Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Welcome to Excellent Rising.
[00:00:02] I'm Anna Mayo, Somatic experiencing therapist for PTSD and trauma Recovery. I run Somatic Trauma Recovery center and for all my offerings, please check the website and the links in the show notes.
[00:00:16] The best way to support this content and podcast since it's independently run only by me and my mic.
[00:00:23] Please leave review and share on your platforms.
[00:00:27] Today I want to talk about what happens when being looked at no longer feels safe.
[00:00:37] And how trauma survivors learn to fear visibility itself.
[00:00:43] And how one harmful stare can rob you of years of connection, of softness, of intimacy, of belonging.
[00:00:54] And I, uh, will reframe social withdrawal, freeze responses and fear of eye contact through the lens of nervous system protection, through the lens of consent and relational trauma.
[00:01:09] And also how healing begins through somatic practice.
[00:01:16] So let's begin.
[00:01:19] Stare versus gaze. I was exploring a lot, working with my clients in a therapist office and from my own experience and observing people.
[00:01:31] What gaze means, what gaze means for your body compares to stare. And what's the context behind gaze and context behind stare?
[00:01:43] And when you are harmed by a person or a group of people, you can spend years of your life avoiding the gaze of others.
[00:01:54] And avoiding gaze is often a, ah, subtle but very clear sign of trauma history.
[00:02:01] We can tell just by observing people who is avoiding gaze, who is withdrawn and that tell us there is a history behind this human and for trauma memory, gaze and stare becomes fused together.
[00:02:27] People who have experienced trauma, they're confusing those two things.
[00:02:34] Gaze is not stare.
[00:02:37] Stare harmed you, Stare abused you, stare violated you.
[00:02:45] Gaze is a, uh, completely different quality.
[00:02:50] Gaze is noticing with curiosity and offering a possible invitation for connection if you chose to engage.
[00:03:02] So gaze carries choice and consent.
[00:03:06] You get to choose, you get to consent or not.
[00:03:10] Gaze is saying, it's almost like, knock, knock, would you like to connect?
[00:03:16] And you get to decide yes or no, or maybe I will get back to you.
[00:03:25] And gaze leaves you in your integrity, in your boundaries, in your autonomy.
[00:03:34] And gaze opens possibility for small chats, exchange of information, friendship, heart to heart connection, receiving something for yourself and giving something in return, even only for a few moments.
[00:03:56] So that's a possibility.
[00:03:58] What comes with the gaze?
[00:04:00] And you always have a choice.
[00:04:04] Stare is different.
[00:04:07] Stare is first gateway into trauma.
[00:04:14] And you never gave consent to be stared at.
[00:04:21] You had no choice in being exposed to it.
[00:04:28] Stare pins you down, it cages you.
[00:04:33] And what choice exists inside a cage?
[00:04:38] What choice did you have inside of that cage someone put you in?
[00:04:47] Uh, the quality sense behind stare, it feels very exposing, naked, violating.
[00:04:57] And it can feel like an assault on privacy boundaries your dignity and your human rights.
[00:05:07] So this has been observed over and over through my work with my clients who are recovering from very complex trauma and ptsd.
[00:05:21] And when it comes to stare, women and girls know this deeply.
[00:05:29] And many of them experience this daily sexual stare, predatory stare, the kind of stare that violates from a distance and still feels like assault.
[00:05:47] And you can notice those men in, uh, public spaces, subways, buses, restaurants, streets, who carry sexual stare.
[00:06:02] And if you're a father or a partner, observe, please observe how some men stare at women and girls.
[00:06:14] That stare is not harmless sexual stare is sexual harassment, period.
[00:06:25] It's not consensual.
[00:06:27] It's not invitational.
[00:06:30] It is violation.
[00:06:34] So think about this as a man. Ask your daughters, ask your partners, have you experienced that, how that makes you feel?
[00:06:47] How can I support you?
[00:06:50] How can I protect you? What can I do? What can I change?
[00:06:56] Because many of us grow up with that stare.
[00:07:01] And, uh, also we have different quality of the stare stare coupled with rage, where also many of us grow up with that stare.
[00:07:17] The stare where you knew harm was coming.
[00:07:21] How many of you lived with raging fathers or raging mothers?
[00:07:27] And that living with a raging parent is a core childhood wound and the root of trauma.
[00:07:37] And it comes with raging stare.
