Clara Sherley-Appel (CSA): This is Story Behind the Story. I’m your host, Clara Sherley-Appel, and my guest today is writer, radio producer, and journalist Stephanie Foo. If you listen to the radio, you have almost certainly encountered her work. After graduating from UC Santa Cruz in just 2 years, she joined the staff of Snap Judgment, first as an intern and then as a full-time producer, before she moved to New York to work on This American Life. But Stephanie’s numerous accomplishments and accolades hid an intense internal struggle that ultimately led her to leave her dream job: in 2018, she was diagnosed with C-PTSD. Earlier this month, she published What My Bones Know – a memoir that chronicles her journey to understand and heal from C-PTSD following her diagnosis. It is a powerful and deeply personal story that sheds light on an under-researched, poorly understood, and oft-stigmatized illness.


Stephanie Foo, welcome to Story Behind the Story!

Stephanie Foo (SF): Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Technically, it was a half years but—


(CSA): Okay. [Clara chuckles] 
I'd like to start by asking you to say a bit about C-PTSD. What is it, and how is it different both from the PTSD that most people are aware of, and from the stereotypes or assumptions people might have? 


(SF): Yeah, so I think most people might have the assumption that PTSD is a warrior's disease; that it's associated with people who have ridden over IEDs in Afghanistan — which simply isn't true. PTSD is really common in the United States and actually it is more common with women than it is with men for various reasons; Some of them biological and some of them that women are often subject to a lot of abuse in this country. The difference between “traditional” quote/un-quote PTSD and complex PTSD is that you can get “traditional” PTSD from a single traumatic event — So if you are hit by a car, you can get PTSD. Complex PTSD is when the trauma happens over and over and over, over the course of many years — So it's kind of like if you were hit by a car once a week for years. And unless you have really, really terrible luck, usually that means that you are in a place where you may have an abuser, or you may be living in a war zone. Mine comes from intense physical and emotional child abuse and neglect. 


(CSA): So tell me a little bit about how that relational element — the way that C-PTSD, unlike PTSD, tends to involve relationships with other people. How does that affect the way that it shows up for you, for other sufferers? 


(SF): So again, if you have traditional PTSD (a couple, let's say, of traumatic events), you have triggers surrounding those events. Like, say you were hit by the car, and let's say it wasn't an intersection with a Dunkin Donuts or something like that: Dunkin Donuts might be a trigger. Maybe the make and model of the car — A gray Volkswagen — would be a trigger. Maybe the color of the sweatshirt that somebody comes out of their car wearing — that might be a trigger. These are all encoded in our brain, both consciously and subconsciously — which would mean that if you saw — whatever: a Dunkin Donuts — you might freak out without quite understanding why. So the problem with complex PTSD is when you are abused dozens or hundreds of times, the number of conscious and subconscious triggers explodes and it is immense to the point where you sort of are afraid of the world itself, or afraid of people. You have a really hard time trusting others. If you haven't been protected by people hundreds and hundreds of times, people themselves can become pretty scary.


(CSA): And I think that's something that's pretty clear, both from what you just said and from the book itself, is: if you have C-PTSD, you can’t really avoid your triggers the way that you could if you got hit by a car and that was the source of your trauma. They’re everywhere. They pervade every aspect of your life. How does that figure into the way that it gets treated?


(SF): The way that it gets treated is essentially, well — I think exposure therapy is a big thing for traditional PTSD; that really isn't so possible with complex PTSD. You can't just expose somebody to everything, so that's part of it. I think also a big part of complex PTSD is trying to believe that you are lovable, that you're not a bad person. I think a lot of sufferers of complex PTSD turn a lot of self-blame and self-loathing inward because a lot of them have gone through a lot of abuse and that's rewired their brains. And so I think mindfulness is really helpful for complex PTSD just to calm down that brain and body, whenever it might be agitated. Being able to relearn healthy self-parenting talk, so being able to talk to oneself when they're really feeling like they might hate themselves or they're feeling really scared. And also just kind of re-learning how to be in community with other people, how to love and be loved and sort of relearn how to navigate conflicts and relationships. 


(CSA): So you were diagnosed in 2018, but you had been with your therapist for (I think it was) 8 years at that point in time — Is that right?


