Speak Plainly Podcast
Hosted by 2 time best-selling trauma author, Owl C Medicine. A veteran of the US Military, Owl's no nonsense approach to mental physical and relational health is exactly what you didn't know you need. Listen in for ideas worth chewing on and science based tools for living life after trauma.
Speak Plainly Podcast
Unveiling Five Trauma Personality Types
Through personal stories and reflections, this episode illuminates the often unseen battle between our need for attachment and the quest for our truest selves.
We'll explore the 'doer', 'hostile', 'darkness', 'ghost' and 'are we good?' personalities, understanding how each one acts as a suit of armor, originally crafted in childhood to protect us, yet influencing our adult lives and relationships in ways we might not expect.
We cover how these personality types are based on the fight flight freeze faen responses.
We also cover the childhood situations that set up each of the 5. Including picking them up from caregivers who model them for us.
You may find yourself resonating with one or two of these types. And as you heal you may likely find yourself moving thru a hostile phase as you get in touch eith the anger that wasnt safe to feel when younger.
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Thank you, hey everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the Speak Plainly podcast, where we speak plainly about things that matter. I'm your host, owl Medicine author and weirdo, and in today's episode, what we're going to be talking about is how personalities get formed through chronic stress and trauma in early life. What we're calling it is the five trauma personality types trauma personality types and what I want to make clear is this is building on all of the years of episodes of podcasts that I've done so far, and I hope nobody takes this too out of pocket. In order for that to not happen, I'm just going to lay a few things straight right up front. Five personality types from trauma is a very that's a very clickbaity title, but what we're actually talking about is childhood trauma, in developmental trauma or even just chronic stress in our early life.
Speaker 1:That shit can be traumatic and what happens is because we're just in our little family unit, the way that we have to adapt to the stress in our environment, whether that be a drug addicted or a negligent mother or father, or an alcoholic, or fleeing a war-torn country, or a perfectionist parent, whatever crap that we had to deal with and we all have crap that we had to deal with in childhood. Whatever that crap is, our personality builds around it, and what I mean by that is explained in the first blog article that I ever wrote, called the Attachment Authenticity War, and basically what that's all about is how our attachment is very much linked with our approval of our parents or our caregivers, and if there is something in us that is not congruent with what they want or expect or approve of, then that's where the war begins. It is our attachment to them and our connectiveness to them, and their disapproval threatens that connectivity. So we continue to do our best to remove the threat to our belonging, because belonging is how we survive, and we do that by squishing down parts of us, whether those are the parts of us that are messy, because messiness isn't approved of, or the parts of us that are soft, because softness is considered weakness and weakness is not approved of. Whatever it is, there's some crap that our personalities build around, and when we talk about going down to the root of our trauma, what we're talking about is going down to the pieces underneath our personality.
Speaker 1:In Rethinking Broken, I talk about how there is no real you underlying all of the trauma. There is a real spark of an individual and a personality and all of that. But I want to make it really clear that I wasted a lot of time trying to find the real me underneath my trauma. That person doesn't exist, that person hasn't existed ever. At first I was like, well, maybe that person hasn't existed since I was a child, but when we look at the way fetuses even are influenced by the father's mood and the mother's conditions, we can't get away from our conditioning. That means there is no us that we have to uncover buried underneath these personality traits that we're going to talk about today. And I think that goes very much in line with the fact that we talk about finding our passion, and it's talked about in a very similar way.
Speaker 1:I think that it is similarly useless, because, again, there is no passion, that you have just waiting there and, like when you were born, you weren't born being a math genius. You have to learn algebra first. Beethoven wasn't born a musical genius. He had to be near a piano in order for all of that to come out. That's the way that things work.
Speaker 1:There is a piece of something, a seed, a catalyst that grows and gives birth to the unique individual expressions that we call ourselves or our personalities, according to what the specific types of stress we had in our childhood. Often that, combined with whatever that unique spark of personality was and the age at which we were exposed to certain types of stress, determines very much about how we respond to things. Because we're responding to things essentially in a vacuum, and what I mean by that is you are in with your family, which is one culture, one unit, and you don't really have much outside of that. That is a vacuum, and in order to cope we have to rely on monkey see monkey do, and we decide that we're going to cope subconsciously, entirely, obviously. So I guess decide is the wrong word. We see a style of coping that seems like it might work and we mimic it, or our biology does it for us, and that's the ground zero.
Speaker 1:Where I'd like to start is most of the time we have no choice in the way that we respond to things. It's our biology taking care of it for us. That being said, each of these five trauma personality types are all rooted in the biological machine that you and I exist in. There is no special fancy spirit who is guiding you to be a certain way or anything like that this is not magical woo-woo shit. This is very real, plain nuts and bloody bolts kind of thinking. There are basic responses that the body can go through for stress, and you probably know them to fight, flight, freeze, fawn and fuck, and each of these personality types are firmly rooted in one of the stress response strategies that the body has just built in innately into us. So we're going to start with the one that I currently most resonate with.
Speaker 1:The thing to remember as you listen to this podcast episode is to don't dip into shame as you're listening to this. Just accept that we all developed these responses at a time where we didn't choose them. Our bodies chose them for us according to things that were far out of our control, and they are not fixed as in. We can fix them. They're not fixed as in, they're not solid, they don't last forever and they can all be worked on. You may never completely flip 180 degrees to the other side and, in fact, if you were to do that, you would be equally but oppositely toxic, because, again, these trauma personality types are based on stress responses that, if launched at the wrong time, give us the wrong results. The other thing to keep in mind here is not only is it not your fault, so don't dip into shame.
Speaker 1:The other thing is that you might identify with one or two, primarily, of these. There are some that are fairly mutually exclusive and we'll get to those, but for the most part there will be some overlap, and that's okay. Many of us will have one main type, with a backup available to us and those of us who are on a healing path and that have been on a healing path, you will probably recognize that you have moved through one or two or even three or more of these personality types as you have grown and as you have healed. Like. It is very common, the five types are the doer at least this is what we're calling them. It is very common, the five types are the doer at least this is what we're calling them the doer, the hostile, the darkness, the ghost and the. Are we good?
Speaker 1:It's very common for people with any of these personality types to move through a hostility phase, because that's what happens when we get in touch with our anger, and many times, especially with any of these personality traits that are associated with the fawn or freeze response in the body. Getting in touch with the anger that allows us to protect ourselves is a mandatory part of the healing process. So throughout our healing, many of us wind up touching this hostile section as well. So here we are, we're getting ready to dive into it. Don't dip yourself too much into shame, don't worry about it too much, and you'll probably recognize a few of these within yourself, definitely a primary one and probably a secondary one, and if you've done much growing and changing and healing and self-evaluation, then you've probably moved through a couple of them. But the reason I think that this is important is that one the ghost personality specifically is one that I think gets missed a lot, because I think the ghost personality is one of the most easily misdiagnosed as the well-adjusted type. I also think that the um are we okay? Gets misdiagnosed sometimes, but not as often as the ghost. But we'll get to why.
