Healing the Trauma of Growing Up Gay

[00:00:00] Dr. Frank Anderson: Foreign.

[00:00:08] Matt Landsiedel: Welcome to Gay Men Going Deeper, a podcast by the Gay Men’s Brotherhood that showcases raw and real conversations about personal development, mental health and sexuality from an unapologetically gay perspective. I am your host, Matt Lansadel, and joining me today is Dr. Frank Anderson. Welcome.

[00:00:26] Dr. Frank Anderson: Thank you so much. When I hear that description, I’m like, okay, I know where we’re going is exactly what I did in my memoir. Some people are like, are any questions off limits? And I’m like, after you’ve read my memoir, no, there are not.

[00:00:40] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. When we had our pre interview meeting, I was like, yeah, this is going to be a good fit. For those of you who don’t know, Dr. Anderson is a world renowned trauma treatment expert, harvest trained psychiatrist and psychotherapist. He is an acclaimed author of To Be Loved, A Story of Truth, Trauma and Transformation Transcending Trauma and the co author of Internal Family System Skills Training Manual. As a global speaker on the treatment of trauma and association, he is passionate about teaching brain based psychotherapy and integrating current neuroscience knowledge with the internal family systems or IFS model of therapy. Dr. Anderson believes that the traumatic events can have a lasting effect on the well being of and life of an individual and that addressing these events will help lead people down a pathway of healing and forgiveness. You’re a perfect candidate for this podcast. I’m very honored that I get to spend an hour picking your brain. I know you have a lot of wisdom and you have a lot of experience both as a gay man, but somebody that’s struggled with trauma yourself, personally and also professionally, you. This is your expertise. So we’re very lucky today to be able to soak up some of your wisdom. And today we’re going right to the heart of the matter. We’re going to be talking about healing the trauma of growing up gay. This is a significant, significant trauma. A lot of people don’t realize this, so I want to really just spend the hour or the next hour unpacking this. What does it look like? What is attachment trauma? What is cptsd? What is ifs the model that you’re using to help people heal trauma and teaching and educating around. So we got a lot of good stuff for you guys today. And I want to first start off because I watched your interview on Medline and your tagline is trauma blocks love and connection. And love and connection is what heals trauma. Tell us a little bit more about that.

[00:02:29] Dr. Frank Anderson: Yeah, so that’s a phrase that I don’t really quite take ownership of because when I was writing my second book, Transcending Trauma, was kind of during the pandemic. Right, right, right. Go, run. There you go. There you go. Right, right, right. Go, run. Right, right, right. Go, run. And every time I go for a run, I’d hear trauma blocks love. Love heals trauma. Trauma blocks love. Love heals trauma. It was like a message. Yeah. And as I’m writing through this whole book, I was like, yeah, that’s exactly how it feels to me. Trauma blocks love. Trauma blocks our authentic self. And if you’ve been in the world of healing as long as I have, like, 1992, working with Bessel van der Kolk, but my whole career, except for my whole life. Right. It is really, when you boil it right down, love and connection, that heals trauma. There’s a lot of different models. Everybody’s got their. Wave their fingers, do the. This talk about parts, like, everybody’s got a model. But when you boil it down to its core essence, it’s actually love and connection. That is what heals. And so it’s this cycle that we’re all in. Because I don’t know anybody who doesn’t have some form of trauma. I just don’t. They’re not my friends. Like, I just haven’t met them. Right. And so it’s part of the human experience from my perspective. So the more trauma we have, the more we don’t have access to who we really are. Right. And, yes, growing up gay is a trauma. And it starts so early, before awareness, even for parents. Intended parents say and do things in culture and society that are just normalized and homophobic. And kids have no clue of their sexuality or orientation at a very early age, and they’re just being themselves.

[00:04:17] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:04:18] Dr. Frank Anderson: You internalize those messages. You absorb them with no awareness.

[00:04:22] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:04:23] Dr. Frank Anderson: It is a trauma to grow up in the world that even with things as good as they are, it’s still a problem. I’m sorry, separate from being trans, being gay is still a trauma in my experience. Experience. And in the work that I do personally as well as professionally.

[00:04:38] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. The conversation we’re having here is really about social conditioning. Right. The way that we’re conditioned as humans and we’re conditioned by a heterosexual culture to be heterosexual. And when we divert from that norm, this really is the trauma. Right.

[00:04:52] Dr. Frank Anderson: I saw it so clearly with my kids when my kids were growing up. A different version. It wasn’t about orientation. Both my boys grow up with true dance. Right. But the world they had to deal with from a. I remember my preschool, my youngest in preschool, as like, honey, before you go to school, I want to talk about the fact that you have two dads. He’s like, no, I don’t. I’m like, yes, you have two dads. He’s like, no, I don’t. I’m like, okay. And he was very indignant about it. It was really interesting. He was like 3 years old, and what he did, it was shocking to me. It’s like, I have a daddy who’s a daddy and a papa who’s a mama. That’s what he did. He was like, took the messages and all that he saw in TV and culture and society and on his own little brain, on his own, figured out, how am I going to fit my world into the world that we live in? This is what he did. That’s the way his brain worked. Right. He’s like, how do I make sense of what I’m living in and what the world is telling me I’m supposed to live in?

[00:05:54] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:05:55] Dr. Frank Anderson: That was his experience as a little kid with True Dance. It’s the same thing as a gay person is like, you met. Boys wear blue, girls wear pink. All the things Dora the Explorer. Like, there’s so many cartoons that are just so. There’s no way to get around it. And we internalize it and we have to make sense of it because, you know, your parents don’t tell you it too. Oh, my gosh. If you’re gay, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I found out the hard way, honestly. You know, if you want to talk about that a little bit, because I.

[00:06:28] Matt Landsiedel: Want to say one quick thing is it’s notion of, like, being alone in this. For some of us, I’ve interviewed a lot of people, and some people as young as 5 years old know that’s their difference and they’re gay. Something’s up. And then we have to carry this alone. And that’s. It’s this thing about diverting from the norm, but also then having to navigate this on our own from a young age. It’s a young nervous system that has to carry the weight of this. This heavy heaviness. Right.

[00:06:53] Dr. Frank Anderson: Well. And that carrying it alone also automatically creates a false self. You have to. You’re carrying something, you know, you’re different. You don’t understand it. And you have to be what the world wants and need you to be in order to be loved.

[00:07:10] Matt Landsiedel: Exactly.

[00:07:11] Dr. Frank Anderson: So you create. You’re like, oh, I remember looking at my uncles, like, say that, do that. Be like this. So something’s not right. I don’t know what the hell it is.

[00:07:21] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:07:22] Dr. Frank Anderson: And yet the world is telling me I’m supposed to be this way in order to get love and attention. So we, we’re good. Creating disconnect and creating a false self.

[00:07:32] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. Abramate says you’re exchanging attachment or you’re exchanging your authenticity for attachment, potentially.

[00:07:40] Dr. Frank Anderson: That’s exactly right. Yeah. He’s a dear friend. I love Gabor. And, and he’s, he’s absolutely right about that. It’s, it’s even more profound. And earlier in the gay experience, like if you have grow up in a dysfunctional family, your parents aren’t available, that’s one thing. When in fact you are different and you feel something, but you have no clue. And it happens for kids at different ages. Like for me, I was just being me for a while. I was like, I didn’t know, like until you get hit with it.

