Episode 31: Why Healing Childhood Trauma Doesn’t Require an Apology from Our Parents

We all have childhood trauma. None of us made it into adulthood unscathed. But, what we’re experiencing as adults — as a result of developmental trauma — isn’t about our parents anymore; it’s about US. What happened to us wasn’t our fault or our choosing, but what we do with it now is our responsibility. And we have the agency to heal — with or without an apology from our parents or caregivers.

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Show Notes

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In this episode, Lindsey…

• shares an example of trauma from her childhood, how it affected her then, how it affects her now, and how she’s worked toward healing
• discusses her perspective that adults healing from childhood trauma may not need to confront their parents at all
• discloses a healing conversation she had with her mom that deepened their relationship
• talks about the difference between approaching childhood trauma in a victim mentality and approaching it from a place of empowerment
• shares why healing from childhood trauma doesn’t actually require our parents’ participation at all
• shares that what happened to us as kids wasn’t our fault, but what we do with it as adults is our responsibility alone

Transcript

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. It’s just me, Lindsey here today doing a solo episode. I wanted to elaborate some more on a conversation that I’ve been having on Instagram and my stories. I’ve opened Instagram up to a lot of question and answer type stuff lately. And the feedback has been really amazing. I’m really excited for the engagement and to get to know my people better.

And one of the questions that I got from Instagram was really great. And it was, how did you talk with your parents about your trauma?

And I wanted to do a whole podcast episode devoted to this. Not because I’m an expert or have some prescriptive process for here’s step one, two, three, four for how you talk to your parents about trauma. But I just want to share my own experience. Because I have talked with my parents about some trauma and I have reserved the right to not talk to my parents about other trauma.

As I said this episode, isn’t going to be, here’s how you talk to your parents about trauma. Instead, I want to offer perhaps a different perspective. For why we might even want to talk to her parents about trauma. And is it even necessary? Because I think that what we really need to focus on is our own work.

And then if we choose to share the work that we’ve done with our parents. Great. If we don’t choose to share the work we’ve done with our parents also fine. Because ultimately our healing is not contingent upon our parents owning what they did to us. Our healing is not contingent on an apology from our parents.

There is no participation or involvement from our parents required. In order for us to heal from whatever it is, their behavior inflicted on us. So that’s what I want to talk about today. It’s answering the question of how did we talk to our parents about trauma? But it’s not really giving here’s how to talk to your parents about trauma. It’s more about my own process of how I’ve gone about healing.

And then sharing that with my parents.

So first I want to give an example from my own real life of a situation. Or a conversation that I actually had with my mom about six or seven months ago. So just to give you some backstory to that conversation. Whenever I was a kid, my mom frequently gave me the silent treatment or was passive aggressive towards me.

And so what that looked like was very often I would come home from school and I would set my stuff down immediately after getting off the bus and walk inside. And I would often find my mom in the kitchen and she would be either getting ready for dinner or preparing some food or putting some groceries away or doing some laundry or whatever.

And in our home, it was expected that before you did anything for yourself, that you asked how you could help. So I would get off the bus. I would come in, put my stuff down and immediately ask, Hey mom, is there anything I can do to help? And very often she would be standing with her back, turned towards me and she would either shrug or she would give some kind of very cold and aloof.

Like noise, like just something like that. And maybe I would think that she didn’t hear me. And so I would ask again, Hey mom, is there anything I can do to help? And she might do the same thing. So then that told my little body, my little self something’s not right here because she’s not turning around and saying hello to you. She’s not asking you how your day was. She’s just being cold and aloof and very weird. There must be something wrong here. You must have done something.

So then I would ask, is everything okay? And often she would continue giving me the culture older. She would, maybe make A shrug of her shoulders, or sometimes she would just say in a very aloof way. No. Everything’s fine. In a way that you know, that everything is not actually fine. And then I would ask, did I do something.

No. Everything’s fine. But clearly everything was not fine. And that was so confusing for me as a kid. And the result of that was that I automatically assumed that whatever was going on with my mom. Was my fault. And so I would go back to earlier in the day to like, whenever I woke up that morning, the last time I saw my mom, before I got on the bus to go to school, I would go back and I would replay every single moment of that day to try and figure out what did I do? What went wrong? What happened between then when she seemed fine? And now when I got off the bus and she seems not fine, what happened.

