,
not sensible but more like manageable than others, like being
afraid of anyone who's using a loud voice, you know,
(07:50):
being afraid of someone who's yelling. You're gonna encounter that
much more in life. That's harder to avoid, right than snakes.
I think it's really interesting that, like the self deaf
mission of trauma right, that we have this idea that
it's not the incident of trauma that's the problem, it's
allowing yourself to identify as traumatized. I think we have
(08:13):
that that as like, Oh, you're being a victim and
you're never going to be able to get out of this,
like it's such a weird like, it's so weird. It's
so weird like that that whole nothing bad should happen
to you. If it does, your your prime directive is
to be resilient and unaffected and don't even name it
(08:33):
as a bad thing, because that's almost like invoking badness
if you call the bad thing bad. Exactly, I think
it's completely missing the fact that trauma can be an adaptation.
There's lots of fears and responses to trauma that actually
can be healthy, that actually can make us sort of
(08:56):
extremely useful in a variety of different situations, and it's
also just not a very empathetic or kind place to
come from, considering that all of us have some form
of trauma. If you're going to judge everyone for their
trauma response instead of stepping in and saying like Hey,
are you having a trauma response? Do you need a minute?
What do you need? How can I help you? How
(09:17):
can I support you in this, there's gonna be a
lot more conflict, judgment and refusal to make space, and
I think it's very ablest and like, what is this perfect,
untouched population of people anyway, honestly, that I've never gone
through anything hard. Yeah, I mean I think it's like
(09:40):
that common default that everybody is pretending to be okay
when we're not okay, which is basically like the entire
reason for my work and this show is to start
talking about how hard it is to be human and
the stuff we go through and that we adapt to
the things that we go through, and that's not the
same as resilience or overcoming but it's more like ship
happens to you and some of the ways that you
(10:03):
survived that and deal with that are awesome in the
right context, and some of those ways are really difficult,
but they're not wrong. Yeah, yeah, it's the judgment of
that that makes it impossible to live with, not the
challenge itself. Right, Stephanie, can you give us a description
(10:25):
of complex PTSD and how that's different than, I don't like,
the post traumatic stress disorder that people might know? Yeah,
so PTSD, you can get, quote unquote, traditional PTSD from
a singular traumatic event. So let's say you're hit by
a car. That can give you PTSD. COMPLEX PTSD is
(10:45):
kind of like if you were hit by that car
every week for three years. It's when the trauma happens
over and over and over and unless you are like
a tremendously unlucky individual, the only way that you're probably
getting complex PTSD is from a difficult relationship with other people.
(11:06):
So having an abuser, suffering from child abuse, domestic violence
or living in a war zone. So complex PTSD in particular,
it tends to really erode people's trust of other human
beings and make relationships a little bit different. Yeah, when
that is what you absorb, right, our relationships tell us
(11:29):
about the world and when your relationships tell you that
the world is an unsafe place, then the world is
an unsafe place and we learned lots of different ways
to survive that place. When I am having a conversation
with an author who has a book out, like I
don't want to give the book away because I really,
really want people to read the book. We were talking
earlier that, like my my perfectionist overwork tendencies, I'm like,
(11:53):
I'm basically going to develop a book report on your
book for everybody, but like, no, stop it right. A
book is a sort of a one way come versation
and the sparks that we gather from that, like that's
that's where that's really interesting to me. There was actually
a tweet that you had out about what my bones. No,
is now going into its six printing in five months.
Thank you to the therapists and teachers who have been
assigning it, the caretakers who have been studying it and,
(12:15):
most of all, the survivors for opening your hearts to it.
MM HMM. This is like the dream, right, the dream
here of taking something deeply personal, deeply painful. It's not
easy to write about these really intense personal experiences and
put them out into the world for public display, into
section and that, knowing that doing that means something to people,
(12:43):
right can we talk about that a little bit. That
that that interesting zone of here's this really intimate personal
stuff that was probably not very easy to write either.
Certainly wasn't easy to live and putting it out in
the world and seeing the impact of that. What's that
been like for you to see the impact of your
story in the world? It's been tremendously meaningful because, well,
(13:04):
when I was first diagnosed, there was nothing like my
book out there. Everything that I read was very clinical.
Most of it was not meant for people like me
to read. It was clear that it wasn't. A lot
of it was not made for people actually with complex
ptsd to read, because they would talk about us. They'd
(13:27):
be like complex people with complex PTSD are so difficult
to treat, they are, you know, they are burdens, they
are pain in the ass, they are whatever. They would
say all of these things and I was like, did
you think that I'd be too stupid to read this?
Like what? I don't understand a lot of it. It
was very pathologizing. A lot of it was very dry,
(13:51):
just just not very fund yeah, and you know, I
was a person who was coming from a storytelling background.
Obviously it told stories for ten years first person stories,
other people's first person stories, and I realized the impact
that had for empathy, for a narrative, for feeling less alone.
(14:11):
You know, I had helped so many other groups feel
less alone by showcasing these important stories, but never really
my own. And so when I was reading all of
these books and recognizing that, you know, that first person
story just did not exist and it made me feel
so isolated and freakish and damaged, I guess and I
(14:34):
knew that if I healed from this in any kind
of way, I would I would need to write about it,
because that story was just needed. I didn't want anybody
else to feel as completely isolated as I did after diagnosis.
And I always told myself in this process that, like
my story did not represent everyone with complex PTSD. I
(14:55):
mean it's obviously a spectrum. We all have different symptoms
and experiences, is and I told myself that if one
person would benefited from the book, then the four years
of creating it would be worth it would be okay.
So to have the response be so overwhelmingly positive, to
(15:18):
get like dozens of messages every day saying like you
got it, that's exactly what it's like. It's been really
wonderful and it's made me realize how truly needed this
was and to be able to give words to people
for this. Yeah, I mean I think it's been great
on a couple of different levels. I think first of all,
(15:38):
it's made me feel less alone, because I didn't really
have many people in my life with complex PTSD, and
now I see people with all different backgrounds and careers,
from herbalists, two doctors to like, you know, farmers, all
messaging me saying like, your experiences, my experience. Certainly it
makes me feel a lot less freakish myself and apparently
(16:02):
have helped other people do that. And Yeah, it also
give some sort of meaning and power to, like the
true anguish that I've had to experience, and it gives
some affirmation to that self loathing that I've suffered from
for so long, that I don't deserve to be here,
(16:22):
you know that I'm too broken to be here, that
I don't fit in with everyone else. I guess those
feelings and, more importantly, learning how to corral those feelings,
has actually made me sort of able to shine a
light for those who come behind me and has shown
me that I really do have a place of importance here,
(16:45):
that we all have a place of importance of being
the healers who can lead the way. It's so counterintuitive
or counter to the ways that we talk about, quote unquote,
mental health in this culture right that if you say
or if you're feeling alone and something or you're feeling
like a freak, you're feeling like the only one who's
experiencing these things like, then you're called to perform harder, right,
(17:08):
perform like everyone else, a little bit harder, to fit in.