[00:08:11] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, right.

[00:08:12] Dr. Frank Anderson: Whether it’s the TV show, whether it’s the comment, boys don’t do that, something hits you when you’re like, oh, I’m wrong. Right. And what hit me was when I was six years old, this is where my kind of story starts in this way. Because one day, six year old kid, I walk into my parents bedroom and they’re like, Frankie, you’re not going to school today. I’m like, why? I’m not sick. It’s not a holiday. Like, why am I not going to school? That like, you’re not going to school. And I’m like, okay, fine. We get dressed and they drive me downtown to the big hospital. I was like, oh crap. I went downtown Chicago, where the big buildings were, Right. I lived in the Midwest, in a suburb. And I’m like, something’s really wrong with me, right? Had no clue what because they didn’t say anything. And then I had a day of psych testing. I didn’t even know what the hell it was. I’m like, I’m going to a hospital. I’m drawing pictures, I’m telling stories in this room with a stranger all day. It didn’t make any sense to me at all. And then I was sent to therapy for six years. No.

[00:09:12] Matt Landsiedel: Conversion therapy, Is that what it was?

[00:09:14] Dr. Frank Anderson: A form of conversion therapy? Yeah, if it was a form of conversion therapy. My mom will say that now, right? Being gay was a disorder back in the day. It was in the DSM and all the books and stuff. But I got caught playing with my cousin’s Barbie playhouse in her basement. That’s what it was. And I remember we’re in the basement all the cousins are playing. And I go into the back room and there’s this Barbie playhouse. I was like, oh, look at the little toilet. Look at the little bed. There was like miniature furniture. Do you know what I mean? And I thought that was kind of cool. And there was Barbies in there and I thought they were kind of cool. And I heard, Frankie, boys don’t play with dolls. Like, I don’t even know who the hell it was who ratted me out, you know, but it was a problem. And that, that started this six year trajectory of me going to therapy once a week and being programmed. I was really programmed to learn how to be a boy. I had to play baseball. I had to do all this stuff. I couldn’t play with girl toys. Like, it was really programming and I suppressed so much of it. But the message was, you are wrong. And if you want to be loved, you better be different.

[00:10:20] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:10:21] Dr. Frank Anderson: And so I think all of us have something. You have to know when you’re wrong. Because I. I was really innocent. I was just curious. That was a moment for me that changed the trajectory of my life. It really did. I married a woman. I did guy things. I suppressed whoever I was or whatever I felt in a big way. I. I had that lesson early on. You better change or you’re in trouble.

[00:10:49] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. Wow. This whole notion of, like, being wrong, it’s just like, it’s the mantra of shame. Right? What was your relationship to shame at that time? And then how did you transcend that? I’m curious.

[00:10:59] Dr. Frank Anderson: You know, I didn’t have any awareness of shame. I didn’t have that, like, you’re wrong, like you are fucking wrong. It was like that. And what I had also was my dad was beating me up and yelling and screaming at me. I had verbal and physical abuse. So it just reinforced everything. So I had, you know, the gay thing. And then my dad, who was really out of control, physically and verbally abusive. And my mother, who was super passive, like she needed him. He would do everything in her power. Oh, Frankie, he loves you. Oh, Frankie, what are you talking about? That’s not true. Because she, my father, and she couldn’t leave him. So it was this crazy combination for me of like, I am wrong, that is clear and I’m going to get killed for it. And I’m stuck here because my mother will not do anything and my father won’t change. So it was. I got so disconnected. So disconnected. Like one of the things I talk about, which is shocking to me now in retrospect, when I was in fast forward and go to college. That’s what the thing my saving grace was. I was smart. I got A’s. Get A’s, get stars on your report card. Get A’s. Like that is what people want. I sucked at baseball, boy, I really sucked at. I was like, they were like, who wants to be the catcher, right? In the baseball thing, I’ll be the catcher. Like it’s got all this protective gear, right? Little did I know there was nobody else volunteered. I had to play every single game. I was the catcher the whole season. So it was. So I was just hiding behind all the protective gear. I hated baseball, right? But I learned smart was good. Like people like smart. So I just to school like just crazy, crazy, crazy. To get into Harvard is like, I.

[00:12:52] Matt Landsiedel: Was going to say like that. Overachieving, overachieving. Most of us as gay men, we know the relationship to perfectionism. Overachieving, overcompensating for these inadequacies or these, these shame driven things that we all experience.

[00:13:05] Dr. Frank Anderson: Survival. It was survival. I thinking if I get all these, he’ll love me like my father, like I was, I was striving to like stay alive, but also to get love. That’s why the name of the book is to be Loved. It was like whole life was organized around to be loved, never felt loved. Like when you’re not okay, you’re wrong, you’ve got to fix yourself. And you don’t feel loved authentically for who you are. Most of us don’t. They all different reasons. We’re laughed with insecurity and lack of feeling valuable and loved. And that was boy, that was a story of my life in a big, big way. It really was.

[00:13:45] Matt Landsiedel: I want to repeat the tagline. Trauma blocks love and connection. And love and connection is what heals trauma. How on earth do we navigate that? Like I’m navigating my own journey. I was diagnosed with CPTSD like three years ago. It’s been a very, very painful journey. Unpacking, disarming protector parts, going back to the scene of the crime, all the things, right? It’s been very, very challenging. So what’s that tipping point, right? It’s like trauma blocks love and connection. But you need to let love and connection in to heal the trauma. Help me wrap my head around this.

[00:14:19] Dr. Frank Anderson: Trauma blocks law. Love heals trauma. I add the connection piece. I added the connection piece because originally when you’re blocked and there’s no internal connection, when you have no access to your authenticity, your truth of who you are, you need connection in order to start dismantling that system. And you need outside someone who sees you, who loves you, who cares about you, in order to help soften the parts of you that are so tenaciously protecting you. And connecting you is a relational component. Am I seen? I remember my high school biology teacher saw me. She’s like, you are a special person. You know, I can remember this chains, right? Like, you’ve got to have connections where people authentically see and love you for who you are. Sometimes that’s in therapy, sometimes it’s in relationships. Right. So that starts softening those protectors enough for you to start loving yourself.

[00:15:26] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:15:27] Dr. Frank Anderson: So love and connection is not only between people. It’s internal, because trauma blocks the internal connection between our head and our heart, between who we are and what we deserve in order to survive. Like Gabor says, we have to disconnect. So there’s this internal disconnection, but you can’t get there until there’s enough loving connection in your life that softens those protective parts enough to allow you to start repairing and healing the trauma. My smart part was who I was. That was me. And it took me a really long time to let that soften enough that it was like, oh, that’s not my identity. It’s just a part of me. I was in therapy in my residency at Harvard. Eleven years, five times a week. I was in psychoanalysis, and I never cried once. That is crazy to me. Crazy that I. I had a connection with my therapist. I was so connected to him. I had to see him no matter what. I would do anything. Like, it was overly connected in a way, but I still hadn’t softened enough to have connection with myself. Like, how do you go to therapy for. And he was a nice person. He was a good therapist, but I couldn’t access me.

[00:16:56] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:16:56] Dr. Frank Anderson: You know, that’s where I came out. It was during that process of being in therapy for 11 years that I finally busted through.

