A True & Effective Healer Respects Your Story
Different ways to hijack your story, when it's disrespected, and what it looks like when someone respects your story as your own.
Eyes Wide Open: Avoiding Re-Traumatization is a series that explores how to recognize scammers, predators, opportunists, and the well-meaning but unqualified, on your healing journey. This installment explores the 2nd of ten essential traits of a true healer.
Each installment can be read as a standalone piece and in any order.
Dear Intrepid Traveler,
How have you been faring? I hope well. It’s been a rough two months, health-wise for me, but I’m doing better! My writing schedule will remain fluid for a while as I improve. Thank you for your patience!
Last installment of Eyes Wide Open, we looked at pseudo listening, when someone hears just enough of your story to springboard into talking about themselves.
Here, it’s about hijacking your story.
Pieces of Your Story
Trauma shatters you. It splinters you from your memories, your body, your self.
Sometimes, the telling of our story helps us to discover it, but like conversations that breathe and the free writing that zigzags like a mountain pass, what we remember doesn’t always come out whole or in chronological order. We may have missing chapters, or only a paragraph, or a scene without context.
Trauma survivors can stare at blank pages longer than any writer. We know there’s a story, but it’s not there yet.
That’s okay. It’s okay to not have all the information or to not have all the dots to connect.
This doesn’t mean you’re in denial. You don’t need to be saved from yourself.
And it’s certainly not an invitation for anyone to hijack your narrative, to fill in the blank spaces or project their personal dots onto the canvas of your experience. No matter how much they know or think they know.
They don’t know the intricacies of you.
What Makes Us Vulnerable to Having Our Stories Hijacked?
When you’re frightened and confused it’s tempting to lean on other people. When you feel disoriented, when what you thought was truth starts to fall apart, and what’s real is too horrible to accept, and you wonder what the hell is real and what isn’t, it’s seductive to let someone spell it out for you.
Uncertainty is uncomfortable. The unknown can be frightening. Being unable to perceive it, and feeling betrayed by your own ability to discern, can be terrifying.
What’s out there?
Or worse, what lies in here, in me? What else is going to jump out at me, terrorize me, haunt me another night, stalk me another day?
When the worst has already risen its head, it can be a nightmare to think there may be something even worse than that.
This is why I wrote the shortest lyrics I ever wrote for a song, Look Inside You, (you can listen here), because it’s a message we need to hear over and over again: Don’t be afraid.
Why Are We Afraid?
We’re afraid, because we assume that what lies within us is ugly, that it lies in wait to jump us, that we’ll run into our shame, or self-condemnation, or a depth of pain we cannot bear to experience, again… and we may.
But for every experience tied to suffering is the opportunity to untie them.
Behind the narratives of a hurtful past are the pieces of our history that empower us.
Underneath the illusions, exist talents, and gifts, and strengths that call us.
Among our pain and grief is the discovery of something just as, if not more, real—the growing sense of who we are and who we are becoming, and out of that, an identity that is more expansive and more beautiful than what we can see from where we are standing, or struggling.
That’s a promise.
But only if we don’t let others take our story, the process to reclaim it, or our right to devise meaning, away.
What Does Hijacking Your Story Look Like?
1. Hijacking can look like projection
Upon discovering similarities in our narrative, this hijacker projects themselves onto you.
They resist any belief or comprehension that your inner experience, similar circumstances or not, can be different.
They beat you to finishing your sentences, not just because they already know what you’re going to say, but because they want to steer the direction of your telling.
They can’t stand silence or blank spaces, and feel compelled to fill them in with more of themselves.
They’re fond of saying, “Oh, just like me!”, and the like, not to identify with you or validate your experience but to claim it.
You’re not a person. You’re a reflection.
The main point of interaction is to use the projection of you to validate themselves.
But it’s wonderful to be validated by others who have similar experiences, isn’t it? To speak to people who “know what you’re going through”, to know that you’re not alone, and that you’re not crazy!
It’s healing. It can change your world. It can change you.
But no matter how much you identify with another person’s experience, or another person may identify with yours, you are not each other. Crossing that line is definitely unhealthy, could become toxic.
2. Hijacking can look like pressure
The pressure is to give more credence to another person’s knowledge than to your personal knowing.
They remind you, “In my experience…” not to share personal insight but to contradict or argue against you going in a direction that doesn’t align with what they’ve learned.
Or “According to my training…” not to utilize expertise, but as a corrective, to quash any ideas or considerations that deviate from that knowledge.
They repeat, “Mm-hmm, I know”, not to validate but to prevent you from sharing further, because… they already know. They teach you, not the other way around.
You’re supposed to fall in line. Your story is supposed to fit.
The main point of interaction is to take care of their ego, and to validate their body of knowledge and work.
It’s good to respect the knowledge of others. We need other people’s expertise, and I deeply admire those who put the very hard work into gaining expertise beyond personal experience.
But no matter how educated a person, the ultimate authority of your experiences is you. It doesn’t mean you’re perfect and never in error. It means your discovery is your own. It means you’re a reliable witness to your life, even if you need help to see more clearly.
3. Hijacking can look like competition
Rather than making your story identical, this hijacker makes it less.
They take your story, and edit it more suitable for a general audience, and more tepid in emotion and impact.
Your story can never “outshine” or “outdo” theirs on the scales of abusive severity.
Your experience, its impact, the challenges you face are muted, no matter how real. Whatever you went through can’t and must not be as bad, never mind worse.
