sSara (00:05)

Empowered people make informed decisions that lead to living a life without regret. This is Sara Khaki and Shawna Woods from Atlanta Divorce Law Group. And this is the Happily Ever After Divorce Podcast. Welcome to the Happily Ever After Divorce Podcast. I’m attorney Sara Khaki with Atlanta Divorce Law Group, and I’m joined by our very own managing partner Shawna Woods. Today’s episode, we are talking about replaying your childhood trauma in your relationship.

sSara (00:34)

Shawna and I recently read a book that sparked this for you. Tell us a little bit about that.

sShawna (00:39)

So I’m actually listening to a book, and I find the title a little condescending. I’m not going to lie. But once I got into it, I found it very poignant. And there was a lot of points in there that hit on not just for me, but for our clients. And the book is called How to Be an Adult in Relationships. Love that title. Right. And it’s by David Rico, R-I-C-H-O. And one of the things and one of the themes that he talks about is the fact that we do replay.

Our initial love bonds in our relationships as adults. For example, if you grow up with parents who are absentee, right? They’re both working, perhaps one has a mental health issue or an addiction issue, but they are absentee, they are not there for you, right? A lot of times what’s gonna happen in your adult relationships is though you think you are looking for something that is not that.

Right you think you’re looking for someone who’s going to be there consistently what you typically will end up with is someone who’s absentee in some way because that’s what feels comfortable for you to love and you are uncomfortable with someone showing you consistent constant affection letting you know that there be there for you very emotionally there for you.

That is uncomfortable for you that feels false to you because that is not the quote unquote love that you were taught as a child. So you may be seeking somebody who is a workaholic. You may be seeking somebody who you don’t even know this that has addiction issues. Right. Because that’s your comfort zone. That’s where you go to be loved.

sSara (02:30)

So first breakdown for me in the book or you personally, when you think of the word trauma, childhood trauma, what are you thinking? Cause I have to tell you, I think that right now is an overused term. It’s like all the other words that used to have some meaning, but they might’ve been watered down a little bit. Like, you know, the word triggered, right? Everybody’s triggered these days. Whereas before I used to have an actual like meaning to that word. So is childhood trauma,

A just way a child put some meaning towards something that they didn’t understand? Or is it actually like a massive incident that happened in their life?

sShawna (03:13)

Right, so this is a fantastic question because when we think of trauma we start, okay, how do we define this? Have you ever heard of the five aces? No. Okay, so there was a book and I will have to go back and get the research, maybe we can get this in. And it actually started out by a physician who was trying to figure out why a certain group of people were having consensitive things like diabetes or showing up with.

Same consistent health concerns. So they developed, they traced it all the way back to this group of people’s childhood and they have these five ACEs. And if you have high ACEs, that means you had a lot of trauma. Okay. Okay. And I don’t remember all five of them off the top of my head, but one of the ACEs are, were your parents divorced? Did you have a parent with a mental health issue or a drug addiction? Okay. Did you have a death of someone close to you as a child? Did you, were you?

Sexually or physically abuse right they identify what trauma is okay so this isn’t just gosh i was picked on one time in first grade right therefore i’m never going to find the love of my life you know that’s not what we’re talking about we’re talking about significant things that happen into your life that formed

Your sense of security and love because even though was probably an insecure love, that’s what it looked like to you. That’s what it felt like to you. And so anything else, unless you have done extensive therapy, anything else is going to feel foreign. And you’re probably not even recognizing these patterns in yourself because you’re seeking the other.

Right? Right. So for instance, if you had a parent who suffered from a mental health disorder, then you’re like, absolutely hands down not I’m not dating anybody with a mental health disorder. But how did that look like for you as a child? Right. Was it absenteeism? So now do you only date people who live out of state?

Do you only feel loved when they, can only have their attention for a specified amount of time, right? So it’s those types of things that we’re talking about. We are talking about trauma that has formed an idea in your head about what love looks like and feels like to you.

sSara (05:32)

Okay.

With that being clear, one of the really biological instinctual things every child has, and this is completely just handed down by biology, is a child has a need to feel connected to their parents because that’s survival. It’s a survival instinct of mom or dad, my caretaker making eye contact for me when I cry.

