এই এপিসোড সম্বন্ধে
The salient point of our discussion revolves around the premise that the emotional struggles we endure in adulthood—such as uncontrollable anger, pervasive shame, and persistent anxiety—may not be inherent flaws but rather manifestations of unaddressed childhood trauma. Today, we delve into the intricate relationship between early experiences and their reverberations throughout our adult lives, emphasizing that recognizing these echoes is pivotal for genuine healing. Joining us is Graham Robinson, a distinguished advocate for those navigating the complex terrain of childhood trauma, particularly among men. Through his insights drawn from both personal experience and scholarly work, we explore the mechanisms by which early emotional neglect and trauma shape our adult behaviors and relationships. Our conversation aims to illuminate the pathways to healing, urging listeners to confront and understand their past to foster a healthier future.
The discourse presented within this episode intricately weaves the exploration of childhood trauma and its profound implications on adult behavior. The conversation, initiated by the host and enriched by guest Graham Robinson, delves into the notion that the emotional struggles many individuals face—such as uncontrollable anger, persistent shame, and overwhelming anxiety—are not mere personal shortcomings but rather reverberations of unresolved issues stemming from formative years. This pivotal perspective posits that the path to genuine healing commences with the acknowledgment and understanding of these early echoes of trauma. Robinson, an advocate for lived experiences and author, draws upon his own journey to elucidate the mechanisms through which childhood trauma manifests in adulthood, revealing that the absence of emotional nurturing may prove more detrimental than overt abuse. The episode emphasizes the necessity of addressing these emotional deficiencies to foster authentic healing and personal growth. An integral theme in the dialogue is the recognition of how societal conditioning, particularly among men, inhibits emotional expression, leading to a pervasive culture of silence surrounding mental health struggles. Robinson articulates the detrimental impact of emotional neglect, highlighting that many individuals, particularly men, have been socialized to suppress their feelings, thus perpetuating cycles of pain and isolation. The episode invites listeners to contemplate the importance of emotional literacy and the courage required to confront one's past—a journey that, while fraught with challenges, holds the promise of liberation from the shackles of unacknowledged trauma. Listeners are encouraged to embrace a reflective approach toward their own experiences, considering how their childhood environments may have shaped their present emotional landscapes. The discussion culminates in a call to action, urging individuals to seek therapeutic avenues to confront and navigate their past traumas. By doing so, they can begin to unravel the complexities of their emotional responses, fostering resilience and healthier interpersonal relationships in the process. Through a blend of personal anecdotes and professional insights, this episode serves as a poignant reminder of the enduring impact of childhood experiences and the transformative power of healing through understanding.
Takeaways:
- The emotional patterns we experience in adulthood, such as anger and anxiety, may originate from unresolved childhood trauma.
- Understanding the echoes of our past experiences is essential for embarking on a path of genuine healing and self-discovery.
- Graham Robinson emphasizes the profound impact of childhood emotional neglect, which can lead to significant adult relational difficulties.
- Individuals often mask their inner vulnerabilities with anger, which serves as a protective barrier against deeper emotional pain.
- The journey towards healing requires confronting painful emotions and understanding their origins, rather than suppressing them.
- Therapeutic interventions, such as hypnotherapy, can aid in managing and healing from childhood trauma, enabling individuals to lead healthier lives.
Links referenced in this episode:
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- Mind meets Machine
- Graham Robinson
- Shattered Innocence
- Healing the Invisible Wounds of Childhood Trauma
- Pain, Loss and Desire
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নোটগুলি দেখান 🔗
প্রতিলিপি 🔗
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What if the patterns we struggle with as adults, anger that flares too fast, shame that won't loosen its grip anxiety that feels ever present are not the personal flaws at all but echoes of something much earlier.
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So dear listeners, today we are staying with that question that with the possibility that understanding those echoes is the beginning of real healing.
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So hey dear listeners, welcome back to another powerful episode of Mind Meets Machine where we explore the intersection of human experience, psychology, and the systems, internal and external, that shape our lives.
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And today I'm joined by a lovely guest.
