Is this your real personality? 5 Childhood Trauma Personalities

Check out this picture. Here is me, probably around, maybe, three years old, and I'm pretty much a ball of good times, kind of like how I am now. Um, although it took a lot of work to get back to being a ball of good times. I was the baby, and I remember laughing a lot, having a lot of fun, having a lot of fun, loving energy. And I don't remember everything from three, but I remember, um, just being off-the-wall and kind of fun.

Here I am at about eleven. Another picture. And here I'm struggling emotionally, not just being a ginger in long sleeves on an airfield in the summer. My family didn't really believe in things like dressing appropriately for the weather, which is pretty much a sign of neglect. Raise your hand out there if you can relate to that.

If we fast forward four years or so, to around, maybe, like seventh grade picture day, that fun-loving energy that you see in the three-year-old pic is, is diminished. And check out the faux silk shirt via the '90s, early '90s. That time in my life, I remember being highly anxious, not in my body, struggling with a lot of shame, but didn't quite really know that, couldn't really quite name that. And I knew something was off, but I was really doing my best to hide it. My home life was a mess with things like alcoholism, violence, illness.

Another five years down the road, and this melancholic dysthymia, like a low-grade depression, had set in that I also did my best trying to hide. I was described by my friends as being very chill, easygoing, and they weren't really aware of the mess that was going on or the symptoms that was going on underneath all this. And my whole identity was wrapped up in being a musician, which wasn't real authenticity either. But we all need something to latch on to when we grow up without a sense of self. And I did a good job at appearing chill, very open, very accommodating. My personality was funny, but also really down and dark. I could easily bring people down with some negativity, and I obsessed a lot about if I had offended anyone, and I could be kind of reactive to that.

The, the drugs and alcohol that I started kind of coping with all this stuff around the age of thirteen wasn't helping all this. So why am I saying all this? Well, the point is, is how do we go from this to this? Later in the video, you'll hear a category of each personality called, "Isn't this just the way that I am?" And that's what I actually thought about around that time too. Um, and also, how do we get back to this? You'll also want to stick around for how to figure out maybe how to do that, which is pretty, it's complex.

So I believe we're born with this spark and this personality, and it's the role of our caretakers to help that personality come more and more to light as we develop. And I believe a healthy parent helps shape what is already there and sort of gets out of the way of the child. Has enough sense to notice the child's uniqueness. And yes, those who get this from a parent are super fortunate. Um, in childhood trauma, we can't really form a healthy sense of self. We can't really develop innate qualities when we're born kind of into a vacuum, meaning that if a parent is abusive, toxic, not interested in us, and they're really off, we have to develop somehow around all that. That's what I mean about the vacuum. The vacuum is the absence of healthy mirroring in the midst of it not being safe to be ourselves, really. So, and no one's helping us become ourselves.

If you struggle with the sense of self, and I, I haven't met a childhood trauma survivor who hasn't yet, it's because the real us usually gets buried underneath what happened to us in childhood. If you grew up in childhood trauma, the real you is under there. It's under how you adapted to what was going on around you. And as a side note, we all still have that personality that we're born with, that spark. It just hasn't been in a safe environment with safe people yet to be able to kind of be developed and come out. I was able to get mine back in therapy, specifically a, a childhood trauma group, where these personality and all these issues could be discussed and worked with.

So here is my take on five childhood trauma-based personalities and how to work on them to become more authentic. And as you listen to each of the five, you probably might be a bit confused about what I'm talking about because it's really going to seem like I'm talking about trauma responses. What is wild about all this is that trauma personalities are really rooted in fight, flight, freeze, shame, submit, cry for help, um, and it's in kind of all the responses that you'll see here. And it's kind of difficult to separate the trauma response from the personality because they're so entwined. So here goes. Keep your focus on what causes these as opposed to feeling down about yourself or experiencing some shame. If you identify with one of the five, you're probably going to identify with a two out of the five. So let's dive into them.

Number one, what I'm calling the Doer. Got to do something. The Doer has a personality that is based upon taking action as a way to avoid their feelings, or more specifically, going back into their childhood feelings. Here are some behaviors and traits. They can be very high achieving, focused on work. They can be highly workaholic as a strategy to avoid intimacy into themselves. They can tend to want to nail experiences as opposed to being present. They want to ace the party, they want to nail the vacation, they want to seize the day. And if they don't do those things, they kind of feel like they failed. Um, they tend to be reactive to situations in terms of solving them up front. They tend to skip the, the feelings of a situation. The Doer doesn't dwell on being rear-ended. They go right into business. They sometimes don't even dwell on being treated poorly by other people. They go into figuring out the why instead of feeling what's going on. They can put a lot of energy into doing things correctly or morally correctly. They can also greatly overdo things. Um, being a mess or making mistakes is a Doer's kryptonite. As a, a therapy client, they want to be the perfect client. They want to get an A in therapy. They also really hate the ambiguity of the process of therapy. Like, for example, when I'm doing an open group and not like an agenda-focused group, the Doer is going to struggle with that initially because they don't know where the parameters are. They're not very process-oriented. They, they tend to think about what their feelings are instead of inherently knowing them, which is a common sign for childhood trauma across the board. It's not unlike the other four that I'll discuss. They can be quite lovely and personable, but difficult to fully know. They can be available yet distant. They can also be kind of freaked out by high-feeling people and probably be a little bit annoyed by them. Um, Doers can be also chaotic. You know, they don't have to be so, you know, ducks in a row. They can kind of be very chaotic. Um, it's still doing, it's still a reacting. They can be super functioning or they can be super disorganized. Doers can be pretty dissociative and rush into action, but they aren't aware that they're showing really emotion. So Doers are surprised when people reflect back to them that, "You seem tense. You seem intense. You seem tense." And that's a shock to the Doer.