And I would even go so far as to think that the school must have called my mom during the day, while I was at school and I did something wrong at school and they were calling her to tell her about it and that’s what’s wrong. And she’s just waiting for me to come out and explain what I had done so that she doesn’t have to confront me about it. She wants me to come out until the tree first. Do you understand, do you hear how irrational this is? And this is what was going on in my eight, nine.

Nine 10, 11, 12, 13 year old brain and body. Consequently as a result of that, the trauma response that formed in me was a very strong Flawn response. And fawning is one of the four F responses outlined by Pete Walker in his book, complex PTSD. Childhood trauma from surviving to thriving the four F.

Letter F responses are fight flight, freeze and fun. And fight flight freeze, our responses of the nervous system. The fun response is a little bit different because we’re not really evolutionarily made to become font types. And a font type is a person who changes or modifies themselves. In order to avoid conflict.

And so what this looked like in my seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 year old self is when I perceived that something was wrong with my mom by her body language, by the tone of her voice, by the passive aggressiveness that she was sending out by the cold shoulder, she was giving me. I knew. Something’s up. Something is wrong.

And because my home was dysfunctional and because there was a lot of codependency and there was physical and verbal abuse and just a lot of unhealthy patterns. I immediately went to whatever is wrong. Must be my fault. And so when my mom wouldn’t answer me, when she was being passive aggressive, giving me the cold shoulder, then when she wouldn’t tell me what she wanted, remember I went in asking, is there anything I can do to help.

All I know is that something happened? I don’t know what it is. I don’t know if it’s my fault or not. I don’t know if I’m in trouble about something that I don’t even know I’m in trouble about. I have no idea what’s going on, but all I do know is that it is expected that when I get off the bus, I put my stuff down and I come in the house and I ask, what can I do to help?

And because my mom will tell me. Because she’s giving me the cold shoulder, silent treatment, passive aggressive. Then I just need to start doing something. So maybe I go and I cleaned my room from top to bottom.

Very often, probably the most often what I would do is I would try to jump. Alongside my mother and joined her in whatever she was doing to get ready for dinner. Because I’m a child. And I craved that closest to my mother and I haven’t seen my mother all day because I’ve been at school, so I want to be near her, but I’m also fawning. So I’m changing, modifying myself.

To do things that I believe will please, her fond types are people pleasers. And even though I don’t know what she wants, because she won’t tell me what she wants. I feel like I have to guess. And so it’s like I’m throwing darts at a dartboard, trying to hit the bullseye to figure out what is it that my mother needs or wants from me.

To resolve this situation to clear this passive aggressiveness from the air to get her to stop giving me the silent treatment. I’m willing to do whatever it takes to not feel this anymore, including modifying myself, changing myself, doing something that will please her. I want to be close to my mother. I craved being close to my mother. So I’m going to jump in and I’m going to try to help in the kitchen. I’m going to try to guess what she’s making for dinner and how I can get a step ahead of her.

And prepare something or get something out or thought something out or chop something or whatever. This is literally how so much of my childhood was so much of my childhood was a guessing game. Just trying to figure out what is it that I need to do to make things feel safe, stable, secure, solid. What is it that I need to do? I’m willing to do whatever it takes, even if it meant being untrue to myself or not listening to my own intuition or Sabbat own inner voice inside of me.

So anyway. As an adult, obviously the result of this was growing up and becoming very paranoid and hypervigilant whenever I would call or text someone and they would not respond right away or whenever I would ask someone a question and they wouldn’t give me an answer right away, that same feeling was triggered inside of me of feeling like, what did I do wrong? Going back in my mind and replaying the last conversation or interaction I have with that person to figure out what.

It happened then I must’ve offended them in some way. I must’ve said something wrong. I must’ve, or even irrationally, what did they hear about me from someone else? Between the last time I saw them or spoke to them. And now what has someone else told them about me? That’s changed their perception about me or their feelings about me.

