Confronting Complex PTSD with Stephanie Foo

Life and Snap Judgment. Her journey through complex post traumatic stress disorder, originating from significant childhood abuse and culminating with both of her parents abandoning her before the age of eighteen, is a poetic masterclass on complex trauma and the ongoing journey of feeling whole after these kinds of experiences. Stephanie's book, What My Bones Know has been called one of the best non fiction books of two twenty two, and having

read it, I cannot agree more. This podcast should not be used as a substitute for medical or mental health advice. Individuals are advised to seek independent medical advice, counseling, and or therapy from a healthcare professional with respect to any medical condition, mental health issue, or health inquiry, including matters discussed on this podcast. This episode discusses abuse, which may

be triggering to some people. The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast, and do not represent the opinions of Red Table Talk productions, iHeartMedia, or their employees. Stephanie Fou, I am fangirling for a minute, and I read your book. And when I read your book, I was actually on an airplane, and there's something about an airplane. It's a night flight, it's dark, you're alone. That's the wishing sound

of the airplane's almost womb like. And I cried so much that the flight attendant actually had to check on how I was doing. And I wasn't crying from a place of sadness. And I'm actually getting tious. I'm thinking about it now. There is such a recognition in your book. Decades of working with clients who have had experiences like yours. People who are close to me, we've had experiences like what you detailed. You hit it in such a special way, and then you took it to that journey of healing.

So not only did I feel like you were able to use language, You're an amazing writer. You were able to use language to capture something that I feel and this is what's so unique about complex trauma, that's so uncapturable.

You also left us with a story of hope. So I want to thank you for that, because even if all I get to say to you today is thank you for the ift you've given not only to survivors, but frankly to clinicians, I think that complex trauma is still a very misunderstood phenomenon in mental health, and more than any textbook, I actually think your book should be in the hands of every trainee, every graduate student, and frankly, every therapist in America for what you've captured, not only

about complex trauma, but about the cultural frameworks which often gets missed in this conversation. So again for me to you start, we can't even end here, and I say thank you, but we're not going to end here. Wow, where I'd like to begin. Actually, I want to get to your story. But because we keep using this term complex trauma, for you, as a survivor, I would love for you to lay out for anyone listening today what it means and what complex trauma has meant to you.

But more than anything, from your perspective as a survivor, what is complex trauma. You know, you can get traditional PTSD from a single traumatic event. So let's say you're in a car crash, you can get trauma from that. I think complex trauma occurs when the trauma happens over and over and over again, and so it's kind of like if you were in a car crash every week

for three years. You know, but of course, unless you are tremendously tremendously unlucky, that's not going to happen to you unless somebody in your life or people in your life are really letting you down. So complex trauma happens the most in cases of child abuse, having an abusive partner,

living in a war zone. So it sort of does really deteriorate your trust in relationships and other people because it means that you have been let down hundreds, if not thousands and thousands of times by very often people who are supposed to love you and take care of you. And that is a deeper wound I think, and trauma from a singular event h and so of course it becomes more complex to heal. How old were you when that model, that framework of complex trauma was given to

you for the first time. I was thirty. Okay, thirty. Yeah. The reason I'm asking that is obviously you were a child, so you were in a different space, but that meant for your late adolescence into your adulthood, you must have been walking around in an experience that didn't make sense to you. I knew I was depressed. I knew that I was anxious. I had self harming thoughts from when I was twelve years old, and I suspected that it

had something to do with my very unstable childhood. But I don't think that I quite understood the gravitas of how my childhood was affecting all of my day to day interactions until I finally got the diagnosis of complex PTSD. So I'd like to go backwards now and again. You talk about it in the book, but not everyone listening has read your book yet, though after this interview, I hope all of them do go out to get the

richness of all that is in your book. Can you take us back and lay out for our listeners what this childhood looked like. I grew up in San Jose, California, in a immigrant community. My family was comfortably middle class. When I was thirteen, my mom left and when I was sixteen, my dad left for another family and he left me the house. So I spent the last year of high school or so a year and a half sort of raising myself. First of all, thank you for sharing that. How did you make sense of this as

a child? It was all my fault? My parents said it was all my fault, and so I internalized that. And I think if it's the parents' fault that they are chaotic. A child cannot deal with how painful that is. And if a child thinks it's my fault, then they have some element of control over it, and they still have some figures that they can idealize. And so that was very classic in my case. Your case is interesting, though, Stephanie, because JU determines work in saying that the child takes

responsibility for it. That's going to be normative across the spectrum of abuse a child can experience. It's a survival behavior, right. It facilitates attachment if they're the good ones, and I can still be safe. Right. In your situation, though, it was leveled up because your parents literally articulated that their abuse of you was your fault. They were hating you because it was your fault. They were saying these things because it was your fault. There was no interpretive moment here.

They were actually handing you that script. That's true. Yeah, And that was all the more striking to me because as I was reading that as a therapist, the idea of how do you undo this when this is not a little sort of survival the child was engaged in.

