Episode 88: Psychoanalysis (Part 3): Impact of Childhood Trauma on Autistic Adults [featuring Debra Brause]
Jan 09, 2025
Show Notes
Navigating the intricate dynamics of human relationships and the impacts of our early experiences can be challenging but also lead to healthier, more fulfilling connections.
In this episode, Patrick Casale and Dr. Megan Anna Neff, two AuDHD mental health professionals, along with Debra Brause, Psy.D., discuss how early childhood experiences for Autistic individuals can shape their adult lives, the importance of seeing people as whole beings, and the transformative power of therapy.
Top 3 reasons to listen to the entire episode:
- Explore the meaning of whole object relations. Learn how acknowledging the complexity of both yourself and others can move beyond simplistic judgments, fostering deeper and more authentic relationships.
- Get insights into childhood dynamics and trauma. Gain valuable perspectives on how childhood experiences, especially those marked by misattunement, affect our adult relationships and emotional health, and how therapy helps in developing self-soothing mechanisms.
- Understand attachment and repetition compulsion. Delve into discussions about attachment theories and how our unconscious patterns in relationships aim to resolve past traumas, often repeating old cycles in an attempt to master unresolved issues.
As you reflect on this episode, consider how these insights might inform your own relationships and self-perception. By integrating a deeper understanding of your past and recognizing the complexity in others, you can foster healthier and more fulfilling connections.
More about Debra:
Debra Brause, Psy.D., received her B.A from the University of Pennsylvania and her Doctorate in Psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology (CSPP). Her professional training includes diagnostic assessment for learning disabilities at UCLA, a postgraduate fellowship in psychoanalytic psychotherapy at the Wright Institute Los Angeles, clinical work in community mental health settings, and continuing participation in psychoanalytic consultation groups.
Dr. Brause has served as a clinical supervisor at multiple community mental health settings around Los Angeles and provides trainings to psychoanalytic psychology interns on Neurodiversity.
Prior to becoming a psychologist, Dr. Brause spent ten years in the entertainment industry, working in television production, news, and as a studio development executive.
She has a blog on Psychology Today about raising a neurodivergent child. In her private practice, she is passionate about working with parents raising neurodivergent children as well as Autistic adults from a neurodiversity-affirming perspective.
- Website: drdebrabrause.com
- Instagram: @debrabrause
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Transcript
PATRICK CASALE: Hey, everyone. You are listening to the Divergent Conversations podcast. We are two neurodivergent mental health professionals in a neurotypical world. I'm Patrick Casale.
MEGAN NEFF: And I'm Dr. Neff.
PATRICK CASALE: And during these episodes, we do talk about sensitive subjects, mental health, and there are some conversations that can certainly feel a bit overwhelming. So, we do just want to use that disclosure and disclaimer before jumping in. And thanks for listening.
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Divergent Conversations. Today, we're joined by Debra Brause, PhysD who received her BA from the University of Pennsylvania and her doctorate in psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology.
Her professional training includes diagnostic self-assessment, diagnostic assessment for learning disabilities at UCLA, a post-grad fellowship in psychoanalytic psychotherapy at the Wright Institute Los Angeles, clinical work and community mental health settings and continuing participation in psychoanalytic consultation groups, speaking over my words today, has served as a clinical supervisor at multiple community mental health settings around Los Angeles, and provides trainings in psychoanalytic psychology [PH 00:02:30] interns on neurodiversity.
Prior to becoming a psychologist, Dr. Brause spent 10 years in the entertainment industry, working in television, production, news, and as a studio development executive. She has a blog on Psych Today about raising neurodivergent children. In her private practice, she is passionate about working with parents or raising neurodivergent children as well as autistic adults from a neurodiversity-affirming perspective. Did I miss anything in that?
DEBRA BRAUSE: No, that's great. Thank you. There's one new development, which is, there's this new center in Los Angeles called the Vista Autism project. And so, they brought in this psychoanalyst named Joshua Durbin, who is training a lot of therapists in Los Angeles to work psychoanalytically with autistic children and it will age up to young adults. But I'm in like a consultation, supervision group with them, and being trained to do that work. Still on the fence about whether I'm agreeing with the method, but I'm learning and just trying to sort of suss it out. So, that's kind of new.
MEGAN NEFF: That's really interesting. Like, when you hear about kind of the typical, "gold standard therapies" for autistic children, like, rarely ever do you hear psychoanalysis. So, that's really interesting. I'm a little bit curious, yeah, like, how you got into that intersection of autism and psychoanalysis because that's not a common intersection at all.
DEBRA BRAUSE: Well, he's from Israel and has trained… There's a center in Israel where I think it's a lot more common to work that way, and I believe also trained in Europe. And he sees America as sort of criminal in the way that they work with autistic children. And so, I'm guessing it's very different in other countries.
And so, they brought him to Los Angeles. And I was just so intrigued, like, I have to know what he's doing because I love psychoanalysis and I love autistic people. And as you said, like there's such little intersection.
And you know the things that I have found when you read the old analyst talking about autism, it's like, unbelievably offensive to me. And I'm just looking for some kind of neuro-affirming way to use, like, this wealth of knowledge, and understanding of humanity, and bring it to the autistic population. And so, I was just so curious what he's doing. So, I kind of feel like I'm a little spy in there. It's like a big Zoom meeting with all these therapists, and I'm just listening, and trying to soak it in, and, like, decide if I'm on board with this. But, yeah. [CROSSTALK 00:05:15]-
MEGAN NEFF: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah. That's really interesting because that, like, for me, it was psychodynamic therapy that finally worked for me, but you're also absolutely right that of the, like, therapy, in general, has so much catch-up to do, but I think the psychoanalytic tradition, particularly, has a lot of catch up to do to become affirming. So, there's this kind of weird irony of dynamic therapy was the therapy that finally worked for me, but also, goodness gracious, like there's a lot of pathology in that framework.
DEBRA BRAUSE: Absolutely. When people are stuck in, you know, Frances Tustin was sort of the gold standard of working with autism. And when you read that work, I mean, some of it's lovely, but there's a very particular way of seeing autism. And I just don't relate to it. And so, there have not been a lot of people who have updated. And I don't think anybody in that field, like, actually knows autistic people like as adults. And it just hasn't caught up. So, I'm hoping that will change.