[00:07:43] And that place where you constantly anticipate rage in someone's eyes is not a playground of joy, of safety, of innocent childhood.
[00:07:58] It scares you because it robs you of the safety. It scares you because it robs you of the safety of gaze and the safety of humanity itself.
[00:08:14] So pause and reflect.
[00:08:17] Who was staring at you?
[00:08:20] Was it your parent, teacher, sibling, coach?
[00:08:29] Who in your childhood stared at you in ways that froze you?
[00:08:36] Who froze that innocent child in you?
[00:08:42] Because stare is very, very dangerous.
[00:08:47] Stare traps the body.
[00:08:49] It makes you feel frozen, speechless and trapped at the same time. And there is no pushing back. It's very powerless place to be. There is no place that you can speak up, especially if you're a child, if you're a woman or someone already overpowered.
[00:09:16] And this is excruciating power over experience.
[00:09:21] It is a life with trauma.
[00:09:24] And this is why I made my books.
[00:09:28] The trauma we don't talk about, because this is trauma.
[00:09:36] It is unspoken trauma, something what we still in mental health spaces, they didn't pin down, They didn't make our curriculum or framework.
[00:09:56] And what comes with this theory?
[00:10:00] Many people withdraw.
[00:10:05] They hide so they're not exposed to any connections which can come with possibility of being stared at again.
[00:10:21] And people mistake withdrawal as a personality.
[00:10:27] People can say also I am introvert. But trauma withdrawal is not the same as introversion. As a personality trait. There is a difference in trauma.
[00:10:40] Withdrawing, hiding, excluding yourself.
[00:10:48] When you exile yourself become protection strategy.
[00:10:56] It is a protective move.
[00:10:59] It is a trauma response.
[00:11:01] It's a rescue plan.
[00:11:04] It's a formal harm reduction, which means if I don't connect, at least I cannot be harmed again.
[00:11:15] And in Shama, that makes perfect sense.
[00:11:19] But then, years later, when you continue your life in this withdrawn place, it becomes very lonely and isolated way of living.
[00:11:31] And all in us, we want to connect. We are social beings.
[00:11:38] Even if we are introverts by personality, we still want to connect in some way. Micro moments and micro capacities.
[00:11:50] And we can also socialize. But the way how we socialize from this place is from distance.
[00:11:58] No deepening. There is no exposure.
[00:12:04] There is no real openness to connection.
[00:12:07] We can open only if we are armed with the facts, with knowledge, with money.
[00:12:18] These are protective shields. We armor yourself around, but there is no connection.
[00:12:25] We place everyone on a safe distance.
[00:12:31] There is no depth.
[00:12:34] Why we learned something. What was supposed to be safe for me and deep for my being harmed me.
[00:12:47] And there is a still memory of raging stare.
[00:12:55] And inside of us, we fear that that gaze can suddenly become stare. If we connect with someone.
[00:13:07] And this is trauma in its core, that's something sudden, intense and unsafe.
[00:13:17] Because stare is always.
[00:13:21] It has a switch on and off.
[00:13:24] It becomes so sudden and quick.
[00:13:31] Many times clients will say, oh, uh, I was just playing.
[00:13:38] Father was doing this and he just suddenly reached.
[00:13:45] And that comes with that stare, intensity. It's unsafe and it's sudden. And this is how we explain what the trauma is.
[00:13:59] And then what happens. Because of one person, you know the name of this person, first and last name, or one group of people, we cut ourselves off from hundreds of genuine connections of genuine kind, human connections.
[00:14:23] But one person stared us down. 1.
[00:14:29] And if it was a group, you know the name of the community.
[00:14:37] And that violent experience robbed us of countless future gazes, connections, tenderness, friendships, belonging.
[00:14:52] And that is not fair to you.
[00:14:55] It is not just for you.
[00:14:59] So the inquiry in trauma recovery becomes.
[00:15:05] How can I slowly allow myself to reconnect through gaze?
[00:15:13] Very slowly.
[00:15:15] Or you can ask yourself, huh? Huh?
[00:15:19] Am I expecting stare?
[00:15:23] And that's why I just withdraw?
[00:15:26] Or can I allow myself to be open to gaze?
[00:15:31] Micro connections.
[00:15:33] Five seconds of safe gaze can be enormous act of bravery if you have complex childhood trauma or complex adult trauma history.
