The Impact of Witnessing Abuse: When You See the Violence

Tonight, we're talking about something that doesn't get enough attention: the trauma of witnessing abuse.

You might not have been the one getting hit. You might not have been the one getting yelled at. But you saw it. You heard it. You felt the fear in the room.

And that changes you. That shapes your nervous system. That's real trauma.

https://www.youtube.com/@TERRORTOTRIUMPHLIVE

https://www.peltsemporium.com

Transcript

Welcome And Live Q&A Setup

SPEAKER_01 0:17

Now, if you're struggling with self-sabotage and you don't know where to start, here, right here with podcasts, your building.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

We are appreciative of you being here today. My name is Alfonso Pelt, and this is my lovely co-host Storm. How you doing, Storm?

SPEAKER_04 1:34

I'm fine, thank you.

SPEAKER_03 1:36

Oh, she's breaking down the sign language over. Y'all see that, y'all? We ain't gotta get all fancy on me tonight. She's showing out on me tonight, y'all.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

But that's cool though. It's good to know sign language because you never know who could who could use that. Like if the person who's deaf, who suffered through some trauma, how they gonna communicate with you if you don't know?

SPEAKER_03 2:09

You don't know what they're saying.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

So, yeah, sign language is an awesome thing to have in your repertoire uh for communication, you know. So that it's a good thing that you know that. So now I know if I go deaf, you know, and I need some help, but the worm helped me, but I won't be able to say it, you know, because I'll be, you know, sign language. I can't sign language, obviously, I don't know sign language, so but I think that's an awesome thing. Okay, getting into what we were talking about tonight. First of all, I would like to welcome y'all. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, or good night, wherever you are watching this from. My name is Alfonso, but again, this is Storm. We thank you for coming to be a part of the Terror to Triumph community. If you're on our YouTube channel, Terror to Triumph Live, or on my personal Facebook page, Alfonso Pelt, your comments and questions and thoughts will be addressed live on this show here tonight. So if you have something that you want to say, if you want to just chime in, if you have a question, you can do that. Just go ahead and post a comment or whatever, and we'll we'll answer your comments. As you can see down there on the well, I'm pointing the wrong way. It's on her side, but it's on her side, but you can see the comment section. If you put a comment up or whatever, it will show up to us and we'll be able to answer you. So that this is our live QA session. So don't be afraid to ask anything or talk about anything. We're here for you. That's what we're here for, okay? Also, you can add me as a friend on Facebook, and that will also help you to have access to schedule changes, upcoming shows and series and specials that's only going to be broadcast on our podcast through Buzz Sprout. So I want y'all to get that information. That's buzzsprout.com, B-U-Z-Z, S-P-R-O-U-T dot com. Okay? Now, moving on from that, we're also working on our professional Facebook page at the moment. So soon we won't be using our, well, my personal Facebook page. We'll actually have a personal, I mean a professional Facebook page just for Terror to Triumph. It's actually active right now. You can go and join to get ahead of the curve and be privy to some of the stuff that we have brewing there. Remember, whatever platform you're on, remember to like and subscribe, okay? Now, tonight we're talking about something that doesn't get enough attention.

Witnessing Abuse Counts As Trauma

SPEAKER_00 4:56

That's trauma of witnessing abuse. Like be there and seeing the abuse happen. Okay, you might not have been the one getting hit or abused or mentally challenged or whatever. You might not be the one suffering parenting. So you you were there when the act was being committed. You were there witnessing someone else being abused. How you handled that or how you observed that affected you. So it was like if you would think of it this way: a person smokes, the person next to them don't smoke, but they receive the secondhand smoke is like that. You're receiving the secondhand smoke from the abuse. Okay? So tonight, you're you're gonna get some information to help you with that. We're gonna dig deep into that, and it'll help it'll help you understand yourself a little bit better because you're going to understand why you felt certain ways and things like that. We got telling you, we always got information for you. So this stuff changes you, it shapes you your very nervous system. You know, the trauma is real. We're here doing this because it's real and we want to help. So, Storm, let's get it.

SPEAKER_04 6:27

All right, let's go. Hey, welcome in. Good afternoon, good morning, good evening, or night, depending on where you're watching from. I'm your host, I'm your co-host, Storm. And we have here our lovely host, Alfonso Pilp. So we want to thank you all for coming and being you gotta go down to the section.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

I just did that. That was the intro.

SPEAKER_04 6:56

Oh, you know what? I haven't died.

SPEAKER_00 7:01

See, you can't make this up. We live. That's how you know we live. We ain't we ain't we ain't able to, you know, just make this stuff and cover it up or edit it or nothing like that. It's all real. This is raw. This is how we handling it. Live broadcast, y'all. You know, ain't no snippets and switching back and forth, you know, and all that stuff. But this is live. So you here with us live. But hey, don't charge it to her heart, don't charge it to her heart. You know, she my my co-host has had a long, long day. She's had a long weekend. And as much as I begged her to get some rest tonight, she said, no, I'm a trooper and I I devoted myself to this cause, and I'm gonna come on your show. And I applaud her for that. So, you know, have mercy on her. Have mercy on my co-host. You know, I'm gonna stand up, I'm gonna be the shield. Y'all, y'all ain't gonna get on my co-host. Now, this is my co-host. We're gonna knuckle up right now. Get off my co-host.