If you're feeling lonely, you have to be more like
everybody else, and the reverse of that is actually what's accurate,
the willingness to tell the truth about who you are
and where you are and what you're feeling and what
you're experiencing like that, stripped down, not bright shiny package.
(17:30):
Truth like that is how not only you feel less alone,
but others feel les alone. It's like how we find
each other. Yeah, welcome back, everybody. I'm Megan divine and
(17:53):
this is hereafter let's rejoin my conversation with Stephanie Foo,
author of what my bones know. There's a site called
glow in the woods that was started by I'm going
to space on her last name of her first name
is Kate, and one of the descriptions it's a it's
a like a crowdsourced blog, community platform for people who
have experienced baby death. And she says I envisioned a
(18:16):
glow in the woods, a place where all of the
Medusa's could come and take their hats off, this place
where nobody's afraid of your snakes because they have their own. Yeah,
and I really see that power of storytelling, and not
just the power of storytelling, but the power of telling
the truth. Mm Hmmm, I think it got too difficult
(18:41):
really for me to pretend to be normal. I just
couldn't do it anymore. Part of me, which is I
could have just pretended like everything was okay and I
could be the high performing Badass that everyone thought I was,
and I just could not. And once I did that
to myself and said, you know, I might not be
(19:04):
that person, but here's who I am instead, that's when
life got a lot easier, more comfortable. And yet that's
when my tribe came along and everyone was like, oh,
US too, and prove that there is a different way
to to live this life. That is just as valuable
and just as viable, and how much easier it gets
(19:26):
when you stop pretending to be something you're not feeling
and also understanding that it has to be safe enough
to do that right. Like, I think there's a lot
of throat, like what's the pop psychology headline version of
that is like speak your truth, claim your power. Well,
it's not always safe to do that. Yeah, I mean
(19:46):
I had to burn down my whole life to be
able to do it. Basically, I lost everything and I
was like, well, I have nothing left to lose, so
I might as well do this. People are always like, yeah,
the bravery thing. People are like, Oh, you're so brave
to have like shared your story, and I was like
there was nothing to lose anymore, so there was nothing
(20:07):
brave about it. I have literally tried everything else possible
and now there is nothing and this is the only
option left for me. Yeah, yeah, this whole like like
let's turn it into a hero story. Well, no, no,
and I think also like, as somebody who was also
put a deeply terrible personal story out into the world,
(20:29):
wrote a book that I needed when that happened that
didn't exist at that time. It's like, look, at all
the good you've done in the world and this this
conflation with yes, sorry, all of that happened to you,
but you were so brave and now you've done something,
so much good in the world, and in a way
I'm really glad that happened to you. Right. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Has that horrendous narrative shown up on your doorstep? Honestly,
(20:52):
not too much, but I did hear it the other day.
I heard somebody else say to someone with PTSD like
that's what forged, like you're forged in fire, you know,
like now you really needed a great writer. I was
like no, yeah, within a couple of days of my
(21:14):
partner drowning, I was a psychotherapist before that happened, and
people were literally coming up to me being you're going
to be such a great therapist after this, you're going
to help people, and I'm like, okay, one you're actually
saying that I wasn't a good therapist before and I
actually needed a person to die in order to get
better at it and that his life is a fair
trade for any people I might help later. And I
(21:36):
just like, we have such a weird response to human
pain and suffering that we really want it to be tidy.
If we can't pretend it didn't happen, then we need
there to be a night and shining armor, heroic moment
where somebody is all healed and they've been of service
to others in the world. And it's almost no wonder
(21:58):
that people are has an to tell the truth about
their own lives. Right, we're confused about what trauma means,
what surviving and living with trauma or traumatic events means,
and we're confused about the role of hardship and becoming
sort of like better versions of ourselves. Like why there
(22:20):
needs to be a quick transformation into positivity, Yep, when
it's like no, this is fucked up and sad and
like yeah, I mean it is a great thing that
I've done this and I can and I can help
people and I'm proud of myself. But if, like, a
magic fairy could show up tomorrow and actually I could
have had a great childhood and not had any of this,
(22:40):
like I would trade it all in a second. I
would take the Magic Yep, I would take the magic fairy. Right,
it's like, well, you wouldn't have all of these beautiful
things in your life. But like what beautiful things would
I have instead, right, like stop reducing this stuff to
like your little formula to make everything work out okay.
And one of the things that I really love about
the way that you consistently show up, in all of
(23:02):
the ways that I've seen you show up, is like
you're not healed right, like you are not without coping
mechanisms or not right. But there's there's this. I think
we've got the folks who read your words and read
your story and see themselves and get it that finding
(23:23):
ways to live alongside this, in ways that reduce the
friction in your heart, in your mind and relationships, are like. Yes,
and other folks who maybe don't see themselves or haven't
yet seen themselves reflected in that story, they're like, but
you're all better now, right. Yeah, I don't know if
anyone is like you're all better now. Anyone who knows
(23:44):
me certainly isn't Um. But yeah, I try to be
very clear in the especially in the last pages of
the book, like it's a happy ending, like I've learned
to live with this in a way where I can
feel all joy and be glad that I'm alive. And
I there's ways that I can use what I've gotten
(24:05):
out of this in productive like ways to help people.
But every day there's and still at least one thing
that really sucks about having complex PTSD. So I don't know,
what are you gonna do? And there's still days where,
you know, I mean I have, I have like written
in this book all of these great coping mechanisms, but
(24:28):
doesn't mean that I use the coping mechanisms every day.
Like sure, I like like I'm much better and I
know they're there and like knowing that they're there gives
me hope. And still there's days when I just yell
at myself like stop being crazy, you're being crazy, stop it,
and that super healthy. It is so healthy, as I
(24:48):
said in the beginning, when we were when we were talking,
like I noticed recognize what I was doing, when I
was preparing for our conversation and literally yelling at myself.
Stopped being fucking crazy. The and you know those, those days,
those days are what happens. It's not that you suddenly
reach this finish line and you find a purpose for
(25:11):
your story and your words and then everything is fine,
like Nope, still still in the trenches over here, is
still in the trenches with everybody else. But also what
kind of like psychopath? Yeah, what kind of psychopath is
just happy all the time? You're definitely not. If that
is the case, I love like, like, let's do the
Midrash on the redefinition of what health means. Like, health
(25:33):
to me means when you were having a ship day,
you were having a ship day and you don't have
to pretend to be doing anything else. That performative positivity
is pathology, which should totally be a bumper sticker if
that was not an ecological terror to make bumper stickers. Yeah,
I mean, like, I think it's like a diet, right,
(25:54):
you need a little bit of fat and sugar and
carbs and meat and veggies. If you're only eating like
one thing, you die. So I think that's kind of
how I see mental health is, like you have to
make sure that you have a lot of your experiencing
the full range of human emotion. Yeah, you know, if
(26:17):
your anger is so big that it's blocking out the joy,
then yeah, you should get that in check. If your
if your joy is so big that it's blocking out
the ability to feel sad, also a problem. Yeah, it's
the timeshare of the emotional psyche, right, like we want
all of the circuits able to fire and that one
doesn't cancel the other out. I think we do that
(26:40):
weird math of like you can't be grateful and sad
at the same time. Yeah, yeah, humans are weird. Humans
are weird. I mean that's the that's we're terrified of emotion, right,
like we are a culture that is terrified of big
emotion and so like, of course we have all of
these weird little rituals to make or that happiness is
(27:00):
the only thing that people see and it's just it's
not helping anything. And I think one of the big
three lines I see, not just in your book, but
like you're writing and writing on journalism and racism and
climate emergency, is like all of these really difficult things.