[00:15:51] Five seconds.
[00:15:53] This is not small. It's huge.
[00:15:56] It's huge.
[00:15:58] And it can feel wonderful and terrifying at the same time.
[00:16:05] And you remind yourself, stare was imprinted is in my implicit memory.
[00:16:14] It's my emotional knowing about specific people.
[00:16:22] This person in front of me is not the same person who harmed me.
[00:16:28] So use those tools, remind yourself and invite yourself gently.
[00:16:37] You invite yourself gently.
[00:16:40] Today I will allow one moment of gaze connection.
[00:16:48] And when you meet people, and instantly you want to withdraw or build fearful predictions about them, ask yourself, hold on.
[00:17:00] Is this there?
[00:17:02] Or is this gazed?
[00:17:06] So remember, stare is not gaze.
[00:17:12] Gaze carries curiosity. It's very light. The quality is light. It's flexible, it's moving, it's brief. That's the quality of the gaze you're looking for.
[00:17:27] It's almost like a dog carrying a ball, tail wagging, asking, hey, would you like to play? And if not, the dog simply moves on.
[00:17:37] That's the quality of the gaze. It comes in. Yes, now.
[00:17:42] And goes.
[00:17:45] If you don't want to. If you want to, yeah, let's play.
[00:17:50] Let's talk. Let's exchange information, and then we leave. We all go in our own praises.
[00:17:59] Stare is different.
[00:18:01] Stare carries intensity, charge, force.
[00:18:08] It grips it, cages.
[00:18:13] It lingers.
[00:18:17] It freezes your body.
[00:18:19] There is no consent inside it.
[00:18:25] And what is important is knowing you now have options.
[00:18:31] You can move away.
[00:18:33] You can ask for help.
[00:18:35] You can report harassment.
[00:18:40] Sexual. Again, I will repeat this one more time for every woman.
[00:18:47] Young girl, for fathers and husbands and brothers, for friends, sexual stare is sexual harassment and its violation of a human right.
[00:19:05] And you have the right to report that.
[00:19:13] You have right to stand up against that, to call this publicly, call this behavior publicly, don't stay silent.
[00:19:26] Because what we tolerate, it persists. When something so violating persists, we are losing our power.
[00:19:36] There is no justice here. We are losing our, uh, moral values.
[00:19:43] And somatically.
[00:19:46] So if you're stared at somatically, what I'm teaching clients in my office, one very effective somatic practice to break stair freeze is through movement of the ankles.
[00:20:08] And this is something I teach my clients quite often.
[00:20:11] You move the ankles first, the neck follows, and then the eyes release.
[00:20:20] So the body uncages, um, itself from freeze. Okay, so even you can do this now. So move your ankle.
[00:20:30] The moment you move your ankle right, your feet will move.
[00:20:35] Your neck will follow in your eyes as well.
[00:20:40] So that's one of the symbiotic practices.
[00:20:43] So what happens in this?
[00:20:45] The nervous system begins moving. Out of assault and immobilization, out of freeze.
[00:20:55] The quality of gaze.
[00:20:58] Or, uh, let's go easily if you don't respond, it simply moves on.
[00:21:04] It's like this happy dog with ball.
[00:21:09] Nothing is invasive, nothing is forceful.
[00:21:14] So your practice, your invite is, can I allow myself to be connected with gaze to gaze and then let go.
[00:21:27] Uh, see how it feels only for five seconds and release.
[00:21:36] You're making that choice to break that connection.
[00:21:42] And connection is safe because it's a gaze but implicit memory.
[00:21:49] Trauma memory has imprinted stare.
[00:21:58] And you not being able to let go because of terror in your body, freeze.
[00:22:05] And with this practice, gaze to gaze five seconds, then let go.
[00:22:13] You release.
[00:22:14] Your body will learn no harm happened.
[00:22:19] It was curiosity, noticing connection. Five seconds and then release.
[00:22:32] And over time, you build in your nervous system capacities for regulated connection.
[00:22:40] Connection you can enter and leave by choice. So that's a, uh, regulated connection.
[00:22:47] That's connection with consent, with boundaries.
[00:22:51] You can enter in a field of connection, and you're living by choice.
[00:22:58] No one is upset if you want to connect or if you want to leave.
[00:23:05] In trauma, freeze.
