Podcast Player Episode 064

Dr. Robin Stern: Welcome to The Gaslight Effect podcast. I'm Robin Stern, co-founder and associate director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, and author of the bestselling book, The Gaslight Effect. I'm an educator and a psychoanalyst, but first and foremost, I'm a wife, a mother, a sister, aunt, and healer. And just like many of you, I was a victim of gaslighting. Please join me for each episode as I interview fascinating guests and explore the concept of gaslighting. You'll learn what it truly means to be gaslighted, how it feels, how to recognize it, and how to understand it, and ultimately how to get out of it.

Dr. Robin Stern: Before we begin, I want you to know that talking about gaslighting can bring up challenging and painful emotions. Give yourself permission to feel them. Some of you may wanna go more deeply with your emotions. While some of you may hold them more lightly, no matter what you're feeling, know that your emotions are a guide to your inner life. Your emotions are sacred and uniquely you respect and embrace them for they have information to give you. If you want to listen to other episodes of the Gaslight Effect Podcast, you can find them at robinstern.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for being here with me.

Dr. Robin Stern: Welcome to this episode of the Gaslight Effect podcast. I'm delighted to have Ingrid Clayton with me today. Ingrid Clayton has a master's in transpersonal psychology and a PhD in clinical psychology. She has a holistic approach to psychotherapy, incorporating trauma-informed modalities like somatic, experiencing EMDR, and other experiential ways of working with the nervous system based on the belief that a therapist can't take her clients further than she's willing to go herself. Ingrid has been using a relational approach to therapy since 2004, bringing her whole self to the work, including her personal experience, intuition, and education. This enables her to be in real connection and collaboration with her clients. She's the author of Believing Me, healing from Narcissistic Abuse and Complex Trauma, where she uncovers her personal experience of childhood trauma from a psychologist's perspective, recovering spirituality, achieving emotional sobriety in your spiritual practice, and her upcoming book, fawning Are Must Reads for All People in Relationships. Tell our listeners your story and just jump into it wherever you want.

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: What a beautiful introduction. Robin, thank you so much for having me here today, and I love your podcast. I love the topic. It's so important. Um, you know, it's funny when people ask me sort of, you know, to jump in or go to the beginning, I go, well, what's the beginning? Is it that I dedicated my life to healing trauma and didn't know that that's what it was, right? Leading to my becoming a clinical psychologist and trauma therapist, or do we go way, way, way back to childhood, which is where, um, narcissism mentored my life. And I didn't, of course know that that's what it was at the time. Um, so maybe I will start with, um, the book Believing Me because, uh, it came out in 2022. It, it is my memoir, and it really sort of came out of the blue as this deep, deep calling to translate my history, these stories, um, both from childhood but also from my adult life.

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: Like my first marriage, all these, they were coming onto the page so forcefully, and I did not know why. I was like, why am I writing about being 13? And, um, you know, next thing you know, sometime in my thirties. And the truth is, it's because I sat on a million therapist couches in my life. I've done all the self-help programs, I've read all the books, I have the degrees. I specialized in trauma, and I did not know two very important things for myself. One, that I had complex trauma, in fact, complex, PTSD, and two, that it was a result of narcissistic abuse. So essentially that book, my memoir is me having to become my own therapist so that I could put my story onto the page. You know, this is this five year process of sort of painfully seeing it, um, through a therapist's eyes and going, oh, this is what this is.

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: And I thought, if I have all this training and education, and I had no idea what was living inside of me and how it was being perpetuated, how many people don't know ? That's such a feature of this work, right, of gaslighting, of emotional abuse, of manipulation, is that it warps our own ability to see and know the truth. That's why I called the book Believing Me. So, um, it took me on this journey to go back and, uh, it was the most healing and helpful thing I've, I've absolutely ever done. It's changed my life, it's changed my work, um, and I'm just continually blown away, blown away at how many people see what I thought was a very unique story. You know, we're all like, oh, no one's gonna really resonate or understand. It's like people are saying, you are telling my story on these pages, you know? And, um, it's such a gift to have been able to finally validate myself, but then also to get that, that deep reflection from other survivors. It's, yeah. So, so that's, that's where I come from. .