And so as I’ve done trauma work over the last couple of years, I have. Necessarily gone into those very painful, hard, hurtful parts of my story. And I’ve had to excavate that trauma out. I’ve had to identify where it came from. It came from that little girl who had come home from school, whose mother was being passive aggressive and giving her the silent treatment and how she felt like she must be the reason why her mother is behaving this way.

Ma as A child is not thinking, I sure wish my parents would act like an adult right now. Children are thinking that I wasn’t capable of thinking that when I was eight years old, So I first had to go back and identify what is this pattern? Why do I feel the same way? When somebody doesn’t respond to my text message that I felt when I was eight years old and got off the bus and my mom wouldn’t talk to me. So first identifying the pattern.

And then identifying the emotions that stirred up for me. And for me, it stirred up a lot of anxiety is fear. It stirred up confusion. It stirred up like this anxious. Like energy of needing to figure something out. Because if I didn’t, it was going to feel like the end of the world. And all I wanted was to get closure from this situation and for my mom to go back to loving me and accepting me and talking to me again.

So that was the second thing that I had to do. And then I had to do a lot of work around just sitting with those feelings, making space for those feelings, allowing those feelings to be there, not shutting them out, not repressing them down, not suppressing them, but just like sitting with this, sitting with that anxiety, sitting with that confusion, sitting with that, that feeling of impending doom and.

Wanting to fix it, wanting to change myself to please that other person feeling like I have to guess. As to what’s wrong and what I need to do to solve the problem. And then it wasn’t until I had been excavating this particular trauma and trauma response. For several months. And then I got to the place where I felt like I wanted to talk to my mom about it.

And here is how I answered the question from Instagram. How did you talk to your parents about your trauma? So the way that I approach this conversation with my mom, Was from a place of having already done this work around this issue for myself. I had already identified. The problem, the trauma response, that behavior, the feelings in my body, I had already felt those feelings. I had made space for them. I had allowed them to be there.

I stopped repressing them. I stopped suppressing them. I talked with my husband about it. I talked with my friends about it. Like I had talked to multiple people, not specifically about my mom, but about these feelings that I was experiencing, because really when it comes down to it, this issue was not about my mom.

It was about me. It was about the feelings that I had when somebody didn’t respond to my text message or answer my question. It was about the racing thoughts that immediately came into my mind when someone didn’t talk to me or when someone gave me the silent treatment. It was about the feelings in my body.

The sickness in my stomach the heat that I felt in my face and in my neck, the tingling that I got in my fingers. It was about me. It wasn’t about my mom. If it had been about my mom, then I would have only experienced those things. When I was interacting with my mom. But because I don’t only experience those things when I’m interacting with my mom, because I experienced those things. When my husband doesn’t respond to a text message, or when I ask my kid to take out the trash and they don’t respond with sure. Mom or no, they don’t respond with anything. Or maybe they just grunt at me like teenagers. Do.

When I call my friend and leave her a voicemail and she doesn’t call me back for two days, I’m having the same responses. So this wasn’t about my mom. It was about me. It was about what was inside of me that wanted to be seen, felt heard. And healed. And so that is the approach that I had when answering this question on Instagram, how do you talk to your parents about trauma?

By the time I actually sat down with my mom and was like, Hey, I want to talk about this. Here’s what you used to do whenever I was a kid. And here’s how I felt about it. And here’s what I’ve done to heal it. By the time I had that conversation, I wasn’t going to my mom. Expecting her or hoping for her to apologize to me.

I wasn’t hoping for her to take responsibility for what she had done. I wasn’t even trying to hold her accountable for what she had done. I had already moved through it myself and healed it in myself. So by the time I was having this conversation with my mom, it wasn’t about blaming her for what she had done. It wasn’t about telling her how unhealthy her behavior was. It wasn’t even about her apologizing to me.

Or me being right and her being wrong. By the time I was having this conversation with my mom, it was about me seeing an opportunity to create transparency and vulnerability and my relationship with my mom, which I knew would deepen my connection to my mom. And by the way, I have an amazing relationship with my mom. Now, she and I have worked through so much shit together. We had done so much healing, both individually and in our relationship, I couldn’t ask for anything better. And I’m so grateful for my mom.