Speaker 1:All right, without any further ado, let's start with type one. The first trauma personality type that I'd like to talk about is very much me now. Anyway, it's called the doer, and the doer is exactly what it sounds like it's somebody who does instead of feels. It is a person who, when a doer is presented with a problem, they just solve the problem problem. They just solve the problem. That's it.
Speaker 1:A doer is somebody who can get rear-ended and then immediately launch into okay, that's fine. What do we need to do to get through this? All right, give me your insurance and your registration and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and they'll totally skip the like how the fuck did you rear-end me? Phase and go straight to Like how the fuck did you rear-end me? Phase and go straight to how are we going to solve this? That's a doer personality type, and the doer personality type is really doing for one primary reason, and that is to escape the mess of themselves. That is what we're trying to do. We are trying to avoid seeing the mess that we are by constantly cleaning messes, which is why we have lists of lists of lists. We have lists of things that need to be done and lists of things that need to be done after that and before that. All of these can be great, and I want you to keep that in mind with all of these trauma personality types is there are useful things in all of these, obviously, or we wouldn't have done them. It's just when we rely on one consistently that things begin to be an issue. So with the doer personality types.
Speaker 1:It's very common for the doer to be the firstborn or have that firstborn energy, because the doer is the one trying to solve the problems for everybody. The reason a doer has lists in adulthood is because the doer is the one trying to solve the problems for everybody. The reason a doer has lists in adulthood is because the doer also most likely had lists in childhood. They had lists of things that they could do to prevent mom from getting mad. They had lists of things that they could do to make dad's day a little easier to prevent him from blowing up. They are action-oriented people because being action-oriented made things not as bad in childhood. And so whenever there is a conflict or whenever there is a really big emotion especially if there is a big conflict or a conflict that stimulates big emotions doers launch straight into doing.
Speaker 1:Because for me anyway for me it makes sense to me because I'm a doer but I launch straight into doing because the problem is still going to be there, my hurt feelings are still going to be there, the conflict or whatever is still going to be there. I just need to solve it, and the longer it takes me to solve the thing, the further I am away from the initial thing that actually hurt me, and like the way I describe grief thanks to a poem I read, is where, like grief, comes and hits you in waves and I think that that's true of all emotions they come and they hit you in waves and wash over you entirely sometimes and knock you out and you can barely breathe at first, but then later the waves are a little bit less tall and they come further and further in between and you can breathe a little bit. And so for me, my logical, rational explanation for why I do things this way, which is obviously retroactive to some degree, is that I am allowing for space between the troublesome event and when I am dealing with the emotions of that troublesome event. Because when I go to deal with the emotions of that troublesome event, so long as I don't take forever, like years, to do it, then I typically the emotions have subsided to some degree and they're easier for me to deal with. But I do deal with them eventually because I have learned some amount of like EQ, and that is a very important thing for doers to do is to learn some EQ. At least for me, that was kind of my way, I would say out of it, but it's not out of it. It's my way to integrate my doing into a more whole version of myself.
Speaker 1:But before we get there, let's talk about the childhood of doers. The childhood of the doers, or the childhood of doers, often had doer parents and you'll see that theme throughout. This is trauma is not new. It's not a 2024 or 2023 or even 2020 thing. Trauma didn't exist because COVID existed. Trauma has always existed and always will, and the way that people respond to those traumas are predicted by their biology, which is all pretty much the same across the species. So we see these in our parents and in our grandparents and we would have seen them in our great-grandparents and all the way back, and we learn through mimicry. So obviously it seems like it would go without saying.
Speaker 1:But I want to make it very clear that if you're a doer, there's a chance that you had a doer parent and that them doing stuff. I mean for me, the child of a single mother. If it wasn't for her doing and constantly doing and never dealing with her emotions at all under any circumstances ever, she may not have been able to raise us kids or keep us. I mean, my father tried the whole unfit parent thing, like many, many divorcees, especially in the 90s. So that level of doing was adaptive to her. Not so much for me.
Speaker 1:Additionally, here I'm a kind of a unique blend because I was not the oldest, I'm the middle child, but my older brother moved away, moved out of my mother's and in with my father, virgo, with a Virgo. My father was a Virgo, my brother was a Virgo, my mother's an Aries. My brother moved in with my father in like middle school and so then suddenly I became the oldest. So even though I wasn't the oldest when I was young, around that pubescent age, I did become the oldest and I moved a little bit more into the doer, and so it's very common for the firstborn to be doer or for doers to have doer parents.
Speaker 1:In addition to that, the childhood of doers can look a lot like when you have an addict for a parent, because then you're a parentified child and you were the one doing stuff to take care of the parent. That way things go well for you, depending on the drug. That will depend on what interventions you have, because the way that you deal with a raging alcoholic is different than the drug. That will depend on what your, what interventions you have, because the way that you deal with a raging alcoholic is different than the way that you deal with a a nodding out junkie. But having alcoholic or addicted parents is definitely one way to become a doer.
Speaker 1:The other way that I became a doer is being born into a military or religious family, because it's everything, is very much it's about survival and it's about eternity and there's just all of this pressure to do and perform. Otherwise things are very like very important things are resting on you like the end game of your eternal soul and your actual life before you turn into an eternal soul. So the combination of a hyper-religious and military family is a great way to become a doer. My older brother, I feel, was very much probably a doer. I didn't get to know him as an adult so I don't know. He died too young and I didn't know fuck all about trauma. I was just living it at the time. But I would say he's probably a doer just from what I do know and remember of him.
Speaker 1:All right, the thing for doers to get more real and that's the goal with all of these is how do I become more real? Because we're more than just a trauma response. Really, we're more than just a trauma response really, no matter how bad or shamed you might feel coming through this and I hope you don't feel shamed or attacked as I move through these but we have the opportunity to become more real and that is how we heal. We do not heal by becoming the opposite. You don't go from being a doer to being a non-doer and call that healing. No, you integrate, you become more real by making that part of you, only a part of you, and not a primary or the primary or the only part of you. So when I talk about solutions in this, we're going to be talking about it in the language of how do I become more real?
Speaker 1:For me, the way that I really learned to not abandon my doerness because again, I found it super useful with that whole giving space between the initial like emotional response to something and when I deal with it, because in the meantime I've done a lot of legwork and logistics and that sort of thing the end result, like the thing that really helped me, was to develop a lot of EQ. And the way that you do that for a doer is to have the doer dive into their own feelings, and it's best to do this in therapy? Obviously because a doer is going to do anything to avoid their feelings. That's why they're a doer. And it's difficult in therapy because doers get A pluses in therapy. I don't know if you know this. I get an A plus in therapy. Every time I go to therapy I have an A plus and the reason is because that's part of our shit. We want an A plus in therapy because we want to do everything right, because we're doers, so we want an A-plus in therapy, so we want to answer everything right and all that crap. But ultimately, the only thing that's really going to make us integrate more fully is to stop getting an A-plus and just do the process.