Dr. Robin Stern: That is such a beautiful story, and I thank you so much for sharing it. And I, I'll share with you that, uh, it sounds it's very related to why I wrote The Gaslight Effect and, um, to my own experiences, uh, when I was working with patients and they were showing up with, um, confusion and feeling destabilized after, uh, in their relationships after being highly successful in their lives, otherwise. And I recognized that I recognized the movie Gaslight, uh, in their interactions, which was one of my favorite movies. And not surprisingly, um, I also began to recognize that my husband at the time, my ex-husband now, but my husband at the time, who was the most affable, pleasant, lovely guy, was continuously gaslighting me around one area of our life being late. You know, I would complain that he was, um, late and or that we were waiting for him, and I wished he would just be respectful and give me a call. And he would say, you have a problem with lateness, you have a problem with time, and, but we're connected to your story as I thought, wait a minute, if I'm studying this and I'm people and I'm experiencing this, even though I know as I'm experiencing, then I need to write

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: About this. That's right. That's right. And I think, you know, there's, so there's the two pieces of it, right? For me, there's the, the gaslighting, the, the narcissistic abuse. That was a lot of gaslighting that happened to me. And then there's how my body responded to what happened to me, which is in essence the fawning trauma response, which is why my work has really gone in that, uh, direction, because, you know, mine came from childhood and I, I got out of there as quickly as I could, right? I drove away at 17, I moved at first hundreds of miles away, then thousands. And, um, I was similar to maybe a lot of your clients. It's like I was out in the world and I was gonna, you know, be successful and overcome and not carry on these patterns related to alcoholism and everything else. Um, but this thing was still living in me, right? I was living in this now chronic trauma response, which we know with trauma responses, generally with complex trauma, you start to feel like it's just your personality, right? You don't know where you end and trauma response begin.

Dr. Robin Stern: That's just the way you are. Exactly.

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: That's just the way I was. And yet I did keep going to therapist going, why do I keep dating the same person with a different face? Right? Like, what am I wearing a sandwich board, right? Am I like advertising, um, something that I'm unaware of? And in fact, I was . In fact, I was, because, you know, I love that saying, red flags don't look like red flags when they feel like home. And I had so learned to not just tolerate, but accommodate exploitation and chaos, um, and lying and, right. So it just was so deeply familiar to me, and this is the piece that really allowed me to sort of go, wow, I finally make sense to myself. It wasn't just familiar, but if my body adapted in this, what I believe very genius way to fawn, which is to sort of go along, to get along, to merge with, you know, the lies that you're being told to survive them, right? It's not about pleasing, it's not about control. I can't stand those labels that we often get. My intention was to survive and find safety and deeply unsafe situation. Okay? So if my body adapted to be able to do that, to survive, guess what that is? It's, that's empowering. That's actually genius and empowering. It became sort of this superpower, this currency that I had.

Dr. Robin Stern: You said this again for our listening audience, because the distinction you're making between do, having that kind of accommodating behavior that is about pleasing, but not about pleasing because it's about surviving is really, please say that again. Tell us again.

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: Well, I just, you know, to be honest, of course, I had heard about things like codependency and people pleasing. They never resonated with me. They felt, first of all, deeply shaming. And as I go back and look at the literature now, I mean, in black and white, there it is. It's like, you're bad, you're broken. Get it together, honey. Right? It's like, wow. Of course I can't see myself there. It's not how it felt in my body, right? I knew that what they, and it was a different, again, face or um, environment, but I knew what they were doing was wrong. And I, you know, I'd like to think now I'm an intelligent person. I'm, you know, constantly trying to work on myself and be thoughtful, and yet this adaptation that my body made to survive that environment, right? The body knows what works. And the fact is, fawning works for so many of us. We are socialized and conditioned to fawn, right? You think about women, you look at, um, the synonyms for what it means to be feminine. It's practically a definition for fawning, right? To please to sort of care, take, to sort of lean. We're, we're, we're literally told and brought up to be this way as though it's our power and currency. And yet when my body instinctively goes down that road to find safety, now I'm shamed and blamed for it. It's so absurd to me.

Dr. Robin Stern: And you, this is so important. Can you tell us what you, um, unpack a little bit what you mean when you say your body is telling you what it, what were you feeling? Where is that? Like, what's happening?