[00:17:02] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:17:03] Dr. Frank Anderson: And that treatment came out. You know, it was with a wife. I married my wife. She was a pediatrician. We were supposed to have kids. And there was something telling me, I’m not having kids with this woman. Like, why the hell wouldn’t you have kids with a pediatrician? But there’s some. Some part of me was like, this is not right. This is not right. I’m so grateful for that.

[00:17:24] Matt Landsiedel: What did it take for you to break through till you could get to that place where you can start? It’s almost like. I can almost feel it. Like, the Head, the heart, there’s the severing. Right? We have to retreat. We have to go into that dissociative state because it’s too painful to live in this brokenhearted place. What helped you reconcile these two worlds?

[00:17:42] Dr. Frank Anderson: Everybody’s different. I’ll say there’s a different process for everyone, so you gotta trust your own process. I needed to acknowledge my trauma before I can connect to who I was. That was my cross. Some people need to connect with who they are before they can process my trauma. Like, my husband’s different. Came out. He had a suicide attempt at 18. He came out, lost his family, lost connection. He was. Grew up in a very fundamental religious experience. He had to come out first. And he’s still unpacking his trauma. Like, just like, come out first, trauma second. That’s was his order. My order was different. My parents were like, nothing’s wrong, Nothing’s wrong. You know, this is such a happy family. I needed to acknowledge what happened to me first before the layers in me softened enough to let me connect to who I was. That’s why I came out as 32 years old. Before I came out, I was married to a woman for 8 years. Totally disconnected life. And it was finally, I know what happened to me. It wasn’t my fault. I’m not a bad person. Bad things happen to me. Not I’m a bad person. The shame gets kind of like, oh, people really distort what happened to me from who I am. Because we take it out when perpetrators don’t take responsibility for what they do. We take responsibility for what happened to us.

[00:19:09] Matt Landsiedel: Exactly.

[00:19:10] Dr. Frank Anderson: Okay. And so it was unfolding that allowed me like, oh, I’m not bad. It was what happened to me that was a problem, not, I’m the problem. And then I was able to connect with authenticity. And, you know, this is another thing. I’ll tell you, Matt, we all choose the other to survive or to be liked in love, right? So my mother over me because I needed to for survival. And most of my life, I chose other people over me, Right? That’s what we do to be loved and to be liked. You know, it’s more about you than it is about me. And there’s really been two. Two points in my life. I’m working on a third one right now. I’ll tell you two points in my life where I chose me over everyone else. And one was when I came out was like, because I kind of thought, I’m going to lose everybody in my family. I grew up in a conservative Midwestern Family. I’m going to lose everybody if I come out. And it got to a point, it was like, I don’t care. I’m more important than my family. And it was huge. And it was like, it took me over. It was like a force of nature that took like. I couldn’t stop it. I was cheating on my wife and going to cruising areas. At the time she was on call. I’d, you know, go to cruising areas. I was living this crazy, horrible double life. I felt so bad about myself. We can’t do this anymore. I can’t live this long. And kind of busted through. And I’m like, I’m choosing me. It was like, that was the first time in my life, like, it was a huge risk. I didn’t talk to my parents for two. Seven years. Seven years, right. And I didn’t tell them I was out for two years. They didn’t even know because I was living in Boston, they were in Chicago, had no contact with them until I had the strength to tell them in time, honestly, in my life that I chose myself, was writing this memoir, because the memoir is very revealing, and it tells a lot about what actually happened. My family does not want this out there, I’ll tell you that. You know, And I said to my mom, it was a week before the book came out. I said, mom, I’m really sorry. I love you. I care about you, but I’m telling my story, and my truth is more important than my relationship with you. I’m sorry to say that I love you and I care about you. And if you never want to be in my life, that’s a risk worth taking for me now because I care about little Frankie. And we’re still repairing. Like, this book came out in May. We’re still repairing that relationship because there’s so much at stake, so much loss at stake. That’s what it feels like.

[00:22:04] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. Choosing authenticity over connection, that’s truly choosing ourselves. And that’s why I think I’m so in resonance with your work. When. When I first read your book Transcending Trauma, I was navigating. I was at the very beginning. That’s why I bought. I was navigating my own cpt. So I bought it for myself and I used it for client work. But. And you shared your story so vulnerably in that book at the beginning, talking about how you had your own trauma, you were navigating even later into your career and doing therapy with people, and you were still had unprocessed trauma. And I found Myself relating. And I was like, wow. Like, I don’t feel so alone or feel shame because I think we can take this on as therapists, that we have to be perfect before we can do this work. And it’s not about that. It’s an evolution. Right. We’re always evolving.

[00:22:50] Dr. Frank Anderson: Yeah. And it’s better to be one step ahead. But oftentimes we’re not. In medical school, they’re like, see one, do one, teach one. It’s kind of like that.

[00:22:59] Matt Landsiedel: But it is, it is. It’s humanistic. We’re all human. We’re all walking this path. Life is messy. Right. We can’t clean it up. And the more we try and clean it up and pretend it’s not there, the worse it becomes. And I think so. I applaud you and I honor you. I think that’s so beautiful that you’re. You’re choosing yourself.

[00:23:15] Dr. Frank Anderson: And, you know, another thing that’s become really important to me in this journey of choosing myself. And I’ll talk about forgiveness also at some point, but choosing myself. You know, I heard recently love is not the highest vibration. Authenticity is.

[00:23:33] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. Wow.

[00:23:34] Dr. Frank Anderson: And I was like, oh, let me learn more about. Let me unpack that. And love is a vibration that includes only the positive. Authenticity holds the range of authenticity. It’s the good and the bad.

[00:23:49] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:23:49] Dr. Frank Anderson: And it is more elevated to hold the true range of every human being than to just hold the positive. So that really affected. I was like, yeah, I. I feel that because one of the things that’s been so important in my healing journey is acknowledging the ways that I have harmed and been harmed and acknowledging the ways my perpetrator, my father, and my mother have harmed and been harmed. And it’s. Until we really see the humanity in all of us, I don’t think we can heal in the States. Here. The political divide is ridiculous.

[00:24:34] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. It’s crazy.

[00:24:35] Dr. Frank Anderson: Crazy. But it’s because we’re holding on to what we think is good about ourselves and we’re othering the other side.

[00:24:43] Matt Landsiedel: Exactly.

[00:24:44] Dr. Frank Anderson: We’re not holding both in everyone. Do you know what I mean?

[00:24:47] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:24:47] Dr. Frank Anderson: And so it’s a big deal for me. I talked about the ways I yelled at my kids, the way my father yelled at me. I was like. I really was like, I am not just a victim here. As a matter of fact, nobody is just the victim. When we’re traumatized, we absorb perpetrator energy and we can perpetrate on ourself or people. And I. I really feel we’ve got to hold the range if we’re going to heal, truly. And that’s. People get pissed off at me when I’m like, you’re forcing me to forgive. You’re forcing me to forgive. And I’m like, no, I’m not. It’s a choice, but you can forgive. You’re actually freeing yourself up, the other person and you’re not letting them off the hook.

[00:25:31] Matt Landsiedel: Exactly. Yeah. We’re all victims or we’re all perpetrators throughout life. And I think that’s the biggest, the most humbling thing. That’s the empathy. I think it requires empathy and compassion to hold both. And honestly, we could do a whole episode on how to do that and, you know, bring politics into it because that’s. If you’re going to have a political or religious conversation with somebody, you need that empathy and that compassion and the curiosity to be able to go into that place.