(SF): Yeah.


(CSA): And my understanding is that she had sort of diagnosed you on her end long before she told you. How did receiving that diagnosis affect you, and how did you see C-PTSD showing up in your life at the point when you were diagnosed? And when you were looking back, how did you see that in your earlier narrative? 


(SF): I was really shocked, obviously, about my diagnosis. I think she had mentioned it when I first came in, like, 8 years ago when I was 22 years old. And she probably said, ‘yeah you have complex PTSD,’ and I only heard the PTSD part. ‘Yeah, right. I'm not a soldier. Not really.’ I had completely missed the complex part, so Googling it, I think... Well, she told me this at the end of a session, too. She told me I had complex PTSD and then immediately was like, ‘All right, Bye!’ So I had to google this alone, and what was on the internet at the time was really dismal and depressing and awful. It was just really pathologizing all of the horrible symptoms. All the things that were terrible about… me, because I had complex PTSD. It was really upsetting, and it kind of shed a new light on everything in my life. I just went all the way back to the beginning, and looked at everything through the lens of me being broken and I was like, well, ‘This is why I didn't get that job,’ or, ‘This is why so and so hates me,’ or, ‘This is why this relationship didn't pan out,’ — which was not a particularly healthy way of looking at things. 


(CSA): I'm curious about that cuz you talk at several points in the book about that sort of hopelessness that you felt when you first received your diagnosis, and that feeling of being pathologized in the descriptions that you were seeing of C-PTSD. Can you share a little bit more about that — Where does that come from? What are the pieces of it that felt so wounding and pathologizing? 


(SF): A therapist eventually told me that the crux of complex PTSD is this deep set belief that you do not deserve love, right? And then also, some of the symptoms that I saw online were ‘hopelessness’ and ‘despair.’ So the other symptoms are: aggressive but not able to tolerate aggression; an inability to maintain long-term relationships; not being able to self-soothe and being emotionally erratic; being on a relentless search for a savior. I mean, you read things like this — if you already believed deep down that you're not worthy of love, and then you read this list of horrific flaws about yourself — it's only going to reinforce that and send you on this double pit of despair. And then you're going to be like, ‘Oh no! But, this is part of the C-PTSD too, is that I have a tendency to despair. But what else am I going to do? I just want to die. Oh my God!’ So it's like this bottomless pit that you can't crawl your way out of. 


(CSA): Yeah it sounds very painful. I'm curious why it was important for you to tell your story of C-PTSD?


(SF): Because of this exact thing, right? All I could find on the internet were these really dismal, depressing accounts. I searched for, “I healed from complex PTSD”: Nothing. I searched for, “Celebrities with complex PTSD”: Nothing. My job was that I created first-person narratives (stories on This American Life and Snap Judgment) to build empathy and to show people that they weren't alone in their experiences. I featured people of color on air. I featured people who are narrow atypical, and I featured prisoners just to build empathy. I would always get messages from people saying, ‘Thank you for doing a story about XYZ. I thought I was the only one, and now I'm affirmed I’m not alone.’ Great. So that's what I wanted! I'd spent my whole life doing this. I needed this now, and I couldn't find it. There were no first person stories. There was nothing normalizing. And I told myself if I ever heal from this thing I'm going to make that first person narrative. I'm going to make it hopeful. I'm going to make something that doesn't allow people to just tumble into this dark black hole; That gives them the footholds to climb their way out. 


(CSA): I'm curious if you see a relationship between your childhood experiences that sort of led you to… the trauma that led you to that C-PTSD diagnosis, and the work that you do; Like, you just talked about this desire in your work to create empathy in people for a wide variety of different experiences. That seems to me like it could very easily be something that is related to a childhood where you're not getting a lot of empathy.