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Please welcome Graham Robinson.
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So welcome to the show.
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Hi, Evie.
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Thank you.
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It's a pleasure to be here and looking forward to the chat with you.
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Amazing.
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So dear listeners, before we delve deep into our discussion today, I'll quickly love to introduce you with Graham.
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Graham is a lived experience advocate and the author who works with people, especially men, healing from childhood trauma.
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So drawing from his own journey and his books Shattered Innocence, healing the invisible wounds of childhood trauma and the pain, loss and desire.
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And in this conversation, dear listeners, you will gain the clarity on why trauma triggers, how it manifests, and what the real world healing can look like.
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So wait a way, let's go started.
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Welcome to the show again.
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So it it um it is, as you said in your introduction, the uh the difficulty is most people, and in particular men who've always been taught to hide their emotions, most people don't realize that a lot of what happened in their childhood actually was trauma, was abuse.
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You know, as we grew up, depending on the generations, the being smacked or or other things that happened to you, the child just accepts it because you want to love your parents, so you know, take that and you adapt to survive, basically.
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But if it's extreme, obviously we know that that happens, if it's extreme, physical or or sexual.
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But the really key area that that men and women lose as children is the emotional lack of emotional love from their parents.
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Now they may not physically hurt them in any way, but they might be absent with love, with with holding them, with showing love, with giving them emotional ground rules, really, if you like.
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And so, you know, the father may be working all the time, and he's absent not because he even thinks about it.
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It may have happened to him in his young life that he's just working and and providing, but he's not giving the love.
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And the mother may not be, she may be harassed by other things and doing other things.
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So the child dro j uh grows up with lack of emotional content, and that can sit in a child and through to the adult and can really allow, or or what happens is the child has not developed any of these emotional growth that they should have as a child, and as an adult, they don't know, they can't.
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If they if you add that, some physical beating, some um other things to that as well, and it can be things like my parents, apart from the physical beatings from my father and so on, but my parents used to scream at each other over everything.
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That's the only way they communicated.
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They never spoke.
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I all I can remember is them yelling at each other.
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So as a child, I was always fearful in the home.
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So I was always scared.
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So for me, even from the age of six or seven, I was always outside of the house because it was safer.
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I felt safe on my own running so I grew up in England and we lived in Africa and then eventually came to Australia.
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But I felt safer in the bush in Africa than I did in my own house.
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And you know, I was I was playing around in areas where I mean, not so much I was in a city or near a city, there weren't lions or anything like that around.
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But but it was still dangerous, far more dangerous.
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And I was always on my own because I just felt much safer there.
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And so when we talk about childhood trauma, it is not necessarily one thing like being very physically assaulted in the home or sexually abused.
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It can be the fact that your parents don't show you any love, and therefore, you know, we depend on our male figure in the home to develop our strength and our emotional sort of road, and our female, the mother, to to do the deeper stuff as well in terms of building our emotional essence, our centre.
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If we don't have any of that, and I didn't from either one of my parents, then we have these problems as as we grow up.
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Of course, there is the other side where there's the overbearing mother or the overbearing father, and that can cause traumatic responses.
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The thing that I find most is that people, when I talk to men's groups, when I talk to groups, I will have the wife of the husband come up to me or the partner and say, Oh, my husband, when you talked about that, my husband does that, my husband does this, he does all the things you talked about.
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But he won't they don't approach me until the woman until the m the wife brings them forward.
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So men are still struggling, especially older men, to talk about these things.
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They go, now I'm fine.
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Um and yet they hold this rage, they hold this loss of you know, men even my age are still desperately wanting to make their fathers proud.
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Like my father never, never put an arm around me, never said he loved me, never said he was proud of me.
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And um even even, you know, in my 50s, I started to still feel that I I still wanted to hear that, even when he was dead.
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How stupid is that?
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He's dead and gone, but I still had this hole inside me wanting him to tell me that he was proud.
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And I I didn't understand any of that until one day I was watching television and I saw a father on the television put his arm around his son and say to him he was proud of him.
