61: Healing from Dissociation and the Returning of Memories
Disassociation can sound scary and overwhelming, but is actually much more common than we think. Disassociation is a trauma response and can become a patterned response to stress and overwhelm, and often looks like disengaging and disconnecting from the present moment.
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In this episode I talk about what disassociation is, why it’s nothing to be afraid of, and how to begin healing. I discuss my own process with disassociation and the returning of traumatic memories. I also answer a listener question from someone who is moving through the process of having memories return and wants advice if they should tell their partner or continue to keep this a secret.
Book Recommendation 📚
How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self by Dr. Nicole LePera
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk
Dissociation Made Simple: A Stigma-Free Guide to Embracing Your Dissociative Mind and Navigating Daily Life by Jamie Marich PHD (I haven’t read yet, but have heard good things!)
Lifting Heavy Things: Healing Trauma One Rep at a Time by Laura Khoudari (I haven’t read yet, but have heard good things!)
More on Dissociation 📑
Timestamps ⏱️
Introduction - 0:20
Teaching - 2:45
Listener Question 1 - 17:30
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This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool called Otter. Please forgive any typos or errors.
Amanda Durocher 0:01
Welcome to New View Advice. I'm your host, Amanda Durocher. And I invite you to join me here each week as I offer advice on how to move through whatever problem or trauma is holding you back from living life to the fullest. Let's get started.
Amanda Durocher [Introduction} 0:16
Hi, beautiful soul. My name is Amanda Durocher. And this is New View Advice. If you're new here, this is a healing centered advice podcast. And what that means is that it is my intention to offer you guidance on the healing journey. I don't believe I have all the answers you seek. I believe you have all the answers, you just may need a new view and a little help along the way. Thank you for joining me for today's episode. Today we are discussing disassociation and the returning of memories. I wanted to discuss this topic because I think this association gets a bad rap. I think that it's actually quite common. So today we're going to talk about what disassociation is, why it happens how to heal, and also stressing throughout this entire episode that there is absolutely nothing wrong with you, if you find you have disassociated, or if you find that memories are returning, this is something that I actually think happens to a lot of people. So I wanted to discuss this association today. And I know disassociation can be a scary word. And sometimes when you Google it, the Internet can be a scary place. And it can make it sound like a very intense disorder. But really, I think a lot of people disassociate from their lives. And we'll talk about that today in I know for me healing from disassociation and the process of returning memories. So if you're new here for me, in my mid 20s, I had the memories come back at being sexually assaulted as a child. And then throughout that process, I also remembered that I was sexually assaulted in my teens as well. And so that was a tough process to move through especially because at the time, I couldn't find much information about disassociation. And I felt like I was crazy. And when I tried to talk about it with other people, they thought I was crazy, too, which was not helpful for the process. And a lot of people had trouble believing that I could forget this happened. But starting this podcast, and from reading books, I know that this is a very common thing that actually happens. It's a trauma response, which we'll talk more about today. And I've worked with many one on one clients who have struggled with this process, and who resonate with my work because they have gone through this process of quote unquote, forgetting I don't ever know if that's the right word, forgetting what happened, I don't think we actually really forget, I think it's a bodily response disassociating but for lack of a better word, forgetting and then re remembering what we've experienced throughout our lives. So I hope that makes sense. Today I'm going to talk a bit about disassociation. And again, why it's not a bad thing, and why there's nothing wrong with you if this is something you're healing. And I'm also going to answer a listener question from somebody who is currently experiencing the process of memories returning. So let's jump on in.