(SF): [She sighs heavily] Yeah, I guess so. Probably. I think I had a very narrow worldview when I was a kid, and telling stories — I loved it because it opened up my worldview so much. I think my parents had a very narrow idea of what was “right” and “wrong” and I was punished for being “wrong” all the time. We grew up in a really religious household so, there was all of that. I think really talking to former prisoners, or people that I just would not interact with on a daily basis like polygamous — even white supremacists eventually! — gave me a really nuanced version of the world, and allowed me to see that people are not so simple; that I could actually empathize with and enjoy the company of people that I had not expected to. Not white supremacists! Things like former drug dealers telling me their stories, and just being able to laugh with them and totally being on the same page with them; That really took the world from being a black-and-white binary to a million different shades of grey, I think. And I think what was really helpful in healing from complex PTSD was seeing complex PTSD itself as not being a black-and-white binary of being a good or a bad person, but understanding that this condition has a lot of shades of grey. It has advantages, it has disadvantages. It's painful, but it can also be really beautiful. 


(CSA): Yeah so tell me about that. What are some of the ways that you're understanding of C-PTSD has changed, and particularly moving from that feeling of despair and hopelessness, and like, ‘This is only bad things about me.’ How has that changed since you have started on this journey and started to research it more, and started to go through your own healing process?


(SF): I think there are a lot of really great things about complex PTSD. I think that the exaggerated emotions, like anger or sadness, are not necessarily bad, inherently. In fact, they can be great motivators! I know that (in my life anyway) I've really stuck up for people, and had courage in scary moments because of my anger or sense of justice. I think that during the pandemic I really could see the benefits of complex PTSD, because PTSD is a social construct, and it's only a mental illness in times of peace; In times of war, PTSD is an adaptation. It is literally an evolutionary thing in our genes that has been put there for us to survive.


(CSA): The part where you talked about the way that C-PTSD — I don't know if “prepared you for the pandemic” is exactly right, but the way that it served you in the early days of the pandemic really resonated for me as someone who has OCD, which of course, so much of our understanding of OCD is… the similarities, from the sort of hyper vigilance and the tendency to… that outside vision of OCD as something that is taking things too far, or taking things that might be useful too far. But of course in the early days of the pandemic, who's better prepared than somebody who is constantly looking at the world and doing threat assessments?


(SF): Yeah, if you're obsessively washing your hands in the pandemic, you’re not hyper vigilant, you’re just vigilant.


(CSA): Yeah, you’re doing what everyone else is learning to do in that moment for the first time.


(SF): Right, which I think gave me a leg up because, actually, when a lot of people were encountering this paralyzing fear for the first time; they were almost non-functional. 
Whereas I, on the other hand, I was like, ‘I've been living with this fear forever, and I am good!’ Having complex PTSD also makes you a really good dissociator — which is not super great for feeling feelings a lot of the time, but again: if you're trying to survive, being able to put all of your fear and whatever in a little tiny box and just [makes ‘doo-doo-doo’ sound] go around your day… I was very eerily good at that at the beginning of the pandemic. I was cooking. I was keeping people safe. I was hoarding beans [Clara laughs] and I was, you know…


(CSA): So many beans, so much rice.


(SF): Yeah. But I was making really delicious dinners, and I was getting a lot of work done. You know, I wrote this book. I started writing this book in February 2020 and I basically wrote it in the year of the pandemic. So I was eerily productive. Again, pretty superpower-y.


(CSA): I kind of want to talk about that productivity, because it's something that you talk about in the book quite a bit. The way that your success and your work ethic hid from — or allowed you to hide aspects of the trauma that you'd been through from yourself. [SF “mmms” in agreement] Can you talk about that a little bit? 


(SF): Yeah, well: I think success has always been bred into me as what it is to be good. I mean, when I was six years old my mother would force me to write these journals, and if I messed up “their” the possessive and “there” the location, she would beat me. And so I learned very early on that you have to do things right and get things perfect in order to be good and to be safe. And it seemed like the real world validated that. Obviously! Because we live in a capitalist society, we live in a protestant society, and it's like: ‘the harder you work and the better you do, the more you're going to get ahead in life.’ I think my mother actually was preparing me for that capitalist society in the way that she assumed was correct. And as an immigrant, I think she saw this as really critical because there's that whole thing, you know? You need to work twice as hard, you need to be three times as good. I was in a community, an immigrant community where everyone shared this twisted idea, and we were all competing for UC spots. I grew up in San Jose, California. I think that I actually got very good at being successful, and the thing about being successful is, even if you are a hot mess and you're drinking every night and you're CLEARLY having train wreck relationships over and over with boys [she laughs to herself] — none of that matters because of our weird capitalist society. Because they see: ‘Oh, but she's on the radio.’ ‘Oh, but she has fancy bylines.’ ‘Oh but she makes x amount of money.’ ‘She has an IRA, so she can't be that much of a hot mess. She's got to have it totally together,’ right? So I was able to hide the fact that I was severely traumatized from myself and from everyone around me for a long time by being an exceptionally hard worker. 
—
[AD BREAK]
—
(CSA):  If you’re just joining me, my guest today is writer and radio producer Stephanie Foo, whose memoir, What My Bones Know, chronicles her journey to understand and heal from C-PTSD.
There's something I saw in another interview with you where you talked about how, in the context of that intergenerational immigrant trauma, that for your parents generation — or, sorry. For your peers in your generation, they sort of got a message from their parents that the way that they escape that cycle was by being successful; But of course that feeds exactly into all of these kinds of toxic social constructs that you were just mentioning. Like it teaches this lesson of: Yes, you can escape your trauma through work — but of course, it's still ingrained there. 