The through line that I see and all of that
stuff is the power of acknowledgment, for just being able
(27:22):
to tell the truth about the situation at hand and
not even necessarily having a solution, but that that acknowledgement
of the truth in all of these really deep, complex
difficult things like that is not nothing. I would agree
with you, but I would say that, like the through
line with all of these things actually is agency, I
(27:45):
think with the climate stuff, with the racism stuff, with
the mental health stuff, with everything, and it stems from
my ptsd honestly, because, you know, growing up I always
needed to have some sort of troll over the situation,
like the situation could very easily get out of control
(28:05):
and endanger my life and the lives around me. So
I always needed to like be the mom and keep
everything peaceful and keep everything unlock. But I also think
it's a deeply human desire that like having some form
of agency gives us so much peace and a feeling
of control and a feeling of well well being, and
(28:27):
I think it's really difficult to have those when you
know the world is falling apart and looking at the
news or looking at the climate, and so I try
to find small ways in which people can claim that
agency for themselves to help themselves and the people around them,
and I think that that isn't a really significant way
(28:49):
to feel those that broad spectrum of emotions and go
from feeling just anger to feeling anger and joy, or
just fear to fear and satisfaction and grief. You know. Yeah, Um,
I'm pausing because, like I am such a big fan
of agency and sovereignty. I feel like that's that's something
(29:12):
that I bring up all the time, that people have
the right to be who they are and feel how
they feel and need what they need and to be
able to have some say in how their own lives unfold,
and that loss of agency, that loss of sovereignty, is
(29:33):
a source of so much suffering dehumanization, and I think
agency is the heart of hope, right once you feel
like you have some element of control, it allows you
to feel that things can get better, it keeps you
energized and it is the antidote to despair. So that's
(29:58):
I love that. Okay, so that's a robin waltkimer quote.
That's not me. Her book is actually propping up my laptop.
So I love that you went there, because season two
of the show for me, is actually like where are
people finding hope, because I am definitely having some moments
of like we are screwed, or I'm screwed, because I'm
(30:20):
not able to find any like hope or agency in anything,
and so I love that this like naturally this is
where you go. Like we didn't get into it in
our conversation and I can I'll leave that for folks
to read in the book. But you you wrote into
your parents histories and your family's histories and that whole
history of violence and oppression and colonialism and war and
(30:44):
what that does to a family system and how that
trauma and pain and violence gets passed down. And you've
also written about racism and racism and journalism and how
people of Color experience a lot more saturation of violence
than white folks. Right and this knowledge of violence upon
(31:12):
violence upon violence. It's like, once you start to look
for it, it's easy to see it everywhere. It's easy
to see the tendrils of historical, intergenerational, cultural violence showing
up in so many places. You do this so beautifully
and so skillfully in your book, like you look at
what made your parents behave an act in the way
(31:33):
that they did. You look at that without collapsing into Oh,
I get it now, and so the sort of like
sentimental music, swelling absolution. You don't even talk like I was.
I literally cheered when I read that part of your book.
So thank you. I think two things here. One, understanding
(31:54):
why something, a person, a family, system of culture, an
organization whatever. Understanding why they are the violent oppressive creatures
they are does not absolve them of the responsibility to
not act out of their histories in the violent ways
that they're doing. Right, we can. We can hold both
(32:14):
things at the same time. I think that we get
caught in this like, oh, I understand them, so I
have to excuse them, like I'm just gonna Roll over
MP myself. No, hello, you can understand what created a
person and still hold them accountable for their actions. I
think that's a really tricky point that not a lot
of people pick up. And the other thing, coming back
(32:35):
to what you just described about where you find hope.
It's like when you start looking for the roots of violence,
like there's no end to that. You start seeing it everywhere,
and that can be really, really overwhelming and pressing. There's
(32:56):
no end to goodness either. Yes, for it. Yea, that
is true. It's no end to kindness and love if
you're looking for it, and like healing and like if
you look at the long arc of history, I mean
it's generally been getting a lot better than it wasn't
(33:17):
like there's got to say so, you know, whereas that's true.
I mean all I have to do is like look
at the zoomers, honestly, and the empathy and like the
respect that they have for their feelings and like the
respect that they have for others who are different from them.
(33:37):
And I'm like, you know, things are getting better, I think.
And Yeah, I feel angry at boomers a whole lot.
But you know, history isn't over, history is not done.
Culture is not done. Culture isn't static. It's constantly changing
(34:01):
and evolving and I think there will always be violence. Look,
I'm not, like naive enough to think that there is
not going to be violence, that there's not going to
be grief and death and loss, but I certainly think
that I can support others in their quest for happiness
(34:23):
and be supported better. And, yeah, trying to end the
cycles as best as we can. Yeah, that sounds hopeful, hopeful, hopeful,
but not pollyanna. We're not naive. I guess it is
the word that you use. There's a lot to be
helpful about, honestly, like I think there is that, you know,
(34:48):
the zoo, the zoomers, they have this thing, you know,
okay boomer, they have okay doomer, like, okay, doomer, like
you're gonna say that, like the world is on fire
and everything's dying and whatever, like the whole world is
going to end. Well, fuck you, because you know they're
(35:10):
fifteen and they have the right to a full and
thriving life. And so, yeah, it's kind of Shitty for
us to be like, yeah, the world's on fire, everything
is going to die within thirty years, without giving them
an out or another option. Yeah, so I feel like
this is a good like I can keep talking about
hope and despair, an agency and action forever and ever
(35:31):
and ever and ever, but I feel like this is
probably a good place to wrap us up. Do you
want to tell the people where they can find you
and anything else you want them to know about you
or about trees? Sure, I am on Instagram at Fu
Fu Fu. I'm on twitter, I'm on the radio, my
(35:53):
book is wherever fine books are sold, called my bones, no,
and com during the community, where like it is safe
to have complex PTSD and in this world that I
am envisioning and Dreaming Up and I'm hopeful for, we
(36:14):
can learn to take care of each other and be
more accepting of our TRAUMAS and learn how to repair
really thoughtfully when we have ruptures that come from this
violence I don't know if that was the best, like
most meaningful, profound thing to end on. That's all, I
think that came to mind. I think that's a beautiful
(36:36):
thing to end on. Right. We didn't get a chance
to talk about repair and rupture, that all of that
stuff is in your book. If we treated complex PTSD
like a disability, this would mean advocating for the things
that we need, learning how to do repair after a rupture.
I think those are actually good cliff hangers for us,
because those are all in the book and your vision
(37:00):
of a kinder, more honest, more hopeful world is a
really clear and beautiful and powerful storytelling place to end
and I appreciate it and I'm sure other folks will too.