Amanda Durocher [Teaching] 2:51
I wanted to start this episode by talking a bit about dissociation because I think that it can be an intimidating word. I know that when I discovered what it disassociation was I actually thought it was very healing. And I was like, Oh my gosh, there's a word for what I'm dealing with. There's a reason behind what I'm experiencing. But I know from working with one on one clients that it can be really scary and it can seem like a very intense word. And so one, I want you to pick the words always that work best for you. So maybe you want to say my memories are returning and you don't want to use the word disassociation. Maybe you want to use the word disassociation, maybe it feels empowering for you. I think that when we take on words, and these quote unquote diagnoses, we want them to be empowering for us not disempowering. So I think a lot of times it can be helpful to say like, I have disassociated, rather than I am disassociation, something like that, because I have found throughout my own journey, it's important to not overly identify with labels. They're really there to help you along the healing journey, and to give you guideposts for how to heal. I know that on my own journey, it has helped to separate myself from some of these really difficult feelings such as anxiety and depression. I no longer identify as being anxious, I never say I am anxious or I am depressed. I say I have anxiety I have depression, it helps to create that distance and to understand that these feelings will pass when we use the phrase I am it's a very powerful phrase. And it's a way that we tell ourselves who we are. So I find it really important to be careful with the words we use the phrase I am with and to start creating different language for identifying the processes we're moving through. Another example I like to use is that I am sober. I've been sober for two and a half years. And I never say I am an alcoholic. The word alcoholic didn't work for me. It didn't feel good for me. So I will say I had a drinking problem. I have a bad relationship with alcohol. But I've never taken on the label of alcoholic but for someone else saying I am an alcoholic could feel really empowering. So again, it's always about what feels good for you. And what label for you feels empowering. We always want to be empowered by the words we choose not disempowered. So I just wanted to give that up front in case you listen to this episode and you think, do I disassociate, it's not a scary thing. It's not meant to scare you or to feel bad. It's meant to empower you moving forward. So what is disassociation? disassociation is a disconnection from yourself. It's a disconnection from your body. It's a disconnection from your emotions is a disconnection from your thoughts. But it's a separating from the experience. So many people describe disassociation feeling like checking out, it can be numbing to your feelings, but it's disconnecting from yourself and disassociation can cause memory issues, because we are disconnecting from the present moment. And so disassociation can look different for so many people. So for me, when I talk about disassociation a lot, I'm talking about how I had very traumatic incidences in my childhood that I disassociated from, and it created a disconnection from myself that I just associated really, from so much of my life, I disconnected from so much of my life. And for me, there were traumatic root causes to this, which were sexual assault and rape in my life. But this association doesn't need to have a big trauma in order to happen, it really starts to happen when we don't feel safe, or when we feel overwhelmed. So disassociation is a nervous system response when we go into a very high stress situation. So it can be caused by so many different things. It can be caused by repeated trauma, it can be caused by abuse, it can be caused by feeling unsafe in our home environment, feeling unsafe at school feeling unsafe at work. And what happens is, when we start to disassociate, we start to disconnect from ourselves, we start to check out, it can become a pattern response to stress. So it can feel easier for us when we don't have tools to cope with the present moment to check out and leave instead of becoming overwhelmed by our feelings, our thoughts, or the trauma that's living in our bodies. And so in the book, how to do the work by Dr. Nicola para, she talks about how she doesn't have any memories of her childhood, and how this was because she disassociated from her childhood, because she never felt safe. So she talks about how she didn't have an experience like sexual assault or rape. Instead, it was that her home life didn't feel safe to her. So it created this nervous system response of checking out. So again, I want to stress that I think a lot of people disassociate and check out and disconnect from themselves every day. It's not an uncommon thing to experience. Because we live in a very stressful world. And especially here in the United States, I know that a lot of us can feel really disconnected from one another and disconnected from ourselves. And so this disassociation can happen. So a few other examples of when you may disassociate or when people disassociate is that one, as I mentioned, disassociation is a natural response to trauma. And it's a response that you cannot control, you don't choose to disassociate, it's your body's way of trying to keep you safe. So when you're experiencing a life or death situation, or something that your consciousness perceives as life or death, oftentimes you can check out because it could feel too hard to stay. And what we have to understand is