Competition can hide behind the veneer of kind words and smiles, and even with protestations that they’ve had it worse, they believe it, and will not hesitate to downgrade everything you share to preserve that belief.
If you push back, or upon seeing the look on your face, they may add, “too”, as in “Oh, you’ve suffered, ‘too’.” But you know, not as much.
It’s often passive aggressive.
Not to be confused with acknowledging or respecting the spectrum of suffering, it’s about status. To this hijacker the status of “worst” is an achievement.
The main point in their interaction is to maintain their self-image as long (and worst) suffering by diminishing your experiences, your story.
This can happen when one’s trauma becomes a core of one’s identity. Your story steals or threatens that identity.
Drawing boundaries with a person’s behavior is one thing. But trying to address a problem rooted in a person’s identity is better left to someone with greater expertise.
Your energy is best focused on your healing. Not theirs.
How Do You Know That Hijacking Has Occurred or Is Occurring?
Besides being aware of and recognizing the dynamics above, the biggest clue is found in the impact of your interactions with them. You want someone you invite into your healing space to support or lend to that healing, not take it away.
So, do they? Take anything away?
Do you feel diminished, somehow smaller for this interaction? Do you walk away feeling drained, or fatigued, or angry, and resentful?
Do you feel stifled or suffocated when around them, like you need air? Like you can’t breathe? Like you can’t think?
Do you feel apologetic when you speak, to have the audacity to think you may have something of value to contribute, or fear you may offend, or inadvertently imply an insult?
Perhaps you feel unfinished, but ambivalent about returning to continue the work. Instead of clarity, you may doubt yourself more.
You shouldn’t feel more invisible when you speak up.
If you do, in what’s supposed to be a healing relationship, it’s not.
What Does It Look Like When Someone Is Respecting Your Story?
A true healer makes you feel seen and heard, and helps guide you through your process.
To that end, good facilitators of healing prioritize creating and maintaining a safe space, that allows you to explore, discover and share.
They practice more listening, less interjecting, no projecting, or competing, or compelling.
They assist you in the unveiling, gathering, and processing of information. They celebrate in your learning.
They acknowledge the possibilities, “Yes, there are others who’ve gone through similar experiences you’ve described”, or where appropriate, “I’ve experienced similar things”, but they never forget where you begin and they end.
They use their skill, knowledge, and experience to help you decipher the clues you find. They don’t hand-feed or override you.
They are empathetic of your confusion or frustration. They don’t seek to relieve you of it. They give you the tools to deal with it.
They are honest in their feedback and guidance, offering structure where necessary, but without marching orders.
They encourage you to explore, to wander long hallways of inquiry, to open doors for possibilities to answers.
They are fine with the state of not knowing. There’s no driven need or effort to eradicate ambiguity.
Their advice, suggestions and feedback are spot on to what you’ve been sharing. Even if you don’t agree or choose not to follow, you know they are responding to the you who sits before or beside them.
Likewise, the biggest clue to someone respecting your story is the impact of your interactions. Do you feel lighter for being with them?
Do your encounters feel healing even with the raw tenderness that can happen when wounds are exposed to air?
When crushing things are revealed, do you feel a sense of relief when the dust settles?
Do you feel stronger, even as you feel vulnerable?
Do you take up space? Do your words land somewhere?
Do you want to come back, continue sharing, or confiding, or working with this person again?
Do you feel visible?
Most importantly, are you more visible to yourself?
The Gateway to You
Your story, the discovery and the telling of it, is the gateway to your self. When someone takes that from you, and leaves a changeling script in its place, you lose an important part of who you are and who you are becoming.
What trauma shatters, healing gathers.
Your authentic story is part of that gathering. Protect it as you would a priceless gem.
It is worth more.
Question: In what ways did you feel someone hoovered up your experiences, or lassoed their expectations around it, or played it down, or hijacked it in any other way? I’d love to hear your thoughts! Share in the comments below and I’ll join you!
From my heart to yours,
Demian Elaine’ Yumei ~ Silent No More
"Question: In what ways did you feel someone hoovered up your experiences, or lassoed their expectations around it, or played it down, or hijacked it in any other way? I’d love to hear your thoughts! Share in the comments below and I’ll join you!"
Oh, so many examples I could give, but I think the most intense and the worst, was the experience I had with an alternative healer in the early part of my healing journey, thirty-some years ago. She definitely was on a mission to save me from denial, and as a result, she caused great harm, a huge breach of trust in my self. She pushed me too far, and I went with her, before I realized it was wrong, and had time to back out. Damage already done, but I'm glad I ended my work with her and didn't continue as I could have.
On a positive note, this became the catalyst to write what would become my manuscript for "Eyes Wide Open". I wanted to spare others from getting hurt like that. Who needs to be re-traumatized when looking for help to deal with trauma?
I have been hijacked and felt all those things you describe when it does happen to you. I just never really understood why I was feeling this way. That I was being hijacked. On the outside, the person seemed to be empathetic and listening, but I realize as I'm reading, they were in competition and I never quite felt like I was being seen.
On the other hand, I also recognize that I have been too quick to jump in on conversations. It's a bad habit, so I really have to be mindful of listening. I will often have to remind myself in my head. Don't interrupt, just listen. I will get so excited about something someone is saying, I jump the gun and open my mouth. It's a good reminder of how this can be damaging. And is just rude! So, thanks for explaining it so well.