SPEAKER_04 8:07

Okay, I might just kiss you.

SPEAKER_00 8:09

No, but seriously, seriously, seriously, though. Yeah, so yeah, segment one. You on segment one.

SPEAKER_04 8:16

Okay, see me witnessing abuse is trauma. Here's what we need to stay safe first. If you witness abuse, you experience trauma, not almost, not almost trauma, not kind of trauma, but real trauma. You don't have to be direct target to be harmed by abuse. Let me explain why. When you witness violence, your nervous system goes into survival mode, your body doesn't distinguish between this is happening to me, and this is happening to someone I love. Your I'm a dollar, dollar, dollar, the fear center of your brain fires up your spikes, your heart rates, you're in flight, flight, fight, flight, freeze, or flawn mode. And if you witness abuse repeatedly, your nervous system stays in that state, it learns the world is not safe, violence can happen at any moment. I need to be ready. That's trauma, it's real. Coming scenarios of witnessing abuse, witnessing a parent being abused, you see your mom getting hit by your dad, you hear your parents being verbally attacked, you watch your parents being humiliated, you see the fear in their eyes, you feel helpless to stop it. Witnessing a sibling being abused, you watch your brother get beaten, your sister, you hear your sister being screamed at, you see the pain of their face, you feel guilty for not being the target, you feel rage that you can't protect them. Witnessing abuse between other family members, you see grandparents abuse a parent. You watch an older sibling abuse a younger one, you witness the Mr. Violence in the home. Witnessing the aftermath, you see the bruises, you see the tears, you see the fear, you see the broken things, you see the shame. Here's what's important to understand: when the witness abuses, you're not just seeing it, you're experiencing it through your nervous system. Your body is registering. This person I love is in danger. I may be next. The world is not safe. That's the limit response. That's trauma, the impact took on your brain, hypervigilance. You learn to scan for danger. You read the room, you notice everything, every shift in tone, every change in mode, every potential drift. You're always on alert, always ready, always raised for balance, hyper-arousal, your nervous system stays active, you're jumpy, you're startled easy, you can't relax, you can't sleep, your body is in constant fight or flight mode, emotional deregulation, you feel everything intensely rage, fear, sadness, and even shame. You might explode over small things, or you might go normal. Difficulty with trust. If a person you trust most apparently allow violence to happen or cause it, how can you trust anyone? You can learn that people aren't safe, that love doesn't protect you, that safety is an illusion. Shame and guilt. You feel ashamed that you witnessed it like you should have done something, like you should have stopped it. You feel guilty for surviving when your loved one didn't, or for being the target. Attachment wounds. If you witness a parent being abused, your attachment to them is complicated. You love them, but you also resent them for not protecting themselves or for not protecting you. You want to take care of them, but you are so you're also angry at them. Intergenerational patterns. If you witness abuse, you may unconsciously recreate it. In your relationship, in your parenting, and how you handle conflict. You learn that violence is how people relate, and you might repeat the pattern. The truth. Witnessing abuse is not a lesser form of trauma, it's a different form of trauma, and it deserves to be acknowledged and healed.

Personal Stories And Survivor Guilt

SPEAKER_00 12:55

All that resonated with me. What about you?

SPEAKER_04 13:00

I cause on the last segment, as I said, I'm the one that I was the golden child. I'm the one that seen, you know, I the one that felt, you know, that I was witnessing it and I felt like I couldn't do nothing to help them. I feel like I couldn't, you know, do nothing to protect them. You know, even though as a bigger, the bigger cousin, the older cousin, they I felt like they was my older, my, I mean, I felt like they was my little brothers and sisters, but I felt like I couldn't never protect them for the uh what was going on.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

See, and that caused some like resented feelings, like for yourself, because you wish you could have helped them or something like that.

SPEAKER_04 13:49

I had for years, I took the burden. I felt like it was a burden on my shoulders. I felt like I was the reason why that they went out and committed the criminal activity that they committed. I felt like that I was, you know, I failed them. And when I began to explain it to a grandparent, you know, they told me that you need to take the burden off your shoulders. You know, people are responsible for their own actions. But I felt like that I failed them and I wasn't there for them, and I felt like I was the reason why they went out and did the deeds that they did.