[00:25:57] Dr. Frank Anderson: I was recently on ABC News and I said something really bold, which I was really happy that I said it because it was right after the election here in the states. And I said, both political parties have different ways to solve the same problem. True. Both sides are actually being driven by their trauma and one side has this solution for their trauma and another side has that solution and all they keep doing is fighting over the solutions to the same problem.

[00:26:32] Matt Landsiedel: Exactly.

[00:26:33] Dr. Frank Anderson: I have this experience with my brother in law who was. Is super conservative. He’s a big Trump person. He was at the insurrection at the Capitol, tearing down the thing. Very proud of that. Right. Obviously we’re living in different camps, but he’s been my brother for 21 years and never really talked to me for obvious reasons. When I wrote Transcending Trauma, he I went up to Chicago for the holidays and I’m like, oh God, I have to talk to him. Like we’re sitting at the. Him and I were the only one at the table, right. We’re sitting, talking and he asked me about the book. He was doing the polite thing and I started telling him about my trauma history and blah, blah, blah. And he’s like, frank, it’s like my father beat me up and I was abused as a kid and I thought it was normal. And you’re doing some incredible stuff to help people. That’s amazing. He’s like, I go to the Catholic Church and I do my missionary stuff, but I give you a lot of credit. And I’m like, well, thank you, Bruno. I really appreciate that. Like, thank you. And he got up from the table and he said, could I get a copy of your book? And he Hugged me for the first time.

I’d known him for over 20 years, and it was that joining in our trauma that melted away our political differences. And we have a good relationship now. He still holds his political views, and so do I. That’s not what actually connects us. It’s our wounding. It’s the commonality of our being, not the way we think we’re supposed to solve the problem.

[00:28:08] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, I love that. I love that. It’s a lesson in looking for similarities instead of differences in people. And that’s the answer, really. At the end of the day, it is.

[00:28:18] Dr. Frank Anderson: Yeah. Why do people feel politics so strongly is because it’s personally relevant. Like, it’s about. It’s about our own pain. It’s about our soul, our morals, our views. That is rooted in our trauma.

[00:28:32] Matt Landsiedel: That’d be an amazing. Like, just even doing research on that. Like. Like politics and trauma and the intersection of that.

[00:28:39] Dr. Frank Anderson: Yeah. I wanted to write an article about it, and I really. I loved saying it on ABC News. Like, I’m like, you know, to get it out there in that way, because it’s something I’ve been holding for a while and not said it so publicly before, you know? And people don’t want to hear that. People are like, they’re the enemy. Don’t you understand? Look at how fucked up they are. You know? And I’m like, well, if we actually look a little deeper, we’re fucked up, too.

[00:29:07] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:29:08] Dr. Frank Anderson: And sorry. We’ve got to admit that, you know, like, when we can acknowledge the good and bad in us, we can acknowledge a good and bad in other people or vice versa. Whatever order that needs to happen. And you know what? I’ll tell you, for me, Matt, it’s such a relief to be wrong now. I love being wrong. Yes. Don’t have to be perfect anymore. And I love apologizing. It’s, like, so freeing. My kids are like, yeah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, yeah, you’re right. I am so sorry. And it’s so disarming. They’re so pissed at me. They want to hate me because of whatever’s going on, Right? Yeah. I’m sorry if I did wrong. Oh, so much better. And I don’t need to be perfect. And I screwed up. I am so sorry. I don’t even care what it is. If you told me I did something wrong, like, okay, honey, I am so sorry. Been so good. But I. Because I’m not holding other people accountable for what they’re doing because I’d forgiven them. So I don’t need to be held accountable, Lord, because I could forgive myself.

[00:30:13] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. That’s so beautiful. And probably one of the biggest things I’ve learned in the last three years. Or that how I’ve transformed. I’m not quite at the place where I’m letting love in freely and loving myself. It’s coming. I can feel it. I’m right around the corner from it. But is humility like Humility, the protector parts, disarming, meeting fear, meeting shame, meeting all these things and just like. And just compassion for myself and humility. These are big, big, like, virtues that I’m learning right now. And I’m hearing that in you, like, just being able to apologize, being able to set yourself free from ego and egoic tendencies. It’s like, that’s humility. And from my perspective, it’s a big.

[00:30:51] Dr. Frank Anderson: Relief for me because I need it to hold up this ridiculous standard to compensate for the pain inside of being less than and wrong and bad. It’s just a natural compensation.

[00:31:07] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:31:08] Dr. Frank Anderson: But it’s a. It’s at a huge cost.

[00:31:11] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. Big time.

[00:31:13] Dr. Frank Anderson: Yeah.

[00:31:14] Matt Landsiedel: Okay, I want you to put your doctor hat on now.

I want the clinical side of you.

I love this side. Don’t get me wrong. I love it. That’s a podcast is about. But I really want to. I want to. I want the listener, viewer to get some things, some tangible things. The. The injury that you did on Medline, like, maybe I’ll even tag that in, because you gave some really good things there. And you know that you don’t necessarily need therapy to. To. To heal trauma and these sorts of things. So maybe can we just like, unpack a little bit about, like, the trauma of growing up gay attachment trauma. What is trauma? Like, give the listener, viewer, like, just a little snippet of, like, what this is. What are they. What are. What are we working with here?

[00:31:54] Dr. Frank Anderson: So trauma. Trauma is one of these buzzwords before, like, the baby boomers are like, I don’t have trauma. You know, like, the Gen Z’s are like, I’m traumatized with everything. Like, you know, it’s different. Every generation holds different things around trauma.

[00:32:10] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:32:10] Dr. Frank Anderson: For me, I think about intensity, frequency and duration.

How often, how frequent, how intense was whatever happened to you?

[00:32:22] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:32:22] Dr. Frank Anderson: Is what happens to you not who you are.

[00:32:26] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:32:27] Dr. Frank Anderson: It’s your response to the trauma that’s an issue. Yeah.

[00:32:32] Matt Landsiedel: The meaning we make of it.

[00:32:33] Dr. Frank Anderson: The meaning we make of it, the effect it has in our body, our thoughts, our feelings, and the behaviors that result in. Do I do I smoke. Do I need to be perfect? Do I over exercise? Do I need to have straight A’s? Those are behaviors that are responses to trauma. Ptsd, Post traumatic stress disorder is a response to trauma. So we have to separate what actually happened to me, what did I go through, what energy am I carrying because of what I go through, and then what did I do with it and how am I responding? And most people don’t know that their perfectionism is related to their unresolved trauma. Yeah, most people don’t connect. Right, right. They know. Most people don’t know that drinking or hypersexuality is connected to the unresolved trauma because that’s the behavior, and the behavior is trying to keep the trauma away.

[00:33:34] Matt Landsiedel: That’s right.

[00:33:35] Dr. Frank Anderson: So I want. I’m always like, okay, let’s parse out what are the behaviors you want to. What are your problematic behaviors? And let’s track those back to the origin of why they started and why they were needed and what’s adaptive about them, which gets to what happened to me, because a part inside carries. What happens to me is very different than the parts that are trying to react and respond to it. So we have to separate that out. And I think it’s important for people to know. Like, my list of various types of trauma keeps growing, growing, growing. Single incident trauma, chronic trauma, complex PTSD or ongoing relational trauma. Growing up in a dysfunctional family or environment.