(SF): You can't escape your trauma through work. Eventually, it’s going to creep up on you. It's going to pop up. And (as it did for me) at a certain point my trauma got the best of me and was so loudly screaming in the back of my head that I wasn't able to work anymore, and then I wasn't able to hide it — and then I was screwed.


(CSA): And so that moment was… was it also in 2018, or was it a few years later? I'm trying to remember.


(SF): That was 2018, yep.


(CSA): Yeah, and it was also a moment when you were working for This American Life, when you had a boss who was (I think) kind of toxic at best, and when you were working on a lot of — some of those stories that you talked about are trying to create if not empathy, at least understanding for white supremacists which, you know, it just seems like it is, in many ways, a re-traumatizing task. How did those factors conspire to make that the moment for you?


(SF): 2017 had been really hard, obviously, as for most journalists and it had been very difficult because of the election of Trump. There was just so much racism, and newsrooms really wanted people of color to report more on racism, and so they were forcing us to do think pieces and talk to racists and, or, like, talk to victims of racism.It wasn't just: Bring in a story of a black woman or an Asian woman having a great time living life. It was always: Bring in a story of an Asian woman who's been hate crimed. So, yeah. Reporting on that, reporting on climate change, and a possible pandemic, and nuclear war, and all of that, it just put me in a place where I didn't have hope anymore. I didn't know why humanity continued to exist, and I think it was just because I was just such in a triggered state all the time. Like, life was already hard as it was, and then add C-PTSD on top of that, and then add your boss constantly yelling at you on top of that — it was just a nightmare.


(CSA): And so at that point you decided to take time off from your sort of mainstream professional pursuits and focus full-time on healing. What did that decision look like for you? 


(SF): I mean — it wasn't much of a decision, honestly. Again, I was almost unable to work very much cuz I was so triggered all the time; I was crying at the office. And then I got the diagnosis: complex PTSD. And then I was like, ‘Well, I guess I'm completely broken human being, so I need to just retreat from the world and fix myself. And not see anyone or do anything until I come out the other side.’ And I'm not the worst person that have ever lived. What I truly believed about myself — which was not true, of course.


(CSA): No. Can you talk a little bit about your experience of seeking out therapy? In the book I think you talked about being a little bit naive in that respect, going into the process. Not really knowing what to look for. What did you learn that might help others who are seeking to find a trauma-informed therapist? 


(SF): I don't know if I was necessarily naive. I had already seen a bunch of therapists in my life. I just think that finding a therapist in America is a really difficult prospect. Regardless of whether you're naive or not. I mean even now — if I were to find a new therapist (which I'll honestly I am on the hunt for, and not happy about it), there just aren't very many trauma-informed therapists. But I would suggest you look for a therapist who is trained in treating complex PTSD, who specifically knows about complex PTSD. There’re a bunch of different methodologies that have worked a little bit for me. I think just understanding that you might have to try a bunch of different therapists and a bunch of different methodologies before you find the right one that works; like I cycled through EMDR, and IFS, and rupture repair, and CBT, and all of them helped a little bit, but it was the combination of kind of trying all of them, I feel like, that really helped me. So just understanding that you might have to cycle through a few people, and if you really don't trust your therapist, if they give you bad vibes: don't waste your time sticking with them. Just try and find someone new. 