SPEAKER_00 14:32

See, right, what you're saying is like you felt because you weren't able to protect them and they received abuse that you witnessed, that their uh subsequent actions were a direct result of that abuse. So that's what I talked about last time, parenting, when when you are forced to be a parent, they they kind of put you in that position to watch over them, but you were way too young to do that. So psychologically, seeing them get that abuse made you feel like you should protect them, but you were too young to do so. Even though the person that put you in charge is the one that's causing them the abuse, you still felt the connection, the love for them, and and the resentment, resenting yourself for not being able to. See, this this is what I'm talking about, y'all. If y'all don't believe this is real, the stuff that we're talking about, I don't I don't know what else to tell you. Because this is real life situations that we're talking about here. Now, she's coming from the aspect, Storm, my beautiful Koho Storm, is coming from the aspect of the child that's the oldest, even though she's not a part of the family she's talking about as far as siblings go, but she was put in charge over her cousins. So that was like that situation. Okay, me coming from the opposite spectrum, I'm the youngest of my family. So when I see the person who was in her position take abuse, trying to cover for us, you know, it's it's you know, I feel resentment for myself that I couldn't help my older sister when she was fighting, you know, my mother, and that the stuff like that. And and you see it, you see it go down, and it does affect you. You know, this is you, I made the joke earlier about comparing it to secondhand smoke. Well, it's kind of it is similar to it though, when you look at it from the aspect of the person who's receiving the secondhand smoke can still get the the bad effects of the smoke. And just like that, with trauma, even though you don't receive it, if you witness it, you are still taking in trauma. It's it's detrimental to you too. So, with that being said, I just wanted to reiterate how important the things and the topics that we're talking about on the show are. Okay? This is not this is not just some fight or flight thing, I mean, just some parody or or we're just trying to act like some newscasters or something like this. This is some real concrete information that we're given. This can actually help you save yourself, save a loved one. This is not this is not playtime, even though we joke and laugh because we have to take things out of the the the heavy excuse me, the heavy weight that they are. We have to lighten the load a little bit for ourselves, because this is a heavy burden to even bring you this information and then let you explore through our emotions about what we've been through. This this is not something to be taken lightly. This is a heavy burden, really. So I digress, I'm gonna keep going on with the show. Um I know I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Storm, but I had to say that. I had to say that. I I could not let that go without saying that. That's important. Did you have anything else to comment on that segment?

SPEAKER_04 18:40

Uh no, I'm good.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

Okay. I know I I can get winded. I can get long-winded, and anybody who knows me know I can talk. But the thing, the thing is, tonight is not a it's when I'm wherever I'm doing this podcast, whenever we're doing Terror the Triumph, I might be long-winded, but it's not about some old average everyday stuff that don't matter. You know, this this matters, and this could possibly help somebody. So don't dismiss my long-windedness tonight or on this show. You know, give me some grace, okay? I'm gonna go on then to the next segment, okay?

How Trauma Rewires The Nervous System

SPEAKER_00 19:26

The next segment, let's talk specifically about witnessing, about how witnessing abuse rewires your nervous system. Your nervous system has three parts. One, two, three, three. So that was okay. For those who know, if you know, you know, that's where I was I was coming off with something else. For us old school heads. Y'all know that commercial, but I'm gonna let that go. Anyway, so you got three parts to your nervous system you got the parasympathetic that rest and digest, okay? That's what that does. The sympathetic, which is the fight or flight, and the dorsal vagal, which is freeze or shut down, okay? In a healthy nervous system, these three parts work together. You can activate them when you need to, you can rest when you're safe, but when you witness abuse repeatedly, your nervous system gets stuck, okay? Stuck in a sympathetic activation, fight or flight, your body is always ready for danger. That's what we talk about, hyper-vigilance. Okay? You're always tense, you're always alert, you're looking around, you're looking at exits, you're looking at people who could be potential threats. You're always ready to either fight or run, okay? You might have trouble sleeping. You might feel anxious for no reason. That's a me thing right there. You might be irritable or aggressive, you know. I might not be aggressive, but I am irritable. So not IBS, not to be confused with IBS. I'm just irritable bowl syndrome. I'm just irritable. Okay. So you might have racing thoughts. You you ever had that where your mind is just constantly going when you get agitated, or one of your triggers are activated, you start your mind starts going over things, or maybe even going back to the traumatic experience, you might have that. You might feel restless, like I'm sitting in this chair right now, but I I I can't sit still. I keep moving around, or I keep fidgeting with stuff, and I don't feel comfortable, you know, just sitting still, you know. I'm flipping stuff over, you know. But you can't sit still. Something about it's just like you gotta move. But you just fidgety. That's restlessness. Okay. You might have physical tension, like your jaw clenching, your shoulder tension, you know, you feel tightness in your back, or your your stomach starts getting upset. You're stuck in a dorsal vagal shutdown, which is your freeze situation, where your body gives up. You disassociate, like your mind just dislocates itself from the presence, the present time situation that you're in. Like your mind just goes somewhere else. Like you where you at? Then you go numb, like you don't feel nothing. Or though any of those three things could be that from a dorsal vagal shutdown. You might feel disconnected from your body. I've heard people talk about this. I've actually experienced this. I don't know if you have storm, but when you get in a situation that triggers you, one of your triggers gets activated, like you feel like you are hovering over yourself, looking down at yourself, or looking at the person that you're in a confrontation with, or something like that, like you have an out-of-body kind of experience. Excuse me, you ever had something like that?