[00:34:23] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:34:24] Dr. Frank Anderson: Family legacy trauma. The trauma that you get by being born in the family that you are in often includes ethnic issues, whether you’re Jewish or Italian or whatever ethnicity you are. Yeah. Institutional trauma, being bullied school or in medical trauma. In hospitals, there’s institutional trauma, religious trauma, religious trauma, cultural trauma. There’s so many different ways we are affected by what happens to us and the environment that we grow up in and the global trauma, obviously the pandemic that we all experience.

So there’s a lot to unpack. All traumas are not created equal.

[00:35:09] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, exactly. I’m, like, excited talking about this. I love talking about this stuff. Not many people get jazzed by shame and trauma talking about these things, but I’m so fascinated by it. And so where do you lump in the trauma of growing up gay into.

[00:35:23] Dr. Frank Anderson: It’s developmental trauma.

[00:35:24] Matt Landsiedel: It’s.

[00:35:25] Dr. Frank Anderson: I would say it’s developmental attachment trauma. And developmental trauma is a form of complex relational trauma.

[00:35:31] Matt Landsiedel: That’s what I thought.

[00:35:32] Dr. Frank Anderson: Yeah, it’s a form of it. Like, at what developmental stage did your trauma occur? And when you’re growing up gay, you have this Experience of being wrong, less than inadequate, broken, various different developmental stages.

So it’s really developmental trauma. Yeah, it’s. It can be attachment trauma. Like attachment trauma is different than developmental trauma too. Attachment trauma is what happens very early on in the bonding experiences with your primary caregivers within the first two years of life. And a lot of attachment trauma is preverbal. People store it in their body. They don’t have words for it. Like, one of the things that happened to me that I real. I understood many, many years later was my abuse started in the crib. I started getting hit in the crib as a baby. And my dad was in pharmacy school. He was totally out of control. When I would cry as a baby and my mom was working, he’d hit me. So I have preverbal attachment trauma also, which wasn’t about being gay at all. It was because I was a baby who was crying in hundreds. You know what I mean? So it’s a different level of trauma in that also. So there is those early, like when you grow up with a father who’s an alcoholic and not available, a mother who’s depressed and suicidal, all the ways our parents. You grow up with 10 kids in the family and you’re neglected by sheer number. Early, where you’re not getting your basic needs met is a very early infant before you have words. So you encode it in your body or in emotion. Those can be healed too. It’s just you don’t get to those two words.

[00:37:15] Matt Landsiedel: They show up more like somatic memories. Like you can have feelings of like, not just not feeling safe or feeling wrong and not. You’re not even doing anything. It’s like I’ve had this before. Somatic memories, they come on very intensely. And it’s like, I don’t know why. Suddenly I’m just feeling anxious. Right. It’s like nothing happened, so.

[00:37:33] Dr. Frank Anderson: Or desperately needing someone else to feel good, to feel safe. This is. Pick crappy partners over and over like you, you know, attracting unavailable men. It’s because my early attachment trauma, my attachment trauma is not conscious. It’s preverbal. And there’s desire to fix it. Yeah, Keep repeating it because we don’t have awareness of.

[00:37:57] Matt Landsiedel: Okay, so what is trauma? Past two years at the detachment. Pre two years. What would it be? Relational and developmental. Beyond that. Or is he still attachment trauma?

[00:38:06] Dr. Frank Anderson: Yeah, it’s a good. It’s non attachment trauma. Typically after the first two years. And I tend to break down. Some of us do. Bessel van der Kolk breaks it down too. Like this relational trauma in childhood, growing up in a dysfunctional family. You know the ACE study that, that vest calls developmental trauma disorder? No, it’s basically relational trauma, complex PTSD in childhood versus relational trauma in adulthood. Complex ptsd? We don’t call it developmental trauma as much. Even though a lot of people who are adults who have complex PTSD have early relational developmental trauma. And so you’re an adult and you can have messed up relationships and complex PTSD and you have all these symptoms or you drink too much or you dissociate. And it’s often rooted in unresolved complex trauma in childhood that you didn’t work on. Versus kids who are being traumatized get developmental trauma disorder, which is relational trauma when you’re a kid in childhood.

[00:39:16] Matt Landsiedel: Okay.

[00:39:16] Dr. Frank Anderson: They’re similar. It’s along the continuum, but we do kind of talk about them slightly differently.

[00:39:21] Matt Landsiedel: I think there is a lot of unprocessed and unhealed complex trauma in the gay community. That’s only a bunch. As soon as CPTSD gets recognized and put into the dsm, I bet you we’re going to see a skyrocket of diagnoses in the gay community because it’s so prevalent. Like, I see it everywhere.

[00:39:37] Dr. Frank Anderson: Yeah, that’s what it is. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you’re making me think we’ve got a lot of dysfunction in our community. I mean, in some ways we’re more self aware than the average person because in order to come out, you have to be self aware.

[00:39:49] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:39:50] Dr. Frank Anderson: And in other ways we have such deep seated inadequacies, preverbal wrongness that we’ve encoded. It’s very powerful the way, you know, the super healthy, fit gay community is a big compensation for the AIDS crisis. I was, they, I remember this happening and all these people started getting super buffed in compensation for everybody dying. All around us were really powerful. There was, it’s popping in my head. It was so crazy. I don’t know if you remember this, you’re probably too young to remember this, but there was, there were these potato chips that were certain kind of potato chips made with a certain kind of oil. They were fat free potato chips. They were made with oleic acid or something like this. They were fucking rampant in the gay gay community. Everybody was like, oh my. Like, and all we go out to dinner and people would talk about eating bags of fat free potato chips. But what ended up happening, why it was so rampant in the gay community is they caused explosive diarrhea. Okay. And so everybody’s like, I could eat A bag of potato chips. Shit my brains out and not gain any weight. Right. It was so pathetic. And I was like, we are broken that we care so much about being thin and pretty that we’re going to eat potato chips that give us diarrhea.

[00:41:12] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:41:13] Dr. Frank Anderson: And excited about it. It was very painful. Like I. An HIV inpatient a day treatment program. And they would not. The participants would not go to an eating group.

[00:41:26] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:41:27] Dr. Frank Anderson: Didn’t want to talk about their eating issues because everybody had an eating disorder. To be thin and pretty and perfect and desirable and wanted dinner. I mean it’s so we have a lot of dysfunction in our community. We’re also healthy too. Like it’s both. But it makes me sad. A lot of people that haven’t been able to work through the trauma that you’re talking about.

[00:41:51] Matt Landsiedel: I know. And that was my inspiration of having you on the podcast. And I’ve done. Out of. We’ve done 220 episodes now. I would say probably 15 or 20 of mine are around trauma healing. So I’m really devoted my life and my career to helping gay men move beyond this trauma. And I’m like, so you have an amazing tool in your toolbox. You’ve dedicated your life to a modality. Internal family systems work. I’ve used it. I use it in my private practice. I’ve used it in my own healing journey. It’s amazing. So can you share a bit about that and introduce the audience to this and why this could help them get away and heal trauma?