that when we're children, and our parents yell at us, or if our parents do something that feels unsafe, we can disassociate, because in that moment for our child self, it may have felt like life or death, or it could have just felt so unsafe or so difficult, that our body didn't know what to do. So it checked out. So I also want to reiterate that this is a unconscious response, we don't choose to disassociate and there's nothing wrong with you, if this is your body's response to stress, trauma and overwhelm. And disassociation may be a way for you to cope with very stressful experiences or situations. It can also be a symptom of depression, anxiety, post traumatic stress disorder, some of these feelings that can feel very, very overwhelming, or you may be somebody who disassociate when conflict happens. So you may be somebody who if you get in fights with your partner with a friend with a family member, you don't even remember the fight because you check out during the fight. And because it may be your response to yelling because it's so scary and overwhelming for your nervous system. And again, this association is nothing to fear. There's nothing wrong with you if you disassociate. So what we want to do if we notice that we disassociate, which again, is just noticing that we disconnect from the present moment. It can feel so overwhelming to hear this word disassociation or to have memories returning, which we'll talk about in a minute. But it's just becoming aware of when you begin to disconnect. Are there certain situations that trigger you disconnecting? Are there certain moments throughout your day that you don't remember, are there feelings that are too overwhelming and you tend to go numb when they arise? These are signs of disconnecting from yourself of checking out and what we want to do in order to heal is to begin to come back into the body is to begin to become aware of when we disassociate and how we do that is by breathing is by grounding exercises, such as connecting your feet To the earth, I have found in my own life, doing weights and weightlifting to be really helpful for me and grounding into my body and to staying present. I love cardio, but sometimes that takes me up into the clouds and I live in a fantasy world and I actually become ungrounded. And some forms of yoga can be really grounding as well. For me, I found yin yoga to be really grounding. That's where we hold certain poses. So you have to be really present in your body. But this is something you want to figure out what grounding practices work for you and keeping you in the present moment. Another thing that may be an unpopular opinion, but I've spoken with one on one clients who agree is that alcohol can be a way we disassociate. And it's not just blacking out when we drink. But I found that my memory really suffered from alcohol and that I used alcohol to keep me from feeling some difficult feelings. And I've spoken with one on one clients who have also agreed that when they went sober, they had memories come back, and they were able to ground more, because they weren't numbing and checking out. So alcohol can actually contribute to this disassociation or this disconnection from self. So you just may want to look at your relationship with alcohol. Again, all these practices are personal. And it's you figuring out what works for you, and what your healing from disconnection and disassociation is going to look like in your life. I'm going to use disconnection with disassociation, because I think disconnection is a little less of an intimidating word, and can help us to realize that again, there's nothing wrong with you, if you disassociate, there's nothing wrong with you, if you don't remember your childhood. There's nothing wrong with you if you have experienced a trauma and you have memories returning. So I wanted to take a moment to talk about the memory returning part because as I mentioned, I discovered this association by memories returning in my 20s. So when I was about 25, I started to have nightmares. And then memories return of being sexually assaulted as a child. And this was a very confusing process, because it was an experience I had no memory of. And I didn't understand how that could be possible. But the more I reflected on it, I didn't have any memories of my childhood. And as I've healed, many memories have come back of my childhood. But at the beginning of my healing journey, I had no memories of my childhood at all, I really didn't have many memories, before I started my healing journey, which was when I was 23, when I had a close friend died, and I described that as my light turning on moment. So I went from living in the dark, which I realized was just a very disconnected place, I lived disconnected from myself. And this trauma brought me back into my body. But it's been a slow process to really ground back in my body and process all the memories. So part of the healing journey is that when we are healing memories will return. This is something that really I think happens for everybody. It doesn't have to be big traumatic memories, like being sexually assaulted. But as we begin to journal and we begin to meditate, and we begin to become aware of why we do the things we do, memories will return things that happened to us that we weren't aware of until it came back. And once it comes back, we're like, Oh, how did I forget that, of course that happened. But these memories come back in layers. I'll give an example in a second. But these memories come back in layers, because our consciousness can really only handle one thing at a time. So an example from my own life is, as I've been healing my relationship