SPEAKER_04 23:17

No, I would say that I lose consciousness and I don't I snap. I don't know what happened until I snap back.

SPEAKER_00 23:29

See, that's the fight. You had a fight response. Okay, so hey, this is this is real stuff. Okay, so you might also with the dorsal vagal shut down or freeze mode, you might also feel depressed or hopeless. Like you just can't do nothing about your situation. You have low energy, low energy. Okay, you struggle to engage with life, like you have problems trying to stay abreast of the things that you normally would have to do, or you just start getting what what's the word I'm I'm looking for? Where you put stuff off. You need to do stuff, but you keep putting it procrastinating. That's the word I'm looking for. You start procrastinating and you struggle to engage with life. You feel like you're watching yourself from outside of your body. I just explained that one. So these are things that's actually happening, or you could oscillate, go back and forth between the two. So it's not just, you know, you just stuck in one mode. You have two parts of your nervous system acting at the same time, and you're going back and forth between these different things. This is when you say you're talking to a person who has some trauma, and all of a sudden they have a nervous outburst. You're like, where the heck did that come from? That's what they're going through. They're going back and forth in their nervous system, going back and forth between these states, between the vagal shutdown, which is your freeze mode, and your uh sympathetic activation, activation, not activation, activation, which is your fight or flight mode. So, okay, so when you're going back and forth between the two, you swing between hyper arousal, which is fight or flight, like I said, or shut down, which is freeze. One moment you're enraged, the next moment you're numb. So you're like, you might fight somebody, but after you fought them, you don't feel nothing about it. You know, like you're not still upset, but you just like, okay, it's over with oh well. You you you ever heard of a story about a person who might stab somebody and sit there and eat some cereal right behind it while the person still got the knife in them? It's kind of

Triggering People Is Dangerous

SPEAKER_00 26:00

that situation. This is why you really don't want to think this is something to be taken lightly. You want to you want to understand a person who suffered through trauma because if you sit there and you start to belittle their situation or you say these crazy things to them, trying to trick, trying to trigger. I know people do this too. They they they know you'd have been through trauma, so they'll do things to see what'll happen, what you'll do, what's your response? Oh, he ain't really received trauma. I'ma do this just to see if you you did that. I'ma I'ma pick at it, I'ma pick at the scab. Boy, but when that scab get picked at, and that that that trauma gets unleashed on you, and that's the person whose response to a trigger is fight, you got a world of hurt on your hands. Because this time this person is fighting for their life, they don't understand that you just teasing them or whatever. They what they're going through is they reliving the trauma of their past. You're causing that to be activated. Now, if that trauma is life-threatening to them, you're causing that to be on yourself. So I tell you, don't be playing with people when it comes to you just don't know them at all, but you want to tease them and pick and prop, you don't know what people have been through. These things can activate and come back to light. So let me go on. Okay. This whiplash is exhausting to the survivor. Yeah, I know I can go on. I'm sorry, but I I gotta put it out there. When when when God is giving it to me, I I gotta let it go. I can't hold on to it. It's meant for somebody. Somebody's watching this, this is meant for them. It ain't meant for me. I mean, because I've already gone through it, but somebody might be going through right now, and that that's turning it. They might know somebody. Somebody, God forgive me for saying this. Somebody might have got their ass whooped, and they wondering why that person whooped my ass. All I said was this, I was just playing with them. I know it happened, I know it happened. Y'all know it happened. That stuff didn't happen before. Somebody said, I was just playing with you, but got their ass whooped. And they wondering why, why? All I said, see, but but it's true, it's true. People do not know the buttons that they push. They think I'ma just joke with them, but I don't know them that good, but I'ma just joke with them to see how they're gonna react. Dudes that did that to me on one job, they they kept picking at me, they kept picking at me, they kept picking at me. And one guy said to me to to the other guy, he's like, Man, I think Unc one of them dudes that he he gonna blow up. We better stop messing with Unc. He one of them dudes that he might kill somebody up in here. He he's silent, he just keeps looking at us. Every time we say something, he just looks at us. We better stop telling you, they they were sensing it then. That people do not realize how serious trauma can affect people. When you trigger that person, and that person is a fight or flight person, but they don't go the flight route, they go the fight route, ain't no helping you. You you done. Unless somebody is right there to try to pull them off you, you done. You you fighting for your life at that point, but you're not even understanding what you did. It wasn't that serious. Well, guess what? Show was to somebody, and you made that happen. So it's it's a your fault. I'm gonna do a Jar Jar Binks on your ass. It's a yusa. Yussa did that. So pay attention, pay attention, be aware. Like I give the statistic all the time, university study had showed for every 10 Americans, four to six Americans have suffered some form of child abuse. Now, they said those numbers are diminished because what? Because victims do not report. So if they don't report, the number goes up. It might be close to 80, 80, 90, we don't know. But it's gonna be above 60 percent, which is the 6% they mentioned. So if you think about that, a million people, four to six hundred thousand, but it could be more because they most victims don't report. Most, most, the keyword most. So if most victims don't report, hello, and they already gave the statistic out of the people that do most, it's probably a hundred percent close to it. And yet you nitpicking on people all day, and you don't know what they've been through. It's like you're touching a time bomb and you keep messing with. I remember them old school cartoons, Bugs Bunny and all of them, when they get the bomb and they be playing with the people, messing with the people, and they get the hammer and they be hitting a bomb on the tip on the nose of the bomb, like, hey, what's going on? You know, they're doing it to mess with them. But the the seriousness of the situation is you actually gonna make that bomb explode, and you ain't gonna want to be around for it, but you ain't got no choice but to deal with it because you unleash the trauma. Okay, I done went off on another tangent, but I gotta speak out on it. Us survivors need this information, and you, as non-survivors, also need this information. Okay, moving on. Okay, moving on.