[00:42:25] Dr. Frank Anderson: Yeah. Like I said earlier, I was in therapy for 11 years, five times a week. Which was more like psychoanalytic therapy. Let me understand everything. But it didn’t get to the core healing of my wounding. Didn’t you know there are certain trauma treatments? Trauma is a specialized form of treatment. Going to therapy and talking to a therapist is not going to help heal your trauma. I’m going to make a bold statement. But you need to access these things that are unconscious and deeply held within your body.

Pushed away. And E D R is one of such treatment. Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. Any somatic type of treatment. Somatic experiencing or sensory motor psychotherapy where you work on physical body sensing things to help access the trauma that we store in our body and internal family systems. Which the form of therapy that works with the different parts of our personality or aspects of us. And ifs believes we have different parts or aspects of our personality. Some of them carry the pain of trauma and others are protective in nature and work really hard to keep the pain of trauma away.

[00:43:36] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:43:37] Dr. Frank Anderson: And there’s a process in appreciating the protectors and getting to know them, not hating them and getting rid of them. That opens the door to allow us to access the pain of our trauma from a place of what ifs calls self energy, which is internal wisdom, intuition, our soul. Right. There’s a way we can release trauma, not just live with it. One of the things I’m doing, I created the trauma curriculum for the internal family systems module. I wrote the book on trauma, and I’m creating a program for the general public. Like, that is my just signed contracts for the next book. Oh, here we go again. Round four. To bring trauma healing to the general public. Because I want people to learn how to do this.

[00:44:27] Matt Landsiedel: Cool.

[00:44:28] Dr. Frank Anderson: Outside of therapy. Also, not everybody has access to therapy, and there’s not enough therapists to heal all the trauma in the world.

[00:44:36] Matt Landsiedel: Seriously.

[00:44:37] Dr. Frank Anderson: Right. So I’m doing what I can. Kind of bring it to a larger audience. But I will use these principles of what I learned over the years.

[00:44:46] Matt Landsiedel: Okay. This is good. We’re getting into the meat of it. So I’m curious. What are some of the parts gay men have to develop to not have to be with the pain?

[00:44:58] Dr. Frank Anderson: So I would say a ubiquitous. A part that all gay men hold is shame. Like, I’m bad, I’m wrong, I’m no good. That’s a wound.

[00:45:08] Matt Landsiedel: Right.

[00:45:08] Dr. Frank Anderson: That’s a wound. And everybody has that false self.

[00:45:13] Matt Landsiedel: Would you call that like the ego? Like, are these parts built within the structure of the ego? Like they’re like these parts we develop to keep ourselves.

[00:45:20] Dr. Frank Anderson: Yeah. But they’re kind of more connected to the ego. But they’re also super ego related too.

[00:45:25] Matt Landsiedel: Okay.

[00:45:26] Dr. Frank Anderson: You know, because we all have a critic. Critic is more super is critic is internalized perpetrator or superego energy. Right. And so I would say all gay men have some form of a critic because you’re needing to use that energy that you absorbed. You’re bad and you’re wrong, but you need to use it internally, protectively. Like if you were thin and pretty, then we’d be better if we were smart. So we’d become critical of ourselves. The service of not getting hurt anymore.

[00:46:00] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. To try and motivate ourselves. Go to the gym to.

[00:46:03] Dr. Frank Anderson: That’s exactly.

[00:46:04] Matt Landsiedel: Masters in your doctorate and all these things.

[00:46:07] Dr. Frank Anderson: Right. It’s a self critic in the service of making things better so you don’t get hurt anymore. So I think all gay men have some form of critic. I think we Have a false self. We’ve create this Persona. There’s a fake inauthenticity. It’s a Taylor Swift concert or you go to see Wick at the movie and there’s like all these teenage girls and gay men. Right. And we all have this like this as if this elevated inauthenticity playing the role.

[00:46:37] Matt Landsiedel: It’s the role that we.

[00:46:39] Dr. Frank Anderson: The role play role. You know what I mean? And it’s, it’s very powerful. I’m so great. I’ve been with my husband for 25 years. We’re going out. I’m so grateful to have such a healing relationship for myself. But I have friends that have been in long term relationship and then get out of them. And I’m like, oh, I have the date. In this day and age with all the apps, to find authenticity is like finding a needle in a haystack. Because there’s such layers and layers and layers barrier. Do you know, saying that it doesn’t exist. I don’t want to be the Debbie Downer that’s like, oh, there’s no authentic men in the world. Because I don’t believe that. It’s kind of like the more you heal, the more your energy elevates and the more you’re capable of attracting a similar energy.

[00:47:29] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:47:30] Dr. Frank Anderson: The reason there’s so many unavailable guys out there is because your energy is blocking your authentic self.

[00:47:38] Matt Landsiedel: Totally.

[00:47:38] Dr. Frank Anderson: Yeah, that’s what it is. The more we elevate, the more layers we clear, the more we attract that vibration. There’s a lot of people like, oh my God, you know, for me, this is such a sick community. Yeah, we are sick. That is a sick community. And there are people that are doing their work and you can find them if you do your work. It’s a collective.

[00:48:02] Matt Landsiedel: I like using the, the four trauma responses as a way to help people identify protector parts. Because I know for me, you know, you got fight, fight, freeze. And Fawn. Fawning was my in earlier development. I fawn on.

[00:48:16] Dr. Frank Anderson: I’m going to stop you. You’re going to not like this. A full bond is not a trauma response.

[00:48:22] Matt Landsiedel: Oh, interesting. Okay, tell me more about that.

[00:48:24] Dr. Frank Anderson: I know, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

I wrote an article in Oprah Bailey magazine about this. Right. Okay, here we go. I’m going to get myself in trouble. Fawn is a protective mechanism, but it’s not a trauma response.

[00:48:37] Matt Landsiedel: Okay.

[00:48:38] Dr. Frank Anderson: Social media, popular culture has thrown Fawn around as if it’s a thing in the trauma response and it’s not. I’M not saying people don’t fawn to protect themselves.

[00:48:50] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. So it’s a protective part, not a trauma response is what.

[00:48:53] Dr. Frank Anderson: It’s a protective part, not a trauma response. Yes. I’m not saying fawn doesn’t exist.

I’ve been fawning for a lot of lifetime, you know, we all do. Right. But fight, flight, freeze, submit is a trauma response.

[00:49:07] Matt Landsiedel: Okay.

[00:49:08] Dr. Frank Anderson: Fight or flight and submitting.

[00:49:11] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:49:11] Dr. Frank Anderson: It’s hyper arousal. It’s. The freeze is a transition zone because you’re frozen but you’re activated.

[00:49:18] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:49:18] Dr. Frank Anderson: And then submit is dissociation or playing dead. Because that is the way, like, if I play dead, I’m. That’s the ultimate in my survival tactics. So I always want to tell people accurately and authentically what we’re talking about. Fawning exists. It’s not a survival mechanism. You don’t feel like that. It’s a protective mechanism.

[00:49:40] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:49:41] Dr. Frank Anderson: You know what I mean? But those you talked about, our survival strategies that we all have.

[00:49:47] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. Thanks for correcting that.

[00:49:48] Dr. Frank Anderson: Because I didn’t know that and most people don’t. And like, really, social media is loaded. I’m like, fawn, fawn, fawn, fawn, fawn. Like, that’s another article I gotta write. Yeah. Well, I did. It’s like, don’t throw that around like that.