This is literally what you were being told. I internalized that, and I think even now, probably my whole life, the battle will be to challenge the voice in the back of my head that is constantly this is all your fault, even despite how lyrically you've laid your story out, how successful your life has become, that that voice has sort

of taken up permanent residency. I do want us to come back to that because I think it's important for survivors to hear when your mother left when you were thirteen. Now you're thirteen, you're not young young, five or six. What was that emotionally like for you when somebody who was such a severe abuser disappeared from your life. You know, it was really complicated because there was an element of obviously abandonment, of sadness, of feeling like Why wasn't I

enough for you to stay? Why couldn't you have tried harder? Because I had tried so hard for my parents to maintain their marriage into maintain a family unit. But at the same time, there was a lot of relief because I wasn't being beaten every day. You know, that's kind

of nice. It was a great reprieve, And it was a very complicated time emotionally for me because I think, you know, my mom was very strict, very obsessive about grades and performance, and so I think when she left, I kind of went buck wild in terms of having total freedom. Nobody was watching over me. My dad was sort of like very absentee parent, and so there were times when I was like, why isn't anybody parenting me? And I almost missed some form of that guidance. But overall,

I think it was mostly relief. And when you said you I'm buck wild, How did that affect you in terms of school, pure relationships, any of it. What does that look like? Yeah? I think just like demolishing relationships left and right, being very very angry. I for a couple of years failed every class and just stopped doing any of my extracurriculars and just kind of, I don't know, watched TV and sort of the Internet and ate Cereal all day long. Then it's just you and dad, Okay.

For a few years, what was that? Like, my dad needed to be parented. It became a very parentified relationship where I was taking care of him because he was very emotionally unwell after the divorce. He had a lot of feelings of abandonment, of loneliness, of hopelessness, and so I sort of had to take care of him and we sort of became best friends in a weird way, partners in crime, where he really relied on me, but

he would also let me do whatever I wanted. And after a couple of years that he did leave too because he got a girlfriend. So then I was just totally on my own. Stephanie talks about her father needing to be parented. That right, there is a signature of any antagonistic parenting relationship. The child has to step in and take care of the parent, which effectively means that the child's needs have no place in the relationship. This caregiving reversal may not happen in as extreme a manner

as it did for Stephanie. But many people with egocentric parents will recall that it was about meeting the parents needs and wants. Children's needs and children's wants were at best secondary, and that set up a precedent going into adulthood of not having learned how to express your needs if you came from this kind of family or parental relationship. That part of your story, Stephanie, was really striking to me, right, So what was stunning was that there was literally no

recognition in your environment that a child has been abandoned once. Okay, thirteen is a child because child had been abandoned once and the only remaining adult was so focused on his needs. I think that it's actually a really compassionate take that he needed to be parented. But in essence, though, still you as the child, was the vessel of addressing your parents' needs and being the tool they used to regulate. As a reader, you'reel like, all I want to do is

protect Stephanie. I wanted to let her know she's gonna be safe forever. But in fact, your father immediately pivoted into his own needs and then cultivated a new relationship and got up and left. How does one make sense of a second abandonment prior to the age of eighteen. I think at that age it was a combination of rage and self loathing, because there was this part of me that understood that this was how do you leave

a child who's already been left? How you have to be a patently selfish person to do something that you're responsible, that cool, that heartless. On the other hand, maybe that everyone leaves because you are the problem. Maybe everyone has left me because I am unlovable, And so that is where this deep set belief really sank in. I think is my senior year of high school, that like, if even my parents cannot love me, then who can? Yeah?

And I think that anyone hearing this would completely resonate with that, because again it's meaning making right you as an adolescent, and it's a child we're left trying to make sense of something that made no sense. I mean, that's really the core of complex drama in many ways, making sense of the brutal and that which is not to happen in essence, And so the stories that you make out of that are ultimately ones where you can control the narrative, and the way to control the narrative

to say is that it's got to be me. I'm unlovable, and so people are going to leave, and it almost becomes a very easy and accessible kind of a factoid, I'm unlovable. People self fulfilling prophecy exactly. So talk to us about that. Talk to us about the self fulfilling prophecy. Then how did that unfold for you? I think that if you believe inherently that you're unlovable, that all of your relationships going forward are therefore going to be based

on intense fear. Right again, this is the root of complex PTSD. You don't trust anyone right because how could you when you have no model for being loved appropriately? And so I think anytime somebody tried to give me love, I was very skeptical. I was always looking through the out. I was like looking for the reason why they were going to leave, and so they built this paranoia. Nobody wants to constantly be assuring their partner, Yes, I do

love of you. You know that's kind of old and yeah, I mean I would absolutely pick fights, blow things up because I saw something on the horizon that perhaps was not there, but then manifested it. And yet, as you know, as you say that again from my shrink seat, and I'm like, well, that absolutely makes sense, because then you were going to be safe, right, all trauma behaviors or

safety behaviors, and that's what you were doing. But for you was basically it's not tactical, right, It's just it's happening. And no one around you is a trauma therapist. They're your friends, and so that only is then going to add to that sense of loneliness, but it also fortifies the hypothesis everyone leaves when your father left, So now you're going through it sounds like part of your junior

and all of your senior year alone. What's this known to the other people around you, to your peers, to your teachers, to any other adults in your environment. This was not known to my teachers. It was known as some of my peers, but not all of them. My boyfriend knew. Funny, I thought I was just telling everyone. I thought everybody knew this, But subconsciously I must have known. You know, that's illegal, so don't go around telling everybody

what happened to you. Yeah, and so I you know, it was only after the book came out that I realized this. The book came out. Everybody I knew read it and everybody was like, I did not know, And I was like, how could you not know? But yeah, one of my very very good friends, I said, you know, I went over to your house senior year and I opened your refrigerator and there was nothing in it. There were no condiments, nothing. There was a horta filter and there was a couple of slices of pizza. And I

was like, where's all your food? And you said, oh, my dad bought me a pizza last week. And she remembers at the time thinking like that is not how you take care of a child. I think the only people who knew were children. They didn't have the power to do anything. Now, was there an intentionality and you not sharing it? Were you were very aware because the way you just put it, if people knew, there might have been its own destabilization that came from that, right.

