Susan Gold - Transforming Childhood Trauma Into Adult Freedom

Most people look back on their childhood with nostalgia: lazy summer days with friends eating smores, festive holiday dinners with family, the comradery from baseball games and doing goofy things like messy art projects and sleepover pillow fights. Susan Gold had none of this. The daughter of a narcissistic father and detached and abused mother, and siblings who were always out to get her, Susan was subject to her own hell of abuse and cruelty.

   Susan outlines what it was like to grow up in this poisonous environment in her riveting memoir Toxic Family: Transforming Childhood Trauma into Adult Freedom. As the title suggests, Susan not only survived the loneliness, hurt and pain she endured but learned from them to triumph into adulthood. In our in-depth conversation, Susan reveals how she did it and how the lessons she learned can help others heal their own traumas. Among the topics she discusses

·     The survival mechanisms she used to make her a successful professional

·     The survival mechanisms that led her into destructive and near-fatal behavior

·     Why her marriage was doomed to failure even before it started

·     How she got Andy Warhol to do something he never wanted to do

·     How she stopped the tide of generational abuse

·     Why she is now committed to helping heal others

·     The practical advice she advocates for growth

Childhood abuse does not have to doom you forever. If you or someone you love went through this kind of pain, don’t miss this insightful episode of Dream Power Radio.

    Susan Gold was raised in a challenging and chaotic family system, the middle child of five. To fully thrive, she bravely chose to meet the demons of her upbringing that were continuing to repeat. Her book, "Toxic Family: Transforming Childhood Trauma into Adult Freedom" is about that journey.
      Professionally, Susan became known for attaching celebrity talent to projects in NYC which led her to produce for television and film and on to Los Angeles. She convinced modern art legend Andy Warhol to do an on-camera commercial for Pontiac, a talent deal American TV personality Donny Deutsch still claims as one of his best, helped launch Fox News Channel at the request of Chair, Roger Ailes, and on behalf of Disney Channel persuaded A-list celebrities including Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Taylor Swift, David Beckham and more to be interviewed by cartoon characters…Phineas & Ferb.
     Susan is a decorated endurance athlete competing in three marathons, and dozens of triathlons and has the distinction of finishing third in her age group at the treacherous Escape from Alcatraz event.
     After living with force on both coasts of the United States, Susan heeded an intuitive call for a quieter life and now resides in the northwest corner of the mystical state of Montana with her beloved partner and their pets. Keen on leaving a legacy to help others heal from challenges she’s successfully met, Toxic Family: Transforming Childhood Trauma into Adult Freedom, is part of that quest. With the same magic Susan created in her entertainment career, she is now leading retreats, webinars, workshops and private sessions to help ot

Transcript

Susan Gold

Hello, hello, hello and welcome to Dream Power Radio. I'm your host, certified dream life coach, Debbie Spector. Weissman. This is the place where we talk about dreams, both daytime and nighttime dreams. Now you can use them to make the internal shift to a life you love and rediscover the truth of who you really are.

We'd all like to live in a perfect world who we grew up with, two loving parents, brothers and sisters who were our best friends, grandparents who doted on us constantly, and partners who always had our best interests at heart. My guest today, Susan Gold, had none of this. Her childhood epitomized the definition of toxic parents were either abusive or distant siblings who took rivalry to the extremes.

And grandparents who were cruel. Her later relationships with partners were equally toxic. Despite all this, Susan became a leader in her chosen profession that that success came at a steep price, and she's written all about it in her book, toxic Family Transforming Childhood Trauma into Adult Freedom.

Susan is here to tell us all about her journey to show others who may be in similar circumstances, that there is a way out. Welcome to Dream Power Radio, Susan, Debbie, thanks for having me here today as your guest. Oh, I am so excited that you're here. It is such an important topic about, and  I thank you for sharing your story so others can learn from it.

But Susan, one thing that I thought was clear from your story is that you came from a heritage of generational abuse. So can you talk a little bit about how you were faced to suffer from the sins of your parents and grandparents? Thanks for bringing that up because it's a crucial piece of the story and actually helped unlock forgiveness, which was absolutely a mandatory for me in order to move through with grace and be truly free now.