The Doer trauma personality is rooted in the flight response, but that seems tricky, as someone who is, who say, addicted to substances is also in the flight response. Like, what is the Doer fleeing from? I believe the Doer is escaping being present, uh, for not knowing or not wanting the mess of their own childhood or their own emotions to come up. They can be addicted to action instead of substances in this case, but they can also be addicted to substances if they have dual things going on. The Doer has never really had the safety and encouragement to sit with their feelings, as well as to have a safe person sit with them in their feelings, which is common for a lot of us.

How the Doer personality is formed in childhood. Achieving and doing are amazing coping strategies that kids come up with when things are unsafe, chaotic, or they're raised in families of Doers where no one really knows how to do feelings. Like, in a tricky family, picture a child living in say, violence or chaos, or a highly depressive, shutdown parent as their caretaker. The Doer is going to start to clean the house and make lists of what needs to be fixed. Fix Mom's job for her by getting up earlier and making my siblings' lunches so she doesn't get violent again, which is the kind of thought process of a child Doer. A Doer can be the child of addicts and they can do and try to achieve, do well, so they never have to be stuck in that neglect, violence, or chaos, or just sadness. Um, the Doer can be the child of a very rigid religious or military family where perfectionism or survival is pretty sharp. The doing can be modeled by Doer parents, or kids can definitely come up with this on their own.

How a Doer will struggle in intimacy. Doers are difficult to do conflict with because they go straight to the fix with no process. The Doer has never again, never really had the safety or encouragement to sit with feelings, as well as have a safe person sit with them in their feelings. And without knowing their feelings, we can't really fully know who we are, um, as well as other things like the safety to be who we are. We should have had that as kids.

If you're in a relationship with a Doer, it means that you have to kind of chase them to connect. They approach connection like the other things in their lives, as having something on the to-do list. Um, and maybe don't really have a lot of patience for it, or they kind of do it, try to do it perfectly or something. Here's that thing about, "Isn't this just who I am?" The Doer has this fantasy like, "Yeah, I'll be more intimate when I get these things done first. Just be patient with me." Without knowing that they're in this cycle of constantly later for that. The Doer feels like this is just their personality because they just think they are an all-business type person or an all-creativity kind of person. This is, they're married to that thing and they don't really need the connection so much since they're fulfilled by the doing. When the Doer is actually often really lonely, um, and kind of will find themselves life going past them, like they may have lost decades in just this doing.

How to become more real. What can the Doer do to become more their authentic self? Getting the Doer in therapy to dip down into their feelings instead of focusing on actions would be a good part of some treatment. And I think like with all of these, getting the Doer to dip down into their feelings in psychotherapy or in group work or something like that would be a good part of treatment to help them kind of sink down into the feelings, or increase their window of tolerance for some feelings, or even kind of help the Doer kind of hit bottom with the doing. Talking about it, really kind of making the coping strategy more real to them. Interpersonal groups can help if they are working, if they are a working group, and get the Doer to relate in different ways away from the fixing or the helping or or taking over. I'm not saying that they're a people-pleaser, but they're agenda-focused. For the Doer, therapists will often struggle to get, get them to dip down into the grief feeling place, but the Doer needs to kind of reclaim the spectrum of their feelings and to tolerate more. They often have to spend some time noticing the myriad of ways that they are instantly trying to skip out of their feelings by they're doing, and they kind of have to buy into the fact that the doing just keeps them kind of separated from people. Just like in childhood, they can do the work if they're willing to look at how childhood set them up, and they're also going to have to be willing to have their childhood become more real to them, like I mentioned, for them to emotionally process and reclaim. So that's the Doer.