I mean, even as a child, my parents were always like, don't say what happens, because then you'll get put in foster care. And that in and of itself is really terrifying. And I at that point, I was like, there's the devil that I do know, and there's the devil that I don't, and what I know is that I can take care of myself. And I had this very strongly independent streak that, of course, lots of CPTSC survivors been maintained that all we need is ourselves because we're the

only ones who can trust. And I thought I would rather do this than be put into a home with potentially more abusive parents. There was a particularly poignant scene in your book, Stephanie, when a neighbor got involved. The neighbor had been hearing things and it was almost like she couldn't take it anymore, and she came across the street. She came over to the house. And now how that entire scene unfolded with you ultimately saying, nothing's happening. Nothing's happening.

If you feel comfortable talking about that scene, we can. If you don't, I understand. It was an absolute, profound example of the double bind a child is in any situations when somebody actually can come along with safety, the chronically abused child has to deny that safety. The neighbor was trying to protect me, and I see that now, but at the time, here was this person coming in

doing their best to try to help me. But this seemed dangerous because this person was like, I'm going to call the cops, and you don't want your mom to go to jail. You don't want your parents to go to jail. My mom was, you know, obviously scared, but very much denying anything happened. And so the safest option for me was to deny. And so I got on my knees at my neighbor's feet, begging her, please don't

call the cops. And I still knowing what I know about the foster care system, correct, Yeah, still not sure that wasn't the correct answer. I don't disagree, and that's exactly what I felt when I read that part of your book. So anyone hearing this conversation as it read the book, their question may very well be, well, didn't Stephanie have extended family? And you did, but a lot of them were in Malaysia. Yeah, they were when you would visit Malaysia. They were also attempting to make sense

of this. How were they making sense of this experience you were going through or were they completely unaware of what was happening. They were not aware of a lot. They were not aware when my dad left because we were mostly in touch with my father's family. Oh, I see, my mom wasn't very close with her family generally, so they all knew how bad my mother was. They understood the abuse in that sense because they had seen it, because my mom would be me when you went back

to Malaysia. You know, my mom would scream at me in front of my whole family, and so they thought that she was quite monstrous, and so they would try to spoil me when I was there. They would all try and constantly say, what a good girl, what a good well behaved girl. Hope, why, hope, why, you know, to try to convince her and me maybe that I was not the devil child my mom made me out to be. That dynamic Stephanie of You're the favorite. You're such a good girl. You know, we like you so much.

It's so interesting because in a way, and you actually talk about Pete Walker in your book, who is a renowned trauma and attachment therapist whose work I really really admire in respect, but it's as though your entire family was engaging in what we call a fawn response, as though they were almost trying to win over your mother, but not to protect themselves. It was like fawn response by proxy. It was as though that if they could somehow win her over and convince her of your goodness,

that you could be safe. But the thing that they couldn't do was confront her directly about her behavior. Yeah, you know, and that to me, they were all too afraid of that. Since they were afraid, and in a way it had to be all the more confusing for you as a child. How much of that was cultural? Their unwillingness, I mean, was that cultural? Do you think that would have happened in any culture in the world that family members wouldn't be able to address how your

mother was coming at you. You know, after I did my story, lots of Malaysian Chinese people did reach out and they were like, this resonated with me. But lots of white people did too, Yeah, Americans. Yeah, And so I don't think it's purely cultural. I think that lots of people want to maintain the status quo and are really terrified. And I think in our culture it's very

much stigmatized to criticize other people's relationships. You know, it's sort of like, oh, clearly your partner is not the best, but I'm just gonna keep quiet about it, because that's your life, your thing that you need to figure out. Nobody in our family had ever gotten divorced. Nobody and our family had ever gotten counseling. I mean, you know, and even in America, this is the nineties, that wasn't

made very accessible to us. It wasn't quite as mainstream as it is now seeking therapy when you were young, okay, so before the age of twenty, did anyone ever take you aside and said, Stephanie, what's happening here is not okay in your family and your extended family. No, no, you know again that often is enough. Even if the abuse doesn't stop, that moment of validation of what you're

enduring is absolutely wrong. I'm not saying it would end the cycle, but for a moment, it would take the person surviving at saying okay, I'm not crazy, this is not okay, it's the crazy making thing. Yes. Yes, So now I want to shift a little because now you go into adulthood and you know, you get involved in journalism and what was so I mean compelling about your story was you're like, that's what I want to do.

You really kind of got your eyes Ultimately Raizor focused on the position you wanted, and you put your head down. You got a college degree, you did well in school, You had a clear goal, and you went for it. I think that many people who hear a story like yours, we'll think, well, a person after this is going to be completely addled and scattered and doesn't know up from down and right from left. You instead became ridiculously focused

and had a extraordinary work ethic and ambition. Can you link these two processes because in a way they almost feel disconnected when we think of how we're told stories of trauma. I think lots of people dissociate when they go through trauma. And my favorite form of dissociation was work. When you have a fancy job, like working at this American life, people look at you in a way they want to be friends with you, They want to be near you to soak up your power. They think you're interesting.