(CSA): Okay so I think now would be a good time to have you read a little excerpt from the book so that we can maybe get a little bit more into the writing itself. Before you do, can you just set up what you're going to read? 


(SF): Yeah. So this is from the prologue of my book. It's kind of what we just went over in terms of the moment of me being diagnosed and my meltdown surrounding that. 


[She begins reading]
I've suffered from anxiety and depression since I was 12 years old. The pain is a fanged beast that I've battled 100 times throughout the years, and every time I think I've cut it down for good, it reanimates and launches itself at my throat again. But in recent years I've convinced myself that this battle was completely pedestrian. I mean 20-something millennials are all really stressed out, aren't they? Isn't depression just short hand for the human condition? Who isn't anxious — here, In New York: the capital of neuroticism. 
That is, until I turn 30. One by one I'd watched my erratic friends hit 30 and quickly become adults. They reported that they had less energy so they stopped caring as much about what other people thought and settled into themselves. Then they bought beige linen pants and had babies. I waited for that mature elevated calm — but my 30th birthday was months ago and if anything I care more than ever. I care about shopping cart placement, and plastic in the oceans, and being a good listener. I care about how I seem to mess everything up all the time. I care and I care, and I hate myself for it. My friend's got one thing right though. I'm so tired now, 30 years on this Earth and I've been sad at least half that time. 
On my Subway rides to work, I stare at the supposedly neurotic masses who are calmly staring at their phones and think maybe I'm different from them? Maybe something is wrong with me. In the past week, I've been scrolling through various mental illnesses on WebMD, searching for symptoms that sound familiar to find an answer. Now, near the end of my session with Samantha, after we've exhausted the usual pep talks and affirmations, I gather up my courage to ask about my internet diagnosis: “Do you think I'm bipolar?” Samantha actually laughs. “You're not bipolar. I'm sure of it,” she says. That's when she asks, “Do you want to know your diagnosis?” I don't yell, “Lady. I've been seeing you for a damn decade! Yes I want to know my damn diagnosis!” — because Samantha taught me about appropriate communication. Thanks, Samantha. Instead I say, “Yes. Of course.” Something in her jaw becomes determined and her gaze is direct. “You have complex PTSD from your childhood, and it manifests as persistent depression and anxiety. There's no way someone with your background couldn't have it,” she says.
The first thing I do after our Skype window closes is bring up Google. I've never heard of complex PTSD. Surprisingly, there aren't that many results. I go from Wikipedia to a government page about C-PTSD as it relates to veterans. I read the list of symptoms. It is very long, and it is not so much a medical document as it is a biography of my life. The difficulty regulating my emotions, the tendency to overshare and trust the wrong people. The dismal self-loathing. The trouble I have with maintaining relationships. The unhealthy relationship with my abuser, the tendency to be aggressive but unable to tolerate aggression from others. It's all true. It's all me. 
The more I read the more every aspect of my personhood is reduced to deep diagnostic flaws. I hadn't understood how far the disease had spread, how complete its takeover of my identity was. The things I want, the things I love, the way I speak, and my passions. My fears. My zits. My eating habits. The amount of whiskey I drink. The way I listen, and the things I see. Everything — everything. All of it is infected. My trauma is literally pumping through my blood, driving every decision in my brain. It is this totality that leaves me frantic with grief. 
For years, I've labored to build myself a new life, something very different from how I was raised. But now, all of a sudden, every conflict I've encountered, every loss, every failure and foible in my life can be traced back to its root: me. I am far from normal. I am the common denominator in the tragedies of my life. I'm a textbook case of mental illness. The orange walls of my office begin to close in on me. I don't belong here. I don't belong anywhere. I try to stay another couple of hours at my desk in a desperate attempt to prove to myself that I'm capable of a full work day, but I can't see my computer screen. My co-workers laughing outside my door sound like jackals. I grab my coat and rush out of the building into the cold air, but even outside I haven't escaped. With every step, one word echoes in my head: broken, broken, broken.
For 10 years I thought I could outrun my past, but today I realized that running isn't working. I need to do something else. I need to fix this. Fix myself. To revisit my story. One, that has until now, has relied on lies of omission, perfectionism and false happy endings. I need to stop being an unreliable narrator. I need to look at myself, my behaviors, and my desires with an unflinching meticulous eye. I need to tease apart the careful life I've crafted for myself. The one that is threatening to unravel at any minute. And I know where I have to begin:
Every villain's redemption arc begins with their origin story.
[She finishes reading]