So I’m telling her all of this, we’re actually driving the car and I’m telling my mom. What she did as a kid, how I felt about it, how I felt in my body. The trauma response that I had developed as a result of this growing up, how I interacted with my friends and text messages and voicemails and phone calls and conversations and asking people questions, I’m telling my mom all of this, and then I’m telling her, and here’s what I’ve done. Here’s how I’ve sat with that.

Here’s what, here’s, what I’m making of that for myself. Here’s how I’m healing that.

And you know what my mom’s response was. It was. Did I really do that? I don’t remember that. I’m so sorry. I really don’t remember doing that. I don’t know why I would have done that, but I’m so sorry. I believe you. I just don’t remember. And, what. If I had come into that conversation with my mom from a place of victimhood.

Then. Her saying that to me, I don’t remember doing that. I don’t know why I would have done that would have sounded like gaslighting. Because when we confront somebody about something that they’ve done to us and they say I don’t remember doing that. I don’t know why I would have done that. That feels like gaslighting because they’re invalidating our experience. They’re like telling us that our reality is different from what the truth is. They’re telling us that, they wouldn’t have done that because that’s not in their character. That’s something.

Type of person that they are. But I wasn’t approaching my mom from a place of victim hood. I wasn’t trying to get my mom to acknowledge and own what she had done. , I wasn’t fishing for an apology. I wasn’t hoping for her to take accountability or responsibility for her actions, because the truth is that if it had only been about her, if I had that response as a child and then grown up and never had that trauma response again with another human being.

Then maybe it would have been about my mom taking responsibility. But because I grew up and I continued to have that response to people who didn’t call me back or answer my text messages or answer my questions or whatever. It wasn’t about my mom taking the responsibility. It was about me as an adult taking radical responsibility for myself.

What happened to me in my childhood, the way that my mom behaved. Sure. I’m not excusing what she did. I’m not saying that it was okay. I’m not saying that it was healthy. It was very dysfunctional. It was very unhealthy. And my mom recognizes that, like she acknowledged that it was. But. I’m not in that situation anymore. I don’t live in that house anymore. I’m not under my mom’s authority anymore. I don’t have to get off the bus and put my backpack down and come inside and ask if I can do anything to help anymore. I’m not in that situation anymore. So then back then,

I was a victim. I had no agency. I couldn’t get out of that situation. I just had to. Deal with it, bear it the best that I could. And sure. I have wounds and scars from that for sure that I’m still getting over. But I’m 37, almost 38 years old now. And what I do with what happened to me, then isn’t it.

Anybody’s responsibility, but my own. And that’s how I would encourage you to approach. Really hard conversations with people who have hurt you, especially your parents. Or caregivers who inflicted a lot of wounds that caused trauma in your body. Many of our parents, like my mom, I have to give props to my mom because she’s totally done the work for herself. So I could have a conversation with her in a way that she could be like, I’m really sorry. I did that. I don’t know why I did that, but I’m really sorry that I did Oh my gosh, that was so unhealthy of me.

But a lot of our parents, aren’t going to be able to do that. A lot of our parents haven’t done that work for themselves. And if we do try to come to them from a place of being wounded and being hurt and we approach them as a wounded child, rather than an empowered adult. Then it’s going to trigger that wound cycle all over again.

Because they’re not going to take responsibility. They’re not going to tell us that. They’re sorry. They probably don’t even believe they did anything wrong. Does that make sense? I hope that makes sense. And I believe that if we approach our parents about what happened to us in our past. Then. We should do it from a place of already having done the work.

So that by the time we have the conversation with them, it’s not a trigger anymore. It’s not a wound anymore. It’s healed over some, it’s becoming a scar instead of an open gaping wound. And we can have that conversation with them from a place of here’s what happened. Here’s how I perceived it. But here’s what I’ve done with it.

Here’s how I’m healing. Here’s how I’m choosing differently. Here’s how I’ve recognized ways. That this has helped me grow as a person. And so sitting in the car with my mom, having that conversation when she came on and she was like, Oh my gosh, I did not know I did that. I don’t even remember it. I’m so sorry.

I even said to her mom, I’m not asking for an apology. Like I forgave you for this a long time ago. I’m not trying to hold you responsible here. What you did. It’s already gone. It’s already happened. Like neither of us can go back and change it. It is in the past. What, but I am responsible for what I do with this going forward, and here’s what I’ve done with it.