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Now, I'd seen that that scene all the time in different movies, but this one night, I don't know why, um, I started to shake, I started to cry, and I ended up lying on the on the floor, believe it or not, like in the fetal position, just just sobbing.
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And I I thought I was going crazy, I had no idea what was going on with me.
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And so that started my journey of looking into what had happened to me, why this was happening, and then started the healing.
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Um, and then once I started looking at just that one aspect of, you know, the father with the arm around the shoulder saying he's proud, then I started to look at all the other things that had happened in my childhood and how I'd behaved as an adult.
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Even from my twenties, the things I'd done, which I thought this is just me, like when I'd got into instant anger from one to ten because somebody had been talking too loud.
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So noise, because of my parents screaming in the house all the time, noise has always triggered me.
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And so even people next door, like neighbors, when they talk too loudly, my body used to get tense.
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Used to, you you know, you don't know it's happening because it triggers an emotional warning inside you.
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And you I get would get tense and I'd want to go and shout at them, just be quiet, and they're only talking in a slightly above a normal level.
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That's that's how the trauma can affect.
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And of course, that goes into rage.
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If they don't stop, you get really angry, and then you approach somebody, and of course, you know, the end result can be quite um quite bad if if you and of course you don't get on with your neighbors.
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And you know, things like road rage even are are the same.
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With childhood trauma, you need to or you feel like you must control your life around you.
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Um and you must control everything because that's the only way you feel safe.
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So all of this is because your inner child, you your little child when you were younger, created this false personality to try and get your parents to love you.
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So they didn't love the real you, you got no emotion from them, so you create this false personality, and the false personality doesn't get loved either.
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So the inner child is sort of feels unsafe when any of these things that trigger it from its childhood start to happen.
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And and that's what men quite often, and and women as well certainly don't always understand that it's coming from these events in childhood.
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And once you understand them, then you can start managing them, healing them.
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It's not easy though.
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I mean, I I'll be honest, it's not like once you know that's the end of it.
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It's not like that.
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But once you do understand, for example, to give you an example that many people have is a thing called people pleasing.
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So it it comes from a trauma in childhood where we will do absolutely anything for anyone and everyone, even if we're so busy that we have no time, even if we know we have to put off something we want to do to help them.
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It's not just about helping.
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We will do anything because we need them to like us.
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We want them to like us, want them to make sure that they um that they know that we're always there because that that's a drive that we have.
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And it comes from our childhood trauma where we try desperately to please our parents.
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You know, there's a whole myriad of things.
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I wrote the book.
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I I looked at all the different symptoms and I stopped writing after 19 different symptoms because it there was getting too many.
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And so, you know, you look at the different ways you interact with with partners, you have trust issues.
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So if you have a relationship, quite often, if you've got trauma from your childhood, one of the things you have is that you feel abandoned.
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And the a lot of these things, of course, are triggered inside you without you because you're a child, you don't understand them.
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And that's why you don't know much about them as an adult.
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And so what happens in your relationships, of course, is that you you either have extreme jealousy, you check up on your partner all the time, you you might check their mobile phone, you might try and look at, you know, their emails.
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You you do that, even though there's no indication they're doing anything, you fail to be able to completely trust them.
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So you're always checking up on them.
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And of course, if you're challenged by your partner over that, you go into a rage because you want to cover up the shame that you have.
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So you go into this massive rage, and of course that ends the relationship.
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And then you say to yourself, Well, I knew they were going to leave anyway.
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So, you know, you you drive them away, but you make the excuse that, well, everybody leaves me.
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I knew she or he was going to leave me in the end.
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So it's, you know, this vicious circle that we're in with childhood trauma that we if we don't break that cycle, we certainly can, you know, our lives are not as good as they could be.
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We're not as healthy as we could be.
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I mean, I wish I'd known about this when I was 20 and did the work then.
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Uh I would have still probably had my marriage.
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I would have probably had a whole range of things that were far better because um because of it.
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You know, you know, we live and learn.
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Very, very helpful.
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Very, very helpful, I'd say.
