Summary
Joe narrates a clip from Theo Von’s podcast in which a UFC fighter named Shawn shares severe childhood abuse — sleeping under the bed to protect his mother from his violent father, the chronic terror, the lack of anyone to depend on. Joe uses the footage as a live case study in how trauma is held in the body and how to actually be with someone in pain.
He maps two responses to overwhelming abuse: becoming the endurer (“you can’t hurt me,” total self-reliance) or becoming the perpetual victim who keeps recreating the abuse. Shawn took the endurer path — and that’s exactly why he can’t easily express hurt. Joe shows how Shawn “speed bumps” the unfelt emotions: the longing for his father’s love, the anxiety, the wish to be seen. The detail that finally breaks Shawn down isn’t the violence but the anxiety he felt as a child, and the ancillary pains — the mother who didn’t protect him, the teacher who took his desk instead of asking why he was tired.
The teaching at the center is about what real support looks like. Telling a deeply enduring person “I’m sorry” or “you’re okay” reads as weakness and makes them feel small — the one thing they can never allow. What they need is to be witnessed in their strength, met with presence and unconditional love: “I’m right here. You’re rocking it.” Joe also names the trauma cycle’s cruelest twist: wanting to hurt someone because you were hurt makes you believe you’re bad, which confirms the original story that something was wrong with you, which makes the trauma harder to process. The only way through is to feel all of it.
Key Concepts
- Abuse creates either the endurer or the perpetual victim
- Trauma controls you until you feel the hurt underneath it
- The ancillary pain of not being seen must also be processed
- Don’t make hurt into weakness — witness the strength
- Believing you’re bad perpetuates the trauma cycle
Key Quotes
“Until you can feel the hurt and the pain of the experience, then you’re you’re still going to be controlled by it.”
“Telling somebody, particularly somebody who’s deeply enduring, that I can make you safe and comfortable is never going to work.”
“All he really needs is just a safe place to break down and to be seen and not to be made small in it.”
“The thing like I’m sorry is again like the shot in like it’s weakness instead of like this is strength. What you’re doing right now is strong.”
“You can’t feel like you can trust yourself if you think you’re bad.”
“When I’m working with people through their traumas… if they were seen, something changes, but the not being seen in it causes just as much pain.”
Transcript
In this powerful clip from Theo Von’s podcast, he’s talking to somebody who’s a UFC fighter who’s dealt with [music] some deep personal abuse. We’re going to use this as a way to look at abuse and how you can work with it. [ __ ] [snorts] man. Uh I used to always sleep in my mom’s room cuz I thought my dad was going to kill my mom. So, like I would like sleep by the door, I’d sleep under the bed to make sure she was all right. >> So, we’ve already learned a couple things. This fighter, Shawn, clearly has done some talking about his trauma. That means he’s already on a process of healing. It’s also clear that he it is not something that he’s talked about a ton or he hasn’t fully completed it. You can see from his body language he starts kind of covering his head. He’s like there’s there’s a kind of a protection aspect of it. His body language is open enough, he’s not completely closed down or anything like that, but you can tell that he’s dealt with some of this trauma before. Probably it started with not talking about it, then it was joking about it, and now he’s actually starting to do some of the real processing about it. If for any of you out there who have dealt with a lot of abuse, finding a safe place to talk about it where you can be listened to and attuned to while you’re talking about it is a really critical first step. Everything comes after that. And so, clearly he’s done some of that, so let’s see what happens now. My dad’s like, “Fuck that. He’s not sleeping He’s not sleeping in here tonight. He’s not like kick him out.” And so, I like army crawl under the bed, I’m sleeping under the bed, right? >> Under the bed? >> Under the I’m like laying on the bed, like just laying underneath the bed, like as they’re fighting cuz I think my dad’s going to kill my mom. Wow, he was that violent? Yeah, he’s just coward, you know? So, anyways, like There’s one of two things that happens to somebody who has this much like violence or abuse put on them. One mechanism is that you are like, “You can’t hurt me.” Right? Like you don’t have power over me. There’s nothing you can do. If you’re going to hit me, it didn’t affect me. You can hit me harder. You become basically this ability to endure whatever gets thrown at you, right? And so, that’s the path he’s taken. And you can tell just by I