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: Well, it's a fair point, and so I guess I'll back up a little bit and say, the reason that for me, the language of fawning is so right, is because it's rooted in the landscape of trauma, which is rooted in our bodies, in our nervous system. These are not conscious thoughts and choices. These are instincts, right? And so if you look even broadly at the, the animal kingdom, and you see, you know, a prey animal who hears a noise, he doesn't stop and think like, am I being ridiculous right now? Like, you know, I'm sure he doesn't really mean to hurt me. No, he bolts, he runs, he hides, he does what he has to do to protect himself. All of our trauma responses are just as quick, just as instinctual, and fawning is a piece of that. So when I say that it happened in my body, I mean, it was without my conscious consent, I didn't even know it was happening or why, and that presents differently for different people in different contexts. So when I fond with my stepdad, I had sort of a witness consciousness about it. I didn't have control over the behavior. I didn't think about it. I was just doing it, but I could sort of see it. But in other contexts, like with my mom, for example, who was kind of the fauna, actually the enabler, um, of my stepdad, I couldn't see my fawning with her. It was like the blinders were completely on. So sometimes we have some awareness, but often we have none. So

Dr. Robin Stern: What, what do we need to be paying attention to

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: That it's happening now? So this is the reason why, first of all, I wrote a memoir and not a self-help book specifically, because I think how we start to see it is exactly how you started to see it in your life, which is through other people's experience and stories. And so I really intentionally slowed down so many moments of my life and showed what it looks like. And now what I'm doing with the fawning book is translating all of that. My story is the spine of that book, but I have seven clients who have literally handed over their life story to me. It's the most precious gift I've ever, ever been given. These are not like composite characters of, you know, someone that I'm kind of making up to fit a need in a book. These are literally my, my client, some I've worked with for 15 plus years.

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: Um, they are saying, here's my experience so that other people can see and know theirs too, right? And so, of course, there's a host of, you know, I have a whole chapter about the signs that essentially the thread that's running through all of them is about self abandonment, but we don't know. It's self abandonment, right? Again, we think like, no, no, no, I'm just being generous and kind, or I'm being a good daughter, I'm being a good partner. I'm sort of, but I'm sort of unpacking those things to show, um, you know, there's how we minimize ourselves, how we, how we shrink, how we become almost invisible. And, you know, I talk about this idea that it's sort of like if the relationship is a cup and the other person is taking 80%, we just learn how to live in the 20, we don't know it.

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: We're, we're not looking at this consciously, like this ratio. Um, but that's what the fawning body does. It goes, oh, I'm allowed this much space. Okay, I'm gonna figure out how to kind of fit in here. And sometimes, you know what, it might be sort of necessary. You're dependent on someone financially, or again, it's about safety and survival. You try to take 25% and you're gonna be harmed, right? So often what is at the heart of the fawning trauma response is this double bind. And you're choosing, you have, the body has to choose, and it chooses safety over self, right? It's connection as protection.

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: Um, so it looks differently for different people in different contexts. But, um, I think it's such a pervasive, particularly with childhood trauma, right? You can't, you can't run as a kid, where are you gonna go? You wanna fight back? It's like, come on. You know, we don't really have these other options available, and we're hardwired for attachment. We need our caregivers quite literally, to survive. So a child can't look at their caregiver and go, well, you are deficient, . You know what I mean? Because we need them. So the body goes, oh, it must be me. I must be wrong. I must get small. I must, you know, accommodate and shapeshift and all of these different things.

Dr. Robin Stern: is just so important. And I, and I love the notes that you're giving people as, as your gift to our audience. And connection as protection is something that I think is everyone is listening to and writing down and, and taking to heart. And, and I wonder how, um, what you would say about the line between healthy accommodation and, um, uh, healthy. I wanna please you. I wanna make you happy. I love you. Um, I, I'm gonna care for you in this way, and I'm giving myself up to do this. I'm giving myself pieces of myself. It's too much.

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: It's such a great question. I love that. And you know what, what I tend to say to my clients and in the book is, there is no one way to know, right? There is no rule. In other words, that what I'm trying to restore in people is a healthy connection to their own body, to their own intuition, to their gut, right? So if in essence we've abandoned ourselves, we've lost connection to this internal wisdom that each of us really have. I'm not bestowing this on other people. I'm offering tools that might help them to get back in touch with their own wisdom. And what tends to happen, I've seen it so many times, it's my most favorite thing in the world, is that we go from this idea, again, from this other paradigm that says, well, you're broken. We'll, just set some healthy boundaries, right?