with my partner. So we've been together for 12 years. But we were not consciously working on our relationship the whole time, we started to work on our relationship and read self help books and work on growing a healthy relationship and healing together when we were in our mid 20s. Because we were having relationship issues and we weren't connecting, and we weren't sure of how to create a healthy relationship. And what we realized was, as we started to venture into the world of couples, books and self help books is that so many of the patterns we were playing out were because of instances in our childhoods. So for me a lot of the dynamics between my parents, I would play out in my own relationship. And as I was healing memories would come back of my childhood, I would be like, oh, right, I remember this time my mom did this, or my dad did this. And that is a form of disassociation of disconnection, and a form of the memories coming back. I hope this is making sense. I talk about a lot of these concepts from my own personal perspective. And the words I use, I try to use simple language rather than complicated language. If you're looking for the science behind all this, this is not the podcast for you. And I'm totally okay admitting that this is really me explaining from my own lived experience. So I just want to say that upfront, but I just wanted to really take some time to debunk disassociation. It's not scary, it's actually very common. And when we start to become conscious of it, we can start to notice when we're disassociating throughout our days, I am a much more grounded person than I was 10 years ago, seven years ago, five years ago, two years ago, one year ago, even six months ago, and I'm always coming more and more
We're into my body and I think so many of us who have lived in a disassociated state. So Dr. Nicola parrot will sometimes call this as living in her spaceship. That's how she words it. And for me, it feels like I live in the clouds when I disassociate. And a lot of times my therapist will help to ground me back in my body, if she notices I'm living in the clouds, because for me a lot of times, I can notice when I'm checked out because I'm not connected to how I'm feeling. So when I'm confused about how I'm feeling that is often a sign for me that I'm disconnected. And then I'm disassociating. So as I mentioned, some of the practices I used to ground myself would be breathing techniques, grounding exercises, there's the 54321 technique, which is beginning to connect back to your senses. So that's acknowledging five things you can see then acknowledging four things you can touch around you. So using that sense of touch, and then acknowledging three things you can hear, and then acknowledging two things you can smell and acknowledging one thing you can taste. So by connecting to the senses, you'll be able to ground back into your body. Also, connecting with nature, taking your shoes off, and putting your feet on the earth is really grounding. And noticing what it feels like to have your feet on the ground. And if you're unable to go to nature, just take a moment to see what it feels like to have your butt in the chair to have your feet on the ground. What are you doing with your hands? What does your body feel like? Do you have any aches and pains? It's connecting to how does your body feel, and the more you connect back into your body, the more you'll connect back to yourself. So I wanted to offer this as an introduction teaching. Because again, I think a lot of people disassociate. And some people also call it escapism, escaping from the present moment, I think that's a form of disassociation. There's nothing to be afraid of. It's doesn't have to be a scary diagnosis. It's just a tool for you. And it's just information for you, to help you to heal. And to know that there's absolutely nothing wrong with you, if you relate to any of this, or if you've noticed you disassociate. So I just wanted to give this overview of disassociation. If any of this was unclear if you have any questions, please reach out, I would love to continue this conversation. This is the first episode I've done on disassociation in general. So I would love to continue to go deeper into this topic. And now I'm going to jump into a question from somebody who is struggling with the returning of memories and isn't sure what to do.
Amanda Durocher [Listener Question] 17:35
Hi, I don't know where to start with this. Two years ago, I think something happened to me. At the time, I remember not having much memory only waking up in a bedroom I didn't recognize after being at the pub with a friend. We had been drinking and there was this waiter who was being really friendly with us. It seemed like harmless flirting, I remember leaving the pub and then having gaps in my memory. I had a long term boyfriend who I'm still with now. And I was scared of the way it looked. So I never said anything. I blocked it all out. Two years on and I'm starting to get these memories back. I can remember not wanting to be back at this house that night, wanting to go home, my phone had died and I couldn't get myself home, I felt trapped. Everything is blurry after that, except this one vivid memory, I keep having of pushing this person off of me. I want to tell my boyfriend what happened. But I'm scared of how I will react. I feel so much blame guilt for what happened. I was drunk and part of me chose to go back to this house. But I didn't want to be there. I don't know how to tell my boyfriend. While I still don't really understand what happened myself. Thank you for this question. So this question has two parts, I want to discuss the