Moving on to the second personality is what I'm calling the Hostile. Hey, listen to me. The Hostile is someone who got caught up and stuck in the fight response that was either modeled for them by their parents, and like in a high-conflict family, or it's what the child had to come up with to adapt to their environment to survive. The Hostile typically isn't hostile 24/7, but some definitely can be. Some examples and some qualities of the Hostile. Hostiles can have a knee-jerk reaction to perceived criticism and get defensive or do something called "JADE" - justify, argue, defend, explain - in subtle ways. Even if you agree with them, they might have to have the last kind of thought or the last word to clarify you or or correct you. They can struggle with a dismissive, avoidant, or fearful avoidant attachment style. Some live in hostility, like I mentioned. Some get in their car, hit a big line at the drive-thru, rage, honk, just because of that, and they live in this kind of "F my life" kind of mode. They can be pretty miserable, unfortunately. Some can be quite chill until they're really triggered, usually by intimacy or how others perceive them, and then that hostility comes out. Hostiles can keep score, even go to places of being neurotic around things like, "WTF? I bought you a coffee six months ago. What is this?" You know? Hostiles can have control issues. This is how they can function in intimacy. They need to be right. They can be definitely aggressive and argumentative, which creates a lot, a lot of distance, a lot of separateness. Um, they can be really hard on people around things like perfectionism or how people show up for them in specific ways. They overly value telling it like it is. I'm sure we all have known someone like that. Um, Hostiles can struggle with self-boundaries around going there. They can easily go there with people. They can, they are frequently fine with upsetting apple carts or go out of their way to do so. They can feel like this, so they have to. And as a side note, we're not talking about narcissism here. We're talking about a C-PTSD response, although it may sound like it. I was a Hostile at one point. So Hostiles can come across as intense without knowing it. Part of their dissociation or lack of healthy feedback and mirroring, they can often be that scapegoat kid and be rebelling against the world or defending against never tolerating being the problem again. Relationally, they don't know how not to try to dominate for true instead of being truly equal with someone with mutual respect. It's kind of foreign to them. Um, Hostiles are often paired with number five, which is what I'm calling the All Good, that I'll get into later. Two Hostiles together generally doesn't really work well, but that can kind of happen too. And you might be thinking, "Boy, geez, what a..." insert swear word, "kind of person." But again, I was a Hostile at one point, and I definitely could be described as a big, juicy, old swear word at that time in my life. And as an interesting side note, I became a Hostile after getting out of being sort of very people-pleasing. When I started to do some trauma work, and then I had to work on my rage and hostility that would come out. So these can be fluid depending on where you're at in your recovery.

How childhood set the Hostile up. I often see it mainly as being raised by other Hostiles. Like, this is modeled, and the family is kind of miserable, lives in high conflict, and that bizarrely becomes normalized. They can also be family scapegoats, like I mentioned, or they can be greatly let down by people. A lot of hostility is around, "Don't let me down," kind of stuff, when you really think about it. Households that have intense shouting, volatile screaming going on every day is really a sign of poor mental health in the adults. So of course, the hostility is going to get absorbed. Sometimes the child can learn to easily go to an anger place or an intense place with people because that's just how things are done. Hostiles can experience culture shocks when they go to a friend's house, or maybe when they're of age, they move out and start dating people, or they're at their first job, and their hostility comes out, and that new environment or the new people are like, "Whoa." You know, that's usually a first sign that to the trauma survivor that they've got something going on about them that isn't quite appropriate, um, in a lot of different places. So some will kind of double down on all that and rebel more because they're being triggered back to their family system, still reacting to the family, kind of "fu fu" kind of stuff.

Here are some other childhood trauma causes for the Hostile. Being, say, a child of immigrants where they had to be the interpreter, or they were really ashamed of their parents, or they were told that they were entitled in the new culture versus the old culture. Being put into possible situations that weren't safe and they were really let down. Having parents not take any action, like getting a job or getting them out of poverty, and just having to sit with the heaviness and weight of all that. Um, a child being raised in addiction, poverty, high drama. Uh, big one here is having an emotionally immature parent, and the child had to become the parent or become bossy, frustration, rage, knowing what the right thing is, but not having any adults to kind of like follow through on that. Of course, they're hostile. They definitely become hostile because of being powerless or stuck. Often messed with.

How Hostiles struggle in intimacy. I often see Hostiles, like I said, create distance by making their partners unsafe with their projections. They often need to be superior to their partner, which again creates more distance. Hostiles might say things like, "Oh, you didn't listen to me about the car. Well, you're cut off. You should know better. You forgot something important to me, didn't you? And you're such a mess. F it, I'll do it if you can't handle it." Um, they can also be simply detached from their intensity, like with road rage. Like, you're driving with a Hostile, and they're road raging, and you're freaked out, and they're like, "Well, it's just Tuesday. This is, I'm just vibing. This is just me."