MEGAN NEFF: Yeah, yeah. I hope so too because, again, not for everyone, but I do think this framework for therapy works really well for some of us. I think the insight, the way of accessing our minds, I think, that this can be a really rich therapy for many of us if we're working with a provider who has a affirming framework on autism.
Well, I know today we're going to… I'm excited about what we've talked about getting into, which is things like rewriting scripts and family dynamics. Patrick and I have talked a lot about family dynamics on here, but we haven't actually done an episode yet on, like, family dynamics and multi-generational process for neurodiverse families. I mean, you know, neurodivergent children typically come from neurodivergent parents. I know you actually have an exception to that in your family, but typically, that's what happens. So, then there's all these generational things that get reenacted and projected. And so, I'm not really sure how to get into that conversation, but that's a conversation I'm wanting us to get into.
DEBRA BRAUSE: Yeah, I guess, I would say yeah, because there's so many layers to how we process our own internal world, and then, how we do it within our families, and then, within the generations.
So, I guess, I like to introduce object relations, which is kind of the school of psychoanalysis that I, particularly, like, and just as a general, like, really brief understanding that, you know, we are as humans born dependent. Like, more than any other species, a lot of other animals, like, they're born, they walk away, you know? Like, we are totally dependent, helpless creatures, and we hate that. Like, all of our defenses, all of our, like, you know, as we're growing, we are railing against this conflict that we crave connection and we crave relationship, but we're afraid of dependency, and we want to be autonomous, right? And so, that tension is sort of the birth of object relations, of like object seeking, an object is a word for person. It just means someone that we invest emotional energy into. So, anytime I say object, that's a person, it's usually a parent, but it could be anybody close to you.
And we are, basically, seeking these objects because we have to because we depend on them, and yet we can't control them. And so, that is sort of the core of where all of these other things come from.
And we have to protect… Splitting is sort of very central to this through philosophy. So, we need to take in the good from our mothers. I'm just saying mother, it could be any caregiver. But the good object is, basically, all the good stuff that we get as babies when we're being fed, when we're being cuddled, when we're being changed. That is like how we experience the good object.
And then, the bad object is when the parent's not available. It doesn't mean the parent is bad or they're a bad parent. It just means the stuff that we're getting from them in that moment, like the baby doesn't understand like, "I'm hungry, no one's feeding me." And so, they need to blame somebody. Someone has to pay the price for that. And so, they create this bad object in their mind.
And so, I just want to bring that in because it kind of relates as we go along to how we relate to other people in our life. We set up these templates of our relationships that start in that really early infant stage. And when we have good enough parenting, the good and the bad come together. Like, we're able to see people as whole.
So, that same mother who is loving and wonderful sometimes isn't there, and we're able to integrate that, and be like, "That's okay. She's a whole person. Sometimes she's not available." And when it's not good enough and it's too frustrating, that's where that splitting kind of can stick a little bit, and we have to protect the good from the bad, and separate them because, otherwise, things are too bad and it's too threatening. So, I don't know if that makes sense.
MEGAN NEFF: It does. Well, it does to me, but I also realize that's a lot of new ideas. One association I'm having is to a conversation we had maybe a year ago, Patrick, with Dana Abram, author of Calm the Chaos. And she talked about how her and her brother had very different reactions to being undiagnosed neurodivergent as children. And hers was to take on the badness, and his was the world is bad. Does that relate to this conversation of object relations?
DEBRA BRAUSE: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so there are different ways… We split parts of ourselves and parts of the other. So, somebody's got to take the fall when things are bad, right?
MEGAN NEFF: Also, can I clarify just because splitting is often talked about in the context of BPD, borderline personality disorder. But you're talking about it more broadly. I think psychodynamic, psychoanalytic language, in general, uses a lot of language like the manic defense or splitting, but it's bigger than we're talking about the splitting and BPD. I just want to clarify that.
DEBRA BRAUSE: Yes, yes. So, splitting, we all split.
MEGAN NEFF: We all split.
DEBRA BRAUSE: Yeah.
MEGAN NEFF: Yeah. And I would suggest autistic people, well, it depends, I really like… Donna Henderson talks about we've got islands of inflexibility. It's not like an autistic person is just innately inflexible, but one way that can show up is like people are good or bad, and especially, because we are so value-aligned, I think it's, "Oh, like that person doesn't align with this value of mine, therefore, like they're in the bad bucket."
So, I think this splitting… And splitting of self, I certainly have experienced a lot of that, or the tendency to, if there's an imperfection in our work or in our self like I'm all bad, like, I think that's something that autistic brains are really vulnerable to, frankly.
DEBRA BRAUSE: Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah, sometimes it's like people perceive if I have a flaw, that means I'm all bad. And so, then, if you feel that way, you're going to defend against having any flaws, right? Because if I have a flaw, and then, I'm a terrible person, I'm going to make sure I don't have any flaws, right? And then, you get, like, more narcissistic defenses, honestly, where you're like, "I'm perfect, I don't have any flaws. It must be someone else's fault."
And until you can accept that, like, it's normal to have flaws, like everybody has flaws, and we can accept our flaws, and that doesn't make us bad people, then you don't need to defend against it.
MEGAN NEFF: So, until we can accept our flaws, we're going to have some kind of psychological defense about it, either kind of a narcissistic defense. And again, I don't think you're talking about NPD, you're using language of that-
DEBRA BRAUSE: No, everyone has narcissistic-
MEGAN NEFF: Everyone has narcissistic defenses, yeah. Or it could be, what would be the name of the defense where it's, "I'm all bad." Would that just be splitting or taking on the badness?
DEBRA BRAUSE: Yeah. So, we had talked about Fairbairn, who is one of the, like, really important early object relations theorists. And Fairbairn had this theory that children tend to take on the all bad. He called it the moral defense. So, his quote is, "It's better to be a sinner in a world ruled by God than to live in a world ruled by the devil." Right?
