Name: Trauma Expert Tim Fletcher | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #495
Uploaded: 2024-04-16T15:00:13.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Trauma Expert Tim Fletcher | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #495' from Theo Von on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-04-16. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Trauma Expert Tim Fletcher | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #495' from Theo Von on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-04-16. Transcript available.

Trauma Expert Tim Fletcher | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #495

i have some tour dates to tell you about i'll be in vancouver bc on september
14th st louis
missouri on april 19th halifax nova scotia on august 11th get all your tickets
at theovon.com
t-o-u-r and if tickets are too expensive don't get them hold out don't let
these reapers get at
you we'll come back around sometime um love you guys and thank you for the
support today's guest
is a speaker a counselor and a researcher in the world of complex trauma uh he
has some amazing
videos on youtube i really love how he discusses this world and and his
presentation of it i'm
grateful to spend time with him today via windsor canada he is here with us
today's guest is mr tim
fletcher
tim fletcher thanks for joining me man my pleasure i've seen a lot of your uh
videos on youtube and
a lot of it really resonates with me about uh trauma uh childhood trauma um
just a lot of things in that vein i mean just you have so many wonderful videos
out there and i i'm
just thankful you're here today to talk with us about it um i know we want to
talk about trauma today
and that sort of thing but it's also like a buzzword i feel like people use a
lot and i don't want this to
be um like a thing where we're just creating victims or you know what i'm
saying kind of yep
yeah i think lots in the last 10 years is trauma has kind of come on the radar
now everybody's talking
about everybody's trauma informed and yet people really don't understand it a
whole lot but a lot of
the responses been no i got somebody to blame right and it's like no we can
explain now a lot of your
behavior but you got to now take responsibility to change that yeah that's what
yeah and i don't
want to create a lot of victims today like that's another part and i'm this isn't
a judgment against
anybody i'm just this is even for myself i've had a lot of problems i'll get
trapped in self-pity
sometimes so i just but like you're saying this is a great place for
information and um how do we go
about like not creating victims right so to me what trauma is is pain happens
to every child
but a child in a healthy home is able to get tools and support and they can
resolve and grow through that
that so it's not trauma it's pain that gets turned into growth but what happens
to a child that can't
resolve it nobody's supporting them nobody's giving them tools to handle it it
turns into trauma they're
a victim they they're legitimate victim a helpless victim who can't fix the
problem and so they are
legitimate victims the problem is is that they still feel like a victim as an
adult even though they're
not a victim now they now have tools and support and that's one of the hardest
transitions is to move from
i was a legitimate victim but now i gotta take responsibility because i can't
yeah and some
don't want to do that because they like staying a victim because then i don't
have to be responsible
people feel so sorry for me i can blame somebody i don't have to grow up yeah
it's fascinating yeah
let's talk about trauma let's talk about complex trauma so what is it how would
we say what it is
so trauma is is so the event happens on the outside but i can't handle it it's
too painful it's too scary
for me so it creates this fear and stress that i don't have the tools to handle
okay and so as a
result of that since i can't fix it and resolve it it then wounds me on the
inside and that's the trauma
is what takes place on the inside what makes why we call it complex trauma so
it's really mathematical
terms so there's simple math and there's complex math so simple is one number
complex is more than one
so simple trauma is a one event trauma a car accident a rape whatever complex
is ongoing danger so a
child's in a situation where they're in ongoing danger so there's their stress
system is constantly
activated like do i fight flight what do i do here i gotta get out of here i
can't handle this i can't
handle this so that when a child lives in that environment all all the time
where they're constantly
activated to fight flight but if they're too little to fight or flight then
they eventually go oh i'm
shutting her down freeze i can't handle this so they they go into this dissociative
um let's go into an
internal world to protect ourself and create a fantasy world because it's safe
there um and so complex
trauma is comes out of basically abuse or neglect so the two extreme ends of
the spectrum so the abuse we
can easily imagine that's physical abuse emotional abuse that's harsh
environment violence etc
but a lot of complex trauma comes out of neglect and that's the other end of
the spectrum where
all the physical needs of the child were met but their emotional needs were
yeah so the abuse trauma
something happens to you neglect trauma something didn't happen to you that
should have happened yeah
and it's hard to find out those the neglect trauma sometimes it's hard to
locate some of it
because it's like almost feeling around for ghosts is what it feels like
exactly yeah and so that
that's where we spend a lot of time so what we've done with it is that we've
broken down kind of the
emotional needs that a child has so we have a need to be a child needs to be
authentic and to connect
with safe people and really be able to be vulnerable and open up and to be
totally accepted for who they
are have somebody who totally gets them and hears them and sees them and values
them and nurtures them
those are all emotional needs but if a child grows up in a home where i'm too
busy for you or smarten up
get over it toughen up nobody's getting them nobody's hearing them or why can't
you be like your brother etc
all of that is emotional trauma that's hurting the child emotionally so the