So well, thank you so much. This has been a
really optimistic, pleasant little ROMP. It's so nice to exit
(37:22):
a conversation about trauma not failing like you just had
to go through and recall all the crappy things about
your life and instead be like flowers, flowers, trees, agency
and hope for everyone. Yes, yeah, I know, you already
(37:42):
wrote the whole book. You don't need to relive it
every time you talk to somebody. Yeah, that's what's reading
is for. All Right, I'm going to sign us off, folks.
We will be right back after this break back in
a second. Each week I leave you with some questions
(38:11):
to carry with you until we meet again. This season
is all about hope, real, like functional hope, rooted in
what are honestly, some pretty difficult things. Now you'll notice
that Stephanie and I reference trees and flowers as we
wrapped up our conversation on complex PTSD and on hope.
We had this whole side conversation on how she manages
(38:34):
her own climate despair, how she finds hope inside daily
action in the service of trees. It was a really
awesome conversation, but it didn't quite fit with the things
that we've been talking about previously. So that whole bonus
conversation is going to come out later this week. It
is really sweet and has its own hope inside it,
so watch for that one, although, better yet, just follow
(38:55):
the show wherever you listen to podcasts. That way you
will not miss and thing. Now, what I am personally
taking with me from this week's episode is a bit
more kindness to myself about the ways I've learned to
survive the difficult things in my own life and it's
so easy to be annoyed, especially as a therapist and
(39:17):
like obsessively self reflective person like it's so easy to
be annoyed with the weird ways I act sometimes, are
the weird ways I think sometimes, and I'm like Ah,
after all this time, like you still are using those
old coping skills that that really aren't applicable. I mean
I have great coping skills, I just don't use them
(39:38):
all the time and I think I think I can
be a little bit kinder to myself on those days
that I'm not exactly using the very best tools in
my collection. That's what I'm going to take from this
conversation today. What parts of the conversation stuck with you today?
What parts made you think about something in a new
way or see something differently in your life or in
(39:58):
somebody else's? Were there parts of Stephanie's story, especially those
parts about letting herself be seen? Were there parts of
that story that helped you feel seen? Everybody's going to
take something different from today's show, but I do hope
you find something to hold onto. I'd love to hear
what you've taken from this episode, what insights you might
(40:20):
have had, what curiosity got piqued, I don't know. I
just really like to hear from you. Check out refuge
in grief on instagram or here after pod on Tiktok
to see clips from the show and leave us your
thoughts and your comments on those posts. Really, on any
of the social platforms, refuge in grief and Hereafter pod,
and be sure to tag us on your own social
(40:42):
accounts when you do share the show. Use the Hashtag
here after pod on any platform so we can find you.
The whole team really loves to see where this show
takes you. If you want to tell us how today's
show felt for you, or you have a request or
a question for upcoming explorer, it shouldn't so difficult. Things
give us a call at three to three, six, four, three, three, seven,
(41:06):
six eight and leave a voicemail. If you missed it,
you can find the number in the show notes or
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an email, you can do that too. Write on the
Website Megan divine dot CEO. We want to hear from you.
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(41:26):
needs your voice. Together we can make things better, even
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(41:49):
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(42:09):
subscribe to the show, download episodes and keep on listening.
Friends want more hereafter. Grief Education doesn't just belong to
end of life issues. As my dad says, daily life
is full of everyday grief that we don't call grief,
from daily disappointments right up through those losses that rearrange
(42:29):
the world. Grief is everywhere. Learning how to talk about
all that without cliches or platitudes or dismissive, accidentally on
purpose rude statements. Well, that's an important skill for everybody.
find tip sheets, trainings, professional resources and my best selling book,
it's okay that you're not okay. Plus the Guided Journal
(42:49):
for Grief at Megan Divine Dot c o Hereafter with
Megan divine is written and produced by me. You guessed it,
Megan divine. Acuative producer is Amy Brown, Co produced by
Elizabeth Fossio, logistical and social media support from Micah and
edited by Houston Tilly. Music provided by wave crush and
(43:12):
occasional background noise from the air conditioning that I almost
always forget to turn off.
I think it got too difficult really for me to
pretend to be normal. I just couldn't do it anymore.
Part of me, which as I could have just pretended
like everything was okay and I could be the high
performing Badass that everyone thought I was, and I just
could not. And once I admitted that to myself and said,
(00:25):
you know, I might not be that person, but here's
who I am instead, that's when life got a lot easier,
more comfortable. And yet that's when my tribe came along
and everyone was like Oh, US too, and proved that
there is a different way to to live this life
that is just as valuable and just as viable. This
(00:50):
is here after and I'm your host, Megan Divine, author
of the best selling book it's okay that you're not okay.
Each week I bring you conversations with authors and Divis
and other really cool people, all exploring what it means
to be a fully feeling human in an often difficult world. Now,
if you've lived through horrific trauma or abuse, is it
(01:12):
really fair of us to say that the ways you've
learned to cope with that trauma or abuse are bad,
like bad in air? Quotes here or, to use clinical speak,
to call your coping skills maladaptive. This week on Hereafter
Stephanie Foot, author of what my bones know, she joins
me to talk about complex ptsd and the ways we
(01:34):
pathologize human responses to trauma. You'll also hear how claiming
your own messy, complex coping mechanisms can help you build
a community that sees you and loves you. All of
that and more coming up after this first break. Before
(01:56):
we get started, one quick note. While we cover a
lot of emotional relational territory in each and every episode,
this show is not a substitute for skilled support with
a licensed mental health provider or professional supervision related to
your work. Hey friends, now, as a survivor of trauma myself,
I am really sensitive about asking my guests to summarize
(02:19):
the things they lived through. I've been on that media
circuit where you just talk about some of the worst
moments of your life over and over and over again,
like answering these deeply personal questions about horrendous, difficult things
over and over. It's just it's weird. So whenever I can,
I try to shift the burden of telling the horrendous
(02:41):
story off of my guest and frontloaded here into my
introduction to the show, and that's what I've done today.
Stephanie Foud grew up in San Jose, California, surrounded by
manicured landscapes and high achieving immigrant families. From the outside,
her family looked like that coveted American dream scenario, but
(03:02):
on the inside it was very much a nightmare. Stephanie's
parents regularly beat her and emotionally abused her before eventually
abandoning her when she was sixteen. In two thousand eighteen,
Stephanie was diagnosed with complex PTSD, a little understood and
little studied form of post traumatic stress disorder that can
(03:24):
occur from repeated, long term trauma. Stephanie's Best Selling Book
What my bones note tells the story of that intense
childhood abuse and the coping patterns that helped her survive
what she had to survive. The book is also a
story of intergenerational trauma, immigration and understanding the roots of violence,
(03:44):
while not excusing the violence itself. Just that last bit
is such a super important point and I'm really glad
that we got to talk about it a little bit
in this conversation. Now, books on complex PTSD, like many
other diagnoses or or can additions that we have books
on complex PTSD can be really dry and, honestly, kind
(04:05):
of clueless and cruel in their descriptions about people who
carry long term behaviors or patterns of behavior due to
the trauma and abuse they survived. So you'll hear it
in our conversation today, but Stephanie really wants you all
to know that her book is written by a trauma
survivor for other trauma survivors, not just child aboost but
(04:28):
war and other kind of repeated, horrible experiences. She wants
you to know that the book focuses on healing, but
the kind of healing that can only come when you
respect the ways that each person managed to survive what
they went through. I promise you that's going to make
more sense as you listen to the show. But if
(04:48):
you're haunted by any type of trauma or you know
someone who is, this conversation with Stephanie Foo is a
great introduction to complex PTSD and the work of survivorship.