And I want you to know that I forgive you and I’m not holding any kind of grudge against you. I’m not holding you responsible for this anymore. I don’t want you to feel bad about this. I don’t want you to feel guilty like me talking to you about this was in no way intended for you to feel guilty. Like I want you to know that I’m really thankful that you’re my mom. And I know that you were doing the best you could and what you had at the time.

And I know that we were living in a dysfunctional situation. And even though I was the kid and you were an adult, we were both living under the dysfunctional situation of a very narcissistic man. We were both subject to his abuse, even though it looked different for both of us.

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And so I don’t hold my mom responsible and I don’t want her to take accountability. I can talk to my mom now about what happened to me as a kid. From an adult perspective and not from a wounded child’s perspective. And I think that can be the game changer. Whenever we have hard conversations with anybody.

Is if we can come into that conversation already having done work for ourselves. To grow through whatever the problem is. If we recognize that anything that anybody else does. If it’s affecting us negatively than it is literally a mirror is reflecting back to us what we need to heal in ourselves. So whatever my mom did as a kid, by giving me the silent treatment by being passive aggressive.

Sure it created a wound. Absolutely. It did. But then whenever that’s repeated, whenever I send a text message and somebody doesn’t respond whenever I call a friend and they don’t call me back for two days. Whenever my husband doesn’t get back to me right away. Whenever I ask my kids a question and they don’t respond.

They’re all reflecting back to me. The area of myself that is not healed. And the area of myself is not healed. Is that fun? That little girl who’s willing to do anything to get her mom to talk to her. What they’re reflecting back to me is the insecurity in myself. Of believing that I’m the problem all the time wanting to take the blame, even when I don’t even know what I’m taking the blame for.

That’s what they’re reflecting back to me that wants to be healed. That’s what’s wanting to be healed my whole life. Sure it started 30 years ago, but it’s been wanting to be healed ever since every single time. I sent somebody a text and they didn’t respond back. I called somebody, they didn’t return my call. I ask a question. They didn’t answer my question.

Every single time, that was an opportunity to heal this wound and myself. And it’s going to repeat itself over and over because my higher self wants me healed. And so those patterns are going to repeat over and over until we come into awareness that they are a pattern, we identify where they came from. And then we start taking the steps to heal.

And friends when you do that, let me tell you something. That is how move out of victim hood. As long as I go to my mom as a wounded child. As somebody who wants her to take responsibility, I want to blame her for what happened to me. I want her to own it. I want her to apologize. I want her to grovel at my feet. I want her to know how much she hurt me.

That’s me being a dumb. And the way that I move out of victim hood is by doing the work first for myself, not for anybody else, but for myself. And then if, cause I’m not saying that you always should, if it’s appropriate to have a conversation with that person. Then you don’t have to feel emotionally charged going into that conversation. You can be emotionally neutral.

You don’t have to be attached to a particular outcome. When we get attached to the outcome of confronting somebody and the outcome we want is an apology. Or the outcome that we want is for them to tell us that we’re right. And they were wrong. Or the outcome that we want is for them to take accountability and responsibility for whatever it is that we said they did.

Then we have an emotional attachment to the outcome. But when we do the work first for ourselves and don’t talk about it on social media, don’t make a big deal out of it. Don’t hold it over our parents’ heads or whoever’s heads. When we do that work for ourselves, then if we decide to have that conversation, we can go into it as an adult, having a conversation with another adult, not a wounded child, having a conversation with.

They’re abusive parent. We can have the conversation from one adult to another. An adult who is living in this present moment to the adult who is living in their present moment.

Having this conversation with my mom, I believe. Deepened our relationship even more. I feel like my mom and I already have a pretty deep relationship. We’ve been through a lot and have overcome a lot both individually and together and our relationship. And so the fact that we were able to have this conversation and it was safe.

It wasn’t volatile. It wasn’t emotionally charged. Was, it was a huge blessing. I’m so grateful that I had the opportunity to have this conversation with my mom. But if I had tried to have this same conversation, With my stepdad. I don’t believe the outcome would have been the same. And that’s what I mean, whenever I say, if we need to have this conversation.