Speaker 1:Doers do not like processes. We like the end result of a process and we like figuring out what process we need to do to get to the end result in the most efficient way possible. But doing the process not so much Figuring it out. Even Even figuring out the process and planning it out and all of that and creating actionable steps that's all great, but actually moving through the process is bullshit to a doer doer. So the process that we actually have to do as doers is to dive into our own childhood and dive into our own crap and see what feelings are there and to learn to have a little bit more tolerance for big feelings, because doers really don't have much tolerance for big feelings. I know I didn't for a long time. I still don't have a lot of tolerance for big feelings, and by tolerance what I mean is when my feelings get really big, I want to immediately express them. Now I used to want to drink them away or smoke them away or whatever. Now, when my feelings are really big, I want to express them immediately, then and there, and usually in a way that's pointed towards solving things, because that's what I do as a doer. But the actual learning to be more tolerant of it is just feeling it and not responding, not reacting, and that's why I've developed a mindfulness practice for myself, because it helps me be less reactive. Okay, I think that's long enough on the doers.
Speaker 1:Type one is the doer. I think you've heard enough about it. The last thing I'll say about the doer is that doers are married to their work and they're married to their passion. All right.
Speaker 1:The next personality type that we're going to talk about is the hostile personality type, and this is really fun. This is really fun for me because when I was doing the research for this and taking notes and stuff, I recognized so much of myself and a really good friend of mine, one of my closest friends in the world. I recognized so much of me and of her in this personality type. I've grown through some of it. She's still very much in this personality type and what was so cool is that when I was doing this and I recognized that when we first met this is the reason that we both got along so well and we like just became besties is because we were both really hostile, like really hostile, and um, and I and I love her to death and I don't judge any of the hostility. I have my own shit as a doer and been hostile and I still can be. But, um, I called, I called her to just talk about this and laugh because we're those types of people. She's that type of friend that she can be a hostile personality type and recognize that it's painful and it hurts the people around her and also recognize like, okay, this is the way that I am anyway, so it's safe. It wasn't a shaming call or anything close to that, but I call her.
Speaker 1:She wasn't able to answer. She was actually on the phone for an interview, and not just an interview but interview for like a vice president. I think it was a vice president position. It was some massive, massive federal level interview, like a job to work federal level, having to go to DC and help do legislation and all of that kind of crap, like the kind of thing that is her wet fucking dream. Like, seriously, her wet dream was this interview and when she called back she had finished the interview and she called back and I asked her how the interview went and she spoke about two lines, maybe two sentences, about the actual interview, like oh, it went fine and then immediately went into. But fuck my partner, I should have called you before I did the interview because now I feel like this and I feel like that and like fuck them and they're always, always doing this and it would just immediately went into fuck this other person, fuck this partner that has been with me for like 15 years or whatever. And it was hysterical to me because the exact reason I called is because I wanted to talk about this hostile personality type as a result of trauma in our early lives and lord knows this woman has more than enough. More than enough trauma in our early lives. And, lord knows, this woman has more than enough, more than enough trauma in her early life to explain every bad thing, or like presumably bad thing, that she's ever done. And when she called and started going on about this, I was like, oh, I let her empty her heart and then was like, all right, well, I have to tell you this now because it's too perfect the thing about the.
Speaker 1:There's so many things about the hostile personality type, but this was a perfect example of what the hostile personality type does in relationships. The hostile personality type jumps into this acronym that we call JADE. Jade stands for Justify, argue, defend and Evade. That is their immediate reaction to any amount of accountability. I was talking to her about this hostile personality type and I started reading some of these things the JADE, the Justify, ar, argue, defend and evade thing and she was like, oh fuck, ah, shit, that's oh ouch, that's me. And I was like, yeah, me too. It's not as bad as it used to be, but it is definitely, definitely a thing for me. And the thing to keep in mind with this is it's not 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This is mostly when people get. It can be, but mostly it's when a person gets dysregulated. They launch into the one of these personality types and the thing with the hostile personality type in relationship is they always have to feel superior to their partner and I know that sounds really, really bad, because it is. It is bad, it's terrible, but it's not that bad because there is another personality type that we'll talk about later the number five personality type, that they're almost always together the hostile personality type and the number five, the. Are we good? They make a great match and her partner is definitely a number five, are we good?
Speaker 1:It was so profound having a chance to like looking at this and reading all of this and seeing so much of myself and so much of my friend in this, that I called her. She wasn't able to answer. She calls me back. We spend two minutes talking about this wet dream of an opportunity that she can't give a fuck about, like she literally gave no shits, like it was her dream, goddamn job. And I spent like an hour on the phone with her just talking through all this stuff about like okay, well, you're, you're, you're, like you're mad at your partner because he said this and didn't handle things this way and blah, blah, blah. But you know that's not what he does. That's not who he is. If you wanted like, you went to him because you wanted support, because you were feeling dysregulated, but then you proceeded to try to come up with a like an actual plan of attack with him, and that's not his forte. You have other friends that you lean on for that and you should have gotten on a hold of one of those if you wanted to build an attack plan. He's where you go to re-regulate, not to build an attack plan. Um, so we talked our way through it and recognized there's so much, so much in here. That was really painful because she fully was like oh my God, I am a horrible, horrible person. Why does he put up with me? He like it's terrible. The answer is because we'll get there. It's he's a number five, number five.
Speaker 1:So to talk about more, a few more of these personality traits within the hostile, trauma personality type, you hear like fuck my life a lot, because in a hostile personality type, it's us against the world, it is me versus everybody else on the planet, and the reason comes from childhood, like all of these, the childhood of a hostile personality type. Again, if you're a hostile personality type, you probably had a hostile parent and her mother absolutely hostile, absolutely hostile, also an immigrant, which is the other thing. The children of immigrants often have hostile personality types. The reason is when you have an immigrant family, your job is to fit in. When you are a first generation, like the child of first generation immigrants, your job is to fit in. Your job is to blend in.
Speaker 1:As an Asian family especially, you're coming from a collectivist culture where the highest honor that you can have is to blend in with everybody else. That is the goal, with that being baked into your DNA and then automatically being not like everybody else because you're Asian in America, that automatically puts everybody else like me versus you. And when your parents know that and they know that life is hard and you have to work harder because you're immigrants and all that sort of thing, their life is a big battle. And when their life is a big battle, they have to be hostile in order to survive. And so you learn that you have to be hostile in order to survive. So people with the hostile personality trait are chill. Until intimacy happens, they can be fine, they can be totally chill and not hostile at all until intimacy happens or until conflict happens or until they get feedback about anything that they've really ever done, because they're extremely triggerable.
Speaker 1:Hostile personality types have to be right, more than any other personality type. They have to be right because, again, it's them versus the world and if they're wrong, that's a chink in their armor and that is weakness and vulnerability and that means death in their heads, in their biological brains. They often overvalue telling it like it is and they really don't have any boundaries with oh no, we're going there, it doesn't matter how painful it is, they're going to attack you at your most vulnerable place. And they have to be right. They have no idea how to relate in a way that doesn't dominate. And this again I see in my friend from her mother. I see it so clearly. Her mother has no idea how to relate without being criticizing, negative or power-tripping, genuinely no idea how to relate. And we get that kind of information from our parents, from our mothers. We learn how to relate in the ways that our mothers relate and that's the way she learned how to relate from her mother in a very hostile, holier-than-thou way I'm right, you're wrong. I'm big, you're little, I'm smart, you're dumb, and there ain't nothing you can do about it. Thank you, matilda, for that incredible line. Or Mrs Hugsworth, what was her name? Ms Trunchbull, mrs Trunchbull or Ms Trunchbull, great show. If you have a great movie, show, book, all those things, but that mentality I'm big, you're little, I'm right, you're wrong, there ain't nothing you can do about it.