I can get them, get their attention. If I’m hungry, I get their attention. If I’m meat cleaning, I get their attention. This is a survival skill that are we connecting. And there is a fear of abandonment that comes with that because if caretaker abandons me, mom or dad abandons me, I will not survive. I will die. So we have an animal-like instinct to…

Need connection and an animal like fear of being abandoned. So I wonder if some of this trauma plays in in childhood when you actually that fear at some point manifested itself of am I about to be abandoned? And because something happened around you as a child that you could not understand. So you had to attach some meaning to it to overcome

The survival need of connection or abandonment and either meant that maybe if mom and dad were fighting in the house and were being really really loud you had to find a certain way to be so you didn’t feel that you’re going to be abandoned with mom or dad leave the house or dad leaves the house or mom leaves the house or maybe there’s a very insidious way that you your mom would

Look at you or leave you if you cried or you got angry and mom would leave the room and not be around for it and it might have signaled something to that young child that whoa, when I do that, if I show anger, I’m going to be abandoned. And this is like, I’m such a subconscious level that to your phrase of how you define what trauma is, it might’ve not been like, you know, something as horrifying as, you know,

Going through a war or being a victim of sexual abuse. But at a young age, there was something that kicked into gear, the survival instincts. And as a young age, you overcame that trauma of I’m about to be abandoned with some sort of a survival way of being. And your subconscious mind program that in. So maybe you learn to always be nice. Maybe you learn that you can never show anger.

Maybe you will learn that you have to always be an overachiever or maybe you took on the role of I have to be the peacekeeper between mom and dad, right? Something that is now perhaps showing up in your adult relationship that doesn’t belong here, but you’ve carried it on as a child, it was one of your survival mechanisms.

sShawna (08:55)

And a lot of times, even with people who have had extensive therapy, things manifest themselves in different ways. So to your point, there was a trigger put in you. There was a button installed in you. So early on, you have zero memory of this. And to your parents, it was Tuesday. To you, it was a fundamental thing. They formed how you are in this world.

And until you take a step back and take a look at this, you’re not going to be able to recognize the old patterns in your own life. Think that’s how a lot of people end up with people they’re in narcissistic, abusive relationships with. What is it about that person that you found comforting?

Right was it the stability was it the love bombing rate where you did you not receive sufficient attention and love when you were a child. Or do you have to be that person who your value what you feel your value to the family is is accomplishments and if you’re not accomplishing some right then you have no value to the family you’re no longer seen in the family.

And simply acknowledging these things is a key component in changing your own patterns. Because once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

sSara (10:23)

No, it’s it’s and then you become so curious about it, hopefully, hopefully, and I think that’s the difference again, between functioning adult humans who want to learn about themselves and consistently work on themselves to be better humans and people that leave a stronger impact on their loved ones, versus those that are just, I don’t want to say the word narcissist, but that is really

The lack of wanting to take self responsibility for how you show up is one of the key components of what makes somebody a narcissist. But what you said is so interesting about the deserting and being worthy. That is such a common one that we see. I definitely detected that one in myself too, is like one of the ways that I had, you know, I’ve never went back and said, okay, like this is specifically where it comes from, but.

I’ll tell you, I learned a lot in my own relationship about how I showed up by watching how my parents showed up. My mom definitely had a need to show her value and her worthiness. And I don’t know where, what, from what childhood experience or incident or trauma that comes from. But I learned that. And sometimes these childhood traumas that affect your relationship might not even have been your own childhood trauma. It might have been, it might’ve been legacy, right?

Like you see this a lot from people who have certain patterns and behaviors that come from their grandparents that were survivors of World War Two or grandparents that made it through the Great Depression, right? And this just got passed on and passed on. But for me, I definitely had a value system for a long time that I have to, when I come home from work, I need to look like I’ve worked and look like exhausted from work, right? Because my mom,

Made sure that nobody in the household ever outworked her. That’s how she showed her worth and her value. And until I dug deep into that, I realized that, wow, that’s how she got sick, right? And that’s how we didn’t have a lot of playing time growing up because she was always just trying to provide, provide, provide and nurture, provide and nurture. And so I was playing that role, not even realizing where it came from.

