I'm going to read you something written by Dylan Farrow, daughter of legendary actress Mia Farrow and filmmaker Woody Allan. What's your favorite Woody Allan movie? Before you answer, you should know When I was seven years old, Woody Allan took me by the hand and led me into a dim closet like attic on the second floor of our house. He told me to lay on my stomach and play with my brother's electric train set. Then he sexually assaulted me.
He talked to me while he did it, whispering that I was a good girl, that this was our secret, promising that we'd go to Paris and I'd be a star in his movies. I remember staring at that toy train, focusing on it as it traveled in its circle around the attic. To this day, I find it difficult to
look at toy trains. Dylan Farrow wrote that after her father was received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Golden Globes, Dylan's experience has been widely covered, often questioned, sometimes attacked by the media, Hollywood elite, and the public over the last three decades. But what has been rarely talked about is what happened to Dylan after the age of seven? When did she last see her father? How did she navigate her teen years? How did she feel when her
father married her sister Sunni. On this episode of Navigating Narcissism, Dylan Farrow reveals her experiences with self harm, eating disorders, depression, the devastating effects of suffering in silence, and how motherhood and marriage have helped her heal and thrive. From Red Table Talk podcasts and iHeartMedia, I'm Doctor Rominy and this is Navigating Narcissism. 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. Dylan, It's such a pleasure and such an honor to meet you and just to have a conversation.
Thank you so much for having me.
You know, Dylan, when we hear an experience like yours, it's so easy to get focused on the notoriety and the fame of the perpetrator, and in doing that, we actually lose the true story of the survivor. You today, on navigating narcissism. The focus is on you, your experience of healing and surviving and even thriving after that. And as a therapist, I can tell you survivors are asked many times, unfortunately, to keep telling the story of what
happened over and over again. I believe that survivors should be in full ownership of their stories. So Dylan, I want you to begin telling us your story wherever you feel comfortable.
Thank you. It's a little difficult to pinpoint a beginning because I would say it started when I was in infancy. I almost feel like there wasn't really a chance for me to experience a nor quote unquote childhood from infancy. I was tremendously overprivileged, and I had this fairy tale childhood that had a much darker side to it that started as soon as I can remember, even having memories.
I've backtracked the abuse about that long. It was a constant throughout my childhood of grooming and abuse, which culminated in the attic incident when I was seven or eight years old, and I think people tend to look at that as sort of an isolated event, when really it was a long process.
It is a long process, and I think that your framing on that is so important, Dylan, because we do often get caught up in this culmination and an episode that feels like the defining event, but it wasn't that. It was a process, and that process shaped your identity and it shaped psychology. You also said something that really jumped out at me was this idea, I grew up incredibly privileged. I grew up in a fairy tale. I think that made this all worse, because does that make sense?
We want stories everything to fit. So when there's the fairy tale and then there's something very dark happening, it's very hard even for an adult to bridge that. It's impossible for a child.
Actually, when you were speaking, that did resonate with me because there were definitely two very different sides to my childhood, and one was completely idyllic, and the kind of the kind of life that we can only dream about. When I talked to my child about my childhood, she has no concept of like taking a private plane to Paris for the weekend. There were limousines, there were planes, there was travel, there was fun, there was a nursery filled
with toys from Fio Schwartz. We were regulars at the Russian Tea Room. And then to have that very dark undercurrent of things that were going on at the same time, It seems almost impossible when that was my reality, and to me, both sides of that were what I considered normal.
I mean, those were both real experiences, and I think we want all the pieces to fit. So how could it be a fairy tale and dark and people say, well, pick one or the other. And am I concern for people who have those sorts of stories. Is it often diminishes the empathy that that person gets.
Yeah, it's like people expect when I talk about the dark side of it. Well, I wasn't locked in a basement full of cockroaches and abuse like on the Hour or anything like that. This was taking place in a palatial apartment on the Upper West Side, or in this beautiful country house in Connecticut.
But trauma doesn't know from setting right, and.
That was part of my difficulty, I think in coming to terms with the documentary Alan B. Farrow that came out was sort of absorbing the fact that there were all of these good times interlaced with abuse, with times when I would be taken away from my family for one on one episodes with my father where I'd be isolated where I'd have to suck his thumb or put my head in his lap or something like that. Very snapshot memories for me at this point that are incredibly vivid, but a little disconnected.
And that's what we would expect in a trauma survivor. Memory gets de siiced and diced, as it were, by the entire experience of trauma. So this is a process that sounds like it sort of developed through your entire childhood. It culminated though, when you were seven years old. What I want to understand from you is everything since that event, because that's the healing and the surviving and the growth that you've gone through.
It's interesting because the healing portion of my life has been the entirety of it. There hasn't been a time
when I wasn't healing from this. Something interest that my mom said to me at one point, she said, we have no idea who you might have been if this hadn't happened to you, And that really stuck with me, because it's true, I really have no concept of who I am without this, and a lot of my healing process has been trying to connect with a part of me that I don't even know exists, trying to find something normal in myself, trying to find something that is
I can't say not traumatized, because I don't think it's ever going to completely go away, but a part of myself that is not connected to trauma, to these events in my life and motherhood has been a huge part of that, because it's just been such a completely different experience than anything I've ever known, and it's sort of forced me to evaluate who I am and what I
want to pass on to my daughter. So obviously I haven't spoken with her about any of this and in any real meaningful sense because she's six years old, but as she approaches seven and eight, which was the ages where all of this culminated for me, it's been a little bit emotional, honestly, in seeing this little person who's not me, but it's an extension of me who has none of that, and seeing her and watching the way she interacts with the world and with me and with
her father, And it's been healing in seeing that, because it feels like I was able to pass on peace to her that I never had.
What you're sharing I've heard so many times, especially when there's a childhood trauma, childhood betrayal, the process of being a parent and doing it in an intentional way, being acutely aware of your child's safety and attachment to you and place in the world becomes an integral part of healing. However, there's also their own developmental arc which is markedly different than yours, and it's a really complex bunch of feelings.
In many ways, it's the very question your mother put to you when she said, what would your life have been like had all of this not happened? Your daughter, in many ways is living that, and that can bring up a range of feelings from not only joy and healing, but sometimes even grief of what would have been for us.