The Hostile has a relationship fantasy that is like, "I would love it if you would just listen to me, and we just have this one-way street thing where I give advice and you take the advice, and we would just be fine." Like, that's their relational kind of stance. "Isn't this just how I am?" The Hostile can feel fixed in that they're simply just an intense and overly opinionated person, and that's it. You know, "I'll debate anyone. Any, I'll fight anybody." And I know that that sounds extreme, but my point is, I don't think Hostiles were like this when they were two or when they were one. Our trauma conditioning runs really deep, and it gets compounded as we grow into adults. And yes, it's very possible and likely to have borne strong-willed. That can definitely happen. That happens all the time. But children can be strong-willed and still maintain kindness and connection with others. My clients who are Hostiles, in, including myself, are very capable of gradually softening if they want that. Um, they have to see the hostility as a problem, but not so much if they don't see it as a problem and embrace, kind of, double down on who they are, which also happens too, unfortunately. Hostiles struggle to want to be more chill, but they're so bothered by everything, which really gets exhausting.

How to become more real. How the Hostile can become more present and authentic is doing work around softening, which paradoxically is exactly what the abuse was about, being labeled as say, weak or soft or something like that, not having any power. So that feels like kind of a no-go zone for them. But self-compassion, that is taught by safe people, helps soften a Hostile whom they respect and trust. What I mean by that is a Hostile usually deals with their feelings from a hard anger place up front and detaches from childhood grief and sadness about, say, like in any of the examples I gave earlier, not having a family connection with their parents who are really limited and say, in a survival mode. The Hostile would do well in a group where they do their advice-giving or controlling things, even in subtle ways, and are kind of checked, and they have to be kind of processed in a good working group or talked about that the other people don't really, they want something else from them. They don't want that general advice. It's also beneficial for the Hostile to get validation that they spent their childhood kind of in a rage and frustration, and it was appropriate back then, but not so appropriate now. Um, then some learning would have to take place about accepting people as they are, seeing the humanity in others, know how to be just with somebody instead of, you know, giving advice or being upset by giving the advice. All that's a big reversal there. Letting people be themselves, to make their own mistakes, and still be loving towards them. Hostiles really struggle with being loving. Um, they might confuse control for love, and they lose the humanity in others and can be ruled by confirming those things about people, "See, I knew it," kind of stuff. Chances are, a good therapist would want the Hostile to step out of the addiction to anger and upset, uh, the addiction to being kind of self-righteous, which is a top-tier sign that we're triggered, and learn to reclaim some compassion, some self-compassion and love, which was kind of taken away from them or got wrecked.

Moving on to number three, something that I'm calling the Darkness, or "What did I do?" or "What's the point?" The Darkness trauma personality is rooted in the fawn response, as well as a bit of the freeze response. They tend to give off energy that is feels like hopelessness, kind of lack of power, defeatist, and definitely some negativity. Unlike the Doer or the Hostile, the Darkness often wrestles with making decisions and avoiding out of this kind of analysis paralysis kind of stuff that happens to them. Here are some examples and qualities of the Darkness. Darkness trauma personalities can be pretty dark and take on even like an emo vibe or appearance that just simply might be in line with their values. I'm not saying that's bad, but I'm trying to kind of give you an image about what is happening for them inside. They can often struggle with a fearful avoidant attachment style. They can be ruled by negativity and unfortunately can bring others down with them while they point out that things aren't as great as they seem. Like you're looking at a beautiful whitewater river in the Grand Canyon or something like that, and they bring up like, "Oh, it's probably not going to be here in a thousand years." Like the other personalities, they struggle to feel authentic joy, and the Darkness is often ruled by an intense shame or some anxiety. The Darkness takes things intensely personal, real or imagined. The Darkness reminds me of the Nirvana line, "I miss the comfort of being sad." We can be comforted in that kind of vibe or that sadness. Like the other trauma personalities, so Darkness doesn't have to be in that 24/7, although they can be. They can be also be quite, quite funny and quite engaging. The Darkness often has this marked acute negative self-image that they can drain other people with, and they're usually not aware of that. Coming back to that vacuum that I mentioned earlier, they might have a strategy to downplay themselves or insult themselves to beat others to the punch, kind of do it for them, in a way. They can have a strong, fixed, rigid belief system that keeps them stuck and doesn't serve them. Negativity, rigidity, and hard living can kind of be that vibe. They can very much self-punish. They can really be knocked out in decision-making for the struggles they have with being good enough or what people might think about them. The Darkness can have a highly moralistic kindness to them, which again isn't bad, but they might destroy themselves to say, save a goldfish or something like that, which is actually kind of endearing, uh, but it's still a trauma response rooted in poor self-care.

Here's how childhood trauma set up the Darkness for this personality. The Darkness usually experiences high levels of interpersonal trauma and betrayal growing up. Um, the best way to look at the Darkness trauma personality, like the others, perhaps maybe they're just more visible, is having really an open, broken heart, if that makes sense. They're definitely heartbroken. Maybe the Darkness is just more out with it than the other personalities. The Darkness could have experienced a lot of contempt from a toxic parent, and it could become really intensely clear that things weren't going to be sane or loving or or become safe or loved, or even respected. So they did the right thing and they embraced the kind of Darkness as a way, as a good kind of defense mechanism, kind of a giving up. It's a weird kind of a thing about how giving up can kind of like get somebody through a horrific situation, and they might say, "If I'm not going to be lovable or safe, I'm just going to embrace what I'm experiencing, so it's not that bad." So the abuse becomes more kind of poetic to them, sadly, which is kind of a good strategy. They're kind of externalizing it. Other possibilities is growing up where nothing really worked, having a hopeless parent who modeled the same kind of vibe, or severe neglect.