So, that means if your parents are actually bad parents, if you're in an abusive or neglectful household, you are screwed, right? And so, the only way to deal with that, if you feel like your parents are not giving you what you need is to make yourself the bad one because then there's hope, then you can change, "Oh, it must be me. I'm going to fix this. I'm going to change my circumstances."
It gives you power. You know? It's a little bit omnipotent, right? But it's like, I'm in control of this situation. If your parents they're actually bad, like, that's a much more dangerous situation, so it's a defense to feel like you're protected.
MEGAN NEFF: Absolutely. I have loved that quote. I think I heard it in my training. And it was so helpful walking, especially, when folks did have complex trauma and had such deep shame schemas and narratives about themselves that they just were struggling to release, realizing at one point that was actually really protective for you to say, because, yeah, that element of control, like, if this person is behaving toward me this way because I'm doing something, then it also means I have the power to change how people act toward me. So, yeah, like, it's not intuitive of why that makes sense to take on the badness, but for a child it absolutely does.
DEBRA BRAUSE: True.
MEGAN NEFF: And, Patrick, I'd be curious your thoughts on this as well. But one other thing I'm thinking of, like that makes so much sense in the context of neglect, trauma. I am also wondering about instances where, frankly, just like chronic misattunement, chronic invalidation, not because anyone is bad or good, but because we do not understand yet that the child we're parenting is neurodivergent, or we don't understand that we as the parent are neurodivergent. So, I also imagine that this dynamic could play out in families where simply there's just not a lens to understand what that child needs, how to attune to that child?
DEBRA BRAUSE: Yeah. I mean, there's so many instances of that where it's like the fit between parent and child might be, I don't want to say mismatch, but where there's not enough understanding yet. And this is like the importance of early identification because if you don't understand why my child is different, there might be so many ways that you personalize it, or think, "Oh, my child's not responding to me." Or, "They're not behaving in the way I expect."
And so, that could go like, "What's wrong with my child." Or, "I'm a terrible parent, what's wrong with me?" You know, can lead to the parent withdrawing or getting depressed, or, you know, there's so many kind of, like, implications for that of how each person interprets it because you know, that… And those early relationships are how we internalize the world. Like, that is our sense of, is the world safe? Do people understand me? That's like all attachment theory too, like will people be there for me when I need them?
And if you have an autistic child where maybe the affect is big, and the parent doesn't understand it, then you're leading to a lot of that invalidation, right? The parent trying to maybe hand back a meaning to the child about their behavior that doesn't match what the child is experiencing. So, yeah, there's needs to be so much support, right, around understanding, like, who is this child? Why are they behaving in this way? And for the parent to understand themselves because so much gets projected back and forth.
Like, there's this idea of the container where the child is projecting their feelings into the parent, and the parent has to digest those feelings because they're overwhelming to the child, and kind of hand them back to the child in a way that feels manageable and tolerable.
But if the child, let's say, is autistic, maybe the parent is not understanding this material that's coming at them. So, it's like there's all this raw emotion and feeling coming at the parent. They're trying to digest it and make sense of it. But if they don't get it, or it's too big for them, and they're handing it back to the child in a way that doesn't fit that child is then left in like a dysregulated state and feeling misunderstood. So, it can be really messy, I think. Yeah.
PATRICK CASALE: Yeah, my only thought is like the messiness, right? Like, that was my childhood. So, I'm just thinking about that, like, parents misattuned, for sure, not able to really model that behavior and not able to put that back to the child or repackage it in any sort of way. So, you are left, as you said before, with that defense of like, okay, this is too much for me to understand as a child. I know it's really messy, it's really chaotic, it's really volatile. So, you do turn inwards with that, for sure, of like, "It must be me." Or, "I must be the bad one here." And I must, like, go out onto this lifelong crusade of, how do I change that, and how do I fix that, and how do I, you know, absolve myself from that. So, it's definitely messy.
DEBRA BRAUSE: Yeah.
MEGAN NEFF: Like, Patrick, not to totally put you on the spot, but I kind of feel like your life work has been about that. Like, the doubt yourself, do it anyway, like a lot of the speaking you do has been around kind of reworking the script.
PATRICK CASALE: Yeah, for sure. I think it's been a big part of everything that I've done is, like, trying to figure out how to write that ship in a lot of ways, but also, the realization of someone who doesn't have children, who's never going to have children. Like, it is the reparenting piece from that attachment perspective of like, how do I repair myself if, you know?
DEBRA BRAUSE: Right, your own inner child.
PATRICK CASALE: Yeah, oh, yeah. That's been a long time coming, for sure.
DEBRA BRAUSE: Yeah, I've heard you two talk a lot about self-trust, right? Which is kind of what you're talking about. If I didn't have people to mirror me or like show me what my experience was, how do I trust myself to, like, learn about, you know, my behavior, my internal experience is valid and understandable, even if some people don't understand it? It makes sense, still.
MEGAN NEFF: Absolutely.
DEBRA BRAUSE: Yeah, that's a lot of work to do on your own. And I know you've been in therapy, so, like, that's, you know, such an important piece of, like, feeling seen by someone else.
And, yeah, I have an autistic client. She's told me I can share this in terms of that all-bad sort of experience. Like, she grew up, she didn't identify as autistic until recently. And you know, she would make friends, and then, on the playground, they would all pull her over, and say, like, "We've decided we don't want to be your friend anymore." You know?
And that would happen over and over. And, you know, all you can do is wonder, what's wrong with me, right? What is it about me? Like, you don't know you're autistic. You don't know that maybe there's some communication difference.
And then, now, you know, she has a great job, but she's, like, constantly plagued by this thought that she's going to get fired. She's in a relationship, and always, like, fear she's going to be left. And it's that, like, what did I do? What's wrong with me? And I think it's so important to unpack that and start changing that script, that it's never one person's fault. It's never, like, one side of the relationship. It's like that double empathy issue. It's like everyone's responsible here for their part. It's not just like you're the bad guy, and you know, but it's a way of feeling like there's something you can do to control the situation.