Yes, and I would add even jealousy. It's been an emotional journey for me seeing this little person who I was able to give this to a childhood free of abuse, free of trauma. Maybe it's impossible not to traumatize anybody. But she's happy and she's and she's completely separate from anything that I'd gone through, and that is very freeing in a way.
It is because it's introducing you to an entire reality of your life without the trauma. And I'm so grateful, Dylan that you shed that insight into this concept of jealousy, because I don't think that that's unusual, and trauma survivors will say, this is what safety with parents, in her case, safety with a father, because you didn't have that, and
for a moment you'll say, what would they be? Like, I think it's part of that process, and yet it's almost like this strange, joyful jealousy, but it's still a sense of you had something I didn't have. And I'm really glad you shared that because I think that will normalize and destigmatize a reaction that many people have in the circumstances you're in.
I really hope so, because there are so many complex and varied emotions that come with this kind of trauma, and it's a journey in itself to unravel and unten go and parse these very sometimes conflicting emotions. I will feel anger, resentment, maybe even a little jealousy towards my daughter. Things that might be construed as negative emotions. They play into it as well. And accepting those feelings and working through them and allowing yourself to feel them is a huge part of that journey.
It is very much a journey, and I think it's very much a journey of complex trauma, which is very consistent with what you experienced, sort of a traumatizing experience which was inescapable when you were rendered powerless that happened over an extended period of time. It's a little different than what we would see sometimes in traditional post trauma. You know, somebody who'd been the victim of a crime
one time or something like that. This is different and the emotions that are around it are different, and it can be confusing unless it's been unpacked by a therapist who understands complex trauma.
Yeah. I mean a lot of the times, especially early on in the period where I wasn't healing so much, I would feel a lot of negativity towards myself for feeling these things like oh, I shouldn't feel that way. I should feel this. I'm a bad person for feeling this way. I don't think I'll ever not feel this way,
and that's okay too. I feel like allowing myself to sort of sit with my anger, with my resentment has helped unlock a little bit more insight into who I am, where I am, and where I want to be.
I couldn't agree more people experiencing the full out of complex trauma there will be that period of shame. I'm a bad person for feeling this. It's a lot of self blame from a world at large public perspective. We have an image of what we think someone who's gone
through trauma should be. They should be sad, they should be crying, they should be scared, they should be worried, and so when emotions like anger and resentment surface, I hate to say it, but I think our societal understanding with people like, what, no, You're supposed to be sad, and so as a result, the person experiencing it feels maybe I'm having the wrong emotion. There are no wrong emotions ever for anybody. So I think that is a really important part of the healing process.
I definitely agree, and for a long time I felt that there was definitely a way that I should be reacting to this, that I should be feeling, and when I couldn't sort of squeeze myself into that box, I was frustrated with myself because I had an idea of what other people's idea was and I wasn't the perfect survivor. That was very frustrating to me, because I knew I
was a survivor, but I wasn't good at it. I had to accept that that doesn't take away from my survivorhood, and it doesn't detract from what I went through, because survivors come in all shapes and sizes, and not all of them are going to feel the exact same things about what they went through.
I'm so curious what you think a perfect survivor would have looked like.
I think, going back back to the aftermath of my abuse and the experience I had with the Yale New Haven people where I had to repeat my story over and over and over, I think that that very early on put an idea in my head that I'm not doing this right. I'm not telling this story right, I'm not experiencing this the right way. That they wanted something from me and I wasn't giving it to them, which of course was its own completely evil thing going on
that I couldn't even comprehend at the time. But to the mind of me as a child, it was trying to communicate, trying to explain, trying to get through to these people and not being able to which impacted me and I'm sure enormous other ways, but I think it also put this concept in my head that I wasn't really a survivor of anything because I didn't do that. Right.
What you're rich you're saying just hit me like a title wave. Is that being the perfect survivor in many ways was contingent on the outside world because it was how they received it. Is that if you were a perfect survivor, then your story would have been readily clear to them. You wouldn't have had to explain it over and over again. And because they weren't, that was a comment on you as a survivor when we know that
the vast majority of trauma survivors are gaslighted to this day. Yes, so I'm taking a second to take that in because you nailed it. That's it. Because if the trauma survivor is able to be convincing, then they're a perfect survivor. Just so people understand this, Can you explain what happened at Yale New Haven after the abuse in the attic?
Yeah, and I'm sure you can probably explain it better than I can, because my entire scope of the experience was that in the aftermath of my abuse, I was forced to repeat my story a number of times to these specialists at Yelle New Haven, and that report was ordered by I think the prosecutor in the case, Frank Mako.
After the alleged abuse happened in the attic, Dylan told her mother, who told the therapist. In every state, when a minor shares information about known or suspected child abuse that sets off a legally mandated series of steps, the therapist was required by law to make a report to the appropriate department of Child Services. The high profile nature of the case meant that numerous agencies got involved to
investigate Dylan's report of abuse by her father. This resulted in a series of interviews and assessments that would be overwhelming for any child and incomprehensible where the public stakes were so high.
Instead, I was subjected to a battery of questions over and over again about the abuse, and in the end the report was delivered to my father and it said exactly what he wanted to hear. All I remember from that time is that a very nice lady named Bee would show up at the house and my mom and I would get in the car and we would be
taken to a doctor's office or some office. It was never the same place twice, and I would meet with a doctor or a group of doctors, and I would be shown an anatomically correct doll and asked where Daddy touched me? And I was a kid and that should not have happened. The result was a travesty, both for me psychologically and I think in terms of the investigation that was going on.
What you were put through as a child. I think the nature of the case, the nature of the individual featured in the case here was an obsessive zeal to protect him and not you, to make sure that you got this so right. They documented it so right that maybe maybe they could almost have a gotcha moment like, oh nope, see that was inconsistent. That's what it felt like to me, and then they would be off the hook.
Of having to view this person who they held in high regard and esteem through this perspective.
Yeah, that was my take on it too. It's interesting because I learned most of this as an adult, and.
Why would you have learned that as a seven year old child.