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: Like, just grow your self-esteem as though a, it's that simple. And b, it feels like some victory lap. Like, you go girl, right? Woo woo. It's like, it does not feel that way. It is not that simple. It's a process. But what happens in this process of embodiment, of nervous system regulation, w we start to get this inner knowing, and then we can bring more conscious choice online, right? So we don't get rid of our trauma responses. We need them, they're vital. The distinction is we don't want to live in one all the time. That means we're in survival mode. So the goal then is to come out of survival mode and be a little more consciously aware. One thing I give to every client, you might be familiar, but it's based on Peter Levine's somatic experiencing work, and it's called orienting. The, the senses are the language of the nervous system.

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: And so what he invites people to do, what I do on a regular basis, I look around the room and take in what I see slowly turning my head and just noticing what I notice, right? So most of us in our lives are so busy. We're on autopilot. We're go, go, go. You're not taking anything in even. And again, to think about animals in the wild, they are constantly connected with the earth. When was the last time our feet actually touched the grass? Right? We're, we're so disconnected. So reinhabiting our bodies means reconnecting with the larger environment where our senses can know, look, I'm safe. I'm safe right now. Right? There's no , there's no predator out there coming to get me. And we do this by just taking in our environment visually. And you can use all of the senses. Notice what you hear. It could be the ambient sound of the air conditioner. Notice what you feel. Some people have different senses that really sort of bring them into their body, but practices like this start to restore our connection with self and our internal wisdom. And then it's no longer a should I or how do I, it's a, my body knows what my truth is in this moment and how much of myself I'm wanting to give or not. Right? It's so personal.

Dr. Robin Stern: So personal. Yeah.

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: Yeah. There's no right way.

Dr. Robin Stern: So how did you get into, how did you go from writing your first book to then writing your second book and then writing Bonnie?

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: Yeah. You know, my first book was really about spiritual bypassing. Are you familiar with that term?

Dr. Robin Stern: Oh, tell us.

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: It's from John. Well, Wood's work, he, uh, was a psychotherapist and a Buddhist practitioner. And so he was largely teaching meditation, and he had all these western, um, students coming to him like, I must be doing this wrong, right? Because they weren't literally transcending the human condition. And he was like, well, that's actually not the point, right? So it's this idea, spiritual bypassing that if you use the right spiritual practice in the right way, you can avoid feeling, you can, you know, transcend the human condition. And when I first heard about it, I was just, I mean, it felt like an slow motion arrow coming from my heart. I was like, what do you mean? I could be using these quote unquote healthy practices in a way that's continuing to disconnect me from myself and others. So, um, I felt, once again, early on, it was this term that was so resonant.

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: And yet I was like, but, but we're not talking about why aren't we talking about this? I want people to know. And so I wrote my dissertation on spiritual bypass, and, um, my first book, recovering Spirituality came out of that. And then I quite frankly thought, that's it. I don't have another book in me. Right? And, um, and I didn't for at least a decade when the memoir came for me, , it was, you know, the healing that needed to happen. And actually, I think that's another thing that I'm trying to give to readers. It's like, your own life has the plan for your fawning. I didn't know that that's what that writing was, but that's what the writing was. So there's also a trust in the nudges and the callings and the things that you get curious about, right? Like, where are you being creative?

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: These are also tools of the nervous system, and the more that we listen, uh, the more information we get, and it starts to have ripple effects from there. But, um, you know, and I think a, again, after the memoir, I was like, oh, I'm so glad that I did that. I don't have another, I don't have another book in me. And then long story short, um, I self-published my memoir, so I didn't do it with traditional publishing, and, um, was also thrilled with that. It was an additional part of my healing of saying, no one else has to validate this story. It's only I can. And it was the most, you know, the, the biggest way that I could validate it was to say, of course it deserves to be published. And even if I'm the only one who reads it, this process is, is for me.

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: And, um, but then I ended up getting in touch with an agent that I had talked to on and off for years, and she saw that I had written about fawning in the memoir and knew that big publishing, uh, as it's referred to, was looking for a book on the subject and talk about a nudge in a calling. My whole body just said, I am the one to write that book. My whole life has led up to my ability to write that book. And, um, you know, they, they signed me that day, , and we got the proposal out, and, and here we go. It's coming out next year.

Dr. Robin Stern: So exciting. Yeah. I have a question. Yeah.

Dr. Robin Stern: What do you do if you are someone who is, um, listening to this podcast on their own journey of self-discovery, having already gotten to the point where they know that their accommodation is not in their interest? Yeah. And, um, they now identify fawning and think, wait a minute, so maybe I'm not always that applicable, or maybe I'm not always that in that liminal space mm-hmm . Between, and you discover what's going on mm-hmm . And you are then thinking, well, who am I then? And like, what am I gonna be like? Can you talk a little bit about that?