Speaker 1:Emotionally immature parents are a problem for everybody but, like severely emotionally immature parents, can very much give birth to the hostile personality type. And the problem that hostile personality types have is they're bothered by everything. Everything annoys a hostile personality type. There's no way for them to just be happy. They have no idea what that is like. They don't want to know what that is like because they think that that's stupid. They think that happy and dumb are synonymous. And that actually wasn't in my notes. That was from having the conversation with a friend the other day, with that friend the other day, and recognizing that I believed the exact same thing for a very, very, very long time that anybody who was happy was stupid by default. There was no. If they were not stupid, they wouldn't be happy. Like, obviously, just look around the world. If you're happy, it's because you're freaking, missing something. It's a similar concept to that whole. If you're not angry, you're not paying attention. If you are happy, you're not paying attention, and you are happy, you're not paying attention. And that's not the case. Happiness can be a choice, but not to a hostile personality type.
Speaker 1:So often in a hostile personality type, the abuse that they suffered was specifically around being weak and this is why I was predominantly hostile for most of my life. That's that whole. I don't have fight, flight, freeze. I have fight, fight and fuck you. I was very hostile for a very long time and it was very much because I had emotionally immature, unavailable parents military and religious so I did launch into some of that doer stuff. But, being a middle child, in my most developmental years, up until like fifth grade or whatever, when my brother moved out, it was all about the abuse because you were soft, because I was soft and for her same thing. Softness is weakness and that's super common in Asian cultures and in hyper independent cultures like ours. Softness is weakness and if your trauma and your abuse was around sometime that you were being weak or you were being soft and that was interpreted as weakness, guess what? You're probably going to wind up as a hostile personality type. Again, not your fault, but it is your responsibility because you're the only one able to respond to the echoes of that training living in your nervous system.
Speaker 1:Another thing about the hostile personality type is they really they double down easy. If you challenge them on something, their initial response, along with that jade, the justify, argue, defend and evade. They're also going to double down. They're going to double down that they are right. The justify, argue, defend and evade. They're also going to double down. They're going to double down that they are right, that they were right, and nobody will ever prove them differently. Because, again, it's us versus them, it's me versus the world. And even when they're in a relationship and it's me versus the world, there is no such thing and this is the most painful part about being with a hostile personality type is when it really comes down to brass tacks, when things are heated. There is no such thing as mutual respect in a relationship. There's no such thing. There cannot be in a hostile personality type. And until this hostile personality type deals with that, they're going to be in really fucked up relationships and they're going to be the reason that it's fucked up, at least in their head and it will be their fault. It'll be equally their fault and their partner's fault.
Speaker 1:The thing is a hostile personality type. They recognize that they're hostile even to those that they love and they treat them terribly. And then they lose respect for their partners because they allow them to treat them so terribly. And then they lose respect for their partners because they allow them to treat them so terribly. They're like how do you allow me to treat you like such shit? You clearly have no self-respect, so I have no respect for you. It is a never-ending cycle that happens over and over and over, and a lot of what I think America's problems are are based around this, because these are like just five basic ways that we people tend to jump into their life, based on childhood trauma.
Speaker 1:But this hostile versus people pleasing if this is not the argument of Democrat versus Republican, I don't fucking know what is Like. This is right wing versus left wing. The argument of Democrat versus Republican. I don't fucking know what is Like. This is right wing versus left wing. This is conservative versus liberal. This is it's all about me and fuck everybody, because the world is a battlefield versus no, the world is a terrible place and I need to do what I can to make it better. And I do it compulsively. And the thing is, both of these people are doing it compulsively and it can be great. We all need to think about ourselves and to honor our own boundaries the way that a hostile person does, but we all also need to recognize that everybody else has a bad day too, and it's not just about us, the way that the number five personality type does. And those two get together and it becomes a deadly downward spiral. And that's the downward spiral that America is on, that the entire world is on right now, because everybody is choosing one or the other. They're choosing team hostile or they're choosing team I gotta be nice and both of them.
Speaker 1:Like I said early on, you can't heal any of this by flipping to the 180, because that will be equally and opposingly as toxic. It is toxic to just give and give and give and give and have no self-respect, which the number five does, which the number five does. It is also toxic to be so hostile to everyone around you and to not believe there can be such a thing as mutual respect within a relationship. But I think these are the most easily fallen into. And I think, because they sync up so well, it's easy for a hostile man to show up with a appeasing woman and that's what all of boomerdom is about the boomers. That's exactly what the fuck has happened. You have these hostile, aggressive men and sometimes women, and then it's just flipped right. Then you have the henpecked husband, you have the hostile woman and the constantly appeasing husband or boyfriend. That balance of having those two together individually are incredibly toxic. But if they keep their shit together and shut behind closed doors, well out to the rest of the world, they can be perfectly functional and be like oh yeah, they've got problems, like everybody else does, and yeah, that's totally true. But nobody's going to see how super duper fucked up they are. And that's why I think this one has rippled out into the masses more than any other.
Speaker 1:I think most people wind up dipping into one of these two as their primary, and I said like most of us will have one and a secondary. And what I think happens sometimes is, even if our primary is not the hostile or the are we okay? Type, if number two, if our secondary attempt at stress solving is one of those two types, then that type later in life will become our primary, because it's easy to find someone who is hostile and it's easy to find somebody who is people-pleasing. Essentially, we're talking about A-type personalities as the hostile and B-type personalities as the are we good? The last thing I'll say about the hostile here is that hostiles are so detached from their own childhood and detached from the anger that they have about their childhood often is that they confuse control for love. The hostile personality type genuinely believes their effort to control the people around them is love. That's really hard. They genuinely believe that their efforts to control and manipulate the people around them, that is love, because what they're trying to do is they're trying to set you up for success, regardless of how you feel about it, because they don't know how they feel about it, because they use their hostility to avoid their emotions.
Speaker 1:For the longest time I had to and this is why I go with me being a doer now I had to intellectualize my like, my, where I was at in the world and what the recent happenings in my life were, in order for me to understand what emotions I was feeling. What I mean by that is, I knew I would feel things. I had a dis-ease in my body, but it was always anger. Everything was anger. Everything in my life was automatically converted to anger. Sadness, happiness, every kind of emotion, every kind of stimulation in my life was auto-converted to anger, because anger was the only acceptable form of emotion. As a male in the Midwest in the 90s and 2000s, everything was calculated and that's why I think my doer was my number two, maybe, and being hostile was my number one. I was very hostile for a very long time and when you're hostile, you think that you're helping other people by looking at their situations and telling them what they need to do for their situations, but just forcing your own reality upon them.