Not I've learned that as a seven year old child. So my experience and lining up what I remember with the truth of what was going on was very interesting for me because in a way it was validating in a sense of like, yes, I was gas lit and this sort of tactic should never have been used on a seven year old child, like this was absolutely wrong and bad. And for many, many years, and up until my twenties even I did not consider myself a victim
or survivor of anything, well, maybe of molestation. It was how I sort of categorized it in my head. And I'd even had conversations with people close to me. I had said to them, I think the reason I'm reacting to this is because of what happened when I was a child, and the response from this person was, oh, you know, like, calm down, it's not like you were raped. I internalized that conversation as oh, no, you're absolutely right, it's not like I was raped. I have no right
to feel this way. That impacted me for a very long time, and it wasn't until really my late twenties that I started to fully understand the scope of what I'd been through and accept the depth of my own trauma.
The way we were all told the story, the press and the media was we heard your story up until you were eight, and then there was a big gap in the story until we heard again the powerful words you wrote in twenty fourteen. Can you talk to us about that almost twenty year gap. What was your process of healing, surviving, living like in that twenty year period.
I was very much surviving and not thriving. I was very much coping instead of healing. I had pushed down everything that I had gone through. I told my mom, I was like, I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to think about it. I don't want it mentioned in my presence. Just I think my words were tell me when he's dead, and that was it. My wishes were honored to the letter that nothing concerning that era ever came up in my presence, at least
not in the family. And then I'd wonder why I'd see a picture in a magazine and have what I didn't realize was a panic attack, or you know, a joke would happen on TV and I'd have what I didn't know was a PTSD flashback. I just sort of internalized that as Oh, I'm touchy, I'm sensitive. Just get over at, Dylan. So I was very much punishing myself in a lot of ways, and I was coping through a lot of it.
We will be right back with this conversation. During those twenty years, Dylan, were you in therapy or really this was a period where your family respected your wishes not talk about it, and you didn't have those supports.
I had a wonderful therapist when I was I want to say around eleven years old. I had named doctor Alexander, and she was one of the only therapists who tried to get to talk about it. I was very resistant, but she was patient and understanding and really wonderful. She passed away while I was in therapy, and it was
devastating for me. It took me a very long time to find and connect with therapists sort of in general, because I've been in therapy since I was since I can even remember there were a few of the bad ones during that twenty year period, but I didn't really start seeking therapy in earnest until around twenty fourteen. So it took me up until recently to find a therapist that I truly feel comfortable and connected with, somebody who
specializes in trauma and particularly sexual trauma. And it's made a huge difference.
It's interesting, Dylan, because I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to hear about it. I don't want anyone to bring it up. Absolutely makes sense to anyone who's been through it, but there's an opportunity cost there, right, because under that line, it's almost like it's almost all this debris that's piling up, like behind a dam. Yes, and that's where we see the things you were describing, panic attacks really almost like overwhelming freezing anxiety. All of
this stuff is happening. You're not addressing the thing which is so deeply uncomfortable, and you just don't want to. But you know, the psyche does what the psyche does, and like I said, all the debris accumulates and it sneaks up, and you were going through adolescence, you've lost your therapists, which at that age, to have a therapist die is actually a trauma and a loss and a grief. We don't talk about enough because it doesn't happen a lot, but certainly it could happen.
Yeah.
Also, I want to say that I really appreciate your distinction between coping and not healing. That's such an important thing. I'd never even thought of it that way. It's such a wise way to put it, because coping makes it look to the world like you're doing okay. You're getting up and you're jumping through the hoops, you're brushing your teeth, you're going to bed, you're folding your clothes. That's coping.
And I think coping actually gets too good a brand in some ways, because I think it belies what's happening behind it. We want to believe, oh, well, they're doing the stuff they're supposed to do and everything's fine, and we often don't think about looking under the hood. I'm like, the car is shiny, I'm not so sure the engine's okay, And I think that that's tricky. And I'm really really glad you brought that up because you put it so beautifully.
I'm actually going to steal that from you for oh elect, I'm telling you right now. But here's the thing. You're going through adolescence. Your family's doing the loving thing and supporting you by honoring your boundary, which I think was very important. Other things, though, were happening. And if I may, your father had married your stepsister, my sister. So let me say that again, and I apologize for getting that wrong.
So your father mary, your sister. As you're going through this twenty year period not only of adolescence, but managing this trauma that you're not processing and not adequately supported and all of that, it's so incredibly difficult.
I still have trouble wrapping my brain around that sentence your father married your sister. It is so bizarre and it is so outlandish. And the fact that anybody can look at that sentence or hear it and think, oh, it's totally normal. They're in love and blah blah blah. It just the mental gymnastics needed to accept that sentence as something normal baffles me.
I mean, Dylan, it's a trauma. That sentence is a trauma. A father marrying a sister is a trauma. It's not even mental gymnastics left the room a long time ago. We're in trauma now. I mean that is betrayal. Yeah, it's the most essential betrayal because, frankly, Dylan, if not again, nothing else had happened. This was the sole event that occurred. This in and of itself is a seismic traumatic event.
And this wasn't the only thing that happened. The other things that happened to you were much more undercutting your sense of safety in the world. It was as though up was down and high was low and hot was cold, Like where does one look for safety in the midst of that?
I don't even know. I spent years managing depression and eating disorder PTSD anxiety. I had a lot on my plate, and I was simultaneously trying to pretend that it wasn't there. I was cutting myself, I was binge eating was not mentally healthy. So it was very, very difficult, I think for me to understand what I was going through. It took me years to put words to it. I didn't have the language, I didn't have the tools. During that twenty year.
Period, no one could navigate this easily. What was that turning point for you? What did that look like.