Polyvagal Theory And Body Symptoms

SPEAKER_00 31:56

The polyvagal theory, okay? Your vagus nerve is the main nerve or your of your parasympathetic nervous system. It connects your brain to your heart, lungs, and your digestive system. Breathing fast, heart beating fast, upset stomach. Sound familiar? That's what you're going through. So when you witness abuse, your vagus nerve gets dysregulated. It can't properly signal safety to your body. You know, when you feel safe, all those organs he just mentioned are at rest, right? You don't have an upset stomach. You'll you breathe normal, right? Your heart is at a normal pace. So when you when you witness abuse, all that stuff goes crazy. So even when you're physically safe after the fact, your body doesn't believe it. Your body stays in the in the threat mode. So now you understand, even though you on the side and you witness abuse, you still feel that afterwards. Okay? Now your somatic symptoms, because your nervous system is dysregulated now, you might experience some physical symptoms, which is chronic pain or digestive, upset stomach, feeling like you want to vomit. You might have uh tightness in the chest or pain in your chest or pain in your back, your lower back, or you might have headaches, you know, thriving headaches. People like, I got migraines. I wonder where that's from. You can't came no doctor figure out why you got migraines. Okay, so then you have fatigue, like you're tired all the time. People say, Oh, you just need to go out and exercise. Well, maybe this person has suffered some form of trauma, and this is how their nervous system is dealing with it. Then you have immune system dysfunction where you start to get colds all the time, or you're constantly cold, or you you're hot, or you you you know is sniffling all the time, or you spit a lot. These are these are the things that I'm trying to tell you about that are real reactions to trauma. Even heart palpitations. Did y'all know that? When you feel like your heart might skip a beat, like you you get agitated, or you get anxious about something, your heart starts racing, and then you feel like your heart stops, then starts back up, that happens to me. I that I'm that's that's that's something I experience. I even experience I stop breathing. Aware, like conscious, I might disassociate, but amongst those things that I'm going through in the middle of my anxiety, I stop breathing. I don't even know how long I breathe, but when I might I come back to my senses, I feel like it's been a minute or something. I I'm like trying to catch my trying to catch my breath. Like, what the heck? What where did my mind just go just then? It's some real stuff, y'all. And I just I just want y'all to know. Okay, first of all, let me uh say hello to Mrs. Chrissy McDonald. Good night, or good night to you two. I appreciate you for showing up on the show. Thank you for coming. Hello, David Coleman. What up to you? What up, do fellow Detroit person? That's our little saying in Detroit. If you know, you know. Thank y'all for joining. I appreciate y'all coming for the show. But this uh emotional dysregulation is like when you have intense emotional reactions that seem disproportionate to the situation. That's like what I just talked about. You're talking to somebody and all of a sudden they explode on you, or they get ultra sad and they start crying. You're like, well, what's going on? I didn't think I said anything out the way. Well, this is a reaction. You might have triggered this person, they don't even know what their trigger is, but they're going through the reactions from the trigger. How would you be able to know that? I mean, if you never had that conversation, this is things that happen. They might cry at small things, or they might not be able to cry at all. You might see them. Man, this isn't me saying, I'm gonna be honest. You might see them at a funeral with a straight face. A person close to them just died, they don't have no tears, they don't have an upset face, they just blank. Numb. They can't feel. I've I've been there. I I know that. I honestly when my mother, when my mother passed, um, this is this is crazy. I I haven't told everybody this, but when my mother passed, I was in prison when she died. And before