Speaker 1:Your reality disregards your wants and needs entirely. As a hostile person. You need to understand that your reality. You will never help a person make their life better in quality by telling them what to do or manipulating them, because your life is not quality. You cannot have a quality relational life while still exclusively living in this hostile personality type. It can't happen because you can't have mutual respect, which means that the people closest to you are still subservient to you. They're still less than you are. So you will always have to be the bigger person. You're always the one on the hook and you never get to stop, you never get to chill, you never get to be held, because that means that you have to trust and respect that person. And you can't trust and respect that person that you're with because you have a deep need to be better than they are and in your head you are, and it all goes back to that self-respect thing. But we'll get to that in a little bit.
Speaker 1:That's the last thing I'll say about hostile personality types is they confuse control for love and the way that a hostile personality type becomes healthier is by softening. They need validation of the rage that they felt in childhood and to point that rage to where it belongs. They need to understand that the intensity and rage that they feel every day, they're dissociated from. When you're a hostile personality type, you don't recognize how intense you are, and when people say yo, you're being really intense right now, you go wait, what? This is just me, I'm not being intense, you're just weak. We're genuinely dissociated from the level of intensity that we bring to a room, and so we're often shocked by people saying you're being really intense right now and self-righteousness is the top tier sign, or it's this top tier trigger trigger. If you approach somebody and they launch immediately into self-righteousness that justify that jade acronym. That's a hostile personality type. So again, you have to be number one in your relationships. You have to feel superior to your partners. They confuse control for love and self-righteousness is a top-tier trigger and the abuse that a hostile personality type lived through was abuse around being soft or weak.
Speaker 1:The third personality type is the darkness personality type. Enter the goth and the emo and the nihilists and all of this and this makes sense to me too, on a developmental thing, because if there are five basic personality types and we're not the firstborn, somebody else is taking care of all the things that need to be done and we definitely don't want to wind up as hostile as mom and as weak and nitpicky as dad or vice versa. That doesn't leave a whole lot of options. So the easiest option is to give in to the darkness. So the darkness is associated with the fawn, the doer is associated with the flee response and the hostile is associated with the flee response and the hostile is associated with the fight response and the darkness is associated with the fawn response. And in the darkness you see hopelessness and powerless and you see a lot of analysis, paralysis and you get lots of good emo vibes from the folks who fall into the darkness personality type.
Speaker 1:Often, with people who embody the darkness personality type, the intense shame that they feel for everything is overwhelming. They usually fall into one of two main categories they're either a shame darkness person or they're an anxiety darkness person, and this actually fits really well with a joke I heard, probably 15 years ago now, about the difference between an emo and a goth, as an emo hates themselves and a goth hates the world. That would make the emo the shame spiral type dark personality and the anxiety dark personality would be the goth and these people struggle to feel joy. The dark personality types struggle to feel joy and I definitely had a phase of this and I think lots of teenagers and things have an antisocial stage that is very akin to the darkness stage, as we're learning to integrate the crazy shit that we came from and trying to fit into our new peer group in junior high and high school and whatnot.
Speaker 1:The thing with darkness personality types is everything is personal, they take everything personally and they often find comfort in sadness and melancholy. But the problem with the darkness personality types is like there's a fun, cute, like Wednesday Addams way of doing this right, like you can think of the Addams Family and that sort of thing. But we also think of energy vampires, because the darkness personality type has a. They have a relational fantasy, and the relational fantasy of the darkness personality type is I just want you to agree with me that nothing works, everything sucks and life is terrible, because that's the world that they have in their head and they want whoever they're with to have that exact same, exact same personality output. And if they don't have that, then you're essentially because they take everything so personally. Then essentially, you're challenging their reality. If you don't believe that, well, then they're not supposed to believe that either, because they take everything personally. And now you are personally challenging their entire worldview and you hate them as a person because you don't think the whole world is bleak. And in this way, dark people become energy vampires. They suck the life out of the people around them because, in the same way that a hostile person has no idea how to relate without being superior, a darkness person has no idea how to relate without being negative.
Speaker 1:You know that person, you take them out to the beach and they're like. And you're like oh, isn't this beautiful. Look at the beautiful sunset. Look at these. Look at these beautiful shells and the starfish on the ground and, oh, isn't this lovely. And the sea urchins and they're like. And you're like, oh, isn't this beautiful? Look at the beautiful sunset. Look at these. Look at these beautiful shells and the starfish on the ground and oh, isn't this lovely. And the sea urchins and they're like, yeah, none of it's going to be here in 200 years.
Speaker 1:That person, that bullshit, that's the bullshit personality type of the darkness, that's the bullshit of the darkness and that is what makes them exhausting to be around and makes them isolate more and reinforces more of their own. Everything is terrible about the world when it's really it's you. You're terrible, you're fucking terrible. Like, with all of these personality types, we're all terrible because their trauma responses, the trauma was terrible, so our, our attempts to combat that has to be equally terrible. So it's fucking terrible. Like, stop, stop, um, but you can't right, like that's. The thing is, this shit is hardwired into our neurology and what we always want to say to people with a different trauma personality type than us is just stop it, just just stop it. Why can't you stop it? Just stop, and it doesn't't work. It doesn't because this is baked into our personality. It's baked into us because it's baked into our self-concept.
Speaker 1:People with the darkness personality type have a highly, highly moralistic kindness. These are the people that will kill themselves to save a goldfish. They're the people. They only see the world as such an awful, awful place that only by martyring themselves in an unbelievable way can they combat the darkness and they get this beautiful, poetic response to their insanely negative view of the world. Now, their pain is poetic and beautiful and it makes sense because their trauma is based around interpersonal stuff and betrayal. There is nothing worse than betrayal. There is very little on the planet that can hurt a human being as much as being betrayed by a person that we love and trust.
Speaker 1:The darkness personality type is really based around informed in childhood. Because of betrayal, you can be lied to, you can be manipulated, you can be cheated even. But when you become lied to, manipulated or cheated by a person that loves you or that said that they love you and they betray you, that is a pain unlike any other and that pain is what pushed this person into the darkness. Or having a parent who's dark, which is very much a thing that can happen, like with all of these. You've got a pretty good chance that one of your parents was this way, or one of your caregivers or somebody around you that you looked up to that was there on a very regular basis was one of these types of things. Regular basis was one of these types of things. But the betrayal that forms a personality type like this darkness is. I can't overstate the amount of pain that betrayal fosters.
Speaker 1:I was recently betrayed a couple of years ago by my closest friend in the world. Cut me off, no explanation, no, nothing Told me. If I had anything to, if I had anything to give or I had anything to say to her, I could. I could submit it in writing. And this was after 15 years of friendship and being told that I am family and that and like, and being told I'm family for years and years and years and being treated as family. And then suddenly, when family was around, I didn't mean shit. I was told get your shit, get out of here. Give me like, give me your. I wasn't even there and they were like give me the key. You're not welcome at the house. Goodbye, nothing like, just no explanation.