[00:50:00] Matt Landsiedel: And I think people just identify with it because they identify with pleasing. I think that’s like the number one thing I see in my private work is people are like, why? How can I overcome my people pleasing? Right. And it’s.

[00:50:11] Dr. Frank Anderson: It’s huge. It’s a big deal. And not minimizing the people pleasing is the opposite of authenticity. Yeah, it really is.

[00:50:20] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. I think other big ones that we see in our community is like, like hypersexuality, masculinity, like hyper masculinity. This, like, callous. Like, you know, fuck straight people. You know, you got this like real, like, kind of attitude as a protector part. Like the tough, like callous. I think callous is. Is a good way to look at it.

[00:50:38] Dr. Frank Anderson: That really kind of makes me sad. Is that judging each other?

[00:50:42] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. Oh, for sure.

[00:50:43] Dr. Frank Anderson: Very catty community.

[00:50:46] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:50:46] Dr. Frank Anderson: And it’s this way that we’ve been exiled and judged from culture and now we’re going to do that to each other. You know what I mean? So there’s a way. There’s a way that. Haven’t we been through enough? Why are we judging each other so harshly? Because there’s a lot of comparing and competition. Yeah. That I think is sad.

[00:51:09] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. When I first start connecting with gay men, even, like, collaboratively, it’s really interesting, like, in this work, because I talk to so many people a lot, but it’s like, you first come into contact and it’s like walls are up immediately. Like, there’s very few gay men that I’ve connected with where there’s just. They’re soft and they’re gentle, and it’s. There’s always this, like, kind of defensive, ready to fight kind of energy, and it’s. It perpetuates our trauma, and I think we need to be very mindful of that.

[00:51:35] Dr. Frank Anderson: And it’s a sign for me of a lack of integration, because the reality is we’re more mixed than most as gay men and lesbian women. We have more mixture of male and female energy.

CIS people do. And so if we’re presenting with one side, that’s because we’re not integrated and holding the other side.

[00:52:02] Matt Landsiedel: I love that. That’s a great perspective in my.

[00:52:05] Dr. Frank Anderson: Right. You know, so any of that outward expression is a lack of integration of. Of the other side?

[00:52:12] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:52:12] Dr. Frank Anderson: People ask me my pronouns sometimes, and I’m not a they person. Like, it’s just doesn’t work for me as a they because we’re talking about, you know, gender versus orientation. I like he, she, him. I’m kind of one third female, and I’m two thirds male.

[00:52:31] Matt Landsiedel: I love that, actually.

[00:52:32] Dr. Frank Anderson: That feels integrated for me. It embraces my femininity and it embraces my masculinity, and that’s the percentage that feels kind of accurate for me. He, she, him, you know, and I. And I think we need to hold both because we’re both.

[00:52:49] Matt Landsiedel: I’m not a big pronoun guy. I’ve never used them, but you just kind of slightly sold me on, like. Okay. That kind of makes sense for me too, because I think I’m. I’m that balance. And I. I’m very much about honoring my femininity and these more yin qualities in you, which I’m actually very yin, because the work I do. I’m highly compassionate and I’m empathetic and nurturing and. And these sorts of things. So I have these qualities in me. So I love that perspective.

[00:53:14] Dr. Frank Anderson: Well, I think that pronouns are complicated, and I don’t know that we’ve gotten. We don’t have one that works for everybody. So I think it’s important that it’s not as much about the pronouns as much about the authentically integrating the range of you.

[00:53:30] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:53:31] Dr. Frank Anderson: And how do you present that exactly? Yeah.

[00:53:34] Matt Landsiedel: Okay. How can we begin to disarm these parts? I think that’s the work really, like, the work beyond disarming the parts is when you can start to feel the love and connection. And I’ll speak for myself. I also feel more fearful. Once the protector parts have been disarmed. I’m left vulnerable and I’m like, whoa. Right? So there’s this. Right now I’m at this point where it’s like I’ve stripped away a lot of my protector parts and I’m just naked and I’m feeling very raw. I’m feeling very vulnerable. I don’t want to be visible very often. So I’m kind of now. Now I’m like learning how to let love in so I can start to, like, learn to love myself again more deeply. So, yeah, maybe just share a little bit about that.

[00:54:14] Dr. Frank Anderson: Yeah. So it’s not disarming protectors. That’s what I’ll say. It shouldn’t be disarming them. It should be appreciating and loving them for the ways they’ve been helping you.

[00:54:24] Matt Landsiedel: Okay, good reframe. I love that.

[00:54:26] Dr. Frank Anderson: Yeah. It really. It’s like, thank you so much perfection for the way you saved my life. Thank you for people pleasing part. You’ve got to learn to appreciate the value in them.

[00:54:40] Matt Landsiedel: Okay.

[00:54:41] Dr. Frank Anderson: In order for you to not feel the fear.

[00:54:44] Matt Landsiedel: Okay.

[00:54:45] Dr. Frank Anderson: Because fears, you know, like, it’s more about my smart part. Oh, my goodness. Like, I was only smart. Like, that was it.

[00:54:53] Matt Landsiedel: I.

[00:54:53] Dr. Frank Anderson: That’s all I had. And when I really embraced him, that part of me for the ways he saved my got me out of that house, I started and loved him. Loved him for the ways he was helping me, not disarming him or getting rid of him. Then I’m like, oh, I have a broader range in here. I’m actually funny too. And I’m this and I’m that. So the embracing the positive intention of your parts allows for more space inside. And we shouldn’t really go to the vulnerability until you get permission. Right. And the permission is like, do my parts know me outside of my protectors, There’s a you in there that is loving and compassionate and kind, and that’s the you that you want to get in connection with the parts that hold the pain. Okay. So once your protectors relax, One of the things that I teach in my trauma training that the IFS Institute doesn’t teach so much as you have to repair the relationship between yourself and your protectors, you have to repair that relationship. They have to know you and love you. You have to know them and love them.

[00:56:18] Matt Landsiedel: Okay.

[00:56:19] Dr. Frank Anderson: In order for the next layer to occur, which is for yourself to be with the parts that hold trauma. Okay. There’s a repair that needs to happen first before you can go to that deeper layer.

[00:56:34] Matt Landsiedel: Okay. This is so good. I’m loving this.

I’m like, okay, yeah, I’m going to my therapist next week. So I’m like, this is good stuff. Okay, we got about 10 minutes and we’ll kind of start landing the plane. What else? What else is really important to note. Like, I want to just give the floor to you. Like, we’ve got healing trauma, the four T’s of healing trauma. We could talk about forgiveness, Anything else that’s required to heal.

[00:56:57] Dr. Frank Anderson: Yeah, let’s. So what I would like to talk about next, really, because we talked a little bit about forgiveness. So, you know. But what I’d like to talk about is the process of healing, because this is the thing that people really don’t understand. There’s so many therapies that don’t really do healing. You know, one of the things I’m working on in this new program that I’m talking about, I want to call it Release. A fusion between psychotherapy, neuroscience, and coaching.

[00:57:26] Matt Landsiedel: Cool.

[00:57:27] Dr. Frank Anderson: Okay. Because I really believe that coaching, psychotherapy, and neuroscience all have things to offer, but we need to put them all together.

[00:57:35] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:57:35] Dr. Frank Anderson: And the release piece is really important because a lot of people don’t release the trauma they carry.