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And like um there's a belief that many people grew up with that if the childhood trauma is in the past, it should stay there.
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And that time alone should fix it.
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So from your experience, what does that belief miss?
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So you um all all of your tra trauma that happens in your childhood, so for like everybody's different.
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So one of the things that is very difficult is that what affected me, like like I mentioned that my parents screamed at each other.
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Now another child may not be affected by that.
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For some reason that doesn't worry them at all.
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They they're happy for their parents to do whatever.
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So everybody has different different um impacts from their childhood trauma.
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What what we do, and I I sometimes think of it as a bit like a balloon.
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All of your trauma sits in your nervous system.
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So this trauma is captured by your nervous system.
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So, for example, you could be the trauma like my parents screaming at each other would have happened when I was a one-year-old baby, when I was two.
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I wouldn't have known about it, but it's still being captured in my nervous system.
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So it happened until I left home at 13.
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So the difficulty is you don't know that you've got trauma.
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You know, as children, we all we want to do as children is be loved, have and see and feel that love.
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That's all we want.
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Sure, food and and housing and and everything else, but ultimately the the the thing we need is love.
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And when we don't get that, and then you associate that with other things such as beating, such as the screaming and and other things that may happen, or the abandoned parent, the inner child is is what happens is the little you hides away.
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Um and because we build this false person, a lot of the trauma stays hidden even until like it didn't c I didn't think I was I was too bad during when I look back now, I'll I I know I was, but I didn't think about it when I was growing up and when I was in my 30s and forties.
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It started to come out of me when I was fifty.
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And it happens a lot, the older you get, a lot more of this starts to leak out.
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And I often think of it, even though it's in our nervous system, it's like a balloon that's filled, and it's slowly the air starting to leak out, and it gets more and more the older you get, the weaker the balloon.
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And you know, that's why you hear stories quite often of older men going into great violent rage with their partners after years of living with them.
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So and and having no previous history of that of that anger.
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It's because there may be something that happens every day in the house that the the partner might say or a niggle that you know upsets you a little or just annoys you, then one day that niggle becomes just too much.
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That that comment is too much, and you snap, and it it bursts out.
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And what happens is when the inner child is fearful, the rage that it comes out with is right over the top because it wants to drive you away.
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Now that's a a fairly simplified explanation of it, and it's more complex than that.
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But of course, everybody's so different that you need to look at first your childhood, what happened to you, and you know, some people have wonderful childhoods and and they're fine, there's no problem.
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But most most children have some sort of trauma in their in their um in their childhood, the level of it, and therefore what has it done to you.
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And if you've you know, if were regularly beaten, even though you thought you deserved it because you did something wrong, and you know your father was never there, your father never put his arm around you, never sort of showed you love, your mother may not have either, then you definitely have these things inside you.
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You'll find intimacy difficult, you'll have people pleasing, you'll have a whole range of things.
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And at the core of it is the shame.
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As kids, we're ashamed that we weren't loved, so we think we're bad.
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So we have very low self-worth, we don't achieve as much as we should, or we overachieve.
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So you can also have a child who's been excuse me, in a um poor family relationship, but they turn out to be an overch achiever because that's all they do.
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They w they become a workaholic and they just continue to do that.
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Um and, you know, that's how they put everything else away, and that's all they do is is this work, and that is where they sort of survive.
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And so, you know, it's all very complex, it all depends on what's happened.
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But the main thing is you've got to look at gotta look at your childhood first and be honest about it, and then you can um you can start to figure out where, look at what's going on with you and and where it's unhealthy.
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There's a lot of people, you know, who offer different therapies to help, and there's a lot of information out there that can allow you to understand and you will you will find, once you start connecting and looking around at your behaviour, once you understand some of your behaviour is bad, and that's the first thing, then once you start looking around at why this behaviour happens, you'll find it'll all lead back to your childhood and you'll understand then what's happening.
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Because it's like this isn't an excuse, but it's not our fault that we were treated badly as kids.
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That's not not your fault that that happened.
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And so you have to understand, but it is your responsibility now to do the healing.