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: Yeah. I just love your question. I think you answered it in your question, being curious. And, and I will say, since I don't think this is, um, gonna be on video, as I say these words, I'm instinctively putting my hand on my heart, which is a stance of self-compassion. And whenever I can, I can't really with my sweater now, but I try to do it like you do with a baby, which is skin on skin. And so I put my hand on my naked chest, and this releases oxytocin, which is the bonding hormone, and we can release it by ourselves for ourselves. Usually you take a spontaneous deep breath, which also signals more safety and regulation in the body. So as you ask that simple question, who am I really? And I heard it and I instinctively did these things, I'm already in relationship to the answer just by being curious about it.

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: Curiosity is our biggest and best friend in this work. And then you can start to deepen that curiosity. I mean, as simple little things as like, well, every time someone asks where do you wanna go eat? Do I always say Wherever you wanna go, why don't we just, well, what if I really did choose, what would I choose? Right? Some of those simple choices, like, well, I've asked clients like, well, what do you do for fun? And they're like, fun, what do you mean? I go to work and I work out like fun hobbies. And at first I think they think, oh, okay, Ingrid. Like, that sort of seems silly, but the more that they linger in that space between like, what do I enjoy doing? And when was the last time I allowed myself to do it? I have seen people go on what feels like honestly these magical journeys of connection with self and self-expression.

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: Even if it's like, well, I want to go away by myself. I feel like the, I'm so connected to expectation and it's happening all the time without my knowledge again. Like, well, who do you need me to be? And how do I meet your need and what, what need do I have to meet behind that, that we don't even have the space? And so sometimes, just recently, a client of mine was like, I need to go away. And she went to the mountains and she connected with the trees, and it was profound. And, and another client was like, I think I wanna paint, you know, and he went to the art store and he saw what colors he was drawn to. I mean, all of these things, right? Again, there's no one way, but start with the question, who am I really? What do I like? What do I want? How does it feel in your body? Even just to receive the answer.

Dr. Robin Stern: So how do people who are listening, um, what do they look for for the signs that they may be overly accommodating? Or let's say you're a family member and you're listening to this podcast because you're worried about your sibling in a relationship that looks to you very much like he is disappearing or they're disappearing. What are the signs that that point to your fawning rather than your being?

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: Yeah, I think, you know, one thing is looking at our resentments, , what are the things that you're really irritated by? What are the, what is the pattern that you keep seeing yourself in over and over? For me, it was dating for other peoples, it's in friendships. They're like, why am I the perpetual cruise director? Like, why doesn't anyone just invite me to something? Why can't I, you know, or in our jobs, you feel like I'm always hitting this ceiling and people are stealing my ideas, and I'm not sort of getting my point across. There's lots of different, um, ways that we can see it, but I think looking at where your resentments lie is a big clue. And the reason, well, I think faers are disconnected from their anger and their agency. It's not allowed. In fact, it made things worse, right? Fight a healthy fight response for a lot of faers has been snuffed out.

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: That doesn't mean we're not mad. It means we can't tell you we're mad. It means we can't take care of ourselves around that feeling. And so noticing how you're carrying it now could be a sign that you're fawning. Look where you're gossiping, right? Because it's not safe to be direct and say, you hurt my feelings. But we still need to discharge that pent up feeling in our body. So we might turn to someone else and go, can you believe? Right? Look at what you're gossiping about, what your resentments are, and see if it's a sign, could I be more direct? Are there ways for me to take care of this in a different way? And look at what the barriers are. And if the barriers are relational, safety , it, it could very well be, uh, the fawning trauma response.

Dr. Robin Stern: What else could be barriers to your actually, um, being direct and saying what you feel?

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: Well, I mean, I think there's, there's so many, so it's hard to sort of list them out specifically. But I think my work tends to be grounded in relational safety. And so, um, you know, we don't, we don't shrink and become invisible because we are inherently submissive. We do it because, you know, I I, I'll speak to, to my own experience for a moment, that when I was younger, I did know that what was happening in my house was wrong. Okay? So my stepdad ended up really grooming me. He wanted me to be his girlfriend. And this became more overt over time.

Dr. Robin Stern: Ly his girlfriend.