Speaker 1:I cannot tell you how much that betrayal shattered my heart. And it was by my best friend, my friend, that I dedicated my book to, and that happened before I actually dedicated the book to her. It took time, it took years for me to put everything together and be like no, I really want to still dedicate this book to her because if it was not for her, I would not be who I am today and I could not have put these pieces together and become the person that I am and healed the way that I have. So I still very much dedicate that book to her and to all the people like her who have taken it upon themselves to nurture other people's children. But goddamn, I'll never forget it. I've forgiven. I have forgiven her. I understand what happened. I don't think it's okay, I don't think it's cool. I'll never tell her that it's okay. And if she ever says like can you forgive me and I'm sorry, like could you ever think it's okay? I'm like I'll forgive you, but no, it was not okay and frankly, I don't think it's even forgivable. But I'm glad that I did because it allowed me to heal.
Speaker 1:And carrying that amount of pain and that amount of hate for that level of betrayal is exhausting and that's why I think the darkness personality type takes everything so goddamn personally. It's because it takes effort to not take things personally. When you have been betrayed, everything around you could be like. It takes so much chi to not take things personally. And they don't have that chi left. It's still being consumed by the grudges that they carry for the people who have betrayed them. And until they learn to put down the grudges that they carry by the people who betrayed them, they'll never grow out of the darkness Ever.
Speaker 1:The way out of the darkness for these people is you have to recognize that there was severe darkness in your childhood. There was pain, there was darkness, and you admit all of that was real. And you admit now is different. You admit that now is better, or at least it has the opportunity to be. Even if it's not, it does have the opportunity to be. And the only way that you can make it better is by attempting to seize that opportunity. And you know I mentioned earlier that the healing of this is not to flip 180 degrees, and I think darkness is the perfect example of why healing is not to do the opposite, because the opposite of the darkness is rose-colored glasses, and that is basically kind of number five. But the opposite of the darkness is toxic positivity and that's never helped anybody. It doesn't even help keep you alive. At least, the darkness is a pretty good survival mechanism. Toxic positivity probably not as good, at least not for me, coming from a hyper-individualist culture. Maybe in a more collectivist culture that toxic positivity is more of a benefit to survival. But it's not enough to do the opposite. It's about integrating, which is why for darkness people it's about admitting the pain and the darkness and the betrayal and all of that and recognizing that today is different, that now is different and different means that it can be better.
Speaker 1:Number four this one is called the ghost. It is associated with the freeze response. The ghost is all about inaction and they are an avoidant type. Like the doer. They're hard to get to know because they'd rather be doing than feeling their feelings. The ghost would rather be avoiding than feeling their feelings. Ghosts often have dismissive, avoidant attachment types, so they won't admit that they want you around until you actually threaten to leave and then suddenly they're like no, no, I love you, I want you and these people. Everything is based on this mask, Everything is based on this facade. So the facade is first and foremost about being aloof and self-sufficient.
Speaker 1:These people are often introverted and are often childhood scapegoats. They want connection more than anything else, but they actively, divvily, compulsively, hide from it. They are often overwhelmed by people and that's why they learn to mask so well. They do not do well in large groups and when they come home they want to come home and isolate, and that's how they recalibrate. They're also marked by some sporadic hostility, and the sporadic hostility comes like how do you get hostility from a ghost? Well, actually that was an. That was an accidental, really good analogy. You get hostility from a ghost because of unfinished business, right, and a ghost ghost and the ghost personality. That unfinished business is all of the avoided emotions. That is, the unfinished business of the ghost personality type is all of these avoided emotions that they just haven't dealt with. They haven't, they're not gonna deal with because they'd rather just ghost it. They ghost themselves and their emotions more than they ghost anything else on the planet, which is why they're given to sporadic hostility. They will pretend everything's fine and be aloof and self-sufficient and then they'll let everything build up until they explode in hostility. This is the thing that pisses me off about ghosts. They want others to read their minds because they're too afraid to share their opinions.
Speaker 1:Now again, personality types based on trauma. These are natural responses because of our biology. None of them are better than others, but some of them piss me off more than others, and I'm sure you feel the same way. Maybe the doer or the hostile or whatever like. Maybe some of these piss you off differently, but this one pisses me off because I'm dating one. Luckily, as a hostile doer, I can go straight toward the uh-uh meh and I'm okay with the hostility because I too can be hostile. So I'll poke until that hostility comes out and you get in touch with that anger and then the real you shows the fuck up. Then we can have a conversation. Maybe that's not the healthiest way, but I'm dealing with an unhealthy personality type as well. So unhealthy matches with unhealthy and hopefully the goal is we can be a little bit healthier in the end after that. But that pisses me off when you are expecting other people to read your mind because you are too afraid to speak it. There's always a reason that they're afraid to speak, though Always, as much as I don't want to remember it, there's always a reason that they're afraid to speak.
Speaker 1:Every person on the face of this earth has a true story that will break your heart, at least one. And these folks do not want to share that story under any circumstances, which is why they get stuck so easily, because they have to do everything by themselves. And it makes sense. They're a ghost, they're intangible, they can't even really touch the world around them hardly without somebody else's permission, it seems. And the childhood setup for the ghost personality types is having ghost parents, people who just weren't around much, people who didn't care much. So the childhood setup for these ghost types personalities who get stuck pretty easy is another attribute. The childhood setup is they probably had ghost parents, ghost parents where they dealt with neglect, and here's the real kicker there was no joyful connection in their early years. Now what does that exactly mean?
Speaker 1:I really want to make this clear, because the ghost personality type is the type that is the single trickiest to me, because they're the ones that can go undiagnosed the most easily. They're the ones who are the most convinced that they're just fine as they are, because they're able to keep all their crap inside them and they're able to mask, and they think, so long as I'm masking, then I'm fine and sure I mean you can function that way. But that's a shit way to be when you don't have any real joy in your life. And that's something that ghost personalities, along with darkness personalities, struggle with. They struggle with joy because, especially in the ghost personality type, there was no joyful connection, there was no celebration of connection in their life, so they don't see it as beneficial. They are not socialized well because of this.
Speaker 1:They are the latchkey kids. They're the ones who had too much time alone, too much independence alone, and they were just left to figure it out. And when you're left alone as a child, that is terrifying. Your biology is predicated to slightly freak out when you are left alone for a long time as a kid. And so to avoid that horrible feeling arising in the body since we don't have the skills as children yet to self-regulate as that terrible feeling comes arising in our body and that anxiety builds and the fear builds and the trepidation builds, ghosts ghost themselves. They ghost their body, they ghost their emotions, they ghost everything.
Speaker 1:And by ghosting I mean they dissociate. They dissociate completely'm thinking of had a lot of good times with their dad, but dad was a stoner and dad worked hard and was like a sound engineer and was having to do stuff that was pretty high profile and so everything had to be done right. And between being a stoner to cope with his own anxiety and whatnot and having to do all of this work stuff, then you basically just have kids running around in the background, being ignored, being around dad, being safe, having access to video games and junk food and that sort of thing. So all of their actual like physical needs are being met, but the emotional needs and the emotional connection that they're supposed to have with their caregiver that brings their real joys in life doesn't happen. So they don't get set up in a way that makes them think that relationships are beneficial. So another trait of the ghost personality types is they don't do relationships, not meaningful ones. They either will be single for a long time or they'll have a bunch of short or very superficial relationships because they're simply not rewarding. Their childhood set up a dynamic that made it to where connection just was not celebrated. So what's the point?