So let's get into it. Content notes everybody. This episode
contains non graphic reference to abuse and trauma and it
includes a small amount of swearing. Well, hi, hello, thank
(05:15):
you for having me. Absolutely I sat down and read
your book like cover to cover, over the course of
eight hours on Sunday fast. So one of the things
that I would really love to talk about. Throwing it
out there, it's like you write a lot about how
we pathologize responses to trauma, no matter what happens to you.
(05:36):
Like the healthy responses to be completely unaffected, rise above
and always present as really chill. There's Um, there's a
section I particularly liked in your book when you talk
about meeting Joey for the first time and you're like,
I am pretending to be completely non anxious and chill
and all of these things, and he's like okay, but
tell me what's actually happening. So can we talk about
(05:59):
that like that, the ways that we pathologize responses to trauma? Yeah,
so I think you know, just the word trauma itself,
I think, is pathologized. I think there's this understanding that
trauma itself, experiencing it, makes you broken. I remember reading
(06:20):
this Fox article where they were saying, you know, be
careful about how you use the word trauma, because if
you describe yourself as traumatized that is saying like that
you are broken and helpless and like you're robbing yourself resiliency,
because you're basically admitting that you know there's no hope
(06:44):
for yourself and your giving up. Oh my God. And
I was like wait, what, like, why would you define
I mean, yeah, I mean I guess it's a problem
to say that you are traumatized if that's how you're
going to define trauma, but I don't think trauma needs
to be defined in that way. I think the fact
of the matter is that we all experience some form
(07:06):
of trauma, and trauma is scientific adaptation to keep us alive.
Like if you're bitten by a snake, you're going to
be afraid of snakes. If you touch a hot stove,
you're going to be really careful around a hot stove,
like it's basically your brain wiring threat and saying like hey,
this is something that's really dangerous that could kill you,
(07:28):
so be vigilant around the thing that could kill you.
And you know, for some of US those triggers, like
being afraid of snakes, are maybe more sensible than others,
not sensible but more like manageable than others, like being
afraid of anyone who's using a loud voice, you know,
(07:50):
being afraid of someone who's yelling. You're gonna encounter that
much more in life. That's harder to avoid, right than snakes.
I think it's really interesting that, like the self deaf
mission of trauma right, that we have this idea that
it's not the incident of trauma that's the problem, it's
allowing yourself to identify as traumatized. I think we have
(08:13):
that that as like, Oh, you're being a victim and
you're never going to be able to get out of this,
like it's such a weird like, it's so weird. It's
so weird like that that whole nothing bad should happen
to you. If it does, your your prime directive is
to be resilient and unaffected and don't even name it
(08:33):
as a bad thing, because that's almost like invoking badness
if you call the bad thing bad. Exactly, I think
it's completely missing the fact that trauma can be an adaptation.
There's lots of fears and responses to trauma that actually
can be healthy, that actually can make us sort of
(08:56):
extremely useful in a variety of different situations, and it's
also just not a very empathetic or kind place to
come from, considering that all of us have some form
of trauma. If you're going to judge everyone for their
trauma response instead of stepping in and saying like Hey,
are you having a trauma response? Do you need a minute?
What do you need? How can I help you? How
(09:17):
can I support you in this, there's gonna be a
lot more conflict, judgment and refusal to make space, and
I think it's very ablest and like, what is this perfect,
untouched population of people anyway, honestly, that I've never gone
through anything hard. Yeah, I mean I think it's like
(09:40):
that common default that everybody is pretending to be okay
when we're not okay, which is basically like the entire
reason for my work and this show is to start
talking about how hard it is to be human and
the stuff we go through and that we adapt to
the things that we go through, and that's not the
same as resilience or overcoming but it's more like ship
happens to you and some of the ways that you
(10:03):
survived that and deal with that are awesome in the
right context, and some of those ways are really difficult,
but they're not wrong. Yeah, yeah, it's the judgment of
that that makes it impossible to live with, not the
challenge itself. Right, Stephanie, can you give us a description
(10:25):
of complex PTSD and how that's different than, I don't like,
the post traumatic stress disorder that people might know? Yeah,
so PTSD, you can get, quote unquote, traditional PTSD from
a singular traumatic event. So let's say you're hit by
a car. That can give you PTSD. COMPLEX PTSD is
(10:45):
kind of like if you were hit by that car
every week for three years. It's when the trauma happens
over and over and over and unless you are like
a tremendously unlucky individual, the only way that you're probably
getting complex PTSD is from a difficult relationship with other people.
(11:06):
So having an abuser, suffering from child abuse, domestic violence
or living in a war zone. So complex PTSD in particular,
it tends to really erode people's trust of other human
beings and make relationships a little bit different. Yeah, when
that is what you absorb, right, our relationships tell us
(11:29):
about the world and when your relationships tell you that
the world is an unsafe place, then the world is
an unsafe place and we learned lots of different ways
to survive that place. When I am having a conversation
with an author who has a book out, like I
don't want to give the book away because I really,
really want people to read the book. We were talking
earlier that, like my my perfectionist overwork tendencies, I'm like,
(11:53):
I'm basically going to develop a book report on your
book for everybody, but like, no, stop it right. A
book is a sort of a one way come versation
and the sparks that we gather from that, like that's
that's where that's really interesting to me. There was actually
a tweet that you had out about what my bones. No,
is now going into its six printing in five months.
Thank you to the therapists and teachers who have been
assigning it, the caretakers who have been studying it and,
(12:15):
most of all, the survivors for opening your hearts to it.
MM HMM. This is like the dream, right, the dream
here of taking something deeply personal, deeply painful. It's not
easy to write about these really intense personal experiences and
put them out into the world for public display, into
section and that, knowing that doing that means something to people,
(12:43):
right can we talk about that a little bit. That
that that interesting zone of here's this really intimate personal
stuff that was probably not very easy to write either.
Certainly wasn't easy to live and putting it out in
the world and seeing the impact of that. What's that
been like for you to see the impact of your
story in the world? It's been tremendously meaningful because, well,
(13:04):
when I was first diagnosed, there was nothing like my
book out there. Everything that I read was very clinical.
Most of it was not meant for people like me
to read. It was clear that it wasn't. A lot
of it was not made for people actually with complex
ptsd to read, because they would talk about us. They'd
(13:27):
be like complex people with complex PTSD are so difficult
to treat, they are, you know, they are burdens, they
are pain in the ass, they are whatever. They would
say all of these things and I was like, did
you think that I'd be too stupid to read this?