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Um, you can't just once you start to understand, you can't just let it continue.
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Very, very true, yeah.
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And so, like uh how do emotions like anger and rage sometimes act as uh protectors for something more vulnerable underneath?
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What do you say?
00:17:43.119 --> 00:18:00.480
So rage is is the scary thing um because because of this shame, because of which is the core feeling that we have, we just um we build up also the anger because we weren't loved and so forth.
00:18:00.640 --> 00:18:04.400
So the inner child will have this fear of everything.
00:18:04.559 --> 00:18:06.880
So they become hyper-vigilant about everything.
00:18:07.039 --> 00:18:08.559
Now, this is the inner child.
00:18:08.799 --> 00:18:17.279
As an adult, for example, something like like road rage, say, you want to con you you don't you want to control everything around you.
00:18:17.440 --> 00:18:29.279
The inner child, the moment the inner child feels fear, feels that they're in danger, the only way that they know how to react, really, is to do it over the top.
00:18:29.440 --> 00:18:34.640
So it's like imagine a lion or a tiger protecting its cubs.
00:18:34.880 --> 00:18:37.119
That's really what the inner child does.
00:18:37.359 --> 00:18:43.279
And so the rage comes out and it it's nearly unstoppable.
00:18:43.440 --> 00:18:46.640
And that can be against your partner, it can be against a stranger.
00:18:46.880 --> 00:18:48.160
It triggers something.
00:18:48.240 --> 00:18:52.000
Now, obviously, not everybody's triggered in the same way.
00:18:52.240 --> 00:18:54.240
But just I remember a story.
00:18:54.400 --> 00:19:11.839
I used to work in in radio in Australia in a national broadcaster, and there was a small country town near where we broadcast, and there was a man in his sixties, and he was well known in the town, um, you know, he's a member of local groups and well known.
00:19:12.240 --> 00:19:21.119
His daughter was a police officer, and um he was babysitting his two grandchildren with with his wife, and he took an axe to all three of them.
00:19:21.359 --> 00:19:22.720
He killed all three of them.
00:19:22.880 --> 00:19:30.720
And then when his when his daughter came home to collect the children, he attempted to hurt her as well, but she survived.
00:19:31.039 --> 00:19:42.880
He then drove to a hotel, a pub in uh uh in another town, walked in and sat down and had a beer, ordered a beer at the counter as if nothing had happened.
00:19:43.039 --> 00:19:47.599
Um and the barman recognized him by that time, his picture was on television and so forth.
00:19:47.759 --> 00:19:50.960
And so when he was asked, the police came, arrested him.
00:19:51.039 --> 00:19:53.759
When he was asked why he did it, he said he didn't know.
00:19:54.000 --> 00:20:01.839
Um now I'm not saying that's all childhood trauma, there could have been other things happening, but that's the sort of level of anger that does come out.
00:20:02.079 --> 00:20:12.400
And I wouldn't be surprised if, you know, if you investigate, I mean this man also attacked somebody else in jail, so he had there was a lot of anger inside him.
00:20:12.640 --> 00:20:14.720
But where does that anger come from?
00:20:15.039 --> 00:20:46.319
And if you do the work, I think you would find that it comes from the childhood, and that's sitting in there, and it gets triggered by I don't know why it got triggered that day, but as I said earlier, one little word that you constantly hear doesn't trigger you for a long time, for years, and then one day for some reason it just triggers you and you can't cope with it anymore, and your inner child reacts, and it reacts like that, with that extreme anger.
00:20:46.480 --> 00:20:51.680
And that's the work that I like to do with men about domestic violence.
00:20:51.839 --> 00:20:59.680
It's uh you know, um, a lot of that comes from their w wishing to control their partners, wishing to do all these things.
00:20:59.920 --> 00:21:05.440
But if we look back, we will see that there's more often than not some childhood trauma going on there.
00:21:05.599 --> 00:21:11.920
And if we can get to that point and get them to understand that anger, then they can control it.
00:21:12.240 --> 00:21:16.720
Simple ways to control your ac well, I found anyway, because I used to get that angry.