MEGAN NEFF: Well, and like waiting for the other shoe to drop, like bracing for it because it feels dangerous to let that hypervigilant guard down when you have experienced that. So, it's like, I'm going to anticipate this because the moment I lean into this, and I let this be a good moment it feels unsafe, right? So, then that hypervigilance that we can bring to social relationships between actually, like that hypervigilance we bring can make it more likely to actually happen because of the way that we're then showing up, which is such a painful part of the experience. Yeah, yeah, repetition, yeah, yeah.
DEBRA BRAUSE: Yeah. There's so much like that, the repetition compulsion, which Freud talked about. I mean, that has stuck, I think, through the centuries now, of how we repeat things over and over, unconsciously, because, you know, we're trying to master it. We choose people that are bad for us in a way because they represent, like, earlier relationships. And we're trying to do them over. We're trying to, like, have a better outcome this time.
And we see that all the time. And like, I've heard this guy, his name's Tim Fletcher. He's like a counselor. He talks about, we create what we hate. And it's this idea, like, he has a million examples, but if we're always worried about being abandoned, let's say, because somebody abandoned us early on, then we're going to potentially get really clingy and like, really needy in a relationship because we're always afraid we're going to be left. And then, that action pushes away the person that we're depending on, and just recreates the same thing. Then they do leave, because they're like, "Oh, you're too much." Right? And we just get trapped in those cycles where we just repeat, repeat, repeat, hoping for a different outcome.
I'm sure, like, you know, one of my favorite papers is called relentless hope. And it's this idea that we pick people that remind us of, like, this frustrating earlier object, so a parent or some early caregiver. And then, we, like, try to get them to change. The cliché example is like someone who grew up with an alcoholic parent, and then, they marry an alcoholic, and then they're like, trying to get that person to stop drinking, right? And it's this, like, relentless hope that, like, we're going to get this person to change, and then, that's going to repair that early childhood wound.
And it like, generally, doesn't work, but we all do it to some degree until we've kind of really grieved our early wounding. But if we haven't done grief work around what we didn't get as children, then you keep seeking out. Even if you find someone good, you kind of project onto them that they're bad. And then, you try to make them good again. Like, there's something about changing somebody, and controlling them, and making them what you need them to be. That's like an addiction almost must.
MEGAN NEFF: Like, that's the part the reworking the unfinished business. So, because this is interesting to me, because often, like an attachment theory will talk about, you know, if you grew up with insecure attachment you can have earned security, right? And so, if you attach to a secure partner or a secure therapist, that's partly how we earn security.
But part of what I'm hearing you say with this relentless hope idea is that's not enough for a lot of us because we're like, no, I've got to complete the cycle, there was an unfinished cycle. And so, I actually have to find someone who's insecurely attached, then make them secure. And then, through that, I can get my secure attachment. Like, it's not like I'm going to go find someone who offers me stability. It's I'm going to go find someone who offers me the same instability I had in childhood, and I'm going to fix them, and therefore, fix my childhood wound. Is that what you're saying?
DEBRA BRAUSE: Well, I don't think that's what we need to do, but I think that's the fantasy-
MEGAN NEFF: Well, that's what we unconsciously, many of us are doing, okay.
DEBRA BRAUSE: Right. That's sort of more the unhealthy way of going about it. It's like a defense against actually grieving what we didn't get. So, when we haven't grieved, then we do. We try to go after someone, and try to control and change them, and have this, like, omnipotent wish that they're going to be what we need them to be.
But the healthier alternative is we have to recognize, like, we can't control other people. Like, other people are separate. Like, anyone in the present is not responsible for what happened to us as children. And this sort of mourning about, "Oh, I didn't have exactly what I needed as a child." And I can mourn that, and not try to seek it out in some, like, present bad object that I'm going to change, right? So, that's like until we do the inner work, then we're stuck in that, like, relentless hope cycle. It's almost like this sadomasochistic thing. Like, we hope that we're going to find the person that's going to heal us, and then, when they don't change, we like rage against them and like, "Why aren't you changing? Why aren't you who I need you to be?"
And then, we go back to like, them throwing you a little bit of crumbs, and you're like, "Oh, but maybe they are changing. Oh, maybe they are going to give me what I need." And like, go round and round. And that's the thing that we have to, like, actually get out of that cycle.
MEGAN NEFF: So, this is where it gets so complex, I think, is like attraction. Like, I definitely recall being, like, mostly attracted to unavailable humans. Like, people who were very reserved, who felt mysterious. And like, attraction is such a palpable thing. And you hear that a lot, right? You hear like, "Well, I'm just attracted to like…" Even the stereotype of, like, what is the stereotype? Like, the nice guys never get… I mean, it's a very, like [CROSSTALK 00:28:35]-
DEBRA BRAUSE: [CROSSTALK 00:28:35] stereotype
MEGAN NEFF: Yeah. Like, so that's because our unconscious is like, "No, I can't do my unfinished business through you." And then, our like, attraction system is also connected to that.
DEBRA BRAUSE: Totally. Like, we're not attracted to the good guy because we don't get to rework that whole drama with the good guy. Like, we want to be, like, one sort of idea around the bad object is they're like tantalizing and seductive, and then, they reject you. And that's almost like the stereotype of like the unavailable person that we're drawn to, right? They kind of tease you, and then, they withdraw.
And that is sort of what happened to a lot of people, maybe not in reality, but at least in fantasy. As a child, there was somehow like this tantalizing person that they wanted more of, and then, maybe felt rejected by. And like, that is what we're chasing. And so, until you're able to, like, grieve that frustrating experience, you're going to keep seeking the unavailable person, and then, like, you're not attracted to the good person because that's boring. That's not like, you know… Like, we like that drama in a way because it's not about connection to a good person, we just want intense contact with somebody and someone who's not good for us because that reenacts the old thing.
MEGAN NEFF: Well, and from your world, this is probably a gross simplification, but I read years ago the book Attached, about kind of adult attachment and love. And the thing that really struck me was one of the things the author said is people fall in love with the feeling of an activated attachment system. Like, when my attachment system is activated, like that feeling, like, it gives you anxiety, it gives you excitement, and that many people confuse that with, like, the experience of falling in love.
And I would think, like an old script, unfinished business, would activate our attachment system, right? Because that's that old wound in a way that we would also interpret that as attraction and all of these other things.