Speaker 1:The ghosts they hide in themselves and hide from their feelings, so much that they often get interpreted as secrets, like as like keeping secrets or being manipulative in that way and more than any other type ghosts avoid therapy. One they think they don't have any problems. They think so long as they can mask that, everything is fine, because that's what their childhood told them, unfortunately. But they have this intimacy fantasy, similar to the darkness. Intimacy fantasy of like can't you just agree with me that everything in the world sucks? The ghost personality type has this intimacy fantasy of can't we just be together without talking or looking at each other or interacting? Isn't that good enough? That's their fantasy. If that is your fantasy like can't we just sit next to each other and not interact? Like't that good enough? That's their fantasy. If that is your fantasy like can't we just sit next to each other and not interact, like that's good enough, that's because you have this trauma personality type.
Speaker 1:So I want to make it really clear that if that is your default here, you need to understand you are not a healthily securely attached individual. Healthily securely attached individual. Most likely, most likely, you have trauma in your past. That wasn't the made-for-TV Hallmark movie kind of trauma. So you think everything was fine. Your childhood, compared to the people that you know, might have been fine and dandy, but connection wasn't celebrated. Joy was not a thing. That happened because people were together. You were just around each other and everybody did their own thing.
Speaker 1:And sure that can work, but it is an empty existence. It is an empty existence because our quality of life is determined by the quality of our relationships, and these people have spent their entire life avoiding relationships because they don't think that they're very necessary, because they weren't necessary in their tactic of surviving their neglected emotional needs in childhood. Ghosts believe more than any other that they're fixed as ghosts. We all believe that we're fixed, but especially ghosts as in. Fixed as in like you're stuck as a ghost. Again, none of these are stuck. They all can be worked on.
Speaker 1:Ghosts need to stop ghosting themselves and ghost their feelings in order to get better, in order to grow, in order to be more real what the ghost needs. The ghost would benefit from having others tell them that they want to know more about them, because a ghost personality type is often shocked when people are like, hey, you know, I've known you for 12 years and I don't know anything about you, and then they're like, oh wait, what Really? And it's a little bit shocking, but you might actually surprise them into opening up about themselves. You'll probably only get one or two things maybe, but hey, that's a hell of a lot better than the nothing that you've gotten for the 12 years or whatever. So the way for a ghost to integrate is being around people who genuinely want to know more about you, because it's not going to be your MO to try to share or overshare or anything at all like that Because you don't care. You don't care about relationships, but it benefits a lot if you have a ghost in your life to be like oh hey, I feel like I don't know much about you. Ask a specific question, maybe. Ask one very specific question. Get to know them one little piece at a time.
Speaker 1:Oh, and I forgot to mention, before we move on to the last one, that under hostile, in order for a hostile person to actually grow and integrate, they need a person that they respect, and that's really hard to find. Finding a person that a hostile person respects really hard to find. Finding a person that a hostile person respects one has to have been hostile probably. They will most likely have to have witnessed this person being hostile in order to respect them. But a hostile person needs a person that they respect to teach them self-compassion. I'm sorry I should have put that in there, but there it is.
Speaker 1:Back to number two, the hostile personality type. If that's you, you need to find a person that you respect and spend enough time with them that they can teach you a little bit of self-compassion. That's what Kaya did for me. That's what Adrian did for me, the friend who hurt me and abandoned and all that other stuff also did. People are complicated. Also, that's who it was. She was the first person that I respected. That taught me self-compassion.
Speaker 1:Okay, now the final one. We're almost there. Thanks for sticking with me. I know it's been a long one. The last one is the are we good? And this again, straight to the fixing. These are we good?
Speaker 1:People are straight to the fixing and these are more of the anxious, attached people and they are focused on pleasing anybody who treats them poorly, anybody who treats them like crap. That's where they're going to be, because they automatically don't want to burden anybody, even their therapist. They are classic codependent people. Their codependency leads them to abandon themselves to maintain connection with their abuser. This is why number two, number five hostility. And are we good have a powerful dynamic. Just like my friend, her partner is a number five, the are-we-good type. So these people have rose-colored glasses and they cope with things with an optimism. The quite astute observer will notice that they are coping with a feigned optimism, but optimism nonetheless. It is how they know how to cope, is how they know how to cope, they are forever checking in with their partners, and this is definitely something that I did with my first boyfriend ever.
Speaker 1:I made it a law for myself I could not text him past 11 am because if I did, or before 11 am, because if I did somehow, my insecurity was way worse up until 10. And then I gave myself an hour buffer and I would only message after a while. I would only message after 11, because anything I messaged before 10 am was oh my God, I'm so sorry I did this wrong and I did this wrong. And are you mad at me? And I'm like it's so obnoxious constantly checking in to make sure that they weren't mad at me. And that's the.
Speaker 1:Are we good? Personality type. That is the quintessential basis of it is the. Are we good? Are you mad at me? Can you tolerate me? And that's what's so sad about this one is the goal is not to be loved, it's not to be appreciated. The goal is literally to just be fucking tolerated, and obviously being loved would be appreciated. The goal is literally to just be fucking tolerated and obviously being loved would be great. But for the are we good, being tolerated is basically the same thing.
Speaker 1:So the are we good are constantly checking in with their partners and are extremely sensitive to criticism. They're always providing and doing for others and they do not recognize that they have an option to disagree. When they're presented with something, especially their partner or whatever they're like okay, yeah, it doesn't even they like automatically just dismiss their own world, their own internal compass, their own reality. They just throw it aside in favor of their partners and it's all to appease their partner. And it makes sense because their partners are typically hostile. Another thing about the are we good is they never initiate conflict. They are always trying to avoid conflict. They are masters at avoiding conflict. They are always trying to avoid conflict. They are masters at avoiding conflict. They are wonderful people pleasers and room workers because they can walk into a room and work everybody in the room and appease them and fluff them up and just give everybody in the room a boost and everybody will feel better for it and they're doing it compulsively out of this need to feel liked and tolerated, so they at least are not being rejected straight out the gate. And because of all this they often don't recognize the abuse.
Speaker 1:It takes a long time sometimes for a are-we-good personality type to recognize that they are being abused. It might take multiple times of multiple friends being like yo. That's not cool. Are you still with that fool? The other thing that they're doing is it's such a miserable existence when you are just constantly trying to appease everybody and please everyone around you that in relationships they're not even chasing love or serenity or connection. What they're chasing is relief, just relief. They're chasing a sense of relief that they're tolerated. That's why they're constantly checking in.
Speaker 1:Their baseline is to assume that they're not needed. And they're constantly checking in. Their baseline is to assume that they're not needed and they're not wanted. Nobody wants them around. That's their baseline. And it becomes their baseline because in the childhood setup of the are we good personality type, they become overly in tune with a toxic parent. Whether they're overly in tune with an alcoholic or drug-addicted parent, or a narcissist or a perfectionist, they become overly in tune with the toxic parent. That way they can pop into whatever the parent is feeling, feel out what they're feeling and come up with a plan to then try to steer things in a different direction to avoid whatever blow-up or conflict is about to happen. The main main thing with Are we Good is they were told they were the problem. They were the problem, which is why their baseline understanding and sense of being in the world is that they are a problem, and the only way for them to know that they're not a problem is to check in all of the time and constantly ask Am I the problem? Am I a problem for you right now? Because I feel like I'm a problem, so I'm reaching out to make sure that I'm not a problem.