00:21:16.799 --> 00:21:18.799
I used to get extremely angry.
00:21:19.039 --> 00:21:23.920
Um and like I said, with with noise and with other things.
00:21:24.160 --> 00:21:27.359
And I I just went completely off from one to ten.
00:21:27.599 --> 00:21:29.200
It was just quite frightening at times.
00:21:29.359 --> 00:21:34.319
Not with my partner, not with my children, that that's not an area I did, but in other ways.
00:21:34.559 --> 00:21:42.640
But what I found was that one way for me to control it quite quickly, uh as well as doing work, is to give it a name.
00:21:42.880 --> 00:21:46.000
So so what I did is I called my anger George.
00:21:46.319 --> 00:21:59.200
And so what happens is as the anger starts to come up, as you feel the and because we all feel it, you can feel the anxiousness, you want to go and say something or do something, you just say, whatever you call it, you say, No, George, we're not going to do that.
00:21:59.359 --> 00:22:05.440
And the By naming it, you can actually have a com like if you don't name it, you can't have a conversation with it.
00:22:05.599 --> 00:22:14.319
So you have a comp now it's not going to heal you, but it will stop you in those moments because you're breaking the cycle of rage coming up.
00:22:14.559 --> 00:22:23.119
So um I I just recommend to people to just do that quickly and then you know you really need to go and get therapy and you need to go and work on that.
00:22:23.359 --> 00:22:33.519
The thing that I've found with childhood trauma is that I don't believe we can remove it from our bodies altogether, but we can manage it, we can understand it.
00:22:34.160 --> 00:22:42.720
You know, if I understand how bad I was in relationships, now I can do better, I understand and I don't do the things I used to do.
00:22:42.960 --> 00:22:47.839
I don't get angry now about noise elsewhere, I just move away from it.
00:22:48.000 --> 00:22:48.960
It still triggers me.
00:22:49.039 --> 00:22:56.240
I still feel anxious, even though I know about it, I still all clench up when I hear these loud noises, but I don't do anything about it.
00:22:56.319 --> 00:22:59.920
I just manage my own body, so or my own system.
00:23:00.319 --> 00:23:02.160
So you can do things like that.
00:23:02.319 --> 00:23:14.240
The other thing that I recommend is if you're feeling anxious, and a lot of this is how that it comes up, you know, your heart will race, your stomach will will clench, those sorts of things, and you're feeling anxious.
00:23:14.400 --> 00:23:17.920
Just put a hand on your stomach and just take a few deep breaths.
00:23:18.160 --> 00:23:22.799
Because once you the breathing will help regulate your nervous system again.
00:23:23.039 --> 00:23:28.240
And and you can do these things even if you're sitting on a train or in traffic.
00:23:28.960 --> 00:23:29.680
Excuse me.
00:23:29.759 --> 00:23:31.519
Uh, you know, you can do these things.
00:23:31.599 --> 00:23:35.440
They're not they're not massively difficult things to do.
00:23:35.599 --> 00:23:40.720
Um, and it allows your body just to calm down enough for you to reason with yourself.
00:23:40.880 --> 00:23:48.799
And so what happens is, and you know, the deeper work is you talk to your inner child and you can do a lot of inner child work.
00:23:48.960 --> 00:23:53.039
And a lot of men look at you strangely when you say you've got to do inner child work.
00:23:53.200 --> 00:23:58.640
But the truth is you have to reparent your inner child because it wasn't parented.
00:23:58.799 --> 00:24:00.319
So it didn't have a parent.
00:24:00.400 --> 00:24:07.519
So now you are the parent and you've got to talk to your inner child like you are the father and you're there to protect them.
00:24:07.680 --> 00:24:15.039
That's that's how it works, and that's how you can help your inner child stay calm because it will continue to react.
00:24:15.279 --> 00:24:25.599
But these little ways of, you know, breathing, naming, it helps you just in the moment control some of your um some of your anger or some of your anxieties.
00:24:25.839 --> 00:24:28.960
You feel it coming up, you don't want to, you feel scared.