I guess. If we had to land on one event, it was the Golden Globes in twenty fourteen. My father got the Lifetime Achievement award and I snapped, and that, of course led to its own trauma. But it was an interesting night because I wasn't even watching the Golden Globes. I don't watch award shows, and I was playing video games and then suddenly I get a message from a friend and it was I'm so sorry that this happened to you, like if you need anything, blah blah blah
blah blah, And I was like, who died? Like I was like, was there an earthquake? I had no idea. And suddenly I had six more messages, all the same thing, like I'm so sorry, Like are you okay? Do you want to talk? And I was completely confused. And then finally I turned on the news and I saw it, and all of the coping that I had been doing just wasn't cutting it. Suddenly I had a panic attack, a PTSD episode the likes of which I had never
experienced before. I saw a clip of him being awarded the thing and all the people in the audience clapping and cheering and the speech that preceded it, and I snapped. The next thing, I remember, I was just in bed, I was just crying, and my husband was with me, and I was a mess. I was a wreck. And it took me a while to sort of parse my thoughts. My first assumption was just did they not know? Like
they must not know, I have to say something. I wrote down all my thoughts and I posted them on my private Facebook just for my friends and acquaintances to see. A lot of the response I got to that was have you considered publishing this? And I thought, oh, well, maybe I should. And I remember talking to Ronan at that point. He was definitely nervous when I brought up
the idea of putting it out there publicly. It was also the first time that I had ever talked to him about the abuse, and we had a very long conversation where at one point he started crying. It was a bit of a turning point for us, both, I think, in our relationship and sorry. We stayed on the phone for a couple of hours, and while he wasn't thrilled with the idea, he was basically like, you're going to
do what you're going to do. And after that phone call, I decided that this was something that I had to do, you know, not just for myself. I felt almost like a moral imperative to disclose this publicly. So I gathered all my thoughts and wrote everything down and I sent it out into the world. I sent it first to Nick Christoph because he was the only person I really I knew he was. He was a friend of my mom's.
He passed it along to the op ed section at The New York Times, who promptly rejected it and said it was either too volatile or unethical. But he said, you know, like, if you can't find a home, I'm willing to put this on my column for you. And at the time I was also trying at the La Times, and that was a week long process to try and shepherd it through to publication, and at the last second that was shut down too. So I went back to Nick and I, you know, you said you said you'd
be willing to put this in your column. Is this something that you're that you're serious about? He was absolutely willing. He ran it in his column, but it was rigorously fact checked by a team of lawyers, and then it came out, and there was, of course a big response, and immediately The New York Times gives my father unlimited unfact base for a rebuttal and this is all pre me too or anything. People really didn't have any clue what it meant to deal with survivors at this point,
so I was sort of navigating this alone. Another traumatic experience for me was releasing that off ed because the response was just not at all what I'd envisioned would happen. It wasn't how I would react if I'd been on the outside. What was the response still in decidedly negative?
Yeah, and I remember it well. I'll tell you it's nine years ago, which to me is still recent. So you're saying it was pre me too, but we're not talking about nineteen thirty. Nine years ago is very age memory, RIGHTA.
I tried very hard to stay away from the news, but most of it was just parroting the story that they'd heard twenty years earlier from my father and talking about the Yale New Haven Report and talking about the fact that it never went to trial. And at the time I didn't have Twitter or anything like that, so I just sort of laid low and decided obviously something is very wrong here, and so I surrendered control of it.
Do I remember when I read it Dylan, and I thought, oh, she's calling out the enablers, right. And I didn't know much about the story, but I was still working in this area, and I remember thinking, oh, no, when you call out the enablers, nothing good ever happens. I remember, this show's called Navigating Narcissism. So it's about these unempathic, entitled, grandiose, arrogant, manipulative, gas lighting people who get away with a lot of stuff. But the reason they get away with all that stuff
is because the enablers let it happen. The very publication that wouldn't publish your op ed was more than willing to publish his unfact checked OpEd right there. That's enabling by people who had tremendous power in the industry. So how did this affect your life? Because you've now laid out for us twenty years, you've not really been unpacking this. You're not really doing a lot of trauma informed work
on this. You're having experiences like depression, anxiety, eating disorder PTSD, all the things we'd expect for somebody who hasn't had the opportunity to process their trauma. Twenty fourteen comes up. I'm not going to use snapped. I'm going to say that you actually had the kind of emotional reaction we would expect from somebody who had been harmed and invalidated and was watching their abuse or be emboldened. That's how I frame it. I'm not giving you snapped. Your reaction
makes all the sense in the world. It really does, if from an entirely trauma in FOREGM perspective, because you were already struggling because you weren't processing the trauma. Now it's in your face again. How did it affect your life now in your process of healing and living well?
In the immediate aftermath, I definitely was re traumatized, and there was a whole new level of trauma added to what was already there. The revictimization that occurred in that time was devastating to me, and I became a gloraphobic. To this day, I have anxiety about leaving my house. Even to just go to the grocery store is something that I have to manage. I've been in therapy. I've been doing treatments for my depression and luckily things have
taken an upturn. Things were tricky for a while because the news would happen and I'd have to formulate a response, and that was its own trauma. One of the things that has happened for the better was getting the documentary Alan V. Farrow released. That was huge for me just in terms of peace of mind. I've also been examining myself under the lens of trauma for the first time and sort of forcing myself to sit with the uncomfortable emotions.
And I'm very lucky that i also have a very strong support network my family, for my husband, an incredible daughter. Dedicating myself to healing has been a really long, hard road.
It is a very long road because it's a daily practice, right, Healing's not just It's not a destination, and it's not I think on our big problem is we too often try to apply biomedical frameworks to mental health healing and processes that people who have endured traumatization. Traumatization and especially at such a public level, you know, by not just individuals, but by institutions. There's a woman named doctor Jennifer Frid who talks about institutional betrayal, and that's a massive form
of trauma. That an entire institutional system that's nameless and faceless but comprised of many people that are collectively re traumatizing a person actually has its horrific fallout for people.
It's true. I can't watch movies anymore. I can barely watch television. I watch The Mandalorian exclusively. Anytime something comes up that my husband wants to watch with me, he's very very sweet. He checks the cast to make sure that it's safe quote unquote, and you know, he'll let me know if, oh no, we can't watch that. It's very nice of him to do that. He's basically been like he's like that website like does the Dog Die?
It's so just. You know, there's a site called common Sense Media, but I never knew there's one called dust. What is it about casts that you want your husband to check out before you watch a film?