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: Yes. And I found out that he has a pattern of this and sort of his previous life before he married my mom, and I found that out while writing the book, I sort of, again, all the pieces finally came into place, but at the time, I knew what I know is happening, even though I don't know the whole story, , this is wrong. And so I had a healthy fight response, and I turned to the people, a counselor at school, um, to say, this is what's happening. And she said, I'm a mandated reporter of child abuse and neglect, and I need to make a report. Social services was brought in. And I thought, here we I'm gonna be taken care of, right? Like, it's all gonna be okay. And that is absolutely not what happened. It made it so much worse because the gaslight turned to me and said, you're a selfish liar.

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: None of these things are true. Right? Of course, he did , and my mother was waiting for him to manage the narrative and agree, essentially. She said, I believe that you believe those things happened, but I don't believe that they did. Right? So, I mean, it's devastating, right? It's, it's that trauma is the biggest trauma of all. Not everything that happened up to that point. This is so true for so many trauma survivors. It's not what happened as much as it's the way people responded or did not respond to what happened. It's the being alone with it, which again, perpetuates this need. Then for me to go, well, I'm all I've got. I'm all I've got. This is an unsafe world. I have got to figure out how to stay on people's good side, or I become annihilated. That's how it feels in the body. So again, this language around like, well, come on just dot, dot, dot. I'm like, in my body, it feels like life or death, what you're setting a boundary feels like I'm going to be burned alive. The, i, it, it might sound ludicrous to some people, but for the people that know they're going, that's exactly how it feels, right? It feels like it's terrifying.

Dr. Robin Stern: And those people who are supposed to love you and supposed to care for you, right, perpetrators.

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: That's right. And so where do you go? Where do you go? That's right. Where do you go? Um, and so it's just the feeling that I will not be safe if I speak up, right? It's, it's those millions of examples. Uh, you know, again, I think so many women come by this trauma response. Honestly. It's like someone wants your, you know, I talk about this in the book, that strangers feel the need to comment on whether or not you are smiling to them on the sidewalk, right? And I go, what are we like greeters at the gap? Like, I, I'm just in my life. Do I need to really welcome you to the sidewalk on which we both happen to be walking, right? It's, we're put in this role all the time. And yet, am I gonna say that to the stranger? No. You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna go good morning with a big cheery smile on my face, because I don't want the blowback. I don't want what so many of us also get, which is like, why are you so uptight? What's wrong with you? I was just trying to be friendly, or I wasn't flirting. Like, who do you think we don't want to deal with that?

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: So there's a lot of reasons, and again, this, maybe this speaks to your sort of question of, well, does it mean that we become like a hundred percent authentic, whatever that means a hundred percent of the time? And the answer is no. I think there's also skillful fawning, right? Um, I'm gonna protect my energy, I'm gonna protect my investment, but I do wanna be able to decide where it feels like I wanna set a boundary. And when it's like, whatever, I'm never gonna see you again, kind of a thing. Um, and as I say that, I also want to enlarge the, um, the collective consciousness around these things. 'cause I, I think we as Faers shouldn't be the ones who have to move the needle. What I'm talking about is complex trauma. It's relational trauma. That means we have to look at the context, we have to look at everyone and how they're participating. And, um, it's a much bigger conversation. But, um, who I get to work with are the individuals. So that's where we're starting, right? , we

Dr. Robin Stern: And, and is why, where we're starting and and you are speaking to the whole world right now.

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: Yeah. Yeah. I think so. I think it's so universal.

Dr. Robin Stern: I think that's so important. And I'm just know that people will get so much from listening to you today, and thank you so much for your, we're not done yet, but I just wanna take the Thank you for your general sharing. I mean, it's just incredible and the many takeaways that you've left us with. And so I'm gonna ask you for some more.

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: Yes, .

Dr. Robin Stern: What, what do you most want people to leave this podcast with after hearing you?

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: I love that question. And maybe this is selfish because it's what I needed. Um, so it might not be what they need, but in case they do, it literally like makes me teary every time. I want people to know that they make sense. They are not broken. They were never broken. They were genius. Their body without their permission became the thing that saved them moment after moment. And again, that's not to say that I think we want to live there or should have to live there. I want us to have more freedom and flexibility. That's the whole point. But I want them to know that they make sense right now.

Dr. Robin Stern: It's so beautiful. Thank you so much for that. Yeah, thank you. And how wonderful that, that it's so deep inside of you that it moves you.