Numbness, Dissociation, And Grief

SPEAKER_00 37:30

the night of her passing, I was laying in my bunk. We was getting ready, it was like getting ready for sleep time. I was laying in my bunk, and I had closed my eyes. I think I had drifted off to sleep for a second, but then I woke up with this anxiousness on my heart. I didn't know where it was from. I've I looked around, make sure I was okay first, but then it hit me like overwhelming feeling like my mama gone. I didn't know where that came from. That's this is a true story. I ain't lying. I didn't know where it came from. I thought I was just tripping. So the next day, well, the same day actually, because it was morning, early morning, it was like two o'clock in the morning when that happened. Later on that morning, about 10 o'clock, I get a call, what they call a call out, to the uh control center. I go up to the control center, my sister on the phone telling me, oh, mama died last night. So these paranormal stories that you hear about people filling the spirit when a person dies and they reach out to you, you might have been the last thing on their mind. Okay, but that stuff hit you, man. I bought out. I bought out because I was that at that time at night, I bought out because I was like, this can't be real. This can't be real. You hear the stories, but you don't think it's real. I didn't think it was real, but it hit me so hard, I started crying in my sleep. I was trying to be quiet about it. I didn't want to wake nobody up or nothing like, you know, because I didn't even know what was going on with me. But when I went to the control center and they told me, straight face, they was like, You okay? You alright? I mean, the the correctional officers, the police officers, they got their hands on their gun, they think I'm about to spaz out. I ain't feel nothing at that point in time. Nothing, not one thing. In that stressful situation, being in prison with your mama passing, you can't go to the funeral, all this stuff, and you getting told on the phone your mama died. You would think in that moment you'd be going crazy. Trauma victim, no emotion. Nothing. I had nothing. I couldn't give them nothing. They was like, you want to stay up here in the control center? We we can put you in in solitary for a couple hours, you know, if you need you need to be alone for a minute. I'm like, I'm I might as well just go on back out there because ain't nothing I can do. I mean, I mean, I I literally told them that. If it's a if it's a CO out there that was in that uh Boyer Road Correctional Facility, then y'all, y'all, if y'all watching this right now, you know who I'm talking about. You know who I'm talking about. Because I was right, that that that's a true story that happened. So we we as trauma survivors don't always react. You know, we we a stressful situation come up, we might get numb on you. You might you might be like, this is a joyous occasion. We can't feel it. I mean, the thing is, if it if it's triggering for us, we might disassociate with the whole situation. We might not even, you might be talking about one thing, this this is a trip to you, but because we disassociate and we go off on another tangent, we start talking about something totally different. And you up there scratching your head, like, I but I was talking about this, but you ain't even trying to talk about this with mine. Is like, no, no, no. I'm not even about to sit here and play this game with you. We're done on that already. I'm going over there. You want to stay here? You can stay here in this conversation. I'm going over there. That's how our nervous system is. And we we disassociate, we shut down. You can't talk to us at that point of time unless you're talking about something different. If you're talking about something that's triggering us, you you're not gonna get nothing out of us. We might end up not even talking to you again. That's how serious it is with us. Okay, I then went off on a tangent again. Okay, so you might rage over minor frustrations, or you might not feel nothing. It was just the same thing that I was just talking about, or relational

Relationships, Intimacy, And Repeating Patterns

SPEAKER_00 42:08

patterns. Okay, so this is gonna affect everybody right here because your nervous system has learned that closeness, being close to somebody, closeness, closeness equals danger. Being close to somebody equals danger. You might push people away, you might have difficulty with intimacy, which I'm guilty of both of those. You might be overly dependent on others because you might be depressed, you might be procrastinating on a lot of stuff, you might just feel like you don't have the energy. You might struggle with boundaries, like you keep doing stuff that they keep saying, why you keep doing this? That's me. That's me. You might attract people who recreate the abuse dynamic because that's something that you might feel comfortable with. Like if they're not abusive, oh my god, this this one right here. I was married to a woman who once told me that I don't love her because I don't hit her. She wanted to abuse dynamic to feel that I cared enough about her, but me not hitting her told her or registered to her mind or her nervous system that I didn't care. That my emotions were not invested enough to care enough to hit her. That's what it was telling her. So, people, when when you've experienced abuse or a good amount of abuse, of abuse, years of abuse, these things have. These are real things. Okay? Now the good news is your nervous system can be healed. You're not broken. That might be something that's real repetitive in our show, but it's the truth. You're not broken. It's like a bad habit. You learn how to do one thing, but you can go back and fix that bad habit by doing other things, positive things, to replace that bad habit. It's the same thing. You can learn how to be safe without the reactions. You can learn how to treat your nervous system, how to regulate itself. This is called nervous system healing. Okay? And it's very possible. So, Storm, can you go on to segment three?

Healing Practices And Self-Compassion

SPEAKER_04 44:50

Healing from witnessing abuse. Healing from witnessing abuse is about teaching your nervous system that you're safe right now. Name what you witness. Don't minimize it. Don't say it, it wasn't bad. Name it clearly. I witnessed my parents being beat. I watched my siblings being verbally abused. I saw the fear in their eyes. Naming it is the first step to healing. Acknowledge the impact. How did witness abuse affect you? What sickness do you have? What patterns do you notice? Be honest, be specific. Understand it's not your fault. You didn't cause the abuse. You couldn't stop it. You couldn't prevent it. You were a child. You were powerless, and that's not your fault. Grieve what you lost. You lost the safety of your home. You lost the innocence of childhood. You lost the belief that people you love are protected. That's a real loss. And it deserves to be grieved. Revelate your nervous system. Some some simple matter practices help. Breathe work, slow, deep breathing. And we always said breathe in four, breathe out six. You know, or you can do the four-four-four, the box breathing, like a fine side does. Yes. Movement, yoga, dancing, and walking, cold water exposure, activate your primo sypomatics nerve system, grounding techniques, feeling your feet on the ground, touching techno tech textures, yes, progressive muscle relaxation, meditation, process the trauma. Talking about it helps, writing about it helps, derpy helps. You need to process what you witness to move it from one nervous system to your conscious mind. Build safety in your presence, create environments and relations where you feel safe. Surround yourself with people who don't recreate the abuse dominant dominant dynamic. Build a life that feels stable and secure. Develop compassion for yourself. You are enough. The truth, yes, witnessing abuse changed you, it shaped your nervous system, it affects how you relate to the world, but it doesn't define you, and it can heal, you can heal from it, and your nervous system can learn safety again, and when it does, everything changes.