Well, there are those in Hollywood who don't believe me, very staunchly defend my father, and it's hurtful, and that's probably actually a small word for it. It's devastating to me, it would be to any survivor to be told, we don't believe you, you're lying. We stand with your abuser, but to have somebody do it publicly, somebody well known,
somebody with renown, with respect, it's crushing. I'm not sure I've ever like fully been able to describe what goes through my head when that happens, especially especially when it's somebody that I respected or somebody that I was a fan of. That saying never meet your heroes, don't disclose your abuse to them either, And what you said about enablers really resonated with me in that sense too, because that's exactly what it is, exactly the way you described it.
They're just very high powered enablers.
And those are the most dangerous ones of all because they can literally shape narratives, decide if narratives get shared, distort what's being shared. And even in an an ordinary system you're working for a employer, no one's ever heard of your small family system or something like that, enablers exist. The retraumatization that can happen from people continuing to uphold the person who is callously denying and did harm. That harm is leading a person to engage in more self blame,
more self doubt, which are really really pernicious processes. What's amazing about you is. You would think after one op ed that would have taken you out of the op ed business and said never can, but you bravely went forward. You remarkably wrote another amazing op ed during the Me Too movement I did, and you did it again. Good for you about healing that could not have been easy. Can you talk about what that process was like?
In a lot of ways, it was a lot easier because people were talking about me too in general. People were also starting to understand like, hey, maybe we should give survivors a platform, So it was very different experience. When I wrote the second piece and it was published in the La Times, where my first piece had been
turned down, which spoke to progress. To me, it was encouraging, but my expectations were lower because I at that point had even just internalized it as well, the world just hates me, but I'm going to do this anyway because it's not like their opinion can get any lower. So I really just was like, to hell with it at that point. But I was angry because people were talking about high profile names for the first time in ways
that they hadn't been discussed before. People were putting the lens on people and nobody was talking about little old me, And I mean, maybe that was egotistical of me to assume that that I'd be important enough to be discussed, but it mattered to me. And the biggest sticking point to me in the whole experience of that whole revictimization process was not mattering that my story didn't matter, that that little girl who this happened to did not matter. That outraged me in a way that I can't even
properly articulate. The biggest problem was still that there was no evidence. Basically, people were taking things on basis of like, oh, well, there are fifty accusers. It was just me. I was alone and I had some court documents, but that was really it. And what I needed then was ronan Pharaoh to put all the facts in one easily digestible place that people can reference easily. And I didn't have that. So it was a slow climb from twenty fourteen to
twenty seventeen eighteen to Alan v. Farrow. That was when I noticed the significant change in public opinion.
How has that shift in public opinion correlated with or walked alongside your process of healing?
Any survivor would say that being believed, and their story being accepted and heard and given space is probably at the core of their healing to be truly believed, to be listened to, to feel like this horrible thing didn't just happen and get ignored, that it mattered, that they matter.
Speaking from my personal experience, what I was hoping to get from the experience to know that, like, I'm just some lady living in the middle of nowhere in Connecticut, but these really, really terrible things have happened to me, and that matters at least as much as some movie you saw that made you like jazz or New York City or something like that.
That you matter, that you're seeing that you're recognized that you exist. A trauma survivor will say, my life is being defined by this person having done this thing to me, and I need to individuate out of that. And you being seen and saying that this is real, this is important, and you also said something so so important. Fifty accusers
one hundred accusers was never going to be one. If there was a powerful person you needed to come up with this vast armada of people who were willing to say publicly with at tremendous risk this happened to me, and what happened to you. It happened within the context this was your father. The impact of that impacted your development. This isn't a trauma competition. It's not that there's one kind his it was worse than another. But this was a person you looked to for caregiving, to put pancakes
on a plate. The way trauma impacts us is somewhat different, you know, a little bit different if it happens to you as a child versus an adult, the nature of your relationship with that person. All trauma affects us badly. Developmental betrayal traumas have a particularly insidious effect because again, they're catching you at a time when all of you
is still being shaped. You know, I watched Alan v. Faroh a couple of times, and not only was a remarkable way to lay all of that out, it was unbelievably well edited and put together and drew us into again. For me, as somebody who studies and analyzes narcissistic abuse, that entire theme was there, the steadfast way you showed up in that Dylan, I personally thought that I'm so glad every trauma survivor will see this because you held
that space as a survivor. I feel privileged to be able to tell you that one on one here because I was really struck by that. A piece that was left open ended in that story was the last time you saw your father? How old were you the last time you ever had contact with him?
I have a memory of a last time that I saw him. I was sitting by the pond at my mom's house, and I was slaying in the water, and I just remember watching my mother and father walking up the hill to one side, and they were just walking together, their backs were to me, and that was the last time I ever saw them together. And that's the last time I remember ever seeing him.
Yeah, so you don't remember what age that was, but it sounds like it was a very long time ago.
It was a very long time. I must have been seven. I remember that it was during the point where they were having trouble because it was a very uncertain time for me personally. I was just a kid and seeing my family sort of fracture and break apart was very difficult for me. I remember I saw my mom crying for the first time and just being like just so surprised because I'd never seen an adult cry before. It's
very sad to look back. The memories themselves evoke feelings in me of loss and grief, and it's very fractured, but very it's very real.
It's very hard to live in that space. And for children, the timeframes and the ages and all of that, it becomes a morphisical. You can recall the pain better than you can recall a date or an age or something like that.
He did try to contact me twice that I know of. It was around eighteen, but I was not eighteen. I was older, and I was home and I got a letter, and I never get letters, so I was confused. And it was postmarked from London, which was even more confusing. There was no handwriting. It was all typed. There was no return address. It was just postmarked from London. And I opened it and it was two or three pages typed, and it opened up with now that you're eighteen years old,
and I thought to myself, I'm not eighteen. But I was very confused, so I skipped to the end and it was signed your father or dad or something like that, and I read the letter and it was basically a summons. It was I want you to appear before me. I'm going to explain what really happened. He talked about sending a helicopter and meeting me on a park bench in Central Park, and I was just frozen with terror and I had a complete, complete panic attack, and my mom
took the letter and I never saw it again. The second time that I know of that he that he wrote to me, I was at college and for some reason, I was checking my mailbox, which was I never got mail because I was close enough from home that I could get anything that I wanted, and I had a slip in there that said I received a package, and I was again I was baffled, because nobody sends me
mail except for him. Apparently. I claim the package and I'm handed this enormous Manila envelope, about the size of a big textbook and just as heavy, and I look on the front and it's addressed to my real name, not Dylan, the name I changed to that I keep private, and it was my address at Bard College, and it was marked with a return somewhere in New York, I think Layman or Lyman, something like that, and I was like, I don't know this person, but they obviously know me.