Because sometimes. Having the conversation causes more hurt. Because I know that my stepdad is never going to take responsibility for his abusive actions towards me, my brothers and my mom. I know that he is never going to say that. He’s sorry. He’s never going to take the blame.

But I’ve already done work around my stepfather too. The difference between my stepfather and my mom is that my mom hasn’t worked for herself. And so I know she’s a safe person for me to talk to about this. My stepfather has not done any work for himself, by the way, my mom and myself other are no longer married.

He’s not in the work for himself. And so I know that any conversation I try to have with him. Is not going to be productive. It’s going to lead to more hurt. So I think going into the conversation as an empowered, conscious adult who is responsible for their own choices and decisions. Is better than going into a conversation as a disempowered victim.

Which is the play. If we go, let’s just be honest. If we go into a conversation wanting to blame somebody else, wanting somebody else to apologize to say, they’re sorry to take responsibility for their actions. There is a certain level of victim hood there. And I’m not saying that means that we shouldn’t hold people accountable. We absolutely should hold people accountable. The way that we’re doing it on social media, by a cancel culture is not how I believe we should hold people accountable.

I believe we hold people accountable in communities. Social media is not a community. It’s an audience. It’s a following. It’s a bunch of strangers don’t get to hold strangers, accountable. People hold people accountable and community. However, not everyone in our communities is going to do the personal work on themselves. Doesn’t mean that we ostracize them from the community.

But maybe it means that they don’t have access to certain parts of the community.

I believe that the majority of our society is living in a state of perpetual and chronic victim hood. And I believe that this is. Further perpetuated and cycled. By the current discourse on social media. Particularly about quote unquote accountability. Around social justice issues. The way that this is playing out is very disturbing.

And very unhealthy and in my opinion, Very cult-like.

And what I see. Is a bunch of victims. Who have had really atrocious. Things happen to them. I’m not saying that their pain. Isn’t real or valid. It absolutely is. It absolutely is real and valid. Systemic racism is a valid thing to be hurt and traumatized over it. Absolutely. A systemic oppression of any kind.

Absolutely. It is valid to be hurt over that thing.

But I’m not talking about systemic things here. I’m talking about our individual relationships. I don’t know how much I can personally do. To fight systemic oppression, other than raising my children to be humans who don’t oppress other people. Educating myself on how to not contribute or be part of systems of oppression.

I don’t know what else I can do as an individual. For the systems. But for the individual smaller systems, like my family. Cause that’s a system to my relationships with my husband, my parents, my kids, my friends. Those are systems too. They’re just not, shouldn’t be oppressive systems.

Anyway, what I can do. In those relationships. Is. Not live in a state of perpetual and chronic victim hood. Not always trying to make somebody else responsible for my pain, for my struggles.

I believe that I create my own reality and I do that with my thoughts, whether conscious or unconscious. I do that with my caters, whether conscious or unconscious. I do that with everything and anything that I’m involved in, I am consciously creating a reality. Whether it’s the reality I want or not.

Isn’t the question. It’s the simple fact that I am responsible for the reality that I am creating for myself. You are responsible for the reality that you are creating for yourself. When we were children. We could not have that responsibility. We were solely reliant upon our caregivers.

When we are under systems of oppression, we do not have that agency because our agency is taken away from us due to the system itself. So that’s not what I’m talking about here.

I simply want to encourage you. To become the observer. Of how you show up in your individual relationships. With your friends, your parents, your kids, your partner. Your coworkers. How are you showing up in individual relationships?

If you were being a neutral observer. So this is with no judgment whatsoever. This is not about shaming you or guilting you into anything, but if you are a neutral observer and how you are showing up, In your relationships, individual relationships, not relationships to the system.

Do you find yourself showing up? In a place of victimhood. Do you always want the other person to be wrong? Do you always want to blame someone else for how you are for how you feel?

One of the big giveaways for me, one of the big hints that this is how I was showing up in my relationship, especially with my partner. Was, I very often use the phrase you make me feel. Blank. You make me so angry when you do that. You make me so sad.