SPEAKER_00 47:37

Thank you, Lord. Everything changes, everything. So when we tell you it's possible for you to regain, regain a healthy relationship, that's possible. It's the truth. If you want to function properly in your workspace, you can. It's the truth. If you want a better relationship with your family, your siblings, you can. You might not want that relationship. And that's fine too, because you have the right to protect yourself. You have the right to say no to wanting that relationship to your abuser or the person who abused you or caused you your hurt. So I would say you have to really be honest with yourself. You have to take a look deep into yourself and be honest with your feelings. Be honest with your past. Be honest about telling other people about your trauma, your pain, your hurt. You can't sugarcoat it, and you can can't only tell one side of the story because the whole story matters. You know, sure, you might not want everybody to know everything. You I can't say that everybody's like me who's willing to put their life in the lens, you know what I'm saying? So everybody can see, but I'm doing this so you can get information that is pertinent to you to heal you. So you can get the healing you need, not for me. Okay? So that's also why my lovely co-host Storm is here too. She's here to help you, the viewer, to get the information you need, to bridge that gap between your suffering and the help that you need, because that's what we do on Terror Triumph.

Finding Trauma-Trained Help

SPEAKER_00 49:54

That's the whole purpose of creating this community for survivors and the people close to survivors to help them find the help they need. If you notice down here at the bottom of the screen, this ticker tape, those are two websites right there. You can go there and find therapists. So we're not just giving you numbers to call, like that rain number down there, or the 988 number where you can call if you're in a crisis or you feel feeling that you're in a situation where you might do some harm to yourself. Those numbers are viable, though, if you need that help. But there's also other help, you know what I'm saying, to connect you to somebody who can sit down and talk to you to help you with your situation. I recommend, highly recommend a trauma-trained therapist. Not just any therapist, but a master therapist. Because suffering trauma is not something to be taken lightly for somebody to say, they just got out of therapy training program. No, you need somebody who went to college for this. You need somebody who actually got their masters in learning how to deal with trauma issues. They might have to go to psychology, all that stuff. But you need somebody who's serious about it, who's dedicated to helping you with your situations, who's gonna be peaceable with you and empathetic, understanding, caring, and patient. Who's not gonna down talk you or minimize your situation? This is what you need. This is what we're trying to get you connected with, okay? So Storm, do you have any questions?

SPEAKER_04 51:41

No, no, I don't have any questions.

SPEAKER_00 51:47

Okay, to m to Henry Sam's. Ah I see you down there on the things really the uh memories. But anyway, thank you for joining the show, the live. We are close to cutting it off tonight. I just I would just like to express to people the seriousness behind this, though. Yeah, we we laugh and joke, we have try to have a good time while we're trying to talk about these difficult topics, but um these these things that we talk about. If you would step outside your own shoes and try to step in somebody else's shoes to understand what they suffered through, it would give you an incredible perspective on what they go through on a daily basis. You might only get a piece of it, but that piece may be enough to help you start broadening your scope and helping you to understand that person just a little bit better. We're not just here for the survivors, although that's the purpose of this show. But it's a lot of people who haven't suffered trauma, and these people can help somebody around them who has, who's not a regular visitor on a show, somebody who doesn't download the show or may not even know about it. So we try to tell everybody, you know, hey, refer somebody, tell somebody, bring somebody to the to the YouTube channel, Terror to Triumph Live, so they can see some videos or watch some videos. They might not want to do it. That's okay. But you still got the numbers down here on the bottom of the screen. You can jot those down if they need it. You might not even know anybody that needs it, even though the people might be around you all the time. You might not know who who suffered, who is suffering. Because we as survivors, we're very good at camouflaging our true emotions. We won't tell you that we're suffering. We'll we'll never share that part of ourselves. Not a general survivor, but what we will do is that if you give us the information, we might sit on it, we might not activate on it right then and there, but when we're going through, we might actually use it. And that's what it's for. Oh, since we're at the end of the show, I do want to mention that we have three new countries that