So I take the package and I head to the campus center and I'm sitting at a table with some coffee, and I'm opening this package and out spills hundreds of photographs and some of them even have like little thumbtack marks in them, so they were hanging up somewhere, and they're all of me, and they're all of him. And there's a note written on like a piece ofly legal paper, and this one is handwritten, and it said, uh, basically, I sent you these photos to remind you of the
good times. I want you to know that I miss you, and soon he misses you, and our daughters think of you as their sister. And it was signed love for your father. I freaked out.
In either of those letters, was there any sense of awareness, even a tiny bit of what he had did, what all of this had done to you, the psychological hardship you'd endured. I'm not even expecting that he would cup to anything that was any nothing, none.
If it was about me, it was all about so it was all about it.
Yeah, it's so entitled. I'm ready you will show up at this time, and I'm ready to see you because it works for me. And going to send you all these pictures. The level of manipulativeness of a gesture like that, with no contextualization, no awareness of your process, no sense of boundary, it is, you know, I not that I'm surprised by it. I mean, to me, it's textbook. I think it's a hurt, a hurt for you, a hurt
that anyone would be put through this level. Again, we're back to the unseeing you don't matter what you've been through, doesn't matter. I'm ready, I want what I want, so here I come. And then even using these manipulative posturings of well these folks, these these people think of you as your their sister.
You have no for clarifying that because I'm all so their aunts. Yeah, you know, like you're also my brother in law, okay, and your wife is my sister and my step mom, so like it's nice to know how I fit in your warped little family unit.
Yes, but it's only from his point of view. It's just the manipulativeness to just and also that sense of feeling so entitled that you could just breach the wall into a life that someone's constructed. I mean, I still think the college years are very fragile years. Right, You're an emerging adult, you're coming out of adolescence into adulthood, you're finding yourself independently, autonomously. It's a hard time of
life for anybody that entitlement that like. And I'm just gonna plow right into your life, not even stopping to think how this would affect the other person. That kind of entitled encroachment as it were. It is so unsettling, and it is so unempathic. I just just is wrong.
I freaked out completely in the middle of the campus center. I started crying, and I immediately I went to my friend's dorm and I called my mom's lawyer to see if there was anything, and there wasn't, because apparently two letters doesn't constitute harassment, but it does, maybe not legally, but emotionally. Emotionally, I felt very violated. I felt very harassed and stalked almost because he wasn't contacting me at a place that he knew he looked me up.
It spoke to so much manipulation. It wasn't transparent, right. It had this feeling of subterfuge to it, which is worse.
The fake name to Obviously, if he'd put who it was from on the envelope. I wouldn't have opened it, but he knew that, and to get me to open it, he went that extra mile, and that really just sent a shiver down my spine even now, just like thinking about it.
My conversation will continue after this break. You had talked in the beginning about grooming, this idea of a long drawn out process of using a position of power to gain a less empowered person's trust, isolating them, making them dependent on you, and then praying on them. What's so interesting is that sort of another kind of grooming process seemed to be sort of starting up again, going to send these entitled letters, going to send these sorts of
memories and to draw you back in. It's almost like we're combining two processes, the process of grooming, but the process we talk about in toxic relationships, of hoovering, of pulling someone back in. It's like hoover grooming, Like it's two things happening at the same time. It's so manipulative, and the piece I struggle with most is that it's there's absolutely no consideration of how this thing will land
in this other person's life. Yeah, got to call you out on your language again, Dylan, you said you freaked out. You didn't freak out, so you had an expectable reaction to something this distressing coming into your world. All of your reactions, Dylan, have been exactly what we would expect. They're not snapping, they're not freaking out. They're actually responding exactly as we'd expect someone who'd feel incredibly unsafe to react.
And I think I'm still learning the language to communicate with myself when I say things like snapped, when I say things like freaked out. And I'm glad you called me out on that because it's true, and I need to be more gentle with myself and the way I talk about myself and my experiences, because there is still a part of me that is dismissive, almost like you're like, oh, well, now I've come so far, like why does this even matter? But it does.
It matters. It will always matter the pieces that you can hold compassion for. It's mattering, and it will not be the light you navigate by, it won't be what guide you, won't be the most important thing about you, not at all, but it matters, and it's part of you and your body and your psyche will in some way, shape or form, undercut your sense of trust in other people. These are the things that trauma survivors grapple with for the long term. And the unkindness of the world is, oh,
come on, that was thirty years ago. And I really want to snap back at folks and say, you know what, that person's nervous system didn't get the memo that it was thirty years ago, because the way it's encoded and body and mind is that it could have happened five minutes ago. That the nervous system just lives to protect you, and so you do continue to react. And what we teach trauma survivors is it's this beautiful thing called our body and mind trying to keep us safe when the
rest of the damn world didn't. So thank you very much. This is my body doing what it needs to. So don't you dare judge me. That's what I want to say for people. But that's probably a little heavy handed at a dinner party. So I'm like God, but like you, now, this is how the nervous system works. But that's all that's been happening. It's creating safety, it's creating trust where
all of that was taken away. And I always feel like forever survivors are often tapping on the thin ice on a pond on an icy day, like is this going to be strong enough for me to walk on? Whereas everyone else seems to be running onto the pond with reckless abandon The trauma survivors are sort of tapping and thinking this could crack and I could go into that freezing cold water, to which any survivor would need
to know. You tap on that ice as long as you need until you feel safe enough to stand on it, and that's you taking care of you. And that's actually a really important, beautiful thing. And that's the permission. Just like you'd give your daughter permission to take her time to do something until she felt safe. It's just to show yourself the same grace.
