Good morning.
Today is July 3rd.
It's another gorgeous day.
I'm ready to head out to the doctor in just a few minutes, but I thought I would start
an episode to see where it goes, see if I could get one done.
This is Kat Alexander, and you are listening to Unfuck Yourself.
This is a journey towards authenticity.
So we talked about reasons people are inauthentic yesterday, and I want to play a little clip
for you, and I'm hoping I don't get in trouble.
Hold on, it's just going to be a little clip.
It's by a man named Tim Alexander, and he specializes in complex trauma, and he works
with people in recovery a lot.
Let's see if we can listen in just for a few minutes.
What we did in the very first night is understand that shame is a core belief about myself.
It's a belief about my identity, and that belief is a negative belief that something's wrong
with me.
I'm not good enough.
I don't feel lovable.
I don't feel that I have any value just for being me.
So I feel inferior less than is my normal default setting.
And we developed what that meant, where it came from, and that for basically every person
from complex trauma, they end up with shame.
Because once they are neglected or abused or abandoned or their needs aren't consistently
met, they conclude it's their fault.
So I must not be good enough.
That's why I'm being neglected and abused.
There must be something wrong with me.
That's why I'm being neglected and abused.
So they developed this developing self-concept that is all negative.
What I want to do tonight is go into the next part of where does the brain then go once
it's reached this conclusion that I'm not good enough.
And what I want you to understand up front is this is all happening at a subconscious
level.
This isn't you sitting down consciously saying, I think I'm no good.
What am I going to do about it?
This happens in the mind of a small child at a subconscious level.
So the first thing that you have to understand, but there's a second conclusion, which is
if the two people that brought me into the world have concluded that I'm not good enough,
therefore I can be neglected or abandoned or abused, that means that anybody that gets
to know me is going to abandon me or abuse me or neglect me.
When Shane develops a fear of abandonment, that fear becomes the main emotion that trumps
everything else, but at a subconscious level and it's, I can't stand the pain of being
abandoned, but I'm afraid if people get to know me they'll abandon me again and that
scares me to death.
So what am I going to do to never be abandoned?
So anyway, his name is Tim Fletcher.
You can find him on YouTube.
He has a great series on complex trauma.
But while I was listening to that last night I was like, ding, ding, ding, that is so
me.
So a little bit about me, I was adopted and early on, like at 30 days after being in foster
care for 30 days.
And you know, all families are complex and my father had some issues with being emotionally
vulnerable, we'll say he was kind of cold and distant until he got Parkinson's later
on in life and he became wonderful at that point.
My mom was what you would call a codependent, but I never felt good enough or worthy to
even exist and I'm unpacking that now at 55.
And while I wasn't necessarily abused, like I wasn't abused physically, there are some
other things that are technically debatable.
I was left in a position weekly in middle school where I felt like my life was in danger
and I shared that with my parents and they continued to leave me there and I recently
remembered other people had told them as well and they still left me there weekly.
So that's kind of neglect anyway.
So I have some of those symptoms he talks about and what he goes on to say is that the
brain comes up with these solutions as a child, never be vulnerable or so weakness, never
be authentic.
I mean, first of all, it does no good.
You tell people what's going on and you're very vulnerable and nobody's listening and
it is like too upsetting for a child to continue to feel in fear and vulnerable and not being
hurt and protected.
So we shut things down.
We shut our warning systems down essentially.
We compensate and try to become a hero or a gesture, something to be accepted.
I strove to be a straight A student and I was on every athletic team in middle school
and I lettered a couple times in high school sports.
I was a class officer.
We had things like that back then.
I was yearbook editor.
I made the who's who in high school, students in America and college several times.
But I literally was told one day in an argument with my father when I said, you know, you've
never said you love us.
And he said, you've never done anything to earn my love.
And it wasn't like, oh, poor me.
It was like relief because that's what I'd been feeling.
I've been knocking myself out and I always felt not good enough.
And there he was saying it.
Now he may not have meant it.
He may have just been arguing and just saying something.
But what he said resonated deeply with me.
One of the things Tim says is we develop masks and we become perfectionists and people-pleasers
like I did.
We lie.
We keep secrets from the family or for the family or for others to gain their confidence
like what a great person I am.
I'm holding your secret, even if it's a dangerous one.
We isolate.
We put up walls.
We focus on our image and externals, how the world sees us.
We try to control things to get our needs met and to keep others from seeing our shame.
And we become self-sufficient.
Don't depend on other people.
They're not going to be there for us.
This is all he says that we do to keep from being abandoned.
And I would say it closely correlates to fear of rejection because of course we're scared
if we're rejected we're going to be abandoned.
So that's a little bit about what some other people have to say.
I would like to just briefly go over fear of rejection which was the number one reason
yesterday about why being authentic is scary.
Being authentic means showing others who you truly are which can lead to the fear that
they might not accept you like you and I would add stick around.
So we go into people pleasing.
We mask our true feelings.
We withhold personal information.
We become over achievers.
We avoid intimacy.
We self-sabotage.
We adopt false personas.
We have excessive modesty or humility.
We socially withdraw.
We constantly seek reassurance.
We tend towards perfectionism.
We have habits of overthinking things.
We excessively apologize even when it has nothing to do with us.
We become inauthentic, in our agreeableness.
In other words, we lie for approval.
People say things we don't agree but we're like, yeah, yeah, uh-huh.
We have non-confrontational behavior.
We avoid conflict.
We have very passive behavior.
We become attention seeking.
And attention seeking doesn't have to be on star level, Kardashian level.
Look at me, look at me, look at me.
It could be as simple as dropping a sentence into a conversation like when I was in my
twenties, I dated somebody who was in the band flank and we went blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah.
It didn't actually get no big deal but you know people are freaking impressed.
Didn't change who I became, you know?
Pretending that we're indifferent to things when we're not, neglecting our own personal
needs, it's a huge one for me, and frequent humor or deflection.
Those are the 22 or 20 ways that people can act out because of their fear of rejection.
Tomorrow we're going to look at the first one, people pleasing.
It's a huge one that many people suffer from.
I would love to hear your comments.
Do you relate to any of the things listed today?
I will drop some of them in the episode notes.
If you feel like commenting that something resonates with you and hits home, great.
Comment, share your stories, reach out.
Let's build this community.
Anyway, like I said, we're just going over some of the blocks that keep us from being
authentic.
If you have more, let me know.
I'm going right now, get ahead out, have a great day, do a couple things to lift my
depress later on, like go for a walk.
I actually just joined a social group.
We're not focusing on anything heavy.
It's just a bunch of people from my local town that all know each other and want to
get together and have some clean and sober fun.
We might go kayaking this month, but I've got to ask my doctor because right now that
bad eye, it is open now about halfway unless I forcibly closed it or shut my eyes.
I'm not sure.
I'm really excited.
I still want to go kayaking, but because I haven't been in like three decades and it
was so much fun, but here's the thing.
What happens if it accidentally turns over and I get that like water in this bad eye?
I'm just thinking the doctor is going to tell me now and it's going to crush my heart, but
I'll live.
I can still go to the like.
It would be fun.
Time to grow up, put your big girl panties on, pay the price.
Anyway, I hope you have a fun day.
Let me know what you're doing today.
Hopefully, this is day three in a row.
Hopefully, July 4th.
I will do it again.
See you soon.
Oh, like and subscribe.
That would be awesome.