That phrase you make me. That’s a victim phrase. That comes from a person who isn’t willing to see that however they feel is their own responsibility and no one else’s. And again, I’m not talking about being a child in an abusive home who doesn’t have agency, and I’m not talking about being under the oppression.

Of an abusive system. Okay. It’s not what we’re talking about here. Talking about individual relationships. If I always show up in my relationship with my husband or with my mom. You made me feel this. And because of you, I am this way because of you. I can’t get close to people because of you. I throw away perfectly amazing opportunities because of you, because of the way you treated me. I can’t have deep relationships with people. I can’t get the job that I want. I can’t.

Okay. That’s making the other person responsible for how we are. That is victim hood. That is victim hood. And if I continue to show up in my relationships as a victim, Putting the other person. In the abuser or perpetrator or Harmer role. Then I am not growing. I am staying stuck in that place of victim hood.

Just like I was stuck being an eight year old. With a passive aggressive mom. Every time somebody didn’t respond to my text messages. What changed? Wasn’t the person texted me and it wasn’t my mom. It was my awareness. That’s what changed. Becoming aware of the pattern. Becoming aware of how I can change it.

Then creating a different reality. Creating a better reality than the reality that I had been living in for the pre year, previous 30 years. I guess if I had a. Homework assignment for you or challenge for you in any way, it would just be to become the neutral observer of how you show up in individual relationships.

Are you showing up as a chronic victim? Are you always saying that someone is making you feel this or that? Are you always wanting somebody else to apologize to you? Are you always trying to blame someone and point the finger? How are you showing up in these relationships? And if you do find yourself showing up as a chronic victim, don’t let yourself go into blaming yourself.

Don’t let yourself go into shaming yourself. You don’t need to feel ashamed or guilty. You’re only showing up the way that you know how to show up. You can’t blame yourself for only showing up how you are. But once you’re aware of it, once you’re in that neutral observer place and you’re like, yeah, I am actually showing up that way. I am showing up in victim hood.

Then you can start to take the steps to stop showing up that way. Taking responsibility for yourself. Taking responsibility for your own feelings and your own actions and your own thoughts, not looking to blame somebody else, not looking for an apology from somebody else. Not always trying to hold somebody else responsible or accountable, but.

How am I taking responsibility for myself? Self responsibility is something that I don’t believe we’re talking about enough today, especially in the current climate of cancel culture and woke leftist, social activism. Nobody is fucking talking about self-responsibility and it needs to be talked about.

I believe that being able to have this conversation with my mom and coming to her as an empowered, conscious adult who is creating a reality that isn’t ruled by the past. Opened up. A new level of intimacy, transparency, and vulnerability. In my relationship with my mom and it deepened my relationship with my mom. Absolutely. I believe that.

I also believe that because she told me this. That the work and growth that I’ve done on myself. Has inspired her to do growth and work on herself. She seeing how she has shown up as a victim in her life. And she is now taking the steps to take responsibility for herself and to become an empowered and conscious creator of her own reality.

This is what I need whenever I say, when individuals heal the collective heals, because when we all start taking responsibility for ourselves, when we all start unpacking and excavating our trauma and figuring out why is it that I act this way? And why is it that I think this when does this or that, and how can I change that? And how can I be different? How can I create a different reality when we all start doing that individually? Guess what happens?

The collected heals. Because we are part of the collective. So when I do it and my mom does it and my husband does it and my friend does it. That’s four people, part of a collective, that’s going to have a ripple effect. That’s going to go outward. It’s going to raise the vibration of the collective a little bit more.

It’s going to help us ascend and level up a little bit more. Every time each of us takes responsibility for ourselves and stops trying to cast the blame and throw the blame on somebody else.

If you’re not able to have conversations like this with your real life friends, because they’re woke. Leftists steeped in social justice culture. If you’re unable to talk about this stuff on social media. Which I would highly recommend this to your clear out, talking about this stuff on social media, because it will likely lead to the woke leftists canceling you.

You need somebody to talk about this with man, you need community about this. You need community who is a collective that’s committed to healing, taking responsibility for themselves, becoming empowered, conscious creators of their own best reality. That’s what you need to be a part of. We all need that. We all deserve that.