mean, outside of his body type and that he’s a fighter and all those other clues, you can tell just by that thing he said, “Was your dad violent?” And he didn’t say, “Yep, my dad was violent.” He said, >> Yeah, he’s just coward, you know. Right, so he’s he’s he’s dealt with his trauma in a way that is just like, “You can’t even [ __ ] touch me.” It’s like complete self-reliance. I cannot depend on people. I will depend on myself. And no matter what you do, you can’t hurt me, which has a lot of benefits, but a lot of drawbacks over a time in life. And so, we have an episode on self-reliance, and you can take a look at that, but it’s just that’s what’s happening there. The other option is that you actually start becoming a victim, right? Where you recreate the victimhood over and over and over again. You keep on finding relationships that are abusive. You keep on finding places where you’re going to get physically abused, or you’re going to get sexually abused, or whatever the abuse was. And so, those are the two ways and they can there can be some blending, right? Like, this person might always have a relationship with a woman who yells at him or something like that. So, they you know, who knows, but it’s usually predominantly one or the other, and you can tell which one he is right away. So, picture like me like third, fourth grade, >> Yeah. laying under a bed, fleas jumping all over me, there’s a [ __ ] like dildo next to me. Yeah. >> [laughter] >> Yeah, it sounds like a Japanese game show or >> a dildo underneath the bed? That’s unsanitary. Put it in like put in your [ __ ] drawer. >> Yeah, at least put it in a drawer that has a bunch of gum and coins in it. >> Under the bed with the fleas. Yeah, dude. So, anyways, that’s scary, dude. So, anyways, my dad gets on top of my mom. So, hold on a second. So, so there’s this weird thing that’s happening, which is like, they’re both uncomfortable in this situation, but they’re also wanting to talk about it, and you can actually see the conflict that like I we were on a a podcast episode. Are we going to go here? Is it okay to go here? There’s this like back and forth and you can see they’re both getting uncomfortable. They’re starting to look away from each other, look at each other like which is a really interesting thing and I think that’s important to say because when somebody is going to share trauma with you, if you’re on the receiving end of it, they’re looking to see if there’s some safety, what’s going on, like how well can you hold this? And safety doesn’t mean are you going to be able to say to them, “Oh, I I it’s okay. You’re you’re okay. Everything’s going to be okay.” That’s not actual safety. It’s like, are you going to be able to be with me in this experience? Are you going to try to make it better, run away, be too uncomfortable? Are you are we going to actually be able to go there? That’s one of the things that’s happening and happens every time that somebody’s sharing an abusive or traumatic experience. It’s like, “Oh.” Especially if it’s on their edge. If they processed it a thousand times, they’ll just say it offhandedly like, “Yeah, this is what happened in my childhood.” I remember he said like, “I’m going to [ __ ] I’m going to kill you. I’m going to [ __ ] kill you tonight.” It’s maybe just rough sex, we don’t know at this moment, right? >> And you’re under the bed? >> the bed. So, he starts strangling her and I get out and I the only thing I can see is a guitar. I just [ __ ] crack him in the head, call the cops, and then he gets a job running on the street, calls the cops, gets arrested. My dumb ass mom bailed him out of jail. One other clue that’s just happened and he’s like My dumb ass mom bailed him out of jail. Now he’s like very much illustrating I had nobody to depend on here. I couldn’t depend on my mom even when I was trying to save her. I couldn’t depend on my dad. He was [ __ ] crazy. So, all I could do was learn how to depend on myself. And and I will endure whatever needs to be endured to be able to make my life what I need my life to be. Cuz I’m not going to get anybody else. Usually what that means is that a person is not good at expressing their wants, is not good at expressing their needs, has a hard time asking for any kind of help, and they often like caretake other people. They’re like they’ll be a savior or they’ll caretake other people or at least they think they are. Because they realized that there was their job. His job was to take care of his mom. So, he probably goes through life when he can taking care of other people. And so, all of those things are learned through that like deep amount of self-reliance. My dad would get home drunk, start drinking like 6, and like just be up until like 3:00 in the morning just like tell my mom tell her drinking, tell my mom she’s a [ __ ] or he’s like kill her like And I remember I used to like What a loser, huh? >> Oh, sorry to say