Community Updates And How To Support

SPEAKER_00 54:47

are now watching our show. We have people in Brazil, Chile, and Spain. So thank you for coming and watching the show. For everybody else from America to India, Singapore, Australia, Germany, UK, we we thank you all for coming and viewing our show. We thank you for coming and being a part of the community for Terror to Triumph. If you will, please go over to www.peltsemporium. I'm gonna put that up here for you guys right now. Let's see if I could do it on my phone because my laptop just took a dump. See, this is why I do it off my phone now, because I know I can uh access the same stuff on my phone in case there is a problem with my laptop or something like that. Here we go. Okay, that information there, terror pelfsimporium.com. If you go there, you buy any of the Terra to Triumph branded material, jerseys, hats, beanies, pants, leggings, dress, or or anything, anything that has the Terra to Triumph logo or brand on it, you can buy those things. Those things actually go to help support, keep this show up and running. You know, and they're not some just cheap knockoff or whatever. I personally designed these clothing for you to purchase and have something you can feel good about saying, hey, I supported this cause. I got some nice stuff on there. I think my designs are okay. I'm I'm not gonna I'm not gonna toot my own horn too loud, you know, but I got some nice looking stuff on there. I got shoes, so you can buy some nice sneakers, you know, and I got some what else I got on there. I got t-shirts, you know. Uh yeah, I got hoodies. Oh, I didn't even mention the hoodies. I I love the hoodies, but yeah, she got one, she got one, and it looked good on her too, y'all. But wait, I can't wait till y'all get I got a halter top or a crop top hoodie for the women, and uh y'all y'all don't know about that though. But then I got the other designs too. I got other stuff on there too, like 313 designs, and I got PE designs, which is Pell Semporium designs on there. It's it's my website, but I want y'all to feel free to go over there, peruse, check out, look at stuff, buy something, and help support the show to keep the conversations going so we can continue to get the help to the people who need it. Right now, you know, we're not supported by any. Ooh, you okay? God bless you. We're not supported by any companies or anything like that. If we were, if we did have a sponsor, you would have seen some ad breaks in there for commercials or whatever, what they call roles. You would have seen some roles for commercials or whatever, but we don't have any sponsors right now. So all this stuff is coming out of pocket, and we need help. That's why I implore you at the end of the show. I'll tell you about Bell Symporium. And if you feel that you just want to donate some money, you can do that too. There's an option you can go to buzzsprout.com, look up Terra the Triumph, and you can donate financially that way. I just made the website because I felt like I didn't want people to feel like they just giving away money, they're empty-handed, and you can walk away with something you can feel proud of, and you can show your friends: look, did y'all know about this guy? This guy is really out here trying to help people. Also, we have subscriptions now, and we have content that we will be bringing out on our Buzz Sprout platform. You can only subscribe there to get this crucial content. Can't get this on YouTube, you can't get this anywhere else. Buzz Sprout only. Subscriptions are $10 a month, and you will get our specials, you will get our new series that's coming out, and you will get any guests that we have, they will be there. We will interview them, talk to them, and all that stuff. That's only through the subscriptions, though. So go to buzzsprout.com, subscribe, and be a part of our community. Lock in with us, y'all. Lock in because we going, we're elevating this year. I have been Alfonso Pelt. This has been Storm, my lovely co-host. This has been Terra the Triumph, and we are out for the evening. God bless y'all. Y'all have a good evening, and we will see you Tuesday. Oh no, this is Tuesday. We'll see you Saturday. We'll see you Saturday. TC, hey, everybody mess up. We live, right? We live. So if you messed up, it was my turn. I had to take one this time. So yeah, we're gonna see you Saturday. Oh, one last thing before I push this button to end the live. There may be new show times coming up. We're thinking about expanding the show. We have already been cleared for more hours to do the show, so we're going to expand the show to do more hours throughout the week. So instead of only seeing us twice a week, we might go to four times a week. Let us know how you feel about that. Send a comment or whatever and let us know because we want to we want to reach out and we want to reach more people. We want to help. Also, one last oh, I said one last thing already, but I got one more last thing. On Pelsemporium.com, there's a section called Crystal's Corner. This is a section that's geared to empowering women. I didn't know if y'all knew that, but yes, there's a part on there that does that. So you can go in there and check out the t-shirts that's there, and there'll be more designs coming up in the future. Buy there, purchase there, have fun with your designs. You know, wear them, show them off. They're statement shirts, okay? They're not just regular t-shirts with a smiley face or anything, they're empowerment shirts for women. So go there, check it out, and see what you think. You know, okay, I'm gonna leave it at that. I'm supposed to be gone. I'm over time. Storm, thank you for coming being on the show. I know you were exhausted from your weekend, but I appreciate you being here. Thank you for everybody showing us, showing up, showing out, commenting. And man, we appreciate y'all so much. Join us Saturday for our information session, and we will let you know. Stay tuned for any new and upcoming developments with our changes in scheduling here on Facebook, on my Facebook page, Alfonso Pelt. So you can also friend me on there and get all the current information as we migrate over to our professional Facebook page and as we go on through with our subscriptions and everything like that. So we love you. We want y'all to have a blessed week, and then we'll see you Saturday. Take care and good night.