 I feel that her children were raising, abused and hurt children, and for many aligned, my grandfather's stepmother on my mother's side beat him almost to the point of death. And this caused him psychotic episodes. And he did the same thing with my mother. And when she was beaten, she was expected to stand up, dust herself off and act as if nothing happened.

And I believe that caused mental health issues and it certainly caused addiction within. She sued through food and using food to an extreme to soothe and. Back when she was doing that, the answer was diet pills and diet pills are speed. And my father showed his abuse through alcohol.  He just had to shove his dreams, history and music or his loves, but he had to shove that aside for, for a career in physics, because that was a better, safer path to go.

His, his own father didn't really want children. He wanted to be the child, so, it’s long back in the lineage and once I came to understand that it really helped soften the playing field that I was dissecting and to gain some grace and compassion. Yeah, I guess it gave you a little empathy that realizing that.

How hurt that they had been that maybe you certainly didn't realize that when you were a child and going through everything. Well, I wasn't, and still am a super empath. I was also highly intuitive and quite telepathic, and I could. Feel the pain. My mother was dripping in it, and I would watch her as she would stare off into a distance and twirl her hair tightly around her finger, and I could see how grueling it was for her to be raising five children, basically alone with a narcissistic Peter Pan as a husband.

I know that must have been awful and, and awful to be the child growing up in that circumstance because,  where could you go? I was the middle of five. My siblings all have very different trajectories of growing up in that, in that home. And we're very supportive of one another now.  But back then it was dog eat dog.

There were very few scraps of love doled out, and it was highly competitive to receive them. Yeah, I mean it was all about survival. Back then, for sure. I tell you; I'm reading your story about your childhood. One of the things that actually broke my heart reading it was the time your grandfather burned her security blanket.

 Tell me about how that affected you. Well first, Debbie, thank you for reading the book that really touches and moves me. I'm always surprised, and strangers have read the book. One new friend here in Montana actually knocked on my door at 10 in the morning because she had had an insightful revelation reading the book.

 But I remember that. That time it was incredibly painful. I had one of those pink blankets, they were like rayon nylon with the satin, you know, edging. And I had carried it probably since birth.  And I was five years old, and that thing was dirty and tattered, but it was my confidant. I, I spoke with that blanket.

I was soothed by that blanket, and I took it everywhere, including a trip to my grandparents and my grandfather thought it was time for me to get rid of that blanket. Unbeknownst to me, and in included my mother in his decision-making process, and I was,  greeted by them when my mother encouraged me to come down into the cellar.

And my grandfather said, come here. And he directed me over to the incinerator and he had me step up on a stool and he opened the incinerator door and I saw what were the remains of that treasured friend in Smolders, orange, embers, glistening. And I remember to this day, swallowing that huge lump.

And praying that the water from the tears wouldn't fall down my face. And my grandfather said to me, you don't need that dirty blanket anymore. And I was more aghast that my mother would permit this. And I got down off the stool and I looked at them both. And I remember thinking, you're not going to break me.

And I turned around on my heel and I slowly went up the stairs and I hid in a closet where I could cry because even then I knew it wasn't safe to let my emotions go. That must have been so difficult. Cause when you said it was your, ,  Way to feel soothed because nobody else around you was giving you that and that you could get it from a blanket was the only way to do it and have that taken away.

Just what must have been awful.  Which leads me to ask you this, did you ever feel suicidal as a young child? So, six, I was six years old, and I was in the kitchen. I was crouched down. , I felt my little toes on that tile. Linoleum kind of flooring and I was fascinated by the block of knives that was in a cabinet.

, they were used to cut meats. They were usually only taken out on Sundays, and I remember removing a really long blade from its place. And turning it towards me and thinking, if I could just lance this through my little heart, this will all be over. What would that feel like? And then I heard the thundering and it was my mother stomping into the room.

Susie, what are you doing down there? And I slammed that knife back in its place so, so quickly, and closed the cabinet doors. I knew I was in a place of. And it wasn't safe, and it was so erratic. I mean, the, the hard thing is you could be loved and cajoled one moment, and the next moment you were being beaten or something was flying across the room at you.

 There was no semblance of safety, no rock. Oh, what, what an awful position to be in. And yet, despite all of that,  you developed, you had to develop coping skills just to deal with growing up in a situation like that. And some of the coping skills that you developed actually were beneficial later on in life when you started your career.