memory returning part. And I want to talk about processing those memories. And I also want to talk about this question you have of if you should disclose what happened to your boyfriend? So thank you again, for this question. This is a very honest question. I relate to this question. You have described the process of memories returning quite beautifully here. Because I think that this is what the process looks like. It's what it feels like. And it's uncomfortable, and it's scary. And I'm so sorry that you're going through this. It is not an easy process for anyone. And I felt so alone as my memories returned. And I felt so crazy. And I just want you to know that I understand how difficult this is for you. And I honor what you're moving through. And I thank you for asking this question. So we can have this conversation here collectively because I know you're not alone in this experience. So first, I want to say that you said your two years on and you're starting to get these memories back. To me that's a sign that your body feels safe enough to give you these memories. So when we have an experience that we block out, oftentimes we block it out out of safety for ourselves, our nervous system goes into overdrive, our body becomes stressed and overwhelmed and the only way our body knows how to cope with this situation is to block it out is to check out is to disconnect and to block it from our memory
Amanda Durocher 20:00
And oftentimes I found when I tried to touch those memories, it was like a black wall, I would get a ping of a really difficult feeling. And then my memory would go black. So for me, I was sexually assaulted my childhood, I blocked that out. And I also had this experience in my teens, that came back after I was able to process the child experience because my body felt safe enough to give me the second big trauma. But what would happen before then, with this memory of this big trauma was if I thought about that moment, in my teens, I would get one vivid picture like you described, I would get this vivid picture of sitting around a fire with a group of kids, and then it would feel really anxiety inducing, my body would go into panic, and then it would go black. And that was my way of kind of pushing that back. And I would usually check out and I'd be overcome by such difficult feelings, I would have to come back down to earth by soothing myself and I wouldn't touch that memory again. And when it was ready to be touched, it started to unravel slowly, that picture started to get bigger, different memories started to arise, I started to have nightmares. I think a lot of people who disassociate can struggle with nightmares, especially if you disassociate from a specific incident, and you've blocked that specific incident from your memory, you can begin to have nightmares, because it's a safer way for your body to process the difficult feelings. Because in the dream world, it can feel safe for your body to process those feelings. So one, I just want to honor that I think that these memories are starting to come back. Because my guess is you've spent time with your heart, you've been healing. And now you are in a place where you're not constantly in fight or flight and you're able to process this, it doesn't mean you'll get everything at once. But your body's letting you know, it's time to look at this. You mentioned feeling blame and guilt coming up for this experience, especially because you were drunk, and you chose to go back to this house. This is where I think alcohol can really contribute to disassociation because I think when drinking is involved, oftentimes we blame ourselves for what happens, because we blame ourselves for drinking, and we blame ourselves for our drunk actions. Something I've talked about on other episodes is that I believe that blame and shame are ways that our mind tries to cope with difficult situations, situations that are traumatic, and it's a way of our mind trying to control what happened. So if we blame ourselves, we can keep ourselves from doing it, again, is a coping strategy of that fight or flight response. And though you drink, there's nothing wrong with drinking, I'm sure you drank a million other times, and nothing bad happened. Nothing traumatic happened, nothing you've blocked out happened, right? Millions of people drink every day, it's not your fault that something happened because you chose to pick up a drink. And personally, I wasn't able to feel that way until I gave up alcohol. But I can see in my own life, that it's not my fault. Because I drank these situations are not your fault, because you drank one, too, you said part of me chose to go back to this house, you didn't want to be there in that you felt trapped and you couldn't get home, I invite you to let yourself off the hook. As you said, you didn't want to be there, you were trying to get out you felt trapped. When we feel trapped, our body starts going into overdrive, our body starts panicking. You have to forgive yourself for the way your body coped in that situation. Some of us wonder, why didn't I run? Why didn't I just leave, when we go into that overdrive that hyperdrive or that disconnection that disassociation or that stress response, it's the body doing what the body thinks is best. It's not conscious, it's not your fault. You can only cope from a situation with the tools you have in that moment with the knowledge you have already. Many of us choose to trust people who are untrustworthy, because we have never been given a situation where we shouldn't have trusted someone. Or it's because it may be too hard for the mind to go to that other place that those people are untrustworthy. And