(CSA): Thank you for reading that.
—
[AD BREAK]
—
(CSA):  If you’re just joining me, my guest today is writer and radio producer Stephanie Foo, whose memoir, What My Bones Know, chronicles her journey to understand and heal from C-PTSD.
There’s an immediacy to your writing in this book (and I think especially in this prologue but early on in general) that I find really striking. It's first person. It is written largely in present tense. The style is fairly colloquial. You use slang, you use words that you actually use to speak. How did you think about how you would present your story and what kind of style you would use to write it?


(SF): Honestly, I mean, God help me if I were ever to try and write fiction! This is my writing voice. This is the only voice I know how to write in. It's great that you and other people happen to like it. It's very conversational cuz I was trained up in the radio way. 


(CSA): Well, I'll tell you one thing that I think it does that I find very interesting given a lot of what you've told me about yourself and your approach to storytelling, and your experiences. I think writing with that immediacy puts readers in a mind that they are going along and living that experience with you. You talk a lot about dissociation as something that people with C-PTSD are good at; This is a writing style that breaks away from dissociation. It sort of forces you to be in the moment with the person who is writing.


(SF): Hm! Very interesting. I like that. [She and Clara share a laugh]


(CSA): I think that's why I was curious if it was a choice, cuz I think that I could very easily see that being something that… It certainly helps your story. We'll put it that way. 


(SF): I think there are parts of it that are based on very stream of consciousness journals that I was writing at the time. A lot of the book is based on me just going back and feeling things from those journals, so that doesn't surprise me that the immediacy might actually be the immediacy of me writing my raw feelings in my diary. 


(CSA): I'm curious how the experience of those two things compared for you. When you were writing in your diary, presumably you're writing primarily for yourself; What did that feel like compared to writing something that is telling your story to other people?


(SF): Yeah, that's obviously two different things. One is totally for myself. One is just stream of consciousness, just getting ideas out there. And the other one is with an audience in mind. It is a voice that is thinking about plot and making it exciting, and what parts of this are extraneous, and am I going on too long here? I always say that the first two years, I just wrote purely in a cathartic way, for healing. I focused entirely on healing. I wasn't focusing on writing a book. And then when it came time to write the book, I had all the source material of research and diaries and things like that. Then it really kind of just felt like work — It felt like putting together a radio story, which is the thing that I did for work for the past 10 years. I don't know if the healing, if writing was necessarily cathartic in that way; the cathartic part was actually healing. 


(CSA): You talk at several points in the book about the epigenetics of trauma and particularly intergenerational trauma suffered by especially non-white immigrants. I'm curious how learning about your family's experiences and your family's history affected the way that you thought about your own trauma, and how that affected your approach to healing from it?


(SF): I think that self-loathing that I had previously noted, [she sighs] there is some aspect of just, like, giving up. [She chuckles] I mean, I learned that there's a tremendous amount of trauma in my family from a secret war that nobody told me that my grandparents had lived through, during which my grandfather was imprisoned for 5 years. My grandmother had gone to jail. My family had gone through multiple occupations by colonizers who did not have their best interests at stake. They survived conflict and famine and some of what is in my blood is beyond me and it's beyond my parents. It is a socio-political minefield that I don't necessarily have agency over. So I do think that that alleviated some small aspect of that self-loathing, but, you know, it didn't stop me from trying to reclaim some agency over that. There's this Chinese saying in the book that I quote on the last pages, which is: “A third of the world is under the control of heaven, a third is under the control of the environment, and a third is in your hands,” and I try to take responsibility for the third that's in my hands, and understand that there are thirds that I don't have agency over. 


(CSA): Yeah, I think that's something interesting about most forms of anxiety, and especially anxiety that sort of stems from traumas: One big feature of it is hyper responsibility. This tendency to take that third that is what's in your control, and try to expand it out to the everything. How did you work with that?