Like what? I don't understand a lot of it. It
was very pathologizing. A lot of it was very dry,
(13:51):
just just not very fund yeah, and you know, I
was a person who was coming from a storytelling background.
Obviously it told stories for ten years first person stories,
other people's first person stories, and I realized the impact
that had for empathy, for a narrative, for feeling less alone.
(14:11):
You know, I had helped so many other groups feel
less alone by showcasing these important stories, but never really
my own. And so when I was reading all of
these books and recognizing that, you know, that first person
story just did not exist and it made me feel
so isolated and freakish and damaged, I guess and I
(14:34):
knew that if I healed from this in any kind
of way, I would I would need to write about it,
because that story was just needed. I didn't want anybody
else to feel as completely isolated as I did after diagnosis.
And I always told myself in this process that, like
my story did not represent everyone with complex PTSD. I
(14:55):
mean it's obviously a spectrum. We all have different symptoms
and experiences, is and I told myself that if one
person would benefited from the book, then the four years
of creating it would be worth it would be okay.
So to have the response be so overwhelmingly positive, to
(15:18):
get like dozens of messages every day saying like you
got it, that's exactly what it's like. It's been really
wonderful and it's made me realize how truly needed this
was and to be able to give words to people
for this. Yeah, I mean I think it's been great
on a couple of different levels. I think first of all,
(15:38):
it's made me feel less alone, because I didn't really
have many people in my life with complex PTSD, and
now I see people with all different backgrounds and careers,
from herbalists, two doctors to like, you know, farmers, all
messaging me saying like, your experiences, my experience. Certainly it
makes me feel a lot less freakish myself and apparently
(16:02):
have helped other people do that. And Yeah, it also
give some sort of meaning and power to, like the
true anguish that I've had to experience, and it gives
some affirmation to that self loathing that I've suffered from
for so long, that I don't deserve to be here,
(16:22):
you know that I'm too broken to be here, that
I don't fit in with everyone else. I guess those
feelings and, more importantly, learning how to corral those feelings,
has actually made me sort of able to shine a
light for those who come behind me and has shown
me that I really do have a place of importance here,
(16:45):
that we all have a place of importance of being
the healers who can lead the way. It's so counterintuitive
or counter to the ways that we talk about, quote unquote,
mental health in this culture right that if you say
or if you're feeling alone and something or you're feeling
like a freak, you're feeling like the only one who's
experiencing these things like, then you're called to perform harder, right,
(17:08):
perform like everyone else, a little bit harder, to fit in.
If you're feeling lonely, you have to be more like
everybody else, and the reverse of that is actually what's accurate,
the willingness to tell the truth about who you are
and where you are and what you're feeling and what
you're experiencing like that, stripped down, not bright shiny package.
(17:30):
Truth like that is how not only you feel less alone,
but others feel les alone. It's like how we find
each other. Yeah, welcome back, everybody. I'm Megan divine and
(17:53):
this is hereafter let's rejoin my conversation with Stephanie Foo,
author of what my bones know. There's a site called
glow in the woods that was started by I'm going
to space on her last name of her first name
is Kate, and one of the descriptions it's a it's
a like a crowdsourced blog, community platform for people who
have experienced baby death. And she says I envisioned a
(18:16):
glow in the woods, a place where all of the
Medusa's could come and take their hats off, this place
where nobody's afraid of your snakes because they have their own. Yeah,
and I really see that power of storytelling, and not
just the power of storytelling, but the power of telling
the truth. Mm Hmmm, I think it got too difficult
(18:41):
really for me to pretend to be normal. I just
couldn't do it anymore. Part of me, which is I
could have just pretended like everything was okay and I
could be the high performing Badass that everyone thought I was,
and I just could not. And once I did that
to myself and said, you know, I might not be
(19:04):
that person, but here's who I am instead, that's when
life got a lot easier, more comfortable. And yet that's
when my tribe came along and everyone was like, oh,
US too, and prove that there is a different way
to to live this life. That is just as valuable
and just as viable, and how much easier it gets
(19:26):
when you stop pretending to be something you're not feeling
and also understanding that it has to be safe enough
to do that right. Like, I think there's a lot
of throat, like what's the pop psychology headline version of
that is like speak your truth, claim your power. Well,
it's not always safe to do that. Yeah, I mean
(19:46):
I had to burn down my whole life to be
able to do it. Basically, I lost everything and I
was like, well, I have nothing left to lose, so
I might as well do this. People are always like, yeah,
the bravery thing. People are like, Oh, you're so brave
to have like shared your story, and I was like
there was nothing to lose anymore, so there was nothing
(20:07):
brave about it. I have literally tried everything else possible
and now there is nothing and this is the only
option left for me. Yeah, yeah, this whole like like
let's turn it into a hero story. Well, no, no,
and I think also like, as somebody who was also
put a deeply terrible personal story out into the world,
(20:29):
wrote a book that I needed when that happened that
didn't exist at that time. It's like, look, at all
the good you've done in the world and this this
conflation with yes, sorry, all of that happened to you,
but you were so brave and now you've done something,
so much good in the world, and in a way
I'm really glad that happened to you. Right. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Has that horrendous narrative shown up on your doorstep? Honestly,
(20:52):
not too much, but I did hear it the other day.
I heard somebody else say to someone with PTSD like
that's what forged, like you're forged in fire, you know,
like now you really needed a great writer. I was
like no, yeah, within a couple of days of my
(21:14):
partner drowning, I was a psychotherapist before that happened, and
people were literally coming up to me being you're going
to be such a great therapist after this, you're going
to help people, and I'm like, okay, one you're actually
saying that I wasn't a good therapist before and I
actually needed a person to die in order to get
better at it and that his life is a fair
trade for any people I might help later. And I
(21:36):
just like, we have such a weird response to human
pain and suffering that we really want it to be tidy.
If we can't pretend it didn't happen, then we need
there to be a night and shining armor, heroic moment
where somebody is all healed and they've been of service
to others in the world. And it's almost no wonder
(21:58):
that people are has an to tell the truth about
their own lives. Right, we're confused about what trauma means,
what surviving and living with trauma or traumatic events means,
and we're confused about the role of hardship and becoming
sort of like better versions of ourselves. Like why there
(22:20):
needs to be a quick transformation into positivity, Yep, when
it's like no, this is fucked up and sad and
like yeah, I mean it is a great thing that
I've done this and I can and I can help
people and I'm proud of myself. But if, like, a
magic fairy could show up tomorrow and actually I could
have had a great childhood and not had any of this,
(22:40):
like I would trade it all in a second. I
would take the Magic Yep, I would take the magic fairy. Right,
it's like, well, you wouldn't have all of these beautiful
things in your life. But like what beautiful things would
I have instead, right, like stop reducing this stuff to
like your little formula to make everything work out okay.