Patrick, I am curious. I know I'm relating to a lot of this. I'm curious. Are you relating to this? Like, kind of [CROSSTALK 00:31:58]?
PATRICK CASALE: Oh, yeah, sure. I mean, you know, if I take away the psychoanalytic language of all of it, then it just feels like attachment theory to me is what we're talking about in a lot of ways. And yeah, totally relate to this. I mean, I've definitely been the unavailable person for a lot of people in their lives, and I'm sure that's why they were attracted to me.
DEBRA BRAUSE: Interesting.
PATRICK CASALE: But they know the moment that I've pulled away, whether consciously or subconsciously, and I know that that has intensified dynamics and relationships, too. But I think you know, Debra, what you're saying, what really resonates for me is you use, like, the example of like mourning that childhood experience or that wounding that you weren't able to receive this as a child, or during development, or early on in life, and being able to mourn that, and set that to the side, or at least move through that to some degree. I think that's so true. I mean, you know, as someone who's been in lifelong therapy, as I'm sure a lot of our clients who are also therapists can relate to, and a lot of people who are listening can really do. It's just like mourning the childhood wounding and making peace with it to some degree of like, the people in my present-day are not responsible for that.
And they can feel that, but they can be, like Megan said, secure attachments for us. And if we can work through that process of that mourning, then secure attachment is just what we need, instead of seeking out the other relationship styles where they feel more exciting, more risky, more impulse-driven.
DEBRA BRAUSE: Yes, yeah, they're more like have an addictive quality to them, right? As opposed to just like being able to sit with, like, somebody that's good enough. Like, that was Winnicott's classic idea of the good-enough mother.
And same with a partner. You know, some people are looking for this idealized partner who's going to be, like, everything they needed, and that's not real. Like, nobody can meet all your needs. And so, like, can you find somebody that's good enough? And, you know, you have to meet your needs in different places. But yeah, being able to accept that, that people have limitations.
And, you know, you hear that so much with, even right now around the holidays where people are going and they're being with their larger families, and like being able to accept that our parents have limits, they're not going to be everything we wanted, even like us as adults, and that's normal, you know? Like, we all have our limits, and like so, is it a good enough relationship? Sometimes it's not. And you have to take care of yourself. But often it's just being able to accept reality, you know? We kind of have this split sometimes between fantasy and reality, and like, being able to live in reality that's not perfect. And coming to terms with that.
MEGAN NEFF: Yes.
DEBRA BRAUSE: Yeah. And that, like, I guess, goes into parenting in a sense of, like, the family piece of, you know, you were saying how does this get repeated in families? And it's like, when the parent hasn't worked through their own stuff, and then, they're projecting their kind of unwanted parts, let's say, the parts of them that they haven't accepted into their children, and then the children are holding that, that's another way that they feel shamed or feel like they're not being accepted by their parents. And so, you know, I think a lot of people experience that now going back, and you know, it's just sort of an ongoing dynamic in families.
MEGAN NEFF: I'll give an example of that, actually. So, you know, we spent the first 10 years of parenting our oldest without this lens, and like, I'm still working through forgiving myself and, like, the grief of the ways I misattuned to her when she was little.
But like, when she was younger, she was very ADHD-dominant. And so, we'd go to a store and, you know, she should want to be running around. And throughout my whole life, and for my spouse as well, for different reasons, but for both of us, we have both worked so hard to not take up space. And I've, you know, worked so hard, like when I'll be in a meeting, and I always wanted to move my body, and I suppress it. So, this idea of suppressing movement and things that make me louder was a huge part of my psychology that I didn't yet understand.
So, then when my daughter is being hyper-verbal, and loud, and running, I get embarrassed, I get shame, and I move to suppress that behavior. And I feel like that would be an example of projection of this is activating my embarrassment and my shame, and I haven't worked through what it means to be in a body that wants to move and wants to be allowed. And how dare my daughter do that?
And that sort of projection, I think, happens all the time in neurodiverse families, where these things kind of get projected from generation to generation, of the things that we haven't accepted about ourselves, we then try to train out of our children.
DEBRA BRAUSE: Exactly, yeah, that's such a classic example. And like, particularly, with those ADHD traits where things are maybe louder or bigger. You know, if you have a parent who was raised to be proper, you know, like, behave a certain way in public, and then, you have a child who's acting in a way that you're like embarrassed of, for lack of a better word, and then, yeah, you're trying to squash it and shame them out of it.
And if that doesn't get looked at, I mean, once you realize, "Oh, this is what neurodivergence is, and this is something that I have to let… this is the way my child is. I don't have to change them." But, you know, until that time comes, like the amount of, I mean, that's happening all the time, right? Anytime you go out in public, you're probably seeing that. But it's such a way that shame gets handed down.
And you know that whole intergenerational transmission is also so fascinating because, like, we're seeing now, you know, through projection, through what I call projective identification, we project that shame into the child, and they carry it. And then, if they don't examine it, they project it into their child.
But there's also this epigenetic layer, which is a whole nother thing, which is like how our experience actually shapes our genes. And so, when we experience trauma that encodes like how our genes are expressed in later generations.
So, it's like magic, but it's this crazy way that, like, what we're experiencing now actually does get handed down, and it's so kind of mysterious, but it just speaks to the importance of, like, self-examination, and trying to like, work through our own shame, and the ways that we don't love ourselves. [CROSSTALK 00:39:07]-
MEGAN NEFF: Let's shift to talk about that a little bit of like, how, like the process of creating new scripts of, so this happens a lot, especially, in neurodiverse families, where a lot of old projections, and scripts, and enactments get passed down. How do we rewrite old scripts? Like, what's the process around that?
DEBRA BRAUSE: Yeah. I mean, I always think about, like, really noticing what triggers you. So, if you're with your child, and they're doing something, and you notice you're getting activated, or you're getting embarrassed, like, that's your, like, red flag, right? Like, pause button. What is going on here? Is my child really doing something that they shouldn't be doing? Or, like, what's going on inside of me? Am I embarrassed? Does this go back to my childhood? I wasn't allowed to act this way, you know?