[00:57:44] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:57:44] Dr. Frank Anderson: Manage it. They do all the kinds of things with it instead of release it. And there’s science that supports and backs releasing the energy of trauma. And there are three main steps involved in releasing the trauma. First is, and this is after, by the way, thanking your trauma response and appreciating the value of those protectors and accessing your wisdom, that self energy within you, that internal wisdom. So those are the first two steps and the T’s. The healing piece is the part that holds. The trauma needs to share its experience.

It’s the only holder of the experience, and it’s going to hold it forever unless it shares it now. It could be shared with a therapist. It could be shared with the self now. So it can be shared internally or could be shared relationally. But it’s not just a story. It’s the thoughts, the feelings, and the physical sensations. Like, the experience needs to be shared. Like, does somebody else truly get it? That’s a first necessary step in healing, because heart’s going to hold it forever until it knows it doesn’t have To. And it may say, I don’t have to hold this anymore, because Frank gets it now. He really. What I went through. So that sharing is really important. The second step is having a corrective experience, the opposite of what the trauma is. So if I feel shamed, I want to feel seen and known. If I feel unloved, the part that holds the trauma needs to feel loved. If I feel neglected, I need to feel valued. So the part that holds the trauma, after it shares what it holds, there needs to be a corrective experience. Neuroscience calls it disconfirming, the opposite of what the heart holds.

Feel that. Then release is possible. So then you can. The part can let go of the thoughts, the feelings, and the physical sensation. It doesn’t have to carry it anymore. It shared it, and it got what it needed. So that’s how it can be released. And I really want people to know that, that that’s possible. Release is possible. And that’s what I want to teach people. And that’s what I do. It’s not just managing it or processing it. It’s releasing it and no longer holding it. Like, this always comes up. And I’ll bring it up this time. It comes up a lot. I’m 61. Okay. And I don’t look 61. Like, I know I don’t look.

[01:00:28] Matt Landsiedel: I was, like, 45.

[01:00:29] Dr. Frank Anderson: Right. That’s. It’s people like. And to tell you the truth, you know, what’s your skin care? That kind of bullshit. It’s not my skin care. It’s my healing.

[01:00:39] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. Amen.

[01:00:40] Dr. Frank Anderson: I really feel that the more I have released, the younger I look.

Not because I eat clean and use good skin products. Yeah. That helps. Or I have good genes. But I really feel I’m lighter and cleaner and clearer because I’ve released so much of my trauma. And I think that’s why I have a youthful look and energy.

[01:01:08] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[01:01:09] Dr. Frank Anderson: Because the trauma blocks love. That trauma energy weighs us down and takes a toll on us.

[01:01:15] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[01:01:16] Dr. Frank Anderson: And the more we can release, the more authentically energized we can be.

[01:01:24] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[01:01:24] Dr. Frank Anderson: And I want people to know that that’s possible.

[01:01:27] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. So one last question before we wrap up is how can people do this that can’t afford therapy? Like, let’s bring it back full circle. Because if someone’s like, okay, I got to do all these things. Step one, step two, step three, how do I release it? How do I work with my parts? What’s something that somebody can do? Where can somebody start if they are recognizing from this video or audio that they have trauma that they need to work on. Where’s the best place to start?

[01:01:51] Dr. Frank Anderson: I’m in set. And partly I want to say hold your breath. I’m going to have another book out soon. But other than that. Other than that. Oh, great. What the hell is that going to be? No. This is one of the things that is good about what’s happening in social media right now. There is a lot of access to a lot of different things. You know, go to my website, sign up for my email list. I do courses all the time. There’s. There’s one that’s. One of the good things about what’s happening is that there’s much more access. The things now you have to be discerning and you have to use your judgment. Like one of the big things in this new model of therapy that I’m creating for the general public is you take charge of your own healing journey, not giving it over to a therapist or a coach.

[01:02:35] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. Which is empowering in my opinion.

[01:02:37] Dr. Frank Anderson: Right. You lost people with trauma histories lose agency. Trauma is a violation of your wisdom in yourself.

[01:02:46] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[01:02:46] Dr. Frank Anderson: So you have to take that back. Start trusting yourself.

Is really powerful. Yeah. I mean, a journaling component in my kind of self healing. Because journaling is where your parts communicate. It’s one of the ways they communicate. If you’re writing all of a sudden you’re like, this is not me. It’s just flowing through me. So journaling is a really good way. I personally. It’s like self connection, self awareness. You have to start with self connection and self awareness. What are the ways that you can be with yourself? Because we’re so on our phones. You’re so out in a set in. For me, I go running in nature with music. That is my zone.

[01:03:34] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[01:03:34] Dr. Frank Anderson: And I get a lot of work done separate from my own. I go to therapy still now. Oliver. I’ll be always. But there’s ways that you can do some of this stuff on your own too. And again, I’m really working on a program. It’ll be out before the book comes out. I’m going to do online programs to exactly what you’re saying. If you don’t have the resources. There are ways to start doing this stuff. I’m doing a course in January called Write to Heal. W R I T E. Oh, cool. So the people should learn. I got a whole protocol of how to write. How to write. Not just random shit writing. Like writing with a purpose so that you can kind of do some of that work. There’s. I’M doing another course that’s body centered, embodying the parts with your postures. Like, if, what did your angry part look like in your body? Let it show you. What does anger look like? You know what I mean? And so the people start getting connected to these parts of them in a felt sense. Sense kind of way.

[01:04:36] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[01:04:36] Dr. Frank Anderson: Do you know what I mean? So there’s a. There’s a lot out there if you start looking. And this is one of the resources, obviously. So thank you for doing that.

[01:04:45] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. I’ll make sure to link your website. So frankandersonmd.com I’ll leave the audience with a tip that I have and I use with, with myself and my clients is one of the most popular trauma responses in my opinion is busyness. Busy, busy, busy. And I always say slow down by 10%. That’s the first session when I have clients, slow down by 10%. Chew slower, walk slower. Just slow down. Because you can’t. You can connect to your body. The body operates much slower than the mind. So we want to start to slow down so we can connect somatically. And I think that’s the entrance point to all healing. Presence is, is really the foundation of all healing, in my opinion.

[01:05:21] Dr. Frank Anderson: So I love that. I think it’s great advice. I’m constantly, any, anybody that I’m teaching how to do ifs and like, slow it down, slow it down, slow it down.

[01:05:29] Matt Landsiedel: Exactly.

[01:05:30] Dr. Frank Anderson: Yeah.

[01:05:31] Matt Landsiedel: So much gratitude. Thank you so much for spending over an hour with us and showering us with your wisdom and your also your personal anecdotes and being vulnerable and open with us today. So thank you so much.

[01:05:42] Dr. Frank Anderson: You’re welcome. Thank you so much for having me and thank you for all that you’re doing in the world because getting this stuff out there is really important.

[01:05:48] Matt Landsiedel: So, yeah, thank you. And for those of you who are listening or watching on YouTube, drop some comments down below. I’ll make sure that they can get to Frank if he wants to answer them there. And let us know about your trauma healing journey. Where are you at in your journey? What are you needing support with? Let’s get the conversation happening down in the chat and we’ll see you all for the next episode. Much love.

[01:06:18] Dr. Frank Anderson: Sa.