00:24:29.200 --> 00:24:43.039
I mean, even as an adult, you can be in a situation where there's nothing going on around you that's dangerous, but your inner child suddenly feels scared because of some reason that happened in your childhood, and and you start to feel scared.
00:24:43.200 --> 00:24:46.000
Um, and you know, that's difficult to understand.
00:24:46.079 --> 00:24:47.519
What why why is this going on?
00:24:47.599 --> 00:24:50.400
But your inner child fears everything.
00:24:50.720 --> 00:24:57.279
So so those are some of the simple things, but then look into it further and and start to try and find ways to heal.
00:24:57.599 --> 00:24:59.599
It'll make you a better person, I've got to say.
00:25:00.160 --> 00:25:01.680
It makes a huge difference.
00:25:03.440 --> 00:25:04.720
That's really amazing.
00:25:05.599 --> 00:25:17.359
And also, um, I'd love to ask like uh when setbacks happen, old emotions resurfacing and I would say the anger returning.
00:25:17.839 --> 00:25:20.319
How can someone avoid seeing that as a failure?
00:25:26.960 --> 00:25:34.240
Um I guess the the difficulty with childhood trauma is you have to go and feel the feelings to heal.
00:25:34.319 --> 00:25:35.680
And now that's often talked about.
00:25:35.839 --> 00:25:47.039
There's there was a a very, very good man, he's passed away now, an American called John Bradshaw, who in the eighties was doing a lot of this work before people were talking about inner child as much.
00:25:47.200 --> 00:25:52.480
And the key is that you really have to go in and understand what happened to you.
00:25:52.640 --> 00:26:02.000
To get to get better to heal, to to be able to manage the rage, you have to know where it came from, where it comes from.
00:26:02.240 --> 00:26:09.759
And you have to understand that that it's an emotion in you that's been left there and it's it's like anything.
00:26:09.839 --> 00:26:13.200
It's you know, it's sitting there churning over and growing.
00:26:13.359 --> 00:26:22.160
And so if you don't don't do something about that and and if you don't go in and do real therapy on it, then this rage will always sit there.
00:26:22.400 --> 00:26:30.480
It's funny, the truth is we don't always know what really triggered us as children, what really hurt us the most as children.
00:26:30.720 --> 00:26:38.720
To give you a very quick example, so my father, the first time I remember being beaten was at five with a leather belt, he'd chased me through a forest.
00:26:38.799 --> 00:26:48.319
But I I'd taken two little toys from a shop, and yet I was playing with them in the car, and he saw me and he pulled over and uh took me out of the car and and started whipping me.
00:26:48.400 --> 00:26:51.359
And I thought that was really the worst incident for me.
00:26:51.519 --> 00:26:55.200
And when I was doing the therapy though, I found out that it wasn't.
00:26:55.359 --> 00:27:13.200
What really made a different what the the really difficult emotion for me was when when I was at school at about six, I won an a I came third in an award for a painting, and there was a big presentation at the school in in the auditorium and to collect it in the evening.
00:27:13.279 --> 00:27:18.799
And so I went, all the other people who won prizes had all their families with them.
00:27:18.960 --> 00:27:21.119
I didn't have anyone, nobody turned up.
00:27:21.200 --> 00:27:22.240
I was there on my own.
00:27:22.400 --> 00:27:26.000
And so I didn't even go up on stage to collect the award.
00:27:26.240 --> 00:27:35.599
Um and that when I did the work, that was the moment that really was the deepest pain for me, that emotional pain.
00:27:35.839 --> 00:27:42.400
It was the sort of realization that I was alone, that there was nobody, because nobody turned up for that event.
00:27:42.559 --> 00:27:54.559
And so sometimes we think, you know, the physical beatings are the worst thing, but in actual fact, the truth is the worst thing that we have is the lack of emotional support from our parents, the love.
00:27:54.720 --> 00:27:57.920
If if we don't have that, that's really the deep, deep wound.
00:27:58.079 --> 00:27:59.839
The physical beatings are abuse, yes.