And also, it so depends like do I know my child's neurodivergent or that I'm neurodivergent? Like, that's where so much discovery has to happen. But regardless, like, whatever is going on, like, to know before I'm kind of trying to control my child can I look at myself and think about, like, what's going on here that I'm reacting to? Because it might just be, "Oh, I'm embarrassed because I wasn't allowed to behave this way in public." Or, "I don't think it's the right way to be." And maybe we have to challenge that before we're trying to, like, shame a child out of their behavior.
And so, you know, there's so many new parenting kind of perspectives around, like, really understanding what's underneath behavior, like getting away from that, like reward punishment kind of systems. Like, we're trying to control and manage children's behavior, and more into, like, how can we think about the behavior, or how can we try to understand why is my child behaving this way?
And like Mona Delahooke, I don't know if you've ever read her work? She's this, like, amazing child therapist who writes about the brain body connection, and just really trying to understand, why is my child behaving this way? And what's going on in their nervous system? Like, really understanding is this something is bottom up or top down? Like, were they able to control this behavior, or is this just something that happened automatically?
And you can't punish somebody for doing something that their nervous system told them to do, right? It wasn't intentional. It wasn't a conscious thought. Even if it's aggressive or violent, like, sometimes that is just coming from a nervous system place that they really didn't have control over. So, you really have to think about, how am I going to approach that child and really think about their behavior before I jump in to, like, punish them or change them? It takes a lot of, like, what we call reflective functioning, which is like thinking about the state of mind of the other.
And you know, in terms of attachment, it's like the research is so interesting that even if we don't understand what's going on in our child, just the act of thinking about what might be going on in their mind creates a secure attachment. So, you might get it wrong, but the fact that you are reflecting on what is going on inside my child's mind is like the key to security. Like, being able to hold someone else's mind. And you're not always going to be right, but it's just that act of connection.
MEGAN NEFF: And I would guess that'd be similar for, like, partnerships. Like, if you're in an argument with your spouse or a tough moment with your partner, like the ability to pause and reflect on what might be happening in the other person's mind.
DEBRA BRAUSE: Yeah, absolutely.
MEGAN NEFF: That would also help support that. Yeah, I talk about meta-communication a lot. And I'm like, perhaps live too much in meta-communication, but I think that ability to, like, zoom out what's happening here, what might be happening for the other person, what scripts are playing for the other person? Yeah, what old historical script has just been activated through this conflict?
DEBRA BRAUSE: Yeah, it kind of zooms you out where it's like, it's not like someone's the bad guy. Like, you're the bad guy or I'm the bad guy. It's like there's that third of like, what's happening? Like, however, we're both acting makes sense in each of our minds. And how can we zoom out and look at, like, the bigger picture of like we're both interacting from like, all these internal people that are in our brains, and our old scripts, and our old ways of being. And like that's clashing right now. And how can we, like, with couple's therapy, look at how is the pattern the problem, not the person. How can we look at what's happening between us and that's the thing that we're both as a team kind of looking at as like, how can we stop that pattern?
MEGAN NEFF: And that's personally where I've felt most stuck with clients in the past, is when I can't help them make that transition from who's at fault to the dynamic is the problem, that there's something that we're either enacting or something that is happening here that is bigger than either of us, and that's the problem, not me, not you.
And I think once we can make that step, that's where all of a sudden, especially, like in couples work, that's where we can shift into something much more productive than who's at fault and who's to blame, which is what I think even on a larger scale, like Patrick and I had a recent conversation about kind of politically everything that's happening. And even on a large, like, society scale, we get pulled into that dynamic of…
DEBRA BRAUSE: Yeah, who's the bad guy?
MEGAN NEFF: Yeah, who's the bad guy, who's the scapegoat?
DEBRA BRAUSE: Yeah, totally, it's very easy to project out the badness must be in that other. And, you know, we get rid of the parts of ourselves that we're uncomfortable with, and then, someone's got to hold that. And so, now, you know, it's the immigrants. They're the problem. You know, we like project out whatever we don't like, and then, somebody's got to hold that for us, and then, we can point the finger. It's like such a human process. But like, you can see with splitting, like, just how split the world is right now into these like us and them dynamics. And it's like a very early kind of mental state that we all have. And we have to like work on honing the parts of us that we are not so happy with, that are aggressive, or that are negative, and so, that we don't have to project them out. It's like being able to accept all our parts.
MEGAN NEFF: So, acceptance grief. I think I also hear like making space for complexity, the complexity of like I am many things and like, there are parts of me that are bad, parts of me that are good, parts of the person I love that are good, bad. Like, so I'm hearing that a lot of expansion comes from when we're able to embrace complexity, accept, and grieve, which, frankly, I don't think our… And I know this podcast is more global, I'm talking about the US, specifically, white culture. We are terrible at grief. Like, we hide death, we hide aging. We, like, have built, you know, billion-dollar industries to, like, protect us from aging, which is really like, we are terrible at grief.
But yeah, we have so much denial, which I think that's why the pandemic hit us psychologically so hard, is because it shot through a lot of the defenses we have as a culture around death, around grief, around our fragility.
DEBRA BRAUSE: Yeah, we hate vulnerability, right? And so, yeah, it has to be someone else's fault. That's like where the manic defenses come in. We try to do whatever we can to deny reality and make it seem like that's not real, that's not happening. We're grandiose and we're above it. We're not going to age or die. It's, yeah, such a fear.
MEGAN NEFF: I think one of the best things for me as a human in my, like, development was immersively living in Malawi for six months. And I was probably at a funeral every weekend during that time, and just experiencing, and being immersed in a culture that had come to terms with the fact that death is part of life forever changed me. And the way joy was experienced, the way, like simple pleasures were experienced, like in my body, viscerally, it was such a different experience than what we do here in the States around denial of these things that, frankly, I think we have a lot of repressed grief around.
DEBRA BRAUSE: Definitely.
PATRICK CASALE: Yeah, it almost feels like actual living what you're talking about, Megan, like actually living and experiencing all of those emotions and really not taking those things for granted, for sure.