that about your dad, but >> No, he died of cancer. He died of cancer. He died of cancer, but anyways There’s this moment in him where he’s just like yeah, [ __ ] my dad. It’s okay like of course you can call him an [ __ ] like this whole thing. But, he’s speed bumping the emotion. You can just watch him What I mean speed bumping it means like there’s an emotion there that he’s not allowing himself to feel. So, he’s going right over it, which is like that longing for your dad’s love, that longing for connection with your dad. You can’t get rid of that longing. It did like it’s always going to be there no matter how much of an [ __ ] your father is, there’s something inherent in us that wants a relationship with our dad or our parent. And if you can’t feel that entirely, you’re never going to be completely over the traumatic experience. Meaning, you’re never going to have fully processed it. Until you can feel the hurt and the pain of the experience, then you’re you’re still going to be controlled by it. And what you’re seeing with him, which is amazing and and and and it shows you the self-endurance and that endurer quality is that I can be self-reliant. I am an endurer. But, I actually can’t actually express hurt. I can’t feel the hurt. Because if you ever expressed hurt with the dad, you would only get more abused. And so, that expression isn’t there and so, it becomes very unsafe in your own body to feel the hurt and that’s the exact thing you have to do to get through the trauma. >> We had this little nook and she would like go in the nook and I would just sit there like all night long I’m by like the feet of my mom and my dad like I’m going to [ __ ] kill you and this and that. >> So that’s a lot of responsibility then you feel probably just to like take care of your mom. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah, now he’d always tell her that like if you cheat on me and she probably was cheating on him. If you cheat on me, I’m going to like cut you up and put you in a bottle of acid and bury you. I don’t go to school. I’m up till 3:00 in the morning. And uh I couldn’t stay awake in school. Like so like I remember I was like in third grade or no second grade and I kept falling asleep in my desk and my teacher took my desk away from me and she made me like like stand up. And so me, I’m like [ __ ] you being this little kid. I just went and fell asleep on the ground. This is an amazing thing. So like he’s talking about his the massive abuse that’s going on in the school and and he quickly starts talking about how he basically wasn’t seen, right? No no teacher came up to him and said, “Hey, what’s going on? What makes you tired in in class?” They just assume he’s been bad. And what’s interesting is even in somebody processing trauma, that’s second to the trauma. Like think about that. Think about the fact that this is what he’s telling us. He’s not telling us about another event of like massive abuse which you know happened on a daily basis. He’s talking about school. When you’re working with kids and you’re seeing kids like that, the ones that often make it the best is if they just have somebody to say, “I see where you’re at. Like how can I help you?” When I’m working with people through their traumas, one of the things that I notice all the time is that one if they were seen, something changes, but the not being seen in it causes just as much pain. And so usually when someone’s processing trauma, the first thing is to talk about it. The second thing is to like deeply feel all the hurt and the pain. Then there’s all the ancillary hurt and pains. Like the mom that didn’t save you or the teachers that didn’t come to you. All of that actually has to be processed so you for you to not be living a life as if that trauma is still occurring all the time. Dude, I remember like laying in bed. Like I remember I stopped believing in God, man. Like [ __ ] Like I had [ __ ] um yeah, scary [ __ ] Crazy [ __ ] man. Yeah. It’s okay, man. It’s a lot of that’s sad, dude. I used to be scared at night like uh I used to stand up like I heard when I was a kid that like if you peed around your like animals could pee somewhere that other animals wouldn’t come. You know what I’m talking about? You know what I’m talking about? Huh? Yeah, man. I got Have you ever heard that? What Theo’s doing here is very natural, which is hey, let me tell you something embarrassing and vulnerable about me so that you can feel safe and comfortable. Telling somebody, particularly somebody who’s deeply enduring, that I can make you safe and comfortable is never going to work. They’re never going to trust that, especially if they’re in their trauma. And you can just see his reaction. He’s just like uh he’s like starting to look away. He’s backing off. And Theo’s trying to like reconnect with him like hey, I’m right here with you, which is all natural, but what the person in the trauma wants at that moment is the thing that they never got, which was just unconditional love. And so the best thing you can do in that moment is just to be with them, just to be in like silently be there and just be like I got you. Like I’m right here in your attitude. You might not even say anything. If that’s not happening, if you’re trying to make them feel better, what you’re doing is you’re kind of making them feel weak, which is absolutely the thing that they can never allow themselves to feel. Yeah, I’m sorry, bud. So, oh man. I’m sorry, buddy. It’s all good, dude. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, buddy. He’s trying to say hey, look, I I’m here with you. But the thing like I’m sorry is again like the shot in like it’s weakness instead of like this is strength. What you’re doing right now is strong. He would respond much better to Dude, I am super proud of you for being so strong and feeling this [ __ ] I’m right here. You [ __ ] are rocking it. Even though we all of course are sorry like no none of us wants this to happen to anybody. All he really needs is just a safe place to break down and and to be seen and not to be made small in it. We don’t have to talk, man. I can just sit here with you for a minute. That’s beautiful from PL, but he didn’t need to say it. I can just sit here. We can just sit here. >> all good, dude. Just give me 6 seconds. I’ll just process it. It’s one of the hard things that people don’t understand about like trauma, you know? Sometimes it just comes out. >> Yeah, no, dude. You notice the body language is more protective now. His head is turned to the side. His leg is up. Yeah, when I was a kid, I used to scratch my gum and I’d have a hole in my gum. You know, I’m Just from being nervous and stuff? >> No, I just anxiety, you know? >> Yeah. Yeah, even to this day. I mean at the end of the day, like I’m a grown ass man. I don’t give a [ __ ] I mean you can post this. I don’t care. Oh, dude, I don’t have any >> No, it’s all good, dude. I mean it is what it is, dude. So this is amazing. He can talk about being under bed with fleas and a dildo and whacking his father with a guitar. He can talk about like holding on to his None of that has gotten him emotional. So he’s like clearly processed that. The thing that breaks him down and and makes him like really hurt is is to feel the anxiety he used to feel. Like that’s what cracked him. So, think about that that the where he is right now is that the the pain of this experience is to feel the anxiety that was in him. That’s the thing is like yeah. And you can see it in his hands movement. Everything he’s doing is starting to like is to show that anxiety. And it’s the anxiety that’s actually being processed right now. The anxiety that he had. The The interesting thing is what he’s not talking about is the violence that was put on to him. And what was clear is that the violence was put on to him at some point. And he’s not talking about that. So, either he’s completely processed that or it’s still something that he needs to process. When I talk about like, “Oh, I’d kill a man.” It’s like you don’t understand. You’re like when you go through that level of trauma like you just view the world differently. You know, so it’s like I have a hole in my gum cuz I had have so much anxiety as a kid and I would just scratch my gum until like I mean just blood. It just makes me sad that a kid has to feel that way, you know? Yeah, so like Any kid. As a comedian you got to joke about trauma. Like people think like I joke like I joke about all this [ __ ] Like you know, I was we’re laughing. Like you got to joke about like you got to joke about it. If you don’t, like how do you process that? You know, how do you How do you process that kind of abuse? I mean, I’ll never forget my brother my brother we were like upstairs once and he taped and he taped knives to his [ __ ] leg. I mean, we’re talking elementary school. He wasn’t going to go sit on the couch with my dad and stab him through. Like you know, it’s like So, there it is again. It’s like he’s feeling the anxiety again. He’s feeling like what had to be in his brother to want to stab the father and the anxiety of like, “Oh, my brother’s going to go to jail. My brother’s going to stab my dad.” And like all the anxiety that that brings up with him. That again starts really hitting his process heavily. And And I just have to say like, “Wow. so courageous, so brave, so freaking awesome.” Something in him knows this is his path to freedom. And he’s like going to process it, and you can And he’s relentless in it. Right? Theo gives him lots of ways out, and he doesn’t take any of them. He just keeps on coming back to another story, to another story. Which is just awesome, like so much strength. Makes you want to kill a man, but Yeah. Yeah, you [ __ ] I mean, we all got We’ve all gone through [laughter] [ __ ] man. Yeah, man, life’s good. I make a lot