How the Darkness personality would struggle in intimacy. The Darkness will struggle with how to know how to relate without being negative. They don't really know another way to express themselves because positivity might feel lame, foreign, or fake or inauthentic. Um, they can, they will really struggle with positivity, which, which I also did too, and I get that. They can create by presenting themselves as being too messed up or too complicated for the other person to handle. They can also say point blank at the beginning, "You're going to get sick of me and leave me," which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The Darkness has a relationship fantasy that's like, "I would love it if you could just agree with me that nothing works, and you really, really get that what I'm saying and value me for that truth." Expecting love kind of by being dark or thinking being dark is sort of lovable, and it's, it's a little bit tricky to articulate.

A good therapist would want the Darkness to be able to start processing that it really was dark growing up, but the present is different, and they can maybe deal with that together. And also to kind of chill out a, a little bit, or find a way to kind of, it sounds judgmental, but to kind of lighten up or lighten up their spark, become more alive again. It's not judgmental. Chances are, other people in the Darkness' life kind of want them for that too. And coming to, "Isn't this just who I am?" Um, again, like the others, um, this is so ingrained in their trauma conditioning, given what happened to them, but I don't believe that when they were two, they were really this dark. Um, they weren't as a two-year-old, they weren't sort of saying, "You can't handle me. I'm such a mess." Like with all of these, I'm not suggesting the authentic personality to be reclaimed is going to be a total 180, like to become a different person. That would be silly. It doesn't mean you're not going to not like dark things or dark themes. It's just you can do other things too, you know? The Darkness is just able to see that things actually do work, or that people do want them in their lives and do enjoy them, rather than feel like they have to be down in a hole with you or something like that.

How the Darkness can become more real. A goal to be able to be around others or be in intimacy and be free in that and clear from the negativity, as well as the neurotic discomfort. I know that that's a huge order, but it takes time, over kind of a long process. Just like with the other personalities, the Darkness really needs to deal with the original dark things that happened to them, and hopefully get the opportunity to mend that broken heart. They also have to decide if they really value the darkness kind of energy that they give off. They have to learn also how to be with themselves and others without the safety of wanting to point out how bad things are or how negative things are going to be. Um, and don't take this as, "I hate this stuff, just go be positive." That's kind of obnoxious, doesn't really work. But again, processing how the heart got broken with a capable healer, noticing how the present is different is going to be helpful, depending on the resources that are available to you. Becoming authentic, like all the others, requires conversations with people, like real risk-taking intimacy, and talking about what happened to you or what it was like with a sane, self-safe person. A good interpersonal group can really help the Darkness see that it creates more distance, and that it frustrates and affects other people, that their negativity kind of does that, or that they may lose connection with the Darkness based upon because they're already sort of walking out of the room while still being present because they're like removing themselves from the intimacy.

Moving on to the fourth trauma personality, what I'm calling the Ghost, or "How do I get out of here?" The Ghost is a trauma personality ruled by the freeze response, and they struggle with a lot of inaction and avoidant behaviors. If you've ever heard of the Irish goodbye, it's a good window into the Ghost. Like the other personalities, there can be varying degrees of ghosting depending on what is going on for the Ghost. Some living at 24/7, and some don't. Here are some qualities and characteristics. Ghost trauma personalities can be hard to know. They can be very much there as a consistent coworker or team member or teammate or something, but knowing them emotionally is hard to, to a non-existent level, somewhere. Kind of like the Doer, Ghosts are often ruled by a dismissive avoidant attachment style. Doesn't have to be just that one. Ghosts come across as kind of aloof or self-sufficient or even kind of needing rescue at times. They can feel greatly blocked in knowing how to connect with others from moment to moment. It can often be very readable to others that the Ghost would rather not be present with them, and they want to be doing something else. Um, often identified as introverts, which is all fine and good. I think we all need some kind of time alone, but ghosts consistently stay inside themselves. It's a bit different. Ghosts can be childhood scapegoats who have shut down and don't want to infect others with their scapegoat qualities, and experience it all over again. So they kind of hide. The Ghost can really want connection at times. They can sign up for things and start friendships or relationships, and then there might be an abrupt exit or hiding, like they're in it, and then they're out of there. Maybe. Ghost can be overwhelmed by people, as isolation is a common coping mechanism. Ghost can really struggle with social anxiety. Ghosts can seem fine when you really don't know what's going on with them, and then all of a sudden they send you a text about how you hurt them, comes out of the blue. They're capable of that as well. They can have a bit of sporadic hostility because they really don't know how to bring things up until unless they bottle and blow, kind of a thing. Ghosts can be very hurt in that it takes a lot of energy for them to be part of something, and then they can get greatly hurt when they get feedback that they're too quiet. Um, they can want others to read their mind so they don't really have to express themselves at times. A Ghost can be incredibly stuck and unable to take care of something. And a Ghost can also be sort of charming and and sort of present to a superficial level, but you don't, they don't, there's not much more than that.