And one of the things that I really love about
the way that you consistently show up, in all of
(23:02):
the ways that I've seen you show up, is like
you're not healed right, like you are not without coping
mechanisms or not right. But there's there's this. I think
we've got the folks who read your words and read
your story and see themselves and get it that finding
(23:23):
ways to live alongside this, in ways that reduce the
friction in your heart, in your mind and relationships, are like. Yes,
and other folks who maybe don't see themselves or haven't
yet seen themselves reflected in that story, they're like, but
you're all better now, right. Yeah, I don't know if
anyone is like you're all better now. Anyone who knows
(23:44):
me certainly isn't Um. But yeah, I try to be
very clear in the especially in the last pages of
the book, like it's a happy ending, like I've learned
to live with this in a way where I can
feel all joy and be glad that I'm alive. And
I there's ways that I can use what I've gotten
(24:05):
out of this in productive like ways to help people.
But every day there's and still at least one thing
that really sucks about having complex PTSD. So I don't know,
what are you gonna do? And there's still days where,
you know, I mean I have, I have like written
in this book all of these great coping mechanisms, but
(24:28):
doesn't mean that I use the coping mechanisms every day.
Like sure, I like like I'm much better and I
know they're there and like knowing that they're there gives
me hope. And still there's days when I just yell
at myself like stop being crazy, you're being crazy, stop it,
and that super healthy. It is so healthy, as I
(24:48):
said in the beginning, when we were when we were talking,
like I noticed recognize what I was doing, when I
was preparing for our conversation and literally yelling at myself.
Stopped being fucking crazy. The and you know those, those days,
those days are what happens. It's not that you suddenly
reach this finish line and you find a purpose for
(25:11):
your story and your words and then everything is fine,
like Nope, still still in the trenches over here, is
still in the trenches with everybody else. But also what
kind of like psychopath? Yeah, what kind of psychopath is
just happy all the time? You're definitely not. If that
is the case, I love like, like, let's do the
Midrash on the redefinition of what health means. Like, health
(25:33):
to me means when you were having a ship day,
you were having a ship day and you don't have
to pretend to be doing anything else. That performative positivity
is pathology, which should totally be a bumper sticker if
that was not an ecological terror to make bumper stickers. Yeah,
I mean, like, I think it's like a diet, right,
(25:54):
you need a little bit of fat and sugar and
carbs and meat and veggies. If you're only eating like
one thing, you die. So I think that's kind of
how I see mental health is, like you have to
make sure that you have a lot of your experiencing
the full range of human emotion. Yeah, you know, if
(26:17):
your anger is so big that it's blocking out the joy,
then yeah, you should get that in check. If your
if your joy is so big that it's blocking out
the ability to feel sad, also a problem. Yeah, it's
the timeshare of the emotional psyche, right, like we want
all of the circuits able to fire and that one
doesn't cancel the other out. I think we do that
(26:40):
weird math of like you can't be grateful and sad
at the same time. Yeah, yeah, humans are weird. Humans
are weird. I mean that's the that's we're terrified of emotion, right,
like we are a culture that is terrified of big
emotion and so like, of course we have all of
these weird little rituals to make or that happiness is
(27:00):
the only thing that people see and it's just it's
not helping anything. And I think one of the big
three lines I see, not just in your book, but
like you're writing and writing on journalism and racism and
climate emergency, is like all of these really difficult things.
The through line that I see and all of that
stuff is the power of acknowledgment, for just being able
(27:22):
to tell the truth about the situation at hand and
not even necessarily having a solution, but that that acknowledgement
of the truth in all of these really deep, complex
difficult things like that is not nothing. I would agree
with you, but I would say that, like the through
line with all of these things actually is agency, I
(27:45):
think with the climate stuff, with the racism stuff, with
the mental health stuff, with everything, and it stems from
my ptsd honestly, because, you know, growing up I always
needed to have some sort of troll over the situation,
like the situation could very easily get out of control
(28:05):
and endanger my life and the lives around me. So
I always needed to like be the mom and keep
everything peaceful and keep everything unlock. But I also think
it's a deeply human desire that like having some form
of agency gives us so much peace and a feeling
of control and a feeling of well well being, and
(28:27):
I think it's really difficult to have those when you
know the world is falling apart and looking at the
news or looking at the climate, and so I try
to find small ways in which people can claim that
agency for themselves to help themselves and the people around them,
and I think that that isn't a really significant way
(28:49):
to feel those that broad spectrum of emotions and go
from feeling just anger to feeling anger and joy, or
just fear to fear and satisfaction and grief. You know. Yeah, Um,
I'm pausing because, like I am such a big fan
of agency and sovereignty. I feel like that's that's something
(29:12):
that I bring up all the time, that people have
the right to be who they are and feel how
they feel and need what they need and to be
able to have some say in how their own lives unfold,
and that loss of agency, that loss of sovereignty, is
(29:33):
a source of so much suffering dehumanization, and I think
agency is the heart of hope, right once you feel
like you have some element of control, it allows you
to feel that things can get better, it keeps you
energized and it is the antidote to despair. So that's
(29:58):
I love that. Okay, so that's a robin waltkimer quote.
That's not me. Her book is actually propping up my laptop.
So I love that you went there, because season two
of the show for me, is actually like where are
people finding hope, because I am definitely having some moments
of like we are screwed, or I'm screwed, because I'm
(30:20):
not able to find any like hope or agency in anything,
and so I love that this like naturally this is
where you go. Like we didn't get into it in
our conversation and I can I'll leave that for folks
to read in the book. But you you wrote into
your parents histories and your family's histories and that whole
history of violence and oppression and colonialism and war and
(30:44):
what that does to a family system and how that
trauma and pain and violence gets passed down. And you've
also written about racism and racism and journalism and how
people of Color experience a lot more saturation of violence
than white folks. Right and this knowledge of violence upon
(31:12):
violence upon violence. It's like, once you start to look
for it, it's easy to see it everywhere. It's easy
to see the tendrils of historical, intergenerational, cultural violence showing
up in so many places. You do this so beautifully
and so skillfully in your book, like you look at
what made your parents behave an act in the way
(31:33):
that they did. You look at that without collapsing into Oh,
I get it now, and so the sort of like
sentimental music, swelling absolution. You don't even talk like I was.
I literally cheered when I read that part of your book.
So thank you. I think two things here. One, understanding
(31:54):
why something, a person, a family, system of culture, an
organization whatever. Understanding why they are the violent oppressive creatures
they are does not absolve them of the responsibility to
not act out of their histories in the violent ways
that they're doing. Right, we can. We can hold both
(32:14):
things at the same time. I think that we get
caught in this like, oh, I understand them, so I
have to excuse them, like I'm just gonna Roll over
MP myself. No, hello, you can understand what created a
person and still hold them accountable for their actions. I
think that's a really tricky point that not a lot
of people pick up. And the other thing, coming back
(32:35):
to what you just described about where you find hope.
It's like when you start looking for the roots of violence,
like there's no end to that. You start seeing it everywhere,
and that can be really, really overwhelming and pressing. There's
(32:56):
no end to goodness either. Yes, for it. Yea, that
is true. It's no end to kindness and love if
you're looking for it, and like healing and like if
you look at the long arc of history, I mean
it's generally been getting a lot better than it wasn't
(33:17):
like there's got to say so, you know, whereas that's true.
I mean all I have to do is like look
at the zoomers, honestly, and the empathy and like the
respect that they have for their feelings and like the
respect that they have for others who are different from them.