And so the cachet that I got through success was a great substitute for real love. I think not to mention, like you know lots of Twitter comments being like like like like like you're so cool, love your story. That's also like a very surface level form of love and appreciation obviously, so it doesn't feel as good, but it also doesn't have as much weight and fear associated with it because I don't have to do anything to maintain

this relationship except keep being successful. You raise something so interesting, which is this idea of achievement and attainment as a trauma protective behavior, because what it did was, like you said, it would foster people coming into your life, but it was protective because it was in a strange way. And I never thought of this until you were just talking

your achievement and the cache. As you put it, people could then love the cache and you wouldn't have to worry about them having to love Stephanie and you know, and I think about people who get advanced degrees and all of that like that. To be very transparent with you, I was very much told that, Like I thought, like, Okay, if I get a doctorate, at least I'll feel legitimate, because I didn't feel legitimate as a human being, but the PhD would legitimize me, which is actually quite horrifying

because it's actually a devaluation of the self. You were saying something very similar with this idea of I get the job, I have the title, I get the traction on social media, but even more important the issue you

brought up as this idea of work as dissociation. We don't think about it that way, you know, least of all in a capitalist society, right, you know, But that this idea that we actually fetishize people who work around the clock and get up at five am and did an eighteen hour work day, that in fact, many many times,

that is a dissociative experience. It dissociates from feeling. And another important point is I think when we talk about dissociation the error people make as they go right to Sybil and a person who has multiple personalities, and it's not that at all. It's a real numbing and a distancing and detaching from feeling. And so the fact that you're bringing in work to be in that space is really quite significant, and so I thank you for bringing

that point of view. My session with Stephanie will continue after this break. This idea of work is dissociation and pick up on that, because I think that was a really important point you're making here. You made in the book. Work is something that is so hypervalue that we are thinking if somebody works all the time and succeeds at work, well,

then nothing could be going wrong for them. There was this one moment who would always give this talk at this fancy college, and this guy would always make some comment about like how amazing it was that I was like whatever, twenty seven and that I was where I was,

and how it was so astronomical. And I think the last year I did the talk, I never got invited back after this, or maybe I shouldn't have said it, but I was like, you know, I don't know that I recommend having such an astronomical right, because I think that working this hard is not sustainable, and I think I would have had a longer career in radio if

I had not burned myself out to that degree. But yeah, all people see is wow, that's so shiny and perfect, and yeah, it also reinforced this idea of Stephanie so strong, Stephanie hasn't eat the help. Correct, And I think that what ends up happening is we kind of get into this sort of resilience porn kind of place, which is

she's so resilient. Resilience is great, but resilience is anonymous only with success, so correct correct, and that it is yes, there's a certain amount of resilience that you'd gone through all of this and we're able to show up in the way of being productive, which is again also an overvaluation of productivity as sort of like this measure of

a person. But what we don't tend to do with friends or family or anyone colleagues, so we don't tend to want to look under the hood like are they okay just because they're productive, just because they're working hard, like to punch out what some of these definitions of resilience are rather than just this kind of hard working, productive piece. Because I thought that was a really fascinating part of your story, and yet you were also in your book you detailed that it wasn't all rainbows and

sunshine at work. You actually were working with a really, really difficult colleague and that was a very defining experience for you professionally. It was interesting because outside of my office everyone was like Stephanie's at the top of the world, and inside the office, I felt like the weakest link because I had a very abusive boss who was constantly demeaning me and making me feel stupid and small and

crazy all the time. Because like I would do a story that everybody would love in terms of the world and other co workers, and he'd be like that was that I didn't like that at all. That was like embarrassing to our show. So it meant that I was constantly in my coworkers offices on their floors, like crying and asking for their validation. And that was I think kind of what snapped me into realizing, like, I'm not strong.

I need help because right now I'm seeking help from the floor of my coworkers office who is so over it right now, and I have to have something better than this. Okay, So I'm going to say two things to that, because it's actually hit me in an interesting place. I absolutely agree, I understood your decision making process of I'm sitting on the floor of a colleague's office. I'm going through this terrible stressful thing and it's really taking a toll on me. I need to seek out professional help.

I disagree with the I'm not strong, you know, I think that that's the piece i'd take some umbradge at You're right, right, because for two reasons, anyone dealing with a toxic boss, I don't care if you don't have a history of complex trauma from childhood. That's actually a really noxious process that can take a toll on anyone, and I think it's something we don't talk about how

impactful that can be. Number one, but number two, you had been through complex trauma, and what this boss was doing to you was invalidating you and telling you you were no good. Was literally literally a recapitulation of what happened in your childhood. In this boss was channeling your mother and father. I had told him stories from my childhood.