MEGAN NEFF: Yeah, I've literally called it full-spectrum living before of… And I think, it's Brene Brown who has the quote, like, "You can't selectively numb emotion." So, if you're numbing the harder emotions like grief, and vulnerability, and shame, you're also going to be numbing, like, the more positive emotions. Not that we need to dichotomize emotions as positive and negative, but that idea of you can't numb, you can't selectively numb emotions.
And that's exactly how I felt, Patrick, because I was like, well, this feels like full spectrum living, full spectrum feeling. And I haven't been able to access that in the States. As much as I like try to be expansive in my own emotional experience, when you're just plugged into a culture that's more restricted, I think it's a lot harder.
DEBRA BRAUSE: Totally. We don't have, like, language for just or knowing how to tolerate sitting in those sad emotions, and feeling like we can bear it, you know? And that we can do it together. It's like we need to push it away as quickly as possible and move on.
And yeah, part of psychoanalysis is really, like, giving people, we're not solving their problems, we're helping them just learn how to tolerate life. Like, how to feel like they have coping skills, and they have ways of seeking relationships, and being with their feelings. They might they worse, they might experience their feelings more, but they're more alive rather than coming up with defenses to, like, bury the feelings or push them away or deny them. So, it's complicated.
MEGAN NEFF: I love that as a description of the goal of a lot of psychoanalytic work. So, I started my psychodynamic therapy, partly, because I was in training. And then, partly, there were just things I wanted to work through.
And I remember talking with my therapist early on, of like, kind of, what's the goal here? Because I didn't have, like, acute depression or anxiety at the time. And I really loved how he explained it. It's about expanding. And that was my experience of, I did four years of that of, at the end of it, I felt like such a more expansive, alive version of myself than the person walking in who felt very constricted, restricted, overcontrolled. I think that's such a beautiful expression of what depth therapy is about. It's about becoming more of yourself and expanding into it.
DEBRA BRAUSE: Totally. I love that you have that experience. It's like accessing more parts of yourself, right? And accessing, like, things that maybe had dissociated or weren't even in touch with. And now, like, being more free. We're not as constrained by the past and the old relationships, and we can experience ourselves in the present and experience parts of ourselves that maybe we had, you know, suppressed, repressed, and now we're more integrated. So, it's like being… Yeah.
MEGAN NEFF: I think our relationships expand too because then we're able to, like, make space for other people's complexity, and to understand these, like, dynamics that we fall into with people in our lives.
DEBRA BRAUSE: Absolutely, yeah. Like, seeing people as whole objects, as we call them. So, you're not just seeing them as good or bad, but like, people are complicated, and they're contradictory, and yeah. So, we have [CROSSTALK 00:52:01]-
MEGAN NEFF: So, it's a whole object when you can hold, like, the complexity of a person, that they are both good and bad.
DEBRA BRAUSE: Yeah, yeah.
MEGAN NEFF: Okay, okay.
DEBRA BRAUSE: We'll see all their parts.
MEGAN NEFF: Yeah.
DEBRA BRAUSE: Yeah. I think we often split the world into, like, the good guys and the bad guys. And, you know, everything in our culture kind of colludes with that. But it's like, how do we see the complexity of people that nobody's all good or all bad, where we have all different parts that get acted out in different… We change in different relationships. So, different parts of us come out in relationship to different people. And it's like just having access to all of it at different times, but…
MEGAN NEFF: So, this is also explaining to me why I burned out on social media. Because I bet on social media, there's a lot of projection of good objects, bad objects, and probably not a whole lot of space for whole objects.
DEBRA BRAUSE: Yeah.
PATRICK CASALE: Almost none.
DEBRA BRAUSE: So, a lot of attacking, right? A lot of like, you said one thing, and you're attacking, and now you're all bad, and there's no way I'm going to see the whole of you.
PATRICK CASALE: Attacking comparison or just 100% echo chamber, agreeance, and adherence, which is not healthy either [CROSSTALK 00:53:13]-
DEBRA BRAUSE: Yeah.
PATRICK CASALE: Yeah.
DEBRA BRAUSE: Yeah, hard to, like, remember that this is one sliver of someone's experience that you're reading and to not, like, jump down someone's throat, assuming that is like all of them, or that's the whole story. Yeah, it's such a tough medium because there's this, like, groupthink, right? Where everyone just jumps on the bandwagon, and people get bullied, and it can be really a really challenging place to sit. So, yeah, good place for splitting.
MEGAN NEFF: Well, and it's interesting. I mean, these dynamics have always been part of human societies, but I think with so much of our communication shifting to digital, and for the record, like, there are so many pros of that, like, we're literally here talking because of these technological advancements, but communication's gotten faster. And I think it just makes sense that in a less embodied format for communication, that more of these, perhaps, like earlier defenses, younger defenses, would take root more quickly because of kind of the fragmented nature of digital communication.
DEBRA BRAUSE: Right. I was thinking about that the other day where I have a client who's, I mean, a lot of people wear Apple watches. And he's, like, getting dinged through the whole session. Like, he has a really intense job, and, like, every two seconds of things going off. And there's this idea of the holding environment that Winnicott came up with, where it's like the mother is supposed to, like, create this environment where nothing is impinging on the experience of the infant. It's like they're in this very safe, contained space. It's like the mother enters the world of the infant and is preoccupied with them. And that's almost what you're trying to hold in therapy.
And then, you have this digital intrusion that is like every second the outside world is coming into the session, and like, reminding him of work, and all the stress of his of his life. And it's like, that is not okay. Like, you need to put that in the waiting room or something like this is our space to protect you from all that outside world stuff and enter almost like a dream. Like, the session is supposed to feel like a dream, almost. Like, you're able to play with ideas. You're able to enter into this sort of metaphorical space where we can just think about whatever's coming up. And when the outside world keeps coming in, it just kind of impinges on that and breaks that spell.
MEGAN NEFF: Yeah, you're not able to enter into that kind of deep state, yeah.
I had an association when you were talking, I'm totally mixing ideas here, but I'm going to just share it. When you're talking about the idea of the container, which is an idea I love, I realized, I think I create that for myself through monotropic focus. I think when I get overwhelmed with life, I create a container where nothing can get in except the thing that I am choosing to focus on. And I mean, that is one of the things I do the most for self-soothing. And I think like, there's a process. There's something there where I'm creating a self-container for myself. And I do it quite often, which I feel bad for my spouse because he often talks about how hard it is to get a hold of me because I just turn all notifications off.
