Passive

[Mothership]

I have realised that I'm passive, I don't speak up for myself,  mentally weak, avoiding conflict,  avoiding an argument, all the time, 

Is this a ptsd symptom, I've had several traumas since I was a teenager, I'm 66yrs old now

[Eagle Ray]

Dear Mothership,

Welcome and thank you for having the courage to share your experience. 

I can relate to what you write as I’ve spent a lifetime being passive and avoiding conflict. I am now diagnosed with Complex PTSD and I can see that for me these behaviours were definitely a survival response to my environment.

In trying to work out whether trauma is connected for you, what you may find helpful is the work of Pete Walker. He is a psychotherapist with lived experience of childhood trauma. He has an excellent book called Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving. In it he talks about four response we can have to trauma - fight, flight, freeze and fawn. For many of us, especially with early life trauma, we have developed a fawn response where we appease others to try to keep ourselves safe. So we may always be agreeable and work to meet others needs even when it involves ignoring our own needs. This response can include being passive in the face of conflict. The freeze response can be tied into this too, where our nervous system just freezes at times to protect us, which can also be a form of passivity. Pete Walker also had a website with various articles on it that may be helpful. You will find it if you google “Peter Walker complex trauma” and there is a list of articles on the left of the webpage.

I think the really important thing is to not be hard on yourself for any of this. Those responses are actually logical, adaptive survival responses and they actually make a lot of sense as a form of self-protection at the time. So these patterns may have developed in relation to past traumas but the nervous system keeps deploying them afterwards. That is a feature of PTSD so that could be something to look into.

Have you ever sought any support for those trauma experiences from the past? There are quite a few mental health practitioners now who are trauma-informed and you could try some form of therapy or counselling to begin addressing these things. I currently see a clinical psychologist who is trained in somatic approaches including Somatic Experiencing which is the one that has really benefited me. That particular approach seeks to gently allow the body to complete the survival responses it didn’t get to do at the time of trauma, not by fully reliving the trauma but through connecting with what the body intuitively wants to do to resolve the trapped trauma response.

What has really benefited me as well has simply been having someone compassionately witness and validate my experiences. That in itself is so healing. I am finding now I am speaking up for myself more and valuing myself. I am saying no to situations and people who in the past I would always say yes to, even were saying yes was not good for me. I’m learning to care for the vulnerable parts of myself too. I’ve found another approach, Internal Family Systems, quite helpful for this too. It’s understanding that parts of us can kind of split off and start acting autonomously in response to trauma. This may, for example, be our inner critic that is regularly hard on us and devalues ourselves relative to others. A lot of this is tied up with shame too, perhaps the most destructive part of traumatic experience. I’m learning that these things can be transformed. This includes caring for the part of self that got split off and reintegrating it with kindness and compassion. It takes time and patience but it is possible to start turning around lifelong patterns.

Those are just some thoughts. I don’t know if they resonate or not. But it’s never too late to begin transforming things within ourselves. The founder of Somatic Experiencing, Peter Levine, has said, “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood”.

Take good care and happy to keep chatting if you want to,

Eagle Ray

[Ggrand]

Hello Dear Mothership,

I can very much relate to your story, I am 68 and all my life I have been a very passive person..I have PTSD from trauma both in my childhood and through DV…It’s a coping mechanism our brains do to help protect us…

At times over the past few years, when I did try to speak up for myself,  I wish I didn’t because I was triggered into PTSD depression and started to be very hard on myself …I am a people pleaser, alway have been and always will be now….I have accepted that it’s  part of me….I have had years of professional counselling, which has helped me with coping tools to help manage triggers…I think that a trait learned earlier or pushed on to us a an early age is very hard to unlearn…although I have been told that we can unlearn it..it’s very hard for me to do so…so I am trying to accept it as part of who I am…

I don’t like confrontation so I stay away, walk away or even run away…I get away from it as quick as I can….I do feel helpless, and put myself down for doing that…but I have realised that for me walking away from any confrontation is safer for me mentally then it is to stand up for myself….I also don’t feel anger, another trait that was forced upon me in my early childhood…I think to be able to be confrontational towards anyone, first we must feel anger enough to do so ?…

Speaking to your Dr. honestly about the trauma you went through at a young age would be a first step to help you finding out if you have ptsd, your  Dr. can organise some professional help for you…and a proper diagnosis and some professional counselling to help you manage your mental health…

Thinking of you Dear Mothership with kindness and care…sending you a gentle warm and understanding hug 🤗 ..

Grandy..

[Mothership]

Thank you muchly

[Mothership]

Thank you 😊