He knew all about my childhood, and I told him stories about how like when I had written a diary entries, my mom forced me to write diary entries and then afterward I would bring them to her and she would sit there and force me to stand behind her and she would just rip me a new one, go through my diary entreen to say like, this is anspelled. You use them too much, You're terrible writer. And he would

do the exact same thing to me. He had me stand behind him as he went through my work and he would play it over and over as he just told me, like, why can't you get this right? What's wrong with you? What's wrong with you? I was literally standing in the same position that I would have to

be with my mother. I mean, there's a certain sadism in the boss, but beyond that, sitting on the floor of the colleague and venting, I actually think that was a really good choice because you actually had the wherewithal to seek out another human being to talk about it, to vent about it. And while I understand that may not have been appropriate, and it certainly wasn't sustainable, right, I can get all of that, Yeah, at a brass

tap their strength and vulnerability. Beyond even vulnerability, it's the fact that you still actually kept getting up in the morning, and I'm sure it was taking a terrible toll on you. The one thing to remember, and I see this time and time again when I'm working with complex trauma survivors,

is there's a self judgment. Right Again, too many workplaces are basically hazing rituals anyhow, But when they're in those situations dealing with the angry, sadistic boss, the entitled rant from a client, the entitled rant from a boss, whomever, and that person with the history of complex trauma almost feels themselves crumbling underneath that. They'll say, see, I'm not that strong, I can't hang in the workplace, and it is that like helping them connect the dots and saying

you're not made for this. Something happened to you. It's almost like if you were born with a bomb leg, Like I'm like, yeah, maybe the job going up and down the stairs a lot's probably not it's going to hurt you. Doesn't mean you can't do it, but I think that there's an activation. So then the person who's gone through complex trauma SS, well, there's something wrong with me. I can't put up with a toxic boss. There's nothing

wrong with you. Something happened to you. And I think that languaging becomes a really important thing to give survivors and for people to hold within them from a letting go of self judgment that oh, this is supposed to be a problem for me more than it might be for somebody who didn't have this backstory. Yeah. Absolutely. Then you get into therapy. What is so compelling about your story? And it's really it's a real master class in sort

of trauma therapy. Was your personal journey if you could walk us, so some of how you started this journey and where, because I have some questions about that but how you started therapy, how that worked out for you, and how that all unfolded for you. Started therapy actually when I was like nineteen and I just went to like a sliding scale local therapist in San Francisco. Well, I'd actually seen a couple of therapists before then, but

she was the one that helped the most. I saw her for years, and she was really great in teaching me very basic things like learning how to use eye statements and helping me navigate through a lot of relationships, and how to assert my needs and how to be less negative in the way that I talked about myself, all valid things. But after I got my CPTSD diagnosis, I really knew that I needed somebody who was specialized in trauma work, and so I just went full court press on it, and I quit my job and I

did every single thing I could. I was doing restorative yoga, I was doing em DR, I was doing mushrooms. I went to breathwork classes and all of that, and I think it all helped a little bit. I think there was sort of like a three pronged necessary approach. Number one, the most important thing was sort of getting a sort of mind body stability, being able to calm down when I was triggered, and I think resortive yoga really helped

for that. Meditation really helped for that, and so just being able to sort of breathe and take a minute when I was in a really, really triggered position. The second thing I think was changing the narrative that I had about myself, changing this narrative of shame, recognizing how horrible the things that happened to me were instead of minimizing them constantly. I think MDR was really helpful for that. It sort of helped me see with a very objective

clarity the brutality of my abuse. And lastly, I think, and this is something that we don't really talk enough about in the therapy sphere, was relational therapy sort of building up my ability to trust other people. Learning how to carry on a conversation kind of from scratch with people, Learning how to be curious about their cues instead of sort of constantly jumping to fear whenever they might have a frown or change of tone and their voice or whatever.

Learning how to listen, learning how my trauma and all of that fear got in the way of me being a good friend. Yeah, sort of relearning all of that with the therapist was very important. Did you do all of this with one therapist or did you do it with different therapists. I think the journey began with many therapists, and I think they really set like a very good foundation to do more work. But I think kind of

the revolutionary work came with doctor Jacob Houm. And the therapy that we did do was also really unique because we recorded all of our conversations, all of our therapy sessions. Then immediately after I would go and I would transcribe our entire therapy session put into Google Docs, and then he and I would go through all of the minutia of that session in Google Docs and make comments about like here Stephanie wasn't listening, here, Jacob wasn't attuning to her. Here,

Stephanie wasn't attuning to him. They're sort of pointing out all of breaking down what it is to trust a person. I think it was a great exercise in trusting somebody else, because what a vulnerable thing to do with somebody for both people. He's obviously as a therapist, being very vulnerable in this position. Yeah, like I've talked to many therapists before, and maybe you can talk about this about how that's absolutely terrifying to them, because that's like opening up a

can of worms for their supervisors, I think. And like, what if somebody then files a complaint saying, oh, my therapist said this to me in session, and here's the exact here is the evidence. But I think that was something that was really helpful for me, was he was

leveling the complicated power structures around therapist and client. I thought that the work you did with doctor hamas revolutionary because even in real time, it's really hard to pay attention to what you're calling as the attunement, the listening, the attunement, sales as it were, the misinterpretations, all of that. That kind of line by line analysis, interactional analysis in essence you were doing is the sort of stuff we tend to see in research, definitely not in clinical practice.

It's not even so much the worry that a therapist would be worried about what we said. I mean a short of us saying something really deeply inappropriate. I mean, I think it's the dance of therapy. It's imperfect, but that the two of you put in that time to do that kind of line by line analysis. It really then speaks to the power of even a single part

of one conversation with one person. Right, so even in a ten minute conversation, there can just be one thing that the whole thing hinges on, which would lead to a moment of really you feeling unsafe, the other person feeling disconnected, that loss of attunement, and the whole thing goes off the rails, and that right there for you to understand that and to recognize it's not random, and it's not scary, and it's not out of control, but there's actually a rhythm that there was signal in the

noise as it were. I have to say as a therapist it was really really eye opening some of my clients to record their sessions and I say, you can do with them as you wish, and we can go back and break things down. So that has always been something I have said to my clients. This is your time, and this is your voice, and this is your story, so it belongs to you. You've invited me into your space, I haven't invited you into mine. So that's very much