of money now. I’m happy, but, you know Did you think like cuz Theo’s feeling it, which is beautiful. He’s trying to do like go back and do a story that relates, maybe because he’s a podcaster, maybe to help him feel comfortable. But he’s giving us every signal Sean’s giving us every signal right now that there’s another level that he wants to process through, and it has to do with the brother with the knife wanting to kill the dad, and like he keeps on saying, “Well, we all have our shit.” And he even deflected himself for the first time, where he’s like, “Yeah, I’m making a lot of money.” But you can tell there’s something happening cuz his hand is still going, and there’s some way in which he’s trying to say there’s some other thing here that really [ __ ] sucks to live with. I remember hearing that like animals if you pee Like animals if the animal peed somewhere, another animal wouldn’t come. So I would stand up on my bed at night, and I would pee around my bed in a circle cuz I was afraid that things were going to get me. >> No [ __ ] Who were you afraid like any particular thing? Just >> Everything. Everything? I mean, I was just afraid of everything. [ __ ] I wish I could have been even able to defend myself in my neighborhood or anything. Like I didn’t have anybody look out I you know, I just didn’t So I think, you know, you see guys >> [ __ ] up, man. Like you guys, it’s like at least, you know, even though you’re fighting each other, it’s still like Well, you got to learn it You got to want to be violent. If it wasn’t fighting, bro, I would be jail I’d be in jail. Like it was not like Like to have like you don’t understand like I I truly have a deep down urge to kill somebody. Like I can’t it doesn’t go away. Like I just like I don’t know what it is man like That there it is. That’s the thing that he’s going he was trying to process before. You know you just think like yeah it’s [ __ ] up dude. You know so like when I train it gives me tools to process it but like there there’s definitely something inside me that like tells me that like the moment I take someone’s life and now mind you we could probably agree that it’s because you have so much trauma when you’re victimized it like that’s your way of like protecting you and saying that if you go and kill somebody like you’ll be happy and I would like I would if you could let me kill a man happy as I can’t but >> Right. Some places. Yeah some [laughter] places right. But you know you pull up in Memphis But see I don’t know like a lot of times I don’t know what it’s like to to talk to normal people. Yeah. I have some people who know exactly what it’s like who have been molested who have been abused you know and it’s like I have some people who know you know been beat up I’ve these people know what it’s like but to go talk the average person like man you just don’t know it’s like some people do but you don’t know what it’s like to be able to like the only thing in like that would make me happy is the literally cave in your [ __ ] skull and like the only thing that would I truly want is the [ __ ] like Make somebody hurt. >> [ __ ] hurt yes. He’s describing something that’s like like the traumatic cycle right? I was abused and I either become the victim or I become the abuser. And he’s describing exactly what happens if the trauma is not dealt with then you have this thing in you that you’re just like I want to hurt somebody because I was hurt. But in a human’s mind if you want to go and kill somebody then you must be bad right? That’s the then the thing is oh I’m bad. So not only are you contending with this horrific feeling like that you want to hurt somebody cuz that doesn’t feel good in anybody’s system. So, which it is a response to the trauma. It’s a thing that he’s just like I don’t want to feel that, but you’re also then having a very good reason to tell yourself that you’re a bad person. That you that there’s something wrong with you. There’s something broken with you. And then that story perpetuates the whole thing. It makes the whole thing harder to process and like you’re bad for feeling angry. You’re bad for wanting revenge. You’re bad for wanting to cave somebody’s skull in. You’re bad for being weak. You’re bad for everything is just another way in which you’re bad. Which agrees with why you got the abuse in the first place cuz there was something wrong with you. And the only way through that is to actually allow all of those feelings to be felt so that you no longer have that like oh, I want to kill somebody. And thank goodness that this particular young gentleman uh had something [music] like the UFC to channel all that aggression. It makes me volatile. So, I don’t really even to this day like I don’t go out much. >> trust yourself probably. >> trust myself. >> Yeah, there it is, right right at the end. I can’t trust myself. You can’t feel like you can trust yourself if you think you’re bad.