child's not
feeling safe to be them so the child then has to adapt in order to try to
protect itself so i got to
be tougher i can't be so sensitive i got to wear this mask of being outgoing
etc um but that's also
how i'm going to try to get my needs met so maybe if i'm different then dad
will give me more attention
then mom won't be so angry at me all the time so they're adapting adapting
trying to get their needs
met trying to keep safe and they don't even know who they are a lot of times
and that's what happens
they don't even really develop they don't have a clue who they are after a
while because they're so
busy trying to be something they're not to get acceptance and love because they
know if they're
authentic so in a healthy situation of you're authentic you connect in your
love in complex
trauma if you're authentic you get rejected and so then you'll yeah then you
pull that authenticity
back in especially if you're really young you don't even know you're still not
learning so much about
yourself or evolving who even knows what happens to when you uh redirect that
river that's supposed to
be normal it just becomes a it's just damn floods everything and exactly it can
get some real sewage
going on so what happens when the child is neglected is the child basically
thinks everything it must be
their fault so the reason dad's too busy must be because i'm not good enough
reason mom's angry is
i'm not good enough so they they begin to develop this core self-identity that
something's wrong with
me i'm not good enough so i have to change and be somebody else in order to get
acceptance and love
why does a child develop why does a child because the the world revolves around
them when they're a
child they only know themselves and so they have no one else to blame if
something is wrong in the
world so so we refer to it so the child brain is basically what's developed as
the limbic brain
which is the emotional center so the cortex hasn't developed yet and so it's
called egocentric thinking
so everything they see through their eyes that affects them they caused it
everything is related to them
somehow so if dad's too busy or mom and dad get a divorce i must have done
something wrong it must be
my fault um if i get sexually abused i must have brought it on so everything is
an egocentric way of
thinking i see because they're really the only player on the court kind of
exactly exactly and so then what
happens though with that is they make adjustments hoping to get love and
acceptance and get their needs met and
stay safe but something way back here now goes you're phony so they get the imposter
syndrome which says
you're getting love and acceptance but if they knew the real you they wouldn't
be giving you that love
and acceptance because you're an imposter so the solution hasn't fixed the
problem it's still unresolved so
that's where complex trauma then it's still not fixed so i'm still in fight or
flight um so i got to come
up with a new persona i got to come up with a new mechanism exactly to try and
get my needs met but i
never can find a solution that totally satisfies so it's more than one trauma
that happens to a child
yeah right and they don't have somebody there to help them process it can can
children have different
levels of trauma or no trauma if they have somebody there to help them process
it right
so there's degrees of trauma some very severe to very mild um and and so the
latest studies and gabber
mate in his book um the myth of normal is um published them disabled 75 americans
have this
subtle complex trauma and basically it's a child that so if a child is always
being made teased by
parents or ignored by parents dad's always busy dad's in this chair next to him
but he's always watching tv
so he's physically there but he's not there emotionally the child just doesn't
feel loved
and accepted so they they don't feel safe they don't feel they can totally
relax they have to somehow
earn that connection earn that love and so a child has this inner trauma taking
place that's happening
that's so subtle but it's powerful and it's really major upheaval internally
that's taking place inside
the child it's forming how they're going to behave well exactly so now they're
going to start these
behaviors to try to get attention to try to get connection but is some of that
natural too yeah
because a child and that's it's built off very natural things so the child has
a natural personality so
they can be like naturally funny but then they can take that to just i got to
be funny all the time
they can be naturally very child every child wants to please and love but now i'm
going to be a hero i'm
going to get straight a's i'm going to do all the chores i'm going to be a workaholic
because that's
how i'll get validation and acceptance got it so you were just talking about um
isn't some of that natural
for a child so that so that being wanting to help with the chores that's a
wonderful instinct that a
child has but now they're going to turn that into a maladaptation so now i'm
going to be a people
pleaser so i gotta or i'm going to be a perfectionist everything's got to be
perfect or going to please
never say no to anybody just but then i'm going to burn myself out i'm never
and i'm going to kill
myself so that adaptation you don't mean kill you just mean burn yourself out
yeah okay um that adaptation
pleasing people and all of that has become a maladaptation it's now hurting me
i see so a lot
of children with complex trauma have maladaptations they all do they all do
yeah okay yeah and what are
some symptoms of complex trauma that you can see in people so very common ones
is that they don't know
who they are because they've had to wear masks all their life and they become
people pleasers most have
anger issues most have authority issues because all the authorities of their
life have not been healthy
most have some control manipulation issues that are part of that lot have lying
issues they lie when it
would just as be is just as easy to tell the truth but lying is what they had
to do to kind of stay safe
because truth got them in trouble there's a fear of failure a fear of change a
fear even of success
because it's like oh everything's going too good the other shoe's going to drop
something bad's going
to happe