how I view the therapeutic frame. But it was really quite amazing because some people listening to this and we haven't actually talked with anyone who's talked about their experience of EMDR. Can you talk a little bit about what your experience was of being a client who's experiencing trauma and who's gone through EMDR, because it could actually be really useful to get that first person perspective. Yeah, MDR is the process of going through your trauma or recollecting it,

and there's different ways you can do it. A lot of people sort of follow a finger, yeah, left and right. Their therapist moves this left and right. I did. I wanted to keep my eyes closed, and so I had two buzzers in my hands and I would have a buzz in one ear and a buzz on my hand

and then the buzz on the other side. And I think something about it was like it kept me grounded enough to sort of go through this, yeah, process of looking at my trauma without getting too triggered, without seeing it from like an overly emotional standpoint, seeing it in again, a very factual standpoint, like a very real standpoint, almost like I was watching it happened to somebody else, I would say, and having a strange out of body experience.

Let's take a moment to learn more about this term she just mentioned. E M d R stands for eye movement, desensitization and reprocessing and is a therapy meant to help a person who is experienced trauma to access and work through traumatic memories. It's meant to foster healing from the distress people experience after having had any kind of traumatic experience. When I talk about a couple of other things, one

is that you went back to your high school. And this was a really important part of the book to me, because you talked to a teacher, okay, and you were actually saying, like, were you so, what was your take on what was happening to my peers back when I was in high school in terms of abuse and trauma? What was his response to that? Because this is a really important part of your story, I thought. I think one of the reasons why I minimized my trauma so much growing up is because it was so common in

my community. Like all of my best friends, we're going through what I went through, or sometimes much worse than when I went through. So I thought, certainly all the adults must have seen some percentage of this at the very least, and he was like, no, you're a very privileged Asian children whose parents BUYUMAC books, and so there's no abuse here, and there's just pressure, and that's what it was. He framed the entire story, and what I felt was a trope and a stereotype of Asian kids

tiger parenting. Everyone wants to go to Harvard, and I thought it was so neat and tidy and unseeing that this could be happening, and that what was stunning was what happened when you went to go talk to the school psychologists who said, who said that hundreds and hundreds

of her students were still being physically exactly exactly. And I thought that juxtaposition that the teacher almost was sort of wedded to, like, well, this is what happens here, and everyone's under pressure to get good grades, and the reality of that this isn't just about Okay, these are Asian kids, so this isn't happening was not only a disconnect between what was happening in the adults in that environment, it actually meant that there were fewer eyes fully sort

of appreciating what was happening. And I thought that that difference in falling into that sort of stereotype mode meant that mental health services and that kind of outreach wasn't going to happen. It was just not even the awareness. So these are not only model kids, their families must be model families too. And what's a little pressure because they all want to go to the best schools. And you must see this with your Asian and South Asian clients, right, like, absolutely,

I mean absolutely, I knew this was a problem. I knew this was a problem after I spoke to school psychologists. Since my book has come out, you wouldn't believe the number of messages I get, thousands of messages Asian Americans and from people from San Jose, from my own community saying like, yes, the abuse is prevalent, and yet somehow

this model minority myth persists. And when you go to any school, like I just went to my school district to give a talk on this last summer, again, all of the teachers are like completely clueless about it and completely like, I think you might be making way too big of a deal about this. Wow, my conversation will continue after this break. I have very good students. My students are very good. They have all a's, and I'm like,

that's not the point. But let's see there it is, though they're good and they're getting you these a's because they're afraid, because this is their way of placating the world around. This is the way of that they build their safety, correct, like the way that I built mine. It doesn't mean that there isn't horrible stuff happening at home for them, right, necessitating them to build that safety. Absolutely, and I think that that idea is that this is

being done for safety. And have the experience gaslighted, you know that, Oh they're getting a's, It's fine, that is a gaslight. One of the people you interviged in your book was an expert in estrangement, and I found that section of your book to be really powerful. Yourself or from a Malaysian Chinese family, where family family values sort of the collective protection of the family unit are really foremost. Yeah, but again this is where I'm saying, this is transcultural.

Family estrangement is a taboo. It's not supposed to happen. My understanding is you really don't have much to do with your parents anymore. Am I correct about them? I do not speak with either Okay, so that falls under estrangement, which does I've worked with a lot of clients who are estranged for a range of reasons, mostly due to this kind of abusive and antagonistic behavior. Your expert said something so brilliant, and it was this idea that nobody

wants estrangement. Nobody wakes up in the morning saying I'm going to figure out a way to get a strange from my family, and that once people are estranged, it's not like they're walking around saying woohoo, I got rid of my family, but that they actually live in a state of grief and sadness over what never was, over what was lost, over what happened. But your expert was saying, this isn't about estrangement good, this is about estrangement necessary

and the grief that goes along with it. So can you talk a little bit about why you even talk to an estrangement expert and how that's played out for you. Well, I cited Christina Sharp's work, and then I spoke to Katherine Saint Louis, who did just tons of reporting on estrangement. And because I was at the time trying to decide whether I should be estrange for my father or not. And Catherine told me, I can't tell you whether you

should or you shouldn't. I can only tell you that if you do, lots of other people have done it, and they've done it because it's necessary, and I had to determine if it was necessary. And I think there's lots of times when I wonder if it was necessary less now it's been a few years, but I think it was necessary for my mental health. It was necessary to protect myself and I have relationships with tricky people.