(SF): I mean, I still do that. Let's be real: I still have complex PTSD. I still have intense anxiety and the feeling that I can control everything. I had a cast on my hand though, a couple years ago, and I remember writing on the cast: “Control does not equal safety,” which was helpful to sometimes look at when I was obsessing over something and being like: Wow, yeah. No matter how hard I try, it was because… — I mean, the reason why I had that injury on my hand anyway is because I was trying so hard to do yoga everyday, and then doing down dog or something I dislocated my thumb—


(CSA): Oh gosh.


(SF): — So you know, you can try to be good all the time, but it does not necessarily mean that it guarantees your safety, which is kind of an important thing to sit down and recognize sometimes when you realize that you might be obsessing over something you have no control over. 


(CSA): You did a lot of research on trauma, I think first as part of your healing process, and maybe also some additionally for this book. What did you learn that surprised you?


(SF): I mean, everything. [They laugh] I don't know. There's a lot in this book that surprised me. I went into it thinking that I was a brain damaged mess who was going to die early and was a terrible person, and I came out on the other side thinking, like, ‘Oh there’re real advantages to this.’ I mean, there's severe disadvantages — don't get me wrong: Don't abuse your children. But, you know, I am surprised by how powerful I am. I guess. Despite, everything. And I think I'm surprised by, again, having a full spectrum of emotions — how valuable that is in life. That to be truly mentally healthy is not to be happy and joyous every moment of your life; That's kind of deranged quite frankly. To be mentally healthy is to feel anger when you should feel anger, and feel sadness when you should feel sadness, and be able to feel happiness, too. Just almost being, like, erratic emotionally, and feeling the appropriate emotion whenever it comes up is to be truly healthy — and I think I'm closer to that than I've ever been. 


(CSA): I mean you had a bunch of different therapeutic experiences, but you had a pretty unique therapeutic experience with Dr. Ham — both in the way that you found him, and in the way that you created and used artifacts from your therapy sessions, and how those figured into the therapy itself. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit both about what that experience was, and how seeing your words and your therapist words written out changed your understanding of what was happening, both in the sessions and in your brain. 


(SF): Yeah, so Dr. Ham allowed me to record all of our sessions, which is great. And then immediately after each session, I would run down to the cafe downstairs, plug in all my audio into Temi, have it transcribed, and then cut and paste that into a Google doc where I would clean it up and make it all nice. And then I would share it with Dr. Ham, and then we would both start commenting on the Google doc. It was really, really fascinating cuz when you're in the middle of a conversation, I think things fly by that you're just like — wait. How did? How did that happen, or why was that so upsetting? Or, when you're triggered especially, you don't have total grasp over what is true and what is really going on around you, and I think really being able to microanalyze what was going on in my relationships, it helped me understand how I was being perceived. It helped me understand when I hid myself from other people, when I overshared with other people, and helped me analyze how better to manage that. How to allow myself to be seen while seeing other people in their truth, and how to question, too, when there's a weird disjointedness in the conversation or mismatch; To be able to say: ‘Hey, what just happened there? I'm curious. Let's sort of, you know, “Google docs” this in real life? Can we figure out why we were mismatched, or are you uncomfortable, or what's going on in your head — rather than just plowing through uncomfortable moments. It really allowed me to understand how to better be in conflict and resolve conflict with others.


(CSA): One of the things that's really stuck with me since I finished reading your book is in your conversations with Dr. Ham, he talks to you at some point about rupture and repair and specifically the people who undergo the kind of trauma that you went through frequently only learn how to approach a repair as like a one-way process rather than a two-way process. I'm really curious, what are we talking about when we say “repair” there, and how is the experience of repair different from for somebody who's experienced the kind of trauma associated with PTSD or someone who isn't? 


(SF): It's going back to that idea of black and white versus gray, right? I think when you rupture, in a person with complex PTSD there's an automatic, like, ‘Let's assign fault’ — and often, it's probably my fault. And so there's either demanding apology for the fault, or, potentially throwing yourself on your sword and saying, “I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.” When really, so many of these ruptures are kind of everybody contributing a little bit in different ways; Like, little cues that are passed over, small misunderstandings, somebody saying something without thinking, somebody saying something while not being present in the conversation. It's often these little tiny misunderstandings that can lead to larger conflicts, and the kind of repair that Dr. Ham advocates is trying to understand what the truth of the situation is. Like, having both people be able to engage and empathize with each other where they're at and understand where they were coming from — and that means giving apologies where they're due, for sure — but it's more of a two-way coming together than just like a, ‘This is your fault. Now, make amends.’