Here's how childhood set up the Ghost. Some possibilities. It can very much like the others be learned from having a shutdown or a ghost-like parent or avoidant parents. Um, can be from significant neglect where there really wasn't any joyful kind of connection in the early years, um, and then having to go through like a very lonely, quiet childhood where no one was home. They're, they're kind of not socialized maybe in that way on a deep level. If you picture a severely neglected child who gets themselves up and fed and out to school in the morning, um, and then they're alone again when they come home from school until nine, and when a parent comes home, um, and then it's like ten, there's a lot of alone time. That's a lot of having to shut down from minute to minute, you know what I mean? That's actually very dissociative experience for a child. Um, a kid will have to find ways to cope with that kind of abandonment on a daily level. And another possibility is being overwhelmed by a larger than life kind of energy vampire parent, or that there was so much intensity from violence or chaos that the Ghost rightfully kind of shut down. This is also highly common. A side note regarding coping strategies, like the Hostile fighting the family or fighting opinion or fighting other people is just as noble as a strategy growing up as it is to shut down. There's really no better or worse. It's all a setup later for problems in authenticity in, in, in adulthood.

How the Ghost personality struggles in intimacy. Sadly, the Ghost can go numb or even mute in intimacy and not be able to do any kind of connection really around conflict, which leaves the other person really stuck when not without knowing what to kind of do because they kind of like, they don't really have much to work with there. The Ghost can also avoid relationships, and they think they really don't need them. Um, they can be single for a long time. They can be perpetually dating and not really be in a relationship too. Ghost can really hide, and their partner may interpret that wrongly as dishonesty or secrecy, which I see a lot in the past when I've done couples work. Um, it's often just shutting down, but not living really a separate life, which might it might feel like, but I'm also not saying they can't hide things or be secretive. It just kind of really feels like that to the partner. Um, I'm saying it's possible as well. Ghost might be the hardest to get in therapy and stay in therapy, and I see it as their freeze to flight response where they need to go back to their apartment and kind of recover from people. In short, in order to do intimacy work, and to be good, we have to be able to know each other, actually.

The Ghost has this intimacy fantasy like, "Can't we just love each other and exist without talking too much or bringing anything up?" That's kind of like how they want things to be. "Isn't this just who I am?" A Ghost is definitely going to believe that they are fixed in that personality, and yes, again, we can be born introverted, no problem. But introverts are also capable of intimacy. I don't believe that we're born to want to avoid connection when we really think about it. Biologically, as babies and toddlers, connection is crucial, and we seek it out for survival. It can feel so, it really tells you what that child went through. It can feel impossible to change these trauma personalities, but that's not true. But Ghosts can definitely ghost because they kind of ghost themselves because of what happened.

How to become more real. I think the first step for the Ghost is to really buy into the fact that it doesn't help them in what they want, and that what is missing is actually connection. And getting them to buy into that is tricky. Um, all of these trauma personalities know in a deep, tiny, secret place that there's got to be something more. Um, and they're right about that. Ghosts can be tricky for therapists who want to go into processing places or places of depth, which is actually what the Ghost they came in for, but they struggle kind of going there. They're going to need a lot of help with that. In groups that are say, effective and interpersonal working groups, it's helpful for the Ghost to hear from other members that they don't really know them. Ghosts can think that just showing up is good enough to be known, and it's kind of a shock to them. Um, Ghosts will benefit from hearing from others working on themselves that they want to know them more, and they want them to take some small risk becoming real by actually saying what is on their mind, even if it's like, "I don't want to be here. My inner child just wants to be home alone." That's something a good therapist would want the Ghost to be able to get to a place in their work to kind of open up, to express themselves, to be more kind of learn how to be expressive and say what's kind of on their mind, and not easily leave the conversation or leave easily leave relationships.

Coming to the fifth trauma personality is something that I'm calling the "Are We Good?" or "Are We Okay?" The "Are We Good" is a people-pleasing focused personality that is rooted in the fawn response. They are often associated with an anxious preoccupied attachment style, like constantly making sure things are okay with with a partner and kind of defaulting to their partner to be tolerated. The "Are We Good" personality will tend to give away all of their power. They don't know that they have the right to some of their power, and they will struggle in their sense of self because their main way to be in the world as a kid and probably still in the present is making sure that they're not upsetting anybody, and that they're good with other people, and that they're tolerated by other people. Um, like also with the Hostile and the Doer, they tend to skip their feelings and go right to fixing problems. The "Are We Good" will try to please someone who is treating them poorly instead of being in the feelings or knowing that they're entitled to being upset. And again, this isn't a 24/7 thing, although it kind of can be.