But I think ground for what I think is appropriate whether I should keep you in my life or not, is whether you're going to try. Are you going to hear me, Are you going to give a shit? Are you going to really like put in the effort to try and make this work between the two of us, or is it just going to be me give and giving, giving, trying to make you listen to me, never getting any of that back in return. And I think with my parents,

they didn't want to try. They have not prioritized me in twenty years basically in any way, shape or form, And so just having a relationship like that, anyone knows it's totally draining and totally, as we were saying earlier, crazy making. And to those who in the mental health establishment who are like fixed the relationship at all costs, Yeah,

I am not against reconciliation. I'm not against reconciliation with my parents, but you have to reck ignize that, Like, for reconciliation to happen, you need more than just the person who has been abused, right, and often especially in terms of people of color, in terms of immigrants, you need a whole community. Yes, Like the person who is being abusive often is not being abusive out of just total like carelessness. They often have deep, deep wounds themselves.

They often have like deep mental health crises. And it was kind of like what I was talking about earlier. There's all this stigma culturally that's preventing them from getting help. They don't have their resources, Like the mental health establishment in the United States is geared mostly to help intellectual white people. There aren't enough culturally trained therapists who can support them, who can sort of help them in a way that brings in community, that brings in their religion,

that provides them therapy in a destigmatized way. And so in some ways I do I mean, I blame my parents, they have real accountability here, but in some ways I

blame the entire system as well. And I am so glad you put it in that framework, because when people have gone through these paths, even when estrangement becomes necessary, they're carrying the burden of ancestors of intergenerational trauma, awareness of the political systems, of the colonizing processes that got their generations before to this point, and that really complicated balancing act of having to save yourself, but to do so knowing that history is actually the legacy of every

community of color in this country, frankly, and any marginalized group in this world. So it is something that is such a painful part of this journey, and I think it results in a persistent grief that we don't ever fully move past. So I really thank you for putting that so clearly, because I think that that is the call to arms for this mental health around the world, is that we can support survivors, give them contexts, support people who engage in this behavior, and move from there.

But I want to as we come to our end, what is so beautiful about your story is that it has I consider a happy ending, And I think that one that survivors really really need to hear is talk to us about where you're at now. And you're very young, so it's a lot of story, a lot of story left. But yeah, the ending being sort of where we're beginning it with you right now catching it now. It's actually a really beautiful story. Can you share that? Because I

think it's a really beacon of hope. I think that I have more hope than I ever have right now in the future. I found a wonderful family to sort of provide me with some of that support and acknowledgement and who seeing me and who show up the ways that I ask them to show up through my husband's family. I have a really tremendously supportive partner who gets triggered himself and you know, has his own traumas, but like

is really intent on working together on them. How are you able to trust a man enough to fall in love? I mean, I mean it's completely seriously talk about lack of trust. How did you trust him and then give yourself permission to fall in love? I don't every day, Thank you me, I don't trust him. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, And I'm like you're shady. There's plenty of still like you don't care about me? But then

he shows up. Yeah, and then I say you don't care about me and he's like, I don't and he so that a thousand thousand times now, And there's days where he's like, you don't care about me, and I'm like I do, and how do you? How dare you not see that already? But he just kept showing up. And I think for me, I don't know that I'll ever feel totally safe in this world, but I know that like, I have to jump, I have to take chances.

I have to grab happiness where I can and try and let the people who want to love me love me, or else I'm just going to have a very empty life. So yeah, I keep trying to be brave. Well, it's incredibly brave because the very things that keep you safe, that sort of voice in the back of your head that's always telling you it's all danger and it's all bad, that voice is actually sort of strangely designed to keep

you safe too. And the courage is actually getting out of bed in the morning and saying, okay, voice, the voice is not moving. I always imagine that voice the trauma voice sits in a little chair in like a dark, dusty corner of your brain, and it's just, oh kay, you're not leaving, so you just stay there. I got you. I understand you're trying to keep me safe. I understand that. But the real courage in the post complex trauma landscape is to get up in the morning and I tell

everyone I work with, you got up this morning. We're good, all right, now, just keep going. And I think that that's what you've done. And I think more than anything, I think love is an incredibly healing force. But what I really am full as that you're willing to talk about how it's complicated love, that there's still struggles with trust is the doubt, it's the self doubt, and that you're able to talk about that, that people will find their love stories, and that it is about patients, that

it's about being recognized real quick. Just to just to close that out. It doesn't need to be romantic love. Thank you, Thank you. Some of the most like healing love in my life is my friend's love. I'm really glad you brought that up too, because I think then it's about love, right, whether it's it's friends, love, partner love. It's about love, and it sounds in these friendships you are able to be seen, but when you are having a difficult moment, they can still stand strong in the

face of that. And I think for many trauma survivors, the conviction as people are going to run away when they see my stuff come out, and that no love is that you hang out when the stuff comes out, and there are people who can do that. It may not have happened once before, but it can happen. So I think that that's thank you so much that love in its many forms. I want to make a last point here as we come to our end. Here. The show is called Navigating Narcissism, and that was not your framework,

and I think it's a tricky word. That's why we take it on in this podcast. And when I use that word, I care less about the personality style because it's not a disorder, it's a style. But it's the behaviors that hang out with it, right. The behaviors that come from that are invalidation and minimization and manipulation and devaluation and dehumanization and betrayal. All of that stuff is what sort of sits under that kind of larger umbrella. And while that was not how you ever framed your story,