(CSA): Yeah, you're not taking responsibility for literally everything in a conflict.


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[AD BREAK]
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(CSA):  If you’re just joining me, my guest today is writer and radio producer Stephanie Foo, whose memoir, What My Bones Know, chronicles her journey to understand and heal from C-PTSD.
In addition to your actual therapy, you talk a lot about your relationship with your partner and the ways that that relationship in its healthiness figured into your healing process. Can you talk about — I mean, I just find it so fascinating because so much of what causes C-PTSD is that relational trauma. It seems almost obvious that of course having healthy relationships has to be a big part of how we heal from it. What was that experience like for you?


(SF): I mean let's be totally honest here: our relationship is not an ideal relationship. It's not totally healthy. 


(CSA): Do those exist?


(SF): My husband is not a perfect dude, but I will say that he is willing to work. He's always willing to put in the work and figure out what do we need to get to this next step? What do we need to do to get over this conflict that we're having? Like, we hate each other right now — What do we need to do to have that repair, right? Sure, like any other couple. But there's always: “what can we do to make the repair?” In my life I had lots of (with parents and other people—) it was always like: Here's a rapture, and bye. So having someone who's willing to stick around and repair after that, even when it's totally my fault, is really healing.


(CSA): There's one more thing I wanted to talk about before we wrap up. At one point, you returned to your high school with its predominantly Asian student body and predominantly white faculty of staff to find that the majority of teachers are oblivious to the widespread trauma experienced by their students. I'm curious how that affected you and your understanding, both of your own experiences of there, but also of the sociological context surrounding a lot of that intergenerational immigrant trauma. 


(SF): Obviously, this affirms this idea that we were a community of people who felt as if we could erase our trauma with performance — which is part cultural, part OUR culture, and part American culture. American culture cannot escape unscathed from that. That is the value that Uncle Sam tries to bestow upon this country when you arrive: you can work hard, you can get rich, and you can be anyone you want to be. It's not necessarily true: You can't outrun generations of generational trauma, necessarily. 
I also think that in particular in the Bay area, with its immense Asian immigrant population, a lot of that can get erased by just the model minority myth; Just teachers and people thinking: ‘oh, these are high performing people.’ ‘These are hard-working people. What trauma?’ ‘What mental illness? It seems like they're great. They're the best students. They're getting the best scores.’ That means that Asian mental health issues are papered over a lot, and a lot of students are suffering tremendously. I think that teachers really need to re-examine the way that they approach Asian American students. 


(CSA):  You've written this book — It's incredible. Seen so many people talk about how helpful it is, and how it achieves many of the things you wanted to achieve, and shedding light on C-PTSD, and providing a vision of it that is not entirely despairing and contains a fair bit of hope. I'm curious if your experiences — both on your own journey and in writing this book — have changed the way you think about what you want to do next?


(SF): They’ve certainly inspired the next book that I hope to write! I would love to write a book about alternative forms of trauma. I kind of want to call it, “The Case Against Therapy,” or the case against the current Dogma of psychotherapy — but, let's make it catchy. [Clara laughs] And explaining how wide-ranging therapy can be. Like, a lot of different culturally appropriate relevant therapies that might help people who don't respond well to talk therapy actually heal.


(CSA): Well I look forward to it! Stephanie, thank you so much for joining me today. 


(SF): Thank you so much for having me!


(CSA): You can buy the book from PenguinRandomHouse.com or your local indie bookstore, and you can learn more about Stephanie from her website, stephaniefoo.com, and she’s on Twitter @imontheradio, or on Instagram @foofoofoo.


Catch STORY BEHIND THE STORY the first Friday of every month from 5-6pm on KSQD 90.7 FM. To share your thoughts on this or other shows, drop me a line at clara@ksqd.org. 


THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY is produced for KSQD 90.7 FM by me, Clara Sherley-Appel. Our sound engineer is Lanier Sammons. He also wrote our theme.