Speaker 1:I've talked a lot about the difference between shame and guilt on this podcast. I think it's extremely important and Brene Brown has done an incredible job of getting this out into the world and that's where I got all of my information from. But I love her thing of. Shame says I am bad. Guilt says I did bad. Are we good is shame? Are we good? Is I am bad?
Speaker 1:The people who live their life as the are we good personality type they have a fundamental belief that they are the problem. They often went through horrific daily emotional abuse at home and they thought it was their fault. They go. I'm bad because I couldn't solve mom and dad's divorce. I am bad because I couldn't protect little sister. I am bad because I am bad because it all starts with. I'm bad, not I did bad or I did a thing that could have been done better, but I am bad. That happens in many ways, but often it comes from an abusive parent, like we said, or a parent who is doing the exact same thing.
Speaker 1:We have neglectful, shame-based families in the world that give birth to neglected, shame-filled babies who then have more children that are neglected and shame-filled. They'll be neglected in a different way and shame-filled in a different way. They might go darkness, they might go hostile, they might do ghosting, but the are-we-good personality type really struggles in intimacy because their partner becomes annoyed by their checking in, especially because they often wind up with fives. They can only relate by focusing on someone else, which is great for the hostile personality type, because they can only relate by focusing on themselves. And if you do turn things around and you try to focus on a caregiver on the are we good personality, other centered, focused kind of person. They might just feel shame. You might actually shut them down and they might feel worse because you turned the flashlight on to them, because their baseline again is I'm bad, because their baseline is not like I'm good and can do better or I'm good and deserve better. It's I'm bad. And so all I can hope for is that someone will tolerate me. And this is deep in religious households. This is really deep in religious households.
Speaker 1:This is the part of me that I am the most ashamed of. I am the most ashamed of this. Are we good? Personality crap. I was really bad at it when I was 19 with my first boyfriend and I'm still bad at it. I'm still bad at it. I still am texting him like, are we good, something I said four days ago, and texting him like are we good, something I said four days ago? And I'm like are we good? And that's not even just in my relationships, it's in my romantic relationships, it's in any close relationship that I have. It's way better than it used to be.
Speaker 1:And I'm not saying that I am all of these personality types, but I am saying that I've had enough trauma and my trauma was complex enough, which just means it was chronic enough that I had to come up with multiple different strategies. That's what complex trauma is having multiple strategies that we rely on that are all biologically predetermined. I recognize myself in many of these and they're all really uncomfortable and really not fun. The big problem in relational strategies we've already talked about a little bit it's just that when the focus is on them, they feel shame. So they have to focus on everybody else and they focus on everybody else, including and especially their partners to such a degree that their partners lose respect for them because they have no respect for themselves Again. It doesn't even show up in their minds that they can disagree. It doesn't even show up. They just automatically surrender their reality to give it up to somebody else's, and that is something I have absolutely aggressively refused to do for a few years.
Speaker 1:Since I'm getting about halfway through writing the book, I realized so many of my like basically God. The overwhelming majority of my problems at that point in my life was Life was all based around giving up my reality to appease whoever I was with. I would give up my reality and say you know what I could be wrong. I know that I'm not the only person in the world and that my thinking isn't perfect because I'm human. But I had put in hours of genuine thought and wrote pages down to get my thoughts out on a piece of paper so I could get them out of my head and see if they made any sense and really think things through clearly, while the person that I would be talking to would give it half a second's thought and I would be like, well, okay, I guess I mean I can't say that I'm right every time, but I did do the work to find out the truth and I would still abandon that in deference almost I would abandon that in deference to anybody else's opinion, and it kept me twisted up like nobody's business. So if you are an are we good personality type, please hear me when I tell you that you are not the problem. You have never been the problem. Your fucked-up childhood and your fucked-up parents were the problem. It was not you.
Speaker 1:You have things inside of you that make living your life difficult. You have conditioning inside of you that makes the way that you interact in the world difficult, but that is not a thing that makes you bad or makes you wrong. That's just a thing about you. You are so much bigger than that. You have never deserved the type of abuse that you survived. You never deserved any of it. It is not your fault and you are not bad. You are a wonderful and kind human being who is too kind and too giving and if you want your life to be better, maybe take some of that kindness and some of that understanding and some of that love and some of that peace that you seed in the world around you and you throw it deep inside. You throw it deep inside, plant that seed deep inside your belly and let it grow. Let it grow into something wonderful, because you are wonderful just the way that you are. I'm sorry for the trauma that you went through. I'm sorry for the crap that you had to survive and I'm sorry that undoing that training is so much work and that it's confusing work and that it's scary work and it's, frankly, debilitating work at moments. I'm sorry that doing this work requires other people, but it does.
Speaker 1:Each of us have to react and respond to whatever we're dealt the cards that we have, but also the cards in all the other players' hands. We talk about the poker analogy in life and playing the hand that we're dealt. But a good poker player knows that it's just as much about everybody else's cards as it is theirs. You may not have been dealt a perfect hand, but neither was anybody else. Occasionally you might get somebody with pocket aces, but that's a rarity. So before you throw yourself out as trash, think about other people's cards. Bring yourself a little compassion.
Speaker 1:And the thing about all of these personality types is they're all based on trauma and they're all based on interpersonal trauma and any damage done in relationship needs to be healed in relationship. And a lot of this stuff can feel so heavy and therapy is expensive. If you can find yourself a good group therapy thing based on this stuff, oh my god, it's incredible. It is so freeing and so powerful to hear other people talking about their version of your same crap, because everybody's going to be at different stages. So you'll have people who are just entering in it and it feels, and the way that they'll describe their stuff, it feels like the weight of the universe. Just listening to the stories, it feels like the weight of the universe is on them and that is what it feels like to be in them in that moment and then somebody else will share and their story started like the weight of the universe is on them and that is what it feels like to be in them in that moment, and then somebody else will share and their story started as the weight of the universe. And now there's levity and there's brightness and there's humor in it and you're like, wow, it can go from that to that. And just knowing that, just seeing it modeled, is so beneficial. There are online groups that you can find and join. There are group coaching sessions, there are group therapy sessions. There's lots of really good group stuff out there that I honestly think is really, really beneficial.
Speaker 1:So I hope you got something out of this podcast. I hope that you're not too like lost in the sauce about this or feeling too bad about yourself. Look, we all had shit that we had to deal with and we all had to deal with it in one way or another, and there was no right or wrong way, and none of these are better than others, except for the ones that I have. Those are clearly better than everybody else's and I just want to wish you the best of luck. Thank you so much for spending your time with me, thank you for not getting lost in the shame and for coming here, to a place where you want to learn something about yourself, about the world around you, to hopefully make the world a slightly better place. So thank you for choosing to come here instead of just watching cat videos. Thank you and remember stay curious and stay uncomfortable, we'll be right back. Thank you.