So talk about that little contradiction there.  I can really read people; I could read their energy. You sort of had to survive.  And., I wanted to get to New York City. I used to watch Barbara Walters on my beanbag chair in my belly, in my basement, and I was just like, I want to get to New York, and I want to be Barbara Walters.

Well, I did get to New York. I worked for a very glitzy, large global talent agency, but I wasn't making enough money on the side, so I took up exercise. Size training, personal training. And Barbara Walters became a client and one morning I rang her bell at seven and she said, Susan, get in here. What's going on?

 She was highly intuitive, and she was just,  one of the girls, girls, and she warmed it out of me that I had been sexually harassed in the workplace the day before. And she said, I'm coming with you this morning and we're going to confront this man together. And I said, I'm going to be okay. You know, I'll be okay.

So I did go in, I confronted my boss, he promptly fired me. I started my own talent brokerage firm and one of my first deals was to knock on the door of the factory to convince modern master Andy Warhol to do a commercial. Her Pontiac, he didn't want to do. And the reason this tie into childhood was because I had belief, I had to have belief.

To get through the 17 years, I, I was in my home of origin, and I had believed that I could do this, and I had believed there was purpose. So Andy's manager, Fred, had answered the door when I knocked on it because they wouldn't pick up the phone. So I took the subway down and knocked on the door and Fred said,  come back tomorrow and I'll let you talk to Andy.

And so I knew there was hope or you wouldn't let me talk to Andy, but. The next day, , he opened the doors to Andy's studio, and it was black in there and there's a pin spotlight coming down on Andy's platinum hair going 17 directions. And he's scribbling. And I was terrified to go in there. And there were these three pubs, those little dogs with the squished faces running around the studio room.

And Andy couldn't care less about why I was there. He just wanted to, to be with his dogs. It was all about his dogs. He was in so much pain. I could feel it. And finally he looked up at me and I stopped yammering. And he said, not really. Why should I do this? And I said, because you can have the pugs in the shot with you.

And he said, okay, I'll do it. And that was, that was my upbringing coming into my foreground and in my present. I could sense how much he loved those dogs. I could sense how much they meant to him. And so I didn't even know if that was true or not. But they, he could have the dogs in the shot, but I thought it was the only thing that might convince him.

And it did. Yeah. I mean to, to think about that on the spot. I mean,  you just had it and there are other instances. As you were starting your career and going through your career where you did a lot of things that, I wouldn't say most people, because a lot of people do, but a lot of people wouldn't have the guts to do the things that you did, like knocking on Andy Warhol's door,  unannounced, that sort of thing.

But you think that maybe part of that is because everything, because of everything you went through, that you had nothing to lose. I think actually this is really going to sound Southern California, Huey, even though I now live in rural northwest Montana, I feel I came in with a path and a plan. I have respect for all my challenges and my challengers.

I feel that all of it has been an opportunity for incredible soul evolution, and I've had a highly powerful team surrounding me as I've walked this walk. Or maybe better said, trudged. This trudge.  I, I have always been highly intuitive. I have always thought out of the box, nothing really made sense.

Organized religion didn't make sense. I didn't feel I needed a broker to talk with God. I. The corporate system seemed antiquated. Why are you at your desk at 6 45 when you were done at four 10? Why do you need to go to HR when that guy's two offices away and you can just go have a conversation? I just was a square peg.

In a round hole, but I wasn't afraid to speak up about it because it seemed natural to me, and I operated outside of some of the structures and the systems that I think we're seeing disintegrate now as we all ascend in consciousness and infrequency very well put. And with that, we're going to take a short break here.

We are speaking all about toxic family with Susan Gold and we'll be right back.

Yes. Welcome back to Dream Power Radio. I'm your host, Debbie Spector. Weisman, and we're talking about growing up in a toxic family with author Susan Gold. Well, Susan, we just talked about, the positive coping skills that you developed as a child that helped you become a success in your adult life, but you also developed some negative coping skills.  You had an eating disorder just like your mother did. You said she had it, and you also developed alcoholism like your father did. , but again, what made it, what was it inside you that kept you from just going all the way down and enabled you to get the help you needed to be able to eat healthy and give up drinking?