what that would mean, sometimes that's too scary. Or, or sometimes we tell ourselves, that's crazy. That would never happen, my mind is going nuts again. So we have to learn to forgive ourselves, for the way we handled situations in the past with the knowledge we had. Whatever happened here was not your fault. The actions of others is not your fault. I don't know if there's more here or if this feeling of being trapped and not being able to get home is what your body needs to process or if there's more here. What I find happens when people are healing from disassociation or these scary memories coming back is that they can torture themselves. Myself included in this I used to do this all the time. They can torture themselves trying to figure out what happened, but that keeps you in fight or flight that keeps you in the mind. Healing from disassociation is connecting back to the body, back to the emotions, sometimes you won't even get the details. You just need to process whatever feeling is arising. I'll give you two examples from my own life, healing from being sexually assaulted as a child, I don't have all the details of what happened to me. I know for a fact it happened, I cannot describe to you exactly what happened. I don't think I will ever be able to describe for you detail by detail what happened. But I did have to process every feeling that arose. And I know some things I know some things said to me. And I know some things done to me. I don't know the whole thing. And I can't tell you exactly how old I was, I think I was five or six. But there's a lot I don't know. And what I learned throughout this experience is that it doesn't matter. The body doesn't lie. And the body wants you to process the emotions. So the details don't always matter. What matters are the feelings arising. Panic, terror, betrayal, fear, disgust, guilt, shame. Those are what you want to focus on processing, because those are probably the reason you checked out. Those difficult feelings are what needs to be processed, sometimes you'll get more information, sometimes you won't. And that's another forgiving yourself and forgiving your own heart for. Now, the other experience I went through by being sexually assaulted in my teens and having those memories come back, I do have a lot of details of what happened to me. And the truth is, I thought I wanted that I wish I didn't have that some days. But what I understand from my teen experience is that I have many more details, because so many smaller traumas happened within this big trauma. So for example, I was attacked from behind, I have that detail because that was a trauma that stuck in my body. And I needed to process the fear of being attacked from behind. I also was pinned down and held down and my face was shoved in the dirt. I had to process those because they were separate from being raped. And again, I don't say these things to scare you, I say these to be honest with you to be truthful about the experience, that your body will give you whatever information it needs, because it will give you whatever it's holding on to. If it's just holding on to these feelings, you'll just get the feelings if it's holding on to more memories that it wants you to have. It'll give you the memories if it's holding on to certain instances, or pain within the body. For example, for me, with the being pinned down and held by my wrist, there was a lot of trauma held in my wrist. So I would have all these wrist rashes and I would have wrist pains and when I was healing and I finally allowed that layer to come up, which I'll be honest with you was only in October. So I've had this podcast for two years now. And some of these things I've healed have come up while I have this podcast, I am on this healing journey with you. And it's an honor to be here with you. I am not perfect, I am just sharing with you my knowledge in hopes that it can help you feel less alone. But there's more to that story. I'm not gonna go in it to it now. But those different traumas had to come up in order to be healed. But as I mentioned with the child one, really it was just a lot of emotion, and a lot of confusion about what happened. But again, I don't have the full picture. But I've moved through that experience. And I know that at least the layers that my body wants me to have, because I feel at peace with it, I can talk about it without it triggering a lot of feelings, memories and pain. And if there's more, that's there, more will come up along the way of my healing journey. But we're given layers at a time. And what's ever in front of us, whatever our body or our mind is showing us is the layer that wants to be healed. So I hope something there was helpful for you. And I shared all that because I don't want you to feel so alone, I want you to understand that there's a community of people who get it and who have been there and are healing it alongside you. And if you need support, please reach out. You can reach out with a question or you can schedule a one on one. But I'd love to support you throughout this journey because I don't want you to feel alone because I know how alone I felt healing from this because this is something we don't really talk about as a society. And as I said on my journey, I felt really alone and I had a lot of people doubt me but all I can tell you is the more you connect to your body, your body does not lie, your body knows the truth. And your body will show you what needs to be healed and what that truth is for you. So now I want to discuss this second part of the question of if you should tell your boyfriend what happened and you're scared how he'll react. As always, I think