Here are some qualities and characteristics. The "Are We Good" as a client tends to not want to burden the therapist with anything, with their problems, with their story, and they want to try to be perfect and be very easy for the therapist, and the therapist could be thinking, "Who's treating who here?" Um, they are often ruled by codependency, abandoning themselves to keep connections going, even if they're horrifically bad connections, and unable to be real for fear of consequences. They will often come across as having rose-colored glasses. I'm sure you're familiar with some of this stuff, giving everybody a break, positive vibes, and they will tend to cope with a lot of optimism, and none of that is really real, though. Um, the "Are We Goods" have a lot of unnecessary checking in with you, like, "I'm sorry, what I said in that text two months ago?" And the other person is like, "What text? What? I don't, you know?" Um, lot of checking. They will spend a lot of time thinking if they've upset anybody. They will spend a lot of time providing or doing for others. They're often hypersensitive to criticism, which is kind of their kryptonite, but they don't really know that they have the option to not agree or push back a little bit, which is actually, that's taking a risk, that's being more authentic. Feedback tends to wreck the "Are We Good." The "Are We Good" will have a tendency to have relationships or date Hostiles. I'm not making this up. It's a very, it's just a marked pattern with this stuff. You might think of your parents as both of those things, um, because it's a very common presentation. The "Are We Goods" can assimilate into people's lives for want of being kind of adopted and to be accepted. They can also have a very good chameleon ability to blend with different groups. They will not initiate conflict in any way, and they tend to avoid potential tension at all costs. Um, "All Goods" when in conflict usually take it like a sentencing trial for their crimes. When they are in conflict, they tend to take it like they're being sentenced to jail, like they really can go to a shame place about something that they did, rather than not even knowing that someone might be projecting on them. The "Are We Good" can have a lot of magical thinking in that they don't really recognize abuse up front, and they will sort of have to take some time to learn that what their partner or what their parent doing to them is really abusive. They don't really have a concept of that. Like, kind of like with the others, though, "Are We Good" will have a marked tendency to chase relief in relationships. They're really relieved that you text them back. They're really relieved that your mood changed, and they don't really recognize that they're kind of in a cycle of kind of chasing that kind of stuff, or they're maybe with somebody who's very moody, weaponizing their mood.

How childhood sets up the "Are We Good." The "Are We Good" usually were overly in tune with a toxic or addicted or abusive parent struggling with their mental health, or a highly abusive, narcissistic parent, where the chasing "okness" was kind of part of the daily life. They were often directly told that they were the problem or the cause of things because of the neglect or abusive parenting. Assumed that they were the problem. Many kids start to blame themselves as a strategy, like, "I'm bad because I can't fix Dad. I can't make them happy. I'm bad because I can't solve their marriage. I'm bad because they don't come home. I'm bad because I should have a job and I'm eight years old. I'm bad because I got it wrong again." And this is in the face of really horrific daily emotional abuse from a mentally off parent. Usually by adolescence or high school, the "Are We Good" is ruled by being compliant or thinking of others as emotionally having to navigate kind of an abusive minefield that started very early at home and kind of becomes their worldview. Other possibilities: neglect, shame-based families, chaos, tragic parents where the child is highly attuned to the parents' pain instead of being protected from that pain.

Here's how the "Are We Good" struggles in intimacy. The "Are We Good" is typically paired with a partner that can kind of get exhausted by the constant checking in, the chasing, chasing "okness." Like the Doer, the "Are We Good" will just want issues to quickly resolve because conflict is the worst thing to them because that's where they start to feel the inside childhood trauma. Perhaps the hardest thing for the "Are We Good" is that they only know how to relate or be present from a place of providing care or focusing on another person. Being the focus to them is pretty awful, and they usually interpret it as being in trouble or being shameful. Being in a relationship with an "All Good," if the person is healthy, feels disconnected and a bit lonely because the loveliness from the "Are We Good" doesn't feel right because it's actually really not real. It's coming from a place of trauma. The constant checking in to see if that you're okay can also be kind of crazy-making, like I mentioned. We can unfortunately lose respect for the "Are We Good" because they struggle with having no, no self-respect.

The "Are We Goods" fantasy in a relationship is, "I just want to know if I'm finally acceptable to you. If that's okay for you." "Isn't this just who I am?" The "Are We Good," like the others, they are so conditioned in a knee-jerk strategy of being tolerated and helping that they lose a sense of self. They lose their likes, they lose their autonomy, they lose their personhood in that. And while being caring and kind are noble, there's definitely worse things to be in the world. It's not coming from an open-heartedness place. It's coming from a place of fear and anxiety and being wounded. There's a paradox for the "Are We Good" when you really think about it. How hard is it to not be?

pissed off by other people on the planet to be just frustrated or annoyed with a partner or your dog or the neighbor or something like that. Think of all the energy it takes to not be upset by anything, and that's the "are we good?" because they're so focused on being lovable or tolerated in the world. How to become more real for the "are we good?"