There were choices along the way. I mean, the alcoholism came on in my early twenties. The food addiction started when I was six. I had a worry. I was coming out of my nose from socking, so many down my throat, but I just knew that I, I didn't want to be an alcoholic. There was something wrong when I took a slug of wine from a jug at work to ask for a raise.

I was willing  to get help, to ask for it, and to be willing to take it. When it came, , and the eating, I was vain. I didn't want to blow up, so I had to stop it some way. And just because I had experience from recovering from alcoholism, I could apply that to the food as well. I also had clinical depression.

I was involved in a business deal that I was playing the same role that I had between my parents. I was the mediator. The broker and I was doing the same thing in a, in a work project, and I just lost it. The P T S D just came up like a tsunami and I split out of my body, and I was suicidally depressed yet once again.

But luckily,  I was offered help by friends. I went to a treatment center. I learned about clinical depression. I was treated for it, and I've worked with it off and on for 10 years until I knew the signs. And I could get off the meds. I haven't been on medication in decades. I still get depressed, but I don't go to those suicidal points because I see the red flags.

And then I think ultimately it was narcissistic abuse, understanding it, what the flags are, what the treatment is, and how to work with it. That was the real sort of, what do I want to say, coming together of all, of all of the aspects. Yes. And one other area where you started off on the wrong track in, in your, as you were growing up, was in the area of relationships,  you actually ended up marrying a man who was just like your abusive father.

 How long did it take you to realize that? So I was invited to LA for what I thought was a career move. And it was,  but it was really to meet one of my greatest gurus. And Matt was the man who had become my ex-husband. , he had all the bells and whistles I thought. I finally met my Prince Charming and what I found was I was getting more and more drained within the relationship.

I was becoming more isolated.  Supplies were dwindling. Abundance was in short supply. I was carrying most of the weight. I had bought a home for our family, and finally I saw his mask fall. He seemed like a persona right out of the movies, and what I realized ultimately was he was, He also was horrifically abused and never had the opportunity to look at it.

Instead, he created a false persona and he's the one I perceived to be a narcissist. So I tried to make him accountable through a post-nuptial agreement. We got to the last point I thought our marriage is going to be saved, even though I knew it was well beyond the expiration date. And he folded his arms, his eyes went in those lizard light cold slits, and he said, I'm.

Hiring an attorney and I'm filing for divorce, and that's when I heard that voice of intuition as crystal clear as I've almost ever heard it, which whispered, this is the universe doing for you what you could not do for yourself. And Debbie, it was a year. Of holding no contact in the same domicile. That home that I bought for our family, he took up residence in the master bedroom.

I was in a partial conversion in the garage on a mattress on the floor, and that's what it took for me to wake up to what I was saying yes to and how I was valuing myself. I was a longtime meditator. I held no con eye contact, no. Verbal contact for one year in that circumstance until I could write him his six-figure check and he could move on to his next source of supply.

And I found freedom and I'm grateful to him for what he taught me. Since second grade and Billy Fritz, I was attached at the hip to some kind of male attention, and I didn't need to be. I needed to go within and find my own authentic power. And the one thing is that  you have been able to learn the lessons from,  the bad things that have happened throughout your life.

And one of the things that happened,  while you were growing up and into your adulthood, one of the things that always kept you going was, was fitness. Like you said, you,  taught fitness, you were a dancer in your youth. And you ended up doing marathons and triathlons and just,  taking your body as far as it could go, and then one day you woke up and it broke down on you.

 What was the lesson that you learned about yourself and your self-worth and so much of who you were was wrapped up in,  fitness?  there was another false persona that fell, and it was very difficult because I used that like to numb and to find self-worth and value and that too. I had to go within and learn how to treat my body with care and with love, with gentleness.

And with gratitude, this is the only earth suit I've got this time around and I was bludgeoning myself into the ground un mercilessly, and ultimately that too was a gift. I do some gentle stretching. I may walk my dog. I like to hang from bars. I like to spin circles in the center of the room, but I don't go diving into pools at 5:30 AM to swim 4,000 meters and go throw kettle bells and then go into hot yoga to feel okay anymore.