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: I wonder when that may ever go away. I, part of me hopes it doesn't. I just, um, I, this is, this is so deeply personal to me, and I've also worked with too many people who have come to me, um, with this idea that they were broken and needed to be fixed. And it's heartbreaking. It's a part of the same problem, right? It's also why I, as a therapist feel so, um, called to share my personal story as a fauna today, right? It's not like I'm going, well, you know, I figured it all out and now I can help you figure it out too, because problem solved, finish line. I think we're doing such a disservice to folks by maintaining this black and white binary paradigm of healed and unhealed, safe or unsafe. The, the truth, the reality is somewhere in the middle, it's in the gray. And so I'm trying to create more of an equalizing thing by sort of, I'm jumping into the messy. I don't want to be on some pedestal with the, as the person who has the answers. I'm really trying to be a person who has lived experience and a desire to share it in a way that is hopefully helpful. Um,

Dr. Robin Stern: So you're that person. Oh, and, and I, when you said, I hope I don't lose that, I was, I echoed that and said, I hope you don't lose it either, because your ability to contact that place inside of you is where your power comes from.

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: Yes. Yes. It, I believe that it is, and it's a result of un fawning to the degree that I have been able to in this moment, right? So I think that's also a living picture of what, what this can look like, right? To be able to say out loud publicly, I'm a trauma survivor. Like, forget about it, right? Not like talk about unsafe. It would be, uh, I mean so and shameful and all these other things. And, and so I now have so much more ownership, uh, of who I am and how I am. I do not see myself as, oh no, if you really saw me, you would know how flawed I am. I go, yeah, like, 'cause I'm a person too. And, uh, let us all have more contact with the truth of humanity. You know, I don't necessarily wanna open a big door, but another big topic in this book is related to sexual fawning, right?

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: The way that people have even given their bodies over in the service of perhaps wanting real connection, wanting real relational safety. Um, but it's another way that we have abandoned even our physical selves in the process, right? And this just, there's so many layers, financial fawning of, well, no, I'll get the, I'll get the tab. No, of course it's on me. Or we actually maybe amass some level of resource and we think, well, I can't hold onto this. Of course I need to give it to you. Right? This, this lack of a sense of self that we can hold. And I think for a lot of us, we're, because we're afraid, it's like we ooh, but I don't wanna see those things. So a lot of unfading is being able to look at those things and to love them as much as we love the things that we want to present to the world, right? In a way, it's like I'm more, uh, comfortable and happy now leading with trauma survivor than I am my PhD. It's like, that's in my back pocket now. It's like, yeah, I did that. I'm proud of that. But for so long, I needed that to be the thing that was gonna make me okay. It is not the thing that made me okay. Owning the truth is the thing that made me, okay.

Dr. Robin Stern: What a beautiful way to wrap up this podcast.

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: Oh, I'm so glad

Dr. Robin Stern: Owning the truth. So tell us where, um, where people can find you. Yes.

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: Yeah. I'm, I'm on all the social media places with just my name, Ingrid Clayton, PhD. That's also my website is Ingrid Clayton. You can sign up for my newsletter. That's a great way to be kept up to date on all the book stuff as it unfolds. And I try to give little nuggets along the way for folks there. Um, Instagram is probably the biggest platform, uh, where I, where I share. Um, so yeah, all the places. ,

Dr. Robin Stern: Thank you so much. I love that you told us that your body is genius.

Dr. Ingrid Clayton: Oh my goodness. I'm glad you heard it. I, I, uh, that makes me smile and I really appreciate your time and, um, all your efforts to, to help the people that you do. It's great service.

Dr. Robin Stern: Thank you. Really heart-centered from me. Thank you. And just for the gifts you give to the world. Thank you everyone for listening. I'll see you next time. I know it was a meaningful hour with Ingrid Clayton. Thank you.

Dr. Robin Stern: Thanks for joining me for today's episode. I hope you found it helpful and meaningful. If you want to listen to other episodes of the Gaslight Effect podcast, you can find them@robinstern.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. And please leave a rating and a review. I also invite you to follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter. This podcast is produced by Mel Yellen, Mike Lens, and me. All of my work is supported by Suzen Petit Marcus Estevez and Omaginarium, also by Sally McCarton and Jackie Daniels. I'm so grateful to have many people supporting me and especially grateful for all of you, my listeners.