and I don't think it is your frame. I think your frame is very focused on you in your story of complex trauma, and that's where it shall remain. It's on this podcast because being exposed to those interpersonal patterns, when one is chronically invalidated and not seen and having reality distorted harms us. And we've talked with other guests on our podcast. We've literally said I have complex trauma

as a byproduct of narcissistic abuse. In your case, it was these dynamics but very complicatedly housed in parents that came from very complicated cultural backgrounds who likely brought in their trauma too, And we've talked with other survivors who had parents who had gone through trauma as well, that this isn't about labeling someone as narcissistic, but that this is about understanding that there are interpersonal patterns that hurt us and that we carry within us, and that we

can then move beyond. And yeah, at some level we're carrying a little of that weight on our back always, but that there is a path forward and it doesn't define us, and that we can enter into meaningful, purposeful lives, work, and above all, loving relationships. And so I just wanted to give that context for why your story was so important to us here on this podcast. And I appreciate that. And I think, you know, in terms of my parents, I think the term narcissistic is a little bit limiting

for them. Agree. I think that they exhibit narcissistic behaviors absolutely, like no question. But I think narcissism for them is complicated because and not because they're good people, because I

think their history and potential abuse whatever is tricky. And I think that I've seen this most in my reporting with like survivors of the Khmer Rouge, in that you have these people who are so so trauma having survived to genocide, and they're so focused on survival that all they see is themselves in survival and they wind up

kind of being abusive to their children. I've seen in other communities that not being true when the person is getting the full support of their community, When the abuser is getting the full support of their community, of their religion, of getting the right therapy that they need, I think there is hope. I think that that is not accessible enough in this country right now, enough for the vast, vast majority of us to make those repairs. I absolutely agree.

I really appreciate that framing, and I think it's about the behavior. To me, the label, the framing, it's all about the behavior, and then it's taking that behavior, framing it in a context, and then looking for Like you said, these contexts can vary by culture, by history, by story, and then access and sadly mental health treatment has really become who has the privilege to actually be able to get the help? And that to me, it's a real problem in the world. But thank you again. Where can

people find you, Stephanie? Because your story is something and I think something that many many people need to hear. And I have your book right here. I kind of carry it around. It's completely dog here. It is a little sort of bible. But where can people find you? My paperback comes out great, You're Worried twenty first awesome, so it'll be affordable. I also have a audiobook on Audible that is available that includes recordings of the sessions

with doctor Ham, So lots of people like that. And you can find me on Twitter and I'm on the radio, but I'm most President on Instagram in my handle is fo foo foo. Great. All right, great, Well everyone finds Stephanie because it's an amazing conversation. Thank you for the gift of your time, of your story and your journey. It was a game changer for me, and I really feel honored that I got to meet you and talk

with you. So thank you again, Stephanie. Well, thank you, thank you for being vulnerable in this interview as well. And I really appreciate you having me and having this nuanced conversation. Thank you. Well. I hope our paths cross again. So thank you, Stephanie. And here are my takeaways from my conversation with Stephanie. First, one of the most painful full legacies of childhood abuse is the child's takeaway that maybe I am unlovable, And as Stephanie says, if my

parents cannot love me, then who can. Children experiencing trauma make meaning of their situation by blaming themselves as a way to keep themselves safe. But these inner narratives can persist throughout adulthood. These beliefs can drive decisions throughout life that support that unlovability, and therapy is essential to address these deeply held beliefs for this next takeaway, Seeking safety is a primary motivation of a trauma survivor, and that

sometimes can get distorted. For example, when Stephanie's neighbor try to intervene when she was a child, Stephanie felt she had to protect her mother. When these cycles show up in adulthood, it can mean that turning away from genuinely helpful people and then justifying the harmful behavior of others. And these safety behaviors may also involve doing well, doing well at work or at school, and because doing well

is valued, these behaviors are often missed. For any survivor, it means taking a hard look at your life and questioning how you may use practices like working hard and succeeding as a way of distancing from your pain and feeling safe. In our next takeaway, when Stephanie talked about what worked to help her work through her trauma, she listed multiple approaches, including psychotherapy, emdr psychedelics, and relational therapy.

What she found most useful was learning, at an almost microscopic level, learning how to relate again, learning to trust, converse, be curious, and not to go right to fear from interpersonal cues like a frown. Complex trauma steals this basic skill, but it can be life changing, and the way she

did it was inspired and unique. In this next takeaway, when Stephanie places her parents' behavior within the framework of culture, intergenerational trauma, and historical oppression, she isn't rationalizing, but instead she is contextualizing, and that's an important distinction. Remember, Stephanie still ended contact with her parents and built up a new world of family with her friends, her husband, and

her in laws. Contextualizing doesn't mean that you are excusing the abusive behavior, but it is possible to simultaneously set a firm and permanent boundary but also recognize the complex and historic origin of the abusive behavior. To do so can actually really foster healing. It doesn't have to be either or or black or white. Healing is all about the gray. And for our final takeaway, Stephanie doesn't portray

her healing as an easy path. She certainly doesn't say I'm at someone, I have wonderful friends, and now we walk into the sunset. She acknowledges that on many days there our challenges and a need for reassurance and safety. Healing is absolutely possible, and you can find a love story. It's not always an easy love story, but the hope is for a patient love story and for someone who sees you, sees all of you, and can be that place of safety