Yeah. Now I'm still very much learning about myself, how to treat myself, and also re acclimating to the world around me, learning how to form secure attachments. That's a term I learned from my therapist, because that's definitely not a thing that I had, and try to navigate the pond. Like you said, in some ways, I can take a
couple steps onto the pond and enjoy the ice. But then I have to stop and I have to tap again, and I have to allow myself to do that instead of being frustrated with myself sometimes, and that's when language like I snapped or I freaked out like comes up because I do get frustrated with myself because it has been thirty years and I want so badly to enjoy the world the way everyone else does.
For keep in mind, you say it's been thirty years, I'd argue it's been well, you wrote that last up in twenty eighteen, it's been five years. It's been six years. And it continues right, people continue to talk about it. You could turn on the TV and see actors and performers that have said things that really, you know, put you on edge, in validated you. So it's not just thirty years ago. It could be as recently as yesterday, no, like.
Even today, Like right before we started talking, I got a message from somebody about Barbie movie that was directed by Greta and they were like, what was her stance on all of that? And I was just like, Okay, well I'm going to bring you up to speed with what I know about greta kerwig, Like you know, it pops up unexpectedly in my life from time to time, and thankfully I've gotten from a place that doesn't tank
me for three weeks anymore. I'm happy to say that it'll make me uncomfortable for maybe ten minutes now, but it doesn't disrupt my life the way it used to, which speaks to progress, which makes me feel very encouraged that five years from now I might feel even better.
I would be willing to bet a lot that you will be feeling better because that progress of things not throwing you off for three weeks is huge progress. And being aware that that's happening and that some of those dark nights of the soul that will come up, that's just sort of the that's the path forward, and in a way saying Okay, this is what it is supposed to be. It's a really really big deal. Standing strongly in your role as a mother, as a wife, in
all these other supportive relationships you have. Supportive relationships are so important, but right I mean, I've imagine they've been huge for you.
Yeah. Now, I would not be where I am without my husband, without my daughter, without my mom, without my friends. I'm very lucky that I have this support network that is just so here for me, and it's never a burden, it's never a hardship. I don't feel like I'm a negative force in the people that I loves lives. I'm just incredibly, incredibly lucky.
You also made that happen. It's not just luck. I think it's so wonderful to hear you do have a happy marriage. I think many people feel when they've endured trauma that they won't have the opportunity to craft a successful adult intimate close relationship. That's always the fear that I can't do this. I've been too harmed and you've done that.
I read a real keeper, and I managed to keep him. That's amazing to I mean, he actually did break up with me once, very early on. It was interesting because it was because early on in our relationship I expressed a disinterest in sex basically, and he was like, why is that And I was like, well, I'm you know, I told him the whole story and this is just a thing that you're never going to change. And to my surprise, he said, I can't accept that. I was
a bit bowled over by that. Because other relationships I had just like, oh, that's really sad, but you know, like whatever, Like, as long as you'll have sex with me, we'll figure it out, you know. But he didn't want that. He wanted a relationship with a whole person, which which struck me. It just completely caught me off guard. And he said, if this isn't something that you're willing to work on and heal from, then I don't see any future between us. And I really liked this guy, but
I was also very angry. So I let him break up with me, and then three hours later I called him back and I was like, Okay, I've calmed down a little bit, and I think you may have had a point, and I'm willing to examine this a little bit more thoughtfully if it means we can be together.
It's a great story, and it's also the reminder that in a healthy adult relationship, a healthy relationship of any kind, that each of you, especially when it's two adults, each of you are the protector of the other one's vulnerabilities. He learned what was vulnerable in you, and I'm sure you've learned what's vulnerable in him. In an unhealthy relationship, those vulnerabilities are exploited or weaponized. In a healthy relationship,
we protect them. It's almost as though we hold their hand as a limp through something.
It's true, and seeing him, seeing the way he stepped up, he's become my fiercest advocate and protector. It's changed everything for me because even just knowing that that is possible, let alone for me, I never imagined, Especially around the time that I met him, when I was very much struggling with my trauma and my sexuality, it was very difficult for me to sort of parse that language and understand at the root of it what he wanted was
for me to be okay. He saw that the way I was maneuvering around my trauma was not healthy, and he called me out. And he continues to call me out, which is good for me. He never lets me become complacent in a space of negative trauma. He's always there to be like, Okay, let's work through it.
You've just given a profound lesson to all survivors and partners of survivors, because I think sometimes partners of survivors don't always know how to help their partner navigate trauma. You know, when am I stepping in too much, too little, But it's to see that potential for growth in your partner, to keep them safe safe. I'm here, I'm going to keep you safe. It's almost like teaching a child to jump into the deep end of the pool. I'm not going to let anything happen to you, and I'm right
here and I'm going to catch you. But you've got to jump in, and that's really what he was giving you. I'm so happy, so so happy for you and Dylan. What are your relationships like with your family of origin. Do you still feel connected in that space? It sounds like you're still close to your mom. And how are they all doing.
They're good, and I've had to sort of accept whatever distance they want from me. I have to make space for their trauma as well. I love them all to the moon and back. I mean, I would take a bullet for any one of them. I just hope that they're happy in doing well, even the ones I don't speak to as regularly. There's a lot of us, so obviously you have some of us. We are in better contact than others. They're very much my family.
We talked about your daughter at the beginning. Do you think you will speak with her about your experience at some point eventually.
Event I've thought long and hard about how I want to communicate this to her, and obviously there have been sort of like many conversations that have arisen because my daughter asked at one point, where is your dad? Why don't I talk to my grandpa? And that was uncomfortable. I gave her a bit of a non answer, just that he's not around, that I don't talk to him, and that you're never going to talk to him either,
And she's been very accepting of that so far. But I understand that she's going to have questions in the long run, and I want to keep that channel of care communication open with her that I don't want her to feel like there's anything that she can't ask me. I've sort of internalized that as there will be a moment and I'll know when that is when that discussion
will happen. And I want it to happen, because, yes, it's important for me that she does understand what I've been through and how that's shaped me, and to have her understand that it's important to me. But I don't want it to be in any way damaging to her when that discussion does happen. So I'm just sort of keeping an ear out, keeping an eye out, and answering little questions here and when they come up.