And I don’t know where my mom got it from. Who knows how many generations that goes back. But here’s what’s interesting, Shawna, is that you talk to all my cousins and relatives on my mom’s side, all my mom’s siblings, they have that, all five of them. They’re going to be the hardest worker in the entire family. They all come home being willing to have slave for their family. And when they talk about their father and their mother, my grandparents,

They described them as, my god, they were the hardest workers. They did everything for us. They sacrificed for ourselves. So this is generational. And I don’t know how far back it goes, but I do know that I had my grandparents lost their parents at a very, very young age. So something there must have happened that was traumatizing that shifted the story, the family story of

How you provide for your spouse and how you provide for your children. And it got handed all the way down to me till I did a lot of personal work and realized this is not to the benefit of my children or my spouse.

sShawna (13:52)

That’s it. That’s it that you hit on right there. You’re right. A lot of this is generational. Even the things that we experience of our children, we are raised by parents who didn’t have the tools and didn’t have any way of knowing any different. You just talked about tracing it back to your great-grandparents who died at a very young age, and therefore the children had to become extremely hard workers. This is a

Very common thing that you see across the board, generational trauma. You do see this in a racial divide as well. And I’ve heard this a lot, why some people are afraid of dogs, because they never had an experience with a dog. They never had a bad experience with a dog. But even just walking by a dog or a fenced yard with a dog is when they’re with their parents, when they were children, and they’re feeling their parents’ fear.

Right? That installed the fear to them. And then they installed it into their children because they didn’t even understand why their parents were afraid. They just knew to be afraid. Right? That’s how easy it happens. It’s so insidious. It’s so small and minute. You don’t even know you’re doing it. So acknowledging it is not just, I need to overcome this. So I’m better in relationships. I need to come over this so that

sSara (14:56)

It’s so insidious.

sShawna (15:12)

My children don’t have to overcome this.

sSara (15:15)

As simple as holding your child’s arm a little tighter when a dog walked by. Right. And that could have been enough.

sShawna (15:20)

And that was it. So acknowledging the things, right, that have formed us. And it doesn’t mean everything that formed us was bad. You diamonds are made under very tight pressure. And I am a very outspoken person that there was a lot of trauma in my early childhood. I love who I am. I love what made me become.

So I can’t sit here and say, I wish that never happened. What I can do is sometimes I even laugh at it. I’m like, I am doing this as a direct result of x, y, z PDQ. And even recognize it kind of makes me chuckle. I’m like, I am following a mathematical pattern towards relationships rather than stepping back out and saying, that’s not my problem.

sSara (16:15)

I mean, I think ultimately, and I’ve never figured out the nature versus nurture on this, but it is the bottom line of there’s two types of people on how they attach meaning to what they overcame or didn’t overcome as a child. And there’s some that do exactly what you said. And they say, this is where I got my strength from. This is where I got my resilience from. This is where I got my creativity and, you know, laundry list of things from my resourcefulness.

And then there are those that will say, this is the excuse for all my, you know, and all my poor ways of being. And I think at the end of the day, I don’t know if it is a choice or not. I, I, this is a common conversation. I, Sham, I like to have at home is that nature versus nurture, how you attach meaning to things. And we can probably do a whole nother podcast episode on that.

sShawna (16:49)

For behavior.

Sure we could do a full podcast episode on that. But you’re right at the end of it, even if it’s nature or nurture, whatever it is, if you find yourself in relationships that don’t work, and it’s a pattern in the same kind of relationship, strongly encourage you a to spend some time alone be some spend some time in therapy. But one of the was a beautiful

The way he phrased it, I’m gonna try to rephrase it just as poignant. If you find yourself looking for relationships as if you were walking through a desert and drinking the mirage because you’re not satisfied with the Oasis, you have some work to do.

sSara (17:57)

That’s beautiful, Shada. I think we should end it there. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Happily Ever After Divorce Podcast. If you’d to learn more, go to elanadivorceloggroup.com forward slash resources.