(33:37):
And I'm like, you know, things are getting better, I think.
And Yeah, I feel angry at boomers a whole lot.
But you know, history isn't over, history is not done.
Culture is not done. Culture isn't static. It's constantly changing
(34:01):
and evolving and I think there will always be violence. Look,
I'm not, like naive enough to think that there is
not going to be violence, that there's not going to
be grief and death and loss, but I certainly think
that I can support others in their quest for happiness
(34:23):
and be supported better. And, yeah, trying to end the
cycles as best as we can. Yeah, that sounds hopeful, hopeful, hopeful,
but not pollyanna. We're not naive. I guess it is
the word that you use. There's a lot to be
helpful about, honestly, like I think there is that, you know,
(34:48):
the zoo, the zoomers, they have this thing, you know,
okay boomer, they have okay doomer, like, okay, doomer, like
you're gonna say that, like the world is on fire
and everything's dying and whatever, like the whole world is
going to end. Well, fuck you, because you know they're
(35:10):
fifteen and they have the right to a full and
thriving life. And so, yeah, it's kind of Shitty for
us to be like, yeah, the world's on fire, everything
is going to die within thirty years, without giving them
an out or another option. Yeah, so I feel like
this is a good like I can keep talking about
hope and despair, an agency and action forever and ever
(35:31):
and ever and ever, but I feel like this is
probably a good place to wrap us up. Do you
want to tell the people where they can find you
and anything else you want them to know about you
or about trees? Sure, I am on Instagram at Fu
Fu Fu. I'm on twitter, I'm on the radio, my
(35:53):
book is wherever fine books are sold, called my bones, no,
and com during the community, where like it is safe
to have complex PTSD and in this world that I
am envisioning and Dreaming Up and I'm hopeful for, we
(36:14):
can learn to take care of each other and be
more accepting of our TRAUMAS and learn how to repair
really thoughtfully when we have ruptures that come from this
violence I don't know if that was the best, like
most meaningful, profound thing to end on. That's all, I
think that came to mind. I think that's a beautiful
(36:36):
thing to end on. Right. We didn't get a chance
to talk about repair and rupture, that all of that
stuff is in your book. If we treated complex PTSD
like a disability, this would mean advocating for the things
that we need, learning how to do repair after a rupture.
I think those are actually good cliff hangers for us,
because those are all in the book and your vision
(37:00):
of a kinder, more honest, more hopeful world is a
really clear and beautiful and powerful storytelling place to end
and I appreciate it and I'm sure other folks will too.
So well, thank you so much. This has been a
really optimistic, pleasant little ROMP. It's so nice to exit
(37:22):
a conversation about trauma not failing like you just had
to go through and recall all the crappy things about
your life and instead be like flowers, flowers, trees, agency
and hope for everyone. Yes, yeah, I know, you already
(37:42):
wrote the whole book. You don't need to relive it
every time you talk to somebody. Yeah, that's what's reading
is for. All Right, I'm going to sign us off, folks.
We will be right back after this break back in
a second. Each week I leave you with some questions
(38:11):
to carry with you until we meet again. This season
is all about hope, real, like functional hope, rooted in
what are honestly, some pretty difficult things. Now you'll notice
that Stephanie and I reference trees and flowers as we
wrapped up our conversation on complex PTSD and on hope.
We had this whole side conversation on how she manages
(38:34):
her own climate despair, how she finds hope inside daily
action in the service of trees. It was a really
awesome conversation, but it didn't quite fit with the things
that we've been talking about previously. So that whole bonus
conversation is going to come out later this week. It
is really sweet and has its own hope inside it,
so watch for that one, although, better yet, just follow
(38:55):
the show wherever you listen to podcasts. That way you
will not miss and thing. Now, what I am personally
taking with me from this week's episode is a bit
more kindness to myself about the ways I've learned to
survive the difficult things in my own life and it's
so easy to be annoyed, especially as a therapist and
(39:17):
like obsessively self reflective person like it's so easy to
be annoyed with the weird ways I act sometimes, are
the weird ways I think sometimes, and I'm like Ah,
after all this time, like you still are using those
old coping skills that that really aren't applicable. I mean
I have great coping skills, I just don't use them
(39:38):
all the time and I think I think I can
be a little bit kinder to myself on those days
that I'm not exactly using the very best tools in
my collection. That's what I'm going to take from this
conversation today. What parts of the conversation stuck with you today?
What parts made you think about something in a new
way or see something differently in your life or in
(39:58):
somebody else's? Were there parts of Stephanie's story, especially those
parts about letting herself be seen? Were there parts of
that story that helped you feel seen? Everybody's going to
take something different from today's show, but I do hope
you find something to hold onto. I'd love to hear
what you've taken from this episode, what insights you might
(40:20):
have had, what curiosity got piqued, I don't know. I
just really like to hear from you. Check out refuge
in grief on instagram or here after pod on Tiktok
to see clips from the show and leave us your
thoughts and your comments on those posts. Really, on any
of the social platforms, refuge in grief and Hereafter pod,
and be sure to tag us on your own social
(40:42):
accounts when you do share the show. Use the Hashtag
here after pod on any platform so we can find you.
The whole team really loves to see where this show
takes you. If you want to tell us how today's
show felt for you, or you have a request or
a question for upcoming explorer, it shouldn't so difficult. Things
give us a call at three to three, six, four, three, three, seven,
(41:06):
six eight and leave a voicemail. If you missed it,
you can find the number in the show notes or
visit Megan divine dot C o. If you'd rather send
an email, you can do that too. Write on the
Website Megan divine dot CEO. We want to hear from you.
I want to hear from you. This show, this world
(41:26):
needs your voice. Together we can make things better, even
when they can't be made right. You know how most
people are going to scan through their podcast APP looking
for a new thing to listen to. They're going to
see the show description for here after and think, I
don't want to listen to difficult things, even if super
cool people are talking about them. Well, that's where you
(41:49):
come in. Your reviews of the show. Let people know
it really isn't all that bad in here. We talk
about heavy stuff, yes, but it's in the service of
making things better for everyone. So everyone needs to listen.
Spread the word in your friend groups, your professional circles
on social media and Click through to leave a review,
(42:09):
subscribe to the show, download episodes and keep on listening.
Friends want more hereafter. Grief Education doesn't just belong to
end of life issues. As my dad says, daily life
is full of everyday grief that we don't call grief,
from daily disappointments right up through those losses that rearrange
(42:29):
the world. Grief is everywhere. Learning how to talk about
all that without cliches or platitudes or dismissive, accidentally on
purpose rude statements. Well, that's an important skill for everybody.
find tip sheets, trainings, professional resources and my best selling book,
it's okay that you're not okay. Plus the Guided Journal
(42:49):
for Grief at Megan Divine Dot c o Hereafter with
Megan divine is written and produced by me. You guessed it,
Megan divine. Acuative producer is Amy Brown, Co produced by
Elizabeth Fossio, logistical and social media support from Micah and
edited by Houston Tilly. Music provided by wave crush and
(43:12):
occasional background noise from the air conditioning that I almost
always forget to turn off.
Host
Megan Devine
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