00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:02.160
Obviously, sexual abuse is by far the worst.
00:28:02.240 --> 00:28:07.599
That that that is something else that is brings in a much more difficult time for anybody.
00:28:07.839 --> 00:28:14.880
But really, ultimately it's that emotional, that lack of emotional nurturing, that lack of emotional connection.
00:28:15.119 --> 00:28:24.799
Because what happens is I grew up with feeling always alone and had no emotional connection because I hadn't learnt emotional connection as a kid.
00:28:25.039 --> 00:28:28.079
So I didn't know anything about my emotions.
00:28:28.160 --> 00:28:41.759
So what would happen with me is I would get involved in relationships, but I would always be standing like standing looking outside, looking in, basically, having a distance from my partner, never feeling quite connected.
00:28:41.920 --> 00:28:47.279
I mean, when I left my marriage, I said to my wife, ex-wi, I said, I don't feel like I belong here.
00:28:47.759 --> 00:28:50.720
And she said, You're silly, what what do you mean?
00:28:50.799 --> 00:28:51.680
But that's how I felt.
00:28:51.839 --> 00:28:53.119
I felt like I didn't belong.
00:28:53.279 --> 00:28:58.400
And you can't can't explain it, but it's an all encompassing feeling.
00:28:58.559 --> 00:29:00.240
And so that takes over.
00:29:00.559 --> 00:29:05.359
Many of many people who suffer from childhood trauma will feel like they're alone all their lives.
00:29:05.519 --> 00:29:13.200
Even when they're with groups of friends, even when I was at a party, I'd stand there, look around, and think, I don't feel like I really belong here.
00:29:13.440 --> 00:29:14.559
It was always there.
00:29:14.720 --> 00:29:20.400
It's just you you've never been connected to anybody as a child, and as an adult, that remains.
00:29:20.559 --> 00:29:24.079
It's very difficult to to overcome until you understand it.
00:29:24.160 --> 00:29:26.880
And to be honest, you still f may feel alone.
00:29:27.039 --> 00:29:32.559
I still have when I go to groups, I still feel like I'm outside looking in.
00:29:32.720 --> 00:29:37.119
But but you make an effort and you understand what's going on, and that's the important thing.
00:29:37.200 --> 00:29:41.440
You need to know what's going on to understand it, and to be able to do something about it.
00:29:41.759 --> 00:29:42.480
Exactly.
00:29:42.960 --> 00:29:43.759
Exactly.
00:29:45.039 --> 00:29:45.519
Amazing.
00:29:46.000 --> 00:29:50.640
So uh for the listeners uh who want to connect with you, how they can connect with you.
00:29:51.599 --> 00:29:52.640
Um, yeah, sure.
00:29:52.720 --> 00:29:58.160
It just um the easiest way is through my website, Graham RobinsonWellness.com.
00:29:59.920 --> 00:30:04.400
I do I do work with um hypnotherapy and and other work.
00:30:04.480 --> 00:30:05.680
Um Okay.
00:30:07.039 --> 00:30:21.039
The the the one thing I would say to everybody is um that that is listening that um has any idea that these things are going on, go and go and have do some research, think about your childhood and find some therapy.
00:30:21.279 --> 00:30:30.960
It doesn't matter who it who it's with, find somebody you trust that you think you can work with and do some work because you will feel so much better once you remove some of these traumas.
00:30:31.519 --> 00:30:32.799
That's really amazing.
00:30:33.039 --> 00:30:37.440
And I would say thank you so much for joining us on Mind Meets Machine.
00:30:37.519 --> 00:30:52.000
And if today's conversation has resonated, please take a moment to sit with what has surfaced and also remember that awareness is not a kind of weakness, but it's the first act of courage.
00:30:52.160 --> 00:30:54.799
So, with this hope, until next time, this is your host, Awake.
00:30:55.200 --> 00:31:01.680
And take care of mind and the story still learning to tell.
00:31:01.920 --> 00:31:03.200
So thank you so much.
00:31:04.319 --> 00:31:05.920
Thank you, I really great talking to you.