12-step programs like Alanon or Cota or ACoA are great places to start and to learn about this kind of strategy that they have, the trauma response, and look for how they operate. There's a great thing in ACoA called the Laundry List, and there's an alternative Laundry List. Highly suggest that. I'll actually put a link in the video.

In therapy with a good therapist, there would hopefully be some encouragement about how to dip down into those childhood trauma feelings, or simply be taking more risks to talk about what it is like to not take care of the therapist. What is it like to be the focus?

Group therapy is again excellent for all these if it's the right fit, if it's a working interpersonal group where the peers help each other kind of dig down and go more into authenticity and actually kind of say to the "are we good" that it's triggering to be taken care of by someone. It's actually kind of annoying to be on the receiving end of that, and that's just it's not judgment, it's just kind of how it is. And I'm sure that someone who struggles with that people-pleasing would understand that too. They don't like it either.

Also, getting healthy feedback from how the group sees us is that missing mirroring that we didn't get kind of growing up in a vacuum. In a good therapist wants the "are we good" to start to kind of get more pissed off that they are asked to do more at work, to get pissed off in their relationship that it's a bit one-sided, to get pissed off with their friends that again, it's one-sided because that's what they're kind of known for, and to start to get angry about how they were set up for these kind of behaviors.

So here are some final thoughts. Yes, many of these can overlap, but really not in a myriad of endless ways. Primarily, you're going to be one of the five, a primary, and then you'll probably have a secondary. Like in the beginning of the video describing myself, it was I was essentially describing I was in "are we good" with the backup of kind of the darkness. So you could, if you're into astrology, you could think about it like a moon sign and a sun sign. Speaking to that, here are some examples. This is just what I see from my clients. Hostiles can have touches of doers in them or darkness to them, but they don't really go underground or isolate consistently like a ghost. Um, the "are we good" can have touches of doers in them, and in minor ways, they can also have touches of ghost in them. All goods are never really hostiles. Those two things don't really kind of go together. I, in my mind, I think the darkness can have touches of hostility and ghost. So, and again, some of these are fluid depending on where you are in your recovery in treatment. You know, a darkness can shift into an all good as a direct opposite, just trying to balance and find that sense of self. In my case, like I mentioned, till I got into therapy, I gradually kind of became a hostile when I got in touch with some anger.

And in healing childhood trauma, we can shift into the opposites before we come to center and really kind of find, um, who we were, that original spark that I mentioned in the beginning of the video. For treatment of all of these, I would encourage any of these personalities to become more real about their childhood and find some anger about what happened to them and hold abusive parents accountable, like you were sort of set up to both kind of adapt this personality and kind of miss out on developing what you were sort of born with. And to become more real about what it was like growing up is also part of that. It's the beginnings of becoming more of a real person.

And I really want to stress that we come up with these things in a vacuum, that we can't fully change and become more of our authentic self still in a vacuum. I think we really need other people, as much as you maybe not want to hear that, like in a good group or something like that, to get the feedback and the mirroring. With a good therapist, if you can find one, you know, if that's available to you, to get a sense of what I mean about what happens in a group. In the description, I'll put Vin Yam's his main group therapy principles. Irvin Yalom, I love him. He's really this kind of titan of psychology. He's really the one that really formulated group psychotherapy, and he has these beautiful 11 principles of how group can be helpful. Coming back to our authenticity, it's like his whole goal.

And if therapy or group psychotherapy is not a resource for you, or you're kind of not ready for that kind of thing, I totally get it. A good place to start is my monthly healing community where there's resources, live Q&As, and coursework to do. It's a good place to start to kind of get your feet wet and sort of recovery. And along with other things like 12-step, like I mentioned, ACoA, Koda. Twelve people are going to have issues with 12-step, I get it, but they are good places that are sort of free to kind of get the ball rolling and be kind of more social or find other like-minded people.

Please know two things lastly. We came up with this personality as a way to survive and adapt to what was going on with us without getting any healthy developmental pieces that helps a child embrace who they are. Try not to shame yourself for something that kept you safe or feel judged by me in any of this video. The other thing I want you to know is that these personalities, finding our real personality is fixable, and it's done through realness. It's done through emotional risk-taking, and again, it's done with other sort of safe people. We kind of need that mirroring. Um, a lot of beautiful work can happen there.

So you can consider joining the community that I mentioned. The link is right up here. Please consider liking, subscribing, sharing, all that happy stuff. There is a Patreon if you would like to support the channel. Um, you can also check out my website for any resources that you might be looking for, like assessments or free resources. And as always, may you be filled with loving kindness, may you be well, may you be peaceful and at ease, and may you be joyous. And I will see you next [Music] time. [Music]