But yeah, having pockets of containers where we can go more deep, and we're not getting pinged and ponged this way, anyway, is so important, whether it's with another person or with ourselves.
DEBRA BRAUSE: Yeah, the goal is to be able to do it internally, right? To, like, take in that containing function that the therapist or mother provided, and to internalize it, so that when you're feeling overwhelmed you come up with a containing function inside yourself. So, you're doing that for yourself in a way that, like, we're able to take in the function itself, and do it for yourself, which is, ultimately, the goal.
MEGAN NEFF: Yeah.
DEBRA BRAUSE: No, that's awesome. Yeah.
MEGAN NEFF: Yeah. Well, we've diverged a bit. Any itchy thoughts, as I like to say, anything we haven't touched on that you're like, if we end now you'll be like, "Oh my goodness, there's this thing."
DEBRA BRAUSE: I have always wanted to tell the Apollo 13 story that I mentioned to you. Can I just do that briefly?
MEGAN NEFF: Yeah, I think it's a really powerful story about, like, the work of rewriting old scripts. Yeah, yeah.
DEBRA BRAUSE: Yeah. Might feel unrelated, but it's sort of like how intra-psychically we work through trauma. And how there's this idea of the unthought-known that Christopher Bollas came up with. And it's the idea that there are things that we know that we haven't even thought about yet, but we know them somehow, in our bodies.
And I'm not saying this to be have a depressing story, but just because I find it fascinating. When my son was born, my water broke early, and I went into labor, and he could not get out, right? He was stuck, and they had to, basically, push him out through an emergency C-section. And he came out and was blue. And there was 20 minutes of resuscitation before they could get a heartbeat.
And so, when he was about four or five, he was in preschool, he would act out the story of Apollo 13. And we had all these, like, every figurine you could imagine from the rocket and the launch center, he had an astronaut suit. Our dog had an astronaut suit.
And the story of Apollo 13 is that Jim Lovell and two other astronauts were supposed to land on the moon, and their oxygen tank exploded. And so, they couldn't land. And so, they had to figure out a way with the remaining oxygen. They had to, like, go into the lunar module, which was only meant to last for two days, and it lasted for four. But they had to go around and orbit the moon in order to come back, and finally, land on Earth. And they were never able to go to the moon.
And he was at a school at the time that was like very psychodynamic and like, very into the unconscious. And we were just talking about how, like, in his body, it's like this story represented his birth story where, like, he lost oxygen, he couldn't land, and that somehow, he found a way, like he didn't have a mind yet to mentalize or think about what had happened. He didn't understand it, of course. But in his body, he was like, found this metaphor to represent his story that was like a way of, kind of, working through the trauma.
And they created a book for him that was like a narrative about his birth, that was sort of a little autobiography to kind of create a way to process the trauma, so that we had a story for it, and that it could be worked through.
And I just, like, find the brain so amazing that we can find and like, latch on to things that represent our internal world, even though we have no idea what we're doing at the time. And so, that, to me, was just like the power of the unconscious to heal. Like, that we're all trying to heal whatever traumas we have, and we find ways to do it consciously or unconsciously.
MEGAN NEFF: Good.
DEBRA BRAUSE: Just wanted to share that because yeah, he's an amazing guy.
MEGAN NEFF: That is both a sad, but also a really beautiful story, and just how creative and generative his mind was to be able to find a way to work through that. And something I say a lot, it reminds me of play is so important. Play is so productive. I mean, I don't know if he was experiencing that as play. It probably would have looked like play, but he was doing very serious business in that repetitive play [CROSSTALK 1:01:33]-
DEBRA BRAUSE: Definitely. Yeah, we went down to, like, the Space Center in Houston, and, like, saw the, you know, Command Central. And the cool thing was he wrote a letter to Jim Lovell, the head astronaut, and he got a letter back from him, sort of saying, like, "We're going to prep you for the next mission." And we, like, played this whole thing out. And at the same exact time, they flew a space shuttle into Los Angeles, and parked it here, and like, it was all just sort of happening at the same time. So, it's really cool to really rework that.
MEGAN NEFF: Yeah. That's a beautiful story to end on how generative these things can be. These things can be worked through. Yeah and felt through, right?
DEBRA BRAUSE: Yeah. So, that's my invitation for everyone to do psychodynamic work or psychoanalytic work.
MEGAN NEFF: For sure.
PATRICK CASALE: That's a good call to action, for sure. It's a really great story to recap this conversation and to end on. So, thanks for sharing that. That's super powerful.
DEBRA BRAUSE: Of course.
PATRICK CASALE: As always, we always ask our guests at the end if you have anything you want to share with the audience, where they can find you? If you have anything that you're offering right now? And we'll include that in the show notes as well.
DEBRA BRAUSE: Yeah, just my website. Dr. Debra Brause. It's drdebrabrause.com. I have a blog on Psychology Today, and so most of those blogs are on the website. And that's about it. I'm in Los Angeles, so can work with people in California, but that is the way to find me. I'm on Instagram @debrabrause. I rarely post, but have a little bit on there.
PATRICK CASALE: Cool. Well, we will have all of that in the show notes for everyone to have access to Debra's information and contact if you are in Los Angeles or California and you are interested in that type of therapy approach. I think that's really fascinating. Megan, any last second thoughts before we close out?
MEGAN NEFF: No, and then I proceed to talk. Thank you so much for coming on. This has been a really rich conversation. And, yeah, I just appreciate your depth of knowledge, and what you are doing because I know what you're doing is pretty rare in regards to the intersection of autism and psychoanalytic work. So, just thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today.
DEBRA BRAUSE: Of course, you guys are, like, amazing. And I've listened to every single podcast, and I follow everything you do. And I just, like, am blown away by your work. And I'm so grateful to be here. So, thank you.
PATRICK CASALE: To everyone listening to Divergent Conversations, new episodes are out on Fridays on all major platforms and YouTube. You can like, download, subscribe, and share. And goodbye.