And it’s really hard to find right now, everybody. Is living in a state of perpetual victim hood. So if you find it hard to have these conversations with people, either in your real life or on social media, No worries. It is hard. You’re not alone. You’re not doing anything wrong. Okay. It really is hard.

Most people don’t want to be told that they’re living in victim hood and that they have the power to change. The reality. People don’t want to be told that. Cause what would they do with all that power? If I had the power to create a better reality than the one I’m living in right now, what would I do with myself? If I wasn’t a victim anymore?

Okay. That’s what a lot of people think. It really is. And I believe that they will wake up eventually. I really do. And I’m not saying that from a place of like pride or believing that I’m better than they are. That’s not where it comes from at all. I just, we’re all on our own journey. And some of us get there at a different rate than others. There’s no comparison. This is only about individual responsibility.

But I totally understand if you’re having a hard time finding people that you can talk to about this stuff with it’s really difficult to find people that are safe to talk to about this, who aren’t gonna throw it back in your face. So if that’s you. Then I want to invite you to the online community that I am creating myself.

With other healers. Who are committed to moving out of victim hood and are empowered to consciously create. A reality that is no longer ruled by the past. And this kind of stuff that I just talked to you about, and this episode is the kind of stuff that we are talking about in the circle. We’re talking about hard things and we’re talking about taking radical self-responsibility.

So that we can create a reality that isn’t ruled by the past. I want to invite you to be part of the trauma humor circle is what it’s called. You can find information about it as well as a cute little video that I made@lindsaylocket.com forward slash circle. Currently membership is $25 a month. But depending on when you go, sometimes I have membership discounted. So when you listen to this, it may be discounted.

Go check it out. Lindsey, lock it down. Problem. Forward slash circle. If you feel like you have a community of people that you can talk about this stuff with, if you feel like you’re pretty set on your community and you’re feeling good about that, and you feel like you’re growing and that they’re supporting you and your growth.

But you really love this podcast, then I want to invite you to buy me a cup of coffee. Every month for $5 a month, you can support the podcast. You can help me keep it ad free and freely available. It’s really important to me to keep this information accessible, available, affordable and approachable, and a free podcast is super affordable.

But it does cost my time. It does cost money to run the show. So if you want to support the show without being a member of the circle, it’s five bucks a month, you can become a grateful listener. I can find information about that. LindseyLockett.com forward slash circle also. However this episode in particular is meant to speak to the people who are really looking for that online community.

That is supporting them in taking radical responsibility for themselves and not being a victim to their childhoods, their parents, their past their traumas, there are abusers. Not being victims to that anymore, but taking the hand that they’ve been dealt, accepting it. And alchemizing it from a pile of shit to a pile of gold.

That’s really what the circle is all about. So again, you can find me and other members of the circle, all creating our best possible realities@lindsaylockett.com forward slash circle with your membership, you get access to two bonus podcast episodes per month that are not available to the general public. You also get access to a monthly live zoom call with me and the other circle members where we get together and cheer each other on to become the heroes of our own stories. And we also have a circle community forum. This is off social media. This is a forum like old school forum, but it looks pretty spiky and awesome now where you can literally post a question and people can.

Come in and they can answer your question. You can see what other people are posting. You can go in and respond to them. It’s a great way to connect outside of our monthly zoom calls. So yeah, that’s a circle and I want to invite you to be a part of it. It’s a rocking empowered group of amazing individuals who are healing. We are all healers and we are all feeling.

Thank you so much for being here. The next episode that goes out will not just be a solo episode where we meet and I guessed, and I really hope you enjoyed this. I’d love to hear from you. You can find me on Instagram at I am Lindsay Lockett. The DMS are always open as long as you’re nice and I will catch you next time.

📍 Did you enjoy the show? Awesome. Here’s what you can do next first. Make sure you’re subscribed second. I really appreciate it. If you took a few moments to rate the podcast, finally, you can partner with me to keep putting this healing information into the world for just $5 per month. You will help keep the show ad free and freely available. If you want to go deeper and connect with me and other trauma healers in community, I invite you to join the trauma healer circle. This community is where the magic happens. You get access to bonus podcast.

Episodes monthly zoom calls. And most importantly, you’ll find your people go to Lindsey locket.com forward slash circle to join.