And that feels great. Yeah. And did you feel like you had to go to those extremes to. Feel that self-worth at the time.  Absolutely. I did not know how to really authentically love myself. I was introduced to inner child work in my twenties, and I really hated it. I really poo-pooed it, but it is absolutely key and I'm so profoundly grateful to have little Susie a lie, vibrant and beaming from within.

Oh yeah. And I, I'm glad you said that because it is so important. even if you didn't have  the horrific things that happened to you, happen to you,  because things could happen in, in your childhood that,  might have been benign to, the other people around you, but you could take it inside , and feel, oh, that means something negative to me.

Going back to, we started this off talking about,  the generational. Toxic patterns,  that you had from , your grandparents and your parents, and you have a son.

Do you feel like you've broken that generational pattern with him? Well, it took me forever to give birth, and it wasn't because I couldn't, it was because I was terrified, and I wasn't sure that that was the best thing for any progeny. But ultimately, I felt like I would miss something and. Debbie, between you and me, I thought there's no way I could get pregnant.

My friends were doing in vitro in their thirties, and here I was 42 years old when the dipstick turned blue and let's just say I was not celebrating. I was. Terrified. I was 43 when I delivered natural birth, 10 hours door to door. And I always allowed my son to be the individual being he is with his own pathway, his own journey, and I've treated him with as much respect as possible and tried to provide him a solid platform from which he could work. So he's doing well.  He's set to graduate college in three years instead of four. And we have a really loving, respectful relationship and I'm just really happy for him that he can be who he is here on Earth. Well that's wonderful. So there's a good chance then, , when he.

Someday maybe starts his own family. He won't have that heritage on his back. I hope not. We could always hope. We could always hope. In dreamwork we like to say that nightmares hold important lessons for us. And you've certainly lived, but I would call a nightmare of a life.  What do you think is the biggest lesson that you've learned from your experience?

That it's all for purpose. I've teased out the strands. They've become a beautiful brocade. My life. All of it has led me to an incredible place of profound compassion, not just for myself, but for you and the guy at the end of the freeway ramp and the checker at the store, I mean, It's so worth the ride.

And now this book and the workbook in the back, that's actually helping people transform. What a legacy to leave. And I'm profoundly grateful to have come in and walked the path and, and now leaving the book behind. Oh, that is wonderful. , many people who have grown up in circumstances like yours, , Pretty much end up hating themselves.

 What was it that helped you learn to love yourself? I still have issues with that, but it's, the decibels turned down from, I'd say a 10 plus to about a three.  I think it's part of the human condition. I'm hoping that as we raise in vibration, that will soften as well.  But there is hope. And Lyon Minnelli used to say there's always somebody worse.

There's a worst case you can find if you need take mine. Okay. That is, that is good. , if there would be one thing that you could say to someone enduring their own toxic relationship, what would it be? I would say breathe. I would say put your hand on your solar plexus, which is at the top of your rib cage.

Just below your heart. Breathe and say, I'm okay. It's okay. It's really okay. You're not alone. And , has that been a daily practice for you?  And if so, do you have any other daily practices that you do to keep remembering who you are? I've picked up so many from wise mentors and teachers and coaches, and they're mostly in the workbook.

But yeah, that is a practice that I do often. I also breathe in faith, and I blow out fear when I'm really anxious. It really helps almost instantly. It's amazing. Oh, it's funny you say that because I have a meditation, I do that's very similar to that, and  it's effective.  Anything that helps you understand yourself is really what's out there.

Well, , I can't believe this has gone by too fast for me. Many more things I'd like to ask you, but Susan, how can people find out more about you in the book? Well, if you're drawn, just go to Susan Gold. Do us. It's all there. Oh, very good. Do you have any social media sites or anything like that people can contact?

I do, but I hate social media and I hate all this digital cacophony that's happening. If you feel drawn, you'll find me. Susan gold.us has everything. Wonderful. Well, Susan, thank you so much for being on Dream Power Radio today. Thrilled to be here. Debbie, thanks for all you're doing to get this amazing program out.

Oh, you're quite welcome. Well, we've been speaking about Toxic Families with author Susan Gold. I hope you've enjoyed today's program. If so, please hit that subscribe button so you don't miss out on any future episodes. Until next time, this is Debbie Specter Weissman saying Sweet Dreams, everybody.