[00:23:07] Especially as a child or assaulted person, the body, you could not leave the connection because terror was too high.
[00:23:24] This is the core of the trauma complex trauma, when the terror is so high that they are frozen to respond.
[00:23:37] And now, uh, you're learning that you can.
[00:23:41] So practice opening yourself slowly to gaze.
[00:23:46] And then practice letting go that gaze. And then maybe second, maybe next time, 10 seconds.
[00:23:55] And then afterward, notice nothing bad happened and celebrate that small victory. It's a big bravery for your system.
[00:24:07] It's a big milestone. It's very courageous to do that.
[00:24:11] People who don't have complex trauma cannot get that. How this is big, and this is how you're returning home to yourself, to what was brought from you.
[00:24:27] And this is a trauma we don't talk about.
[00:24:32] And you're not alone in this.
[00:24:35] Absolutely not.
[00:24:37] This is very, very real for millions of.
[00:24:52] So let's summarize all of this.
[00:24:57] Trauma changes the nervous system relationship to human connection itself. Specifically, how unsafe attention becomes fused with all attention.
[00:25:14] Every attention you receive can feel deeply unsafe.
[00:25:20] That's why standing up, speaking about yourself in some circles, in some groups, in meetings, can be deeply triggering.
[00:25:35] Also, stare becomes confused with gaze. It's not the same.
[00:25:41] And trauma survivors withdraw not because they dislike connection, or many times they think they're introverts, but because connection itself was so dangerous.
[00:26:01] So social withdrawal many times is not about personality or introversion, but often is about survival, adaptation, And also people who are quote unquote social, but they're not digging deeper in any connection.
[00:26:35] What's behind that?
[00:26:38] What's behind that?
[00:26:41] Why deep connection itself is dangerous.
[00:26:47] Gaze and stare are not the same. Nervous system experience, It's not the same.
[00:27:00] Because in trauma, often experience is all visibility is threat, all attention is exposure to threat.
[00:27:14] And all closeness is dangerous.
[00:27:19] And all eye contact is possible violation of me.
[00:27:31] So we want to separate, right?
[00:27:34] If you're a therapist, you can write this down. Um, and what we want to teach our clients, what you want to teach yourself, consensual noticing from invasive fixation.
[00:27:51] As a woman, you need to know this.
[00:27:55] If someone is consensual noticing me or this is invasive fixation.
[00:28:08] If you're a woman, if you're a childhood trauma survivor, if you're a salt survivor, your body will remember this because that stare pins you down, it cages you. It's invasive.
[00:28:27] And that's different from consensual noticing. Invasive is not same as invite. Sexual stare is a sexual harassment period.
[00:28:42] And we need to be aware of, uh, seriousness to those experiences.
[00:28:50] Because being stared at is not discomfort.
[00:28:55] It is violation of your nervous system, of your privacy, of your boundaries.
[00:29:03] Sexual stare is violating.
[00:29:11] I need to ditch this. From very young age, many drama survivors, they instantly recognize they're the best observers. The best observers trauma survivors, because instantly they recognize the look before violence, the look before humiliation, the look before punishment, the look before emotional explosion.
[00:29:45] And growing up with this as a child, that child becomes conditioned to freeze to body shutdown, to speechlessness, to hiding, to hyper vigilance because of this repeated exposure to rage filled stare.
[00:30:13] And it explains why many survivors cannot hold eye contact or they freeze socially in groups.
[00:30:24] There is no public speaking, there is no spotlights because they anticipate hostility.
[00:30:36] Many people, they pathologize themselves as antisocial, awkward, um, avoidant, cool, introverted, neurodivergent.
[00:30:49] But actually they're protecting themselves from anticipated sphere, which is so intelligent, it's adaptive, it's protective.
[00:31:02] And you need to ask yourself, am I robbing myself from my true essence? And what is my true essence?
[00:31:15] Can I address this longing for connection?
[00:31:19] And how can I work on that? How can I become connected with someone who feel safe and honor myself? And we can learn that safe gaze exists and your nervous system can slowly learn that again.
[00:31:42] Absolutely. It can. It can build that trust in humans who deserves your gaze Foreign.
[00:31:58] This is excellent rising.
[00:32:03] Please support this podcast by leaving Review Share and as always, be gentle with yourself.
[00:32:12] Be gentle with yourself.
[00:32:14] Much care.
[00:32:16] Much care.