this is a personal choice. If you want to disclose to your partner or not. I think from your question, you do want to disclose that is what your heart wants but you're scared and what I want to say about that is that it is very normal for survivors to be afraid of how our loved ones will react when we tell them, because we feel a lot of guilt, shame and blame for what we survived. I want to assure you, this wasn't your fault. And I want to invite you to invite people in your life into this with you. And if you decide not to tell your boyfriend, I do hope you have a support system to help you through this. The process of memories returning is not a process you should go through by yourself. It's a process that involves a lot of self love, and a lot of care. And when we blame ourselves, shame ourselves and feel guilty for things we've done, it can often take a third party to reflect back to us that those lies we tell ourselves or that there lies, that it is not your fault, you do not need to blame yourself, that the guilt you feel, is likely a betrayal of self that that betrayal wasn't your fault. That situation happened from where you were in life and the beliefs you had at that time and the way your body coped at that time. And there's nothing wrong with that. We like to judge things as right or wrong, good or bad, your fault, my fault, blame shame. And what I keep learning over and over again, is that life is freaking complicated. Everything happens for a reason. And so much of the pain we experience is nonsensical. It's uncomprehending double, it doesn't make sense. And so much of the pain we experience we were not prepared for. Because we are not prepared from a young age for trauma. We go out in the world and we trust people. And a word that keeps coming back in all my one on one sessions is feeling naive. The feeling of I can't believe I put myself in that situation. I can't believe I didn't think differently. I can't believe I was that naive. And I want to let you off the hook for your naivete. I want to let you off the hook if you feel naive in your own life. I know for a long time I've been struggling with the naiveness I've felt throughout my life. And it's not your fault. It's the way that we're taught from a young age, to trust people to be kind and to people please, and to put others feelings above our own. A lot of that creates the naiveness that we experience. And I could go deeper into that. But I just want to let you know, again, that this wasn't your fault. So I think that telling your boyfriend is likely what your heart is asking you to do. And I think that if he loves you the way that I think he does, he will understand. And it doesn't mean this will not be a hard truth for him to hear. I think that the partners of people who have survived trauma, or are going through these experiences, like disassociation, also deserve a lot of love and compassion, because it's not easy to witness the pain of somebody you love. And I think that if you describe to him what you describe to me that if he loves you, and if he's a supportive partner, he'll understand. Or he'll at least be willing to learn with you and understand. I think we're always so afraid of the shame others will throw at us because of how much we're shaming and blaming ourselves. But people outside of us are often more understanding than we are. Unfortunately, we live in a world where bad things can happen. We're traumas happen, where the story like yours has been told before. And I think your partner, your boyfriend will understand that. And I think that it will be healing for your heart to begin to let people into this experience. Because as I mentioned, I think they will reflect back to you that it is not your fault, and that they are going to lovingly support you. And if he does respond poorly, and blames you and breaks up with you, I'm going to be honest, then to me, that's a sign that maybe your relationship wasn't as supportive as the one that you're looking for. But I really do think that inviting those we love in can be really healing for us. And again, I think that your boyfriend probably knows you're moving through something, because it sounds like this has been heavy on your heart. And I think that he would be understanding of your situation. And again, if he's not, then I don't think he's the person for you. Because what I read here is the story of a scared person who's feeling very alone. And you deserve a partner who's able to stand by you and to support you through this. Not a partner who's going to make you feel worse about it. I hope something in this answer was helpful. I am sending you so much love. If you have a follow up question, please reach out. Thank you so much for this question.
Amanda Durocher 34:56
Thank you for joining me for another episode of New View Advice, as well. Always I'm so grateful to have these conversations with you each week. If you haven't already, I invite you to leave a five star rating and a review for the podcast. Ratings and reviews help people to feel safe coming to this podcast and to know that it is a safe space to have vulnerable conversations. So I really appreciate everyone who has left a review and left a five star rating. I am so grateful for the supportive community. The New View Advice community is so kind and loving. And I am so grateful for everyone who reaches out and shares their experience with the podcast. Thank you so much for joining me for another episode of New View Advice. As always, I hope I was able to offer you a new view on whatever you may be going through. Send you all my love. See you next time.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