Oh absolutely, it will evolve, it will unfold, you know, turn like the pages of a book. She will get older. You will also have come further in your process of healing, and you've given her the essential tool that one day when she does talk to you about it. You're giving that to her now, which is a secure attachment, a safe space, a place where she can fully be herself, where she doesn't feel ever judged, where she all feels
safe and seen. It's the single greatest gift that any parent can give their child, which is a sense of safety in the world and a sense of being seen and recognized and loved unconditionally. And so you're giving her all of that. You have gone to this process of going from an experiencer to a coper to a survivor. I would say, now, a thriver, you really are. I mean, you're doing remarkable things. What has been most useful for you in this process?
Gosh, I mean, it's been the collective experience of having the support network, finding a good therapist, finding medication that
works for me. It's been trying to get out of my comfort zone a little bit every now and then, even if it's just to, you know, pick my daughter up from school, which is something that I have anxiety about, being gentle with myself when I can self care, self care, self care, and I mean the chances when I have been able to talk about it, to feel seen and validated and listen to that's been remarkable as well, people who have reached out to me to let me know
that I've had some sort of impact. It's humbling and it's also incredibly healing to know that I'm not alone out there.
I'm glad you said that, because it's not going to ever be one thing. It is the all of it, and I'm glad you laid it out in the way you did, because I think anyone going through any form of healing from trauma, particularly early life betrayal trauma, has to understand that there is no one thing, that it is all of it. It's a daily process. There'll be some days where you are five steps forward and then
though six steps back. That's the nature of it, and it's to be gentle with yourself every day and in the macro, you are stepping forward like you are going forward. And I do particularly appreciate the one thing you had said which is so important to healing, which is sometimes getting out of your comfort zone because you've created safe spaces.
Getting out of the comfort zone. It's not always easy for people who are surviving trauma, but that every so often doing that, you recognize that you build up some new sort of new muscles by doing that.
So I think, yeah, and I'm not saying, you know, like go bungee jumping immediately, Like it's little things done when you feel comfortable. I feel like if there's something that like you're really hitting a wall up against, maybe don't do that just yet. But things like picking up my daughter from school, or running an errand to CBS or you know, like something small like that. It helps give me a little nudge to say, like you can do that. You did it, and you were safe, and
you accomplished everything you need to accomplish. Yeahhi, even if it's just getting your daughter from point A to point B, that's that's a thing you did.
Good job, exactly, good job, because don't underestimate Sometimes it is those trips to the pharmacy or the grocery store, the school pickup, that you start building this sense of efficacy like Okay, I did it. I could try that again.
As being appropriately congratulatory of yourself, I think is you know, like get yourself some chocolate for that.
I'm done with that ultimate reward, so it's yes. Oh my gosh.
It's just been fascinating to hear your thoughts on all of this because I often wonder what would an expert think about like X, Y and Z. It's been really fascinating to have that put into context for me, especially you know, the letters and behaviors, and also the reminder to speak more gently to myself.
It's been an absolute pleasure. Healing from any form of betrayal trauma is a very very difficult experience to have to do that when it's a story in the public eye, when there were institutional betrayals happening at the same time, when all of that was happening, it can feel almost impossible.
And really, what you've shared with us is that it's not there were many bumps in the road, This was not an easy process, that it's still a work in progress, but that you you're in an amazing, really remarkable, beautiful place. Your voice is beautiful and strong, and the way you show up and to do that while you're being invalidated
by the world. I cannot think of many things harder to do from my seat as a psychologist and hearing this will help so many people who have had different forms of betrayal trauma, experience different kinds of toxic relationships and are seeing that it is a process. Yours was a really like a beautiful revelation on how this process can unfold. So again, I can't thank you enough, Dylan.
Thank you so much, Thank you for saying so.
Here are my takeaways from my conversation with Dylan in our first takeaway. Healing from betrayal and trauma is also about accepting uncomfortable feelings. Many trauma survivors will find themselves facing chronic self doubt and shame, and even times when, as Dylan shared, she would feel both joyous and jealous when witnessing the family she had created and the healthy relationship between child and father within that family. That is normal,
but it can also be unsettling. Uncomfortable feelings are part of this process of healing and learning to let them flow. Through us without judging them and accepting that this is what healing and integration are about is a part of healing. For this next takeaway, Dylan talks about the idea of the perfect survivor, whom she frames as a trauma victim who shows up with the right kind of evidence and
right story so they are believed right away. In a case like hers, where people did not want to believe this about an iconic figure, she was subjected to assessment and interrogation and processes that were re traumatizing, and she had the experience that she was doing something wrong because they kept making her talk about it again and again. Too often we put the onus of the trauma on the survivor, not the perpetrator, and especially when this happens
to a child, it can do harm. In our next takeaway, Dylan makes an interesting contrast between surviving, coping, and thriving, and it's an important distinction because it can sometimes create an unclear picture. She recognized that she had been coping, getting through the days, getting things done, jumping through the hoops of life, but was sort of stuck. And because she was getting through the days, it may have looked
like she was doing just fine. In twenty fourteen, when she felt her strong response to the announcement at the Golden Globes, she recognized that she had been coping, but that there was still a lot of work to do towards healing and thriving, which is not just about getting through the days, but about actual healing and growth. For this next takeaway, language matters for trauma survivors. At times, she would characterize her reactions as having snapped or freaking out.
This self pathologizing is not unusual in people who have not only endured trauma and are reacting to emotionally triggering situations, but something we see in survivors of narcissistic and antagonistic relationships. Her reactions at those times to situations that brought up feelings related to the original trauma were expectable and should have been a call for her to be kind and
gentle with herself. In this next takeaway, trauma steals safety and betrayal trauma steals relational safety, leaving a person with a lifelong process of slowly trying to build and ultimately create and foster secure attachments. In Dylan's life, she has created significant safe attachments her husband, her child, other family friends. Her story is a reminder that in a healthy, loving, and securely attached relationship, we protect the vulnerabilities of the
other person and never exploit them. Trauma or betrayal don't steal that capacity, and the work is to create those connections and maintain them every day. And for our last takeaway, Dylan shared what worked for her healing. A strong support network, therapy, medication, sometimes stepping out of her comfort zone, and self care. All of those have been shown to be important tools
in the life long work of healing from trauma. It's never just one thing that helps people in the process of healing and growth.