Running For Our Lives: The Response (Episode 82B - Part 2)

It is important that you listen to the part 1 of this episode first: Running For Our Lives: The Murder I Designed Before I Could Drive - Episode #82A

In this illuminating conclusion to our two-part series (Episode 82B), trauma specialist Erica Bess expertly analyzes the psychological aftermath of childhood domestic violence exposure revealed in Fatima Bey's harrowing account.

"When your child hears you screaming in the other room, imagine the horror inside that they feel," explains Erica, revealing how children become co-survivors of abuse directed at their caregivers. This episode delves into the cascading traumas following the family's midnight escape—living in a hotel room, constant fear of discovery, and the development of adjustment disorder and PTSD that created hypervigilance lasting for decades.

Erica provides professional insight into one of the most chilling revelations from part one: the children's plan to eliminate their mother's abuser out of desperation. This powerful discussion illuminates how violence can perpetuate when children feel powerless to protect those they love.

Yet amidst this darkness emerges an inspiring transformation—how all three sisters channeled their trauma into healing professions. This episode offers profound understanding for survivors, parents concerned about household conflict's impact on children, and those supporting domestic violence survivors. Join us to explore trauma's enduring effects and the remarkable human capacity to transform pain into purpose.

To learn more about Erica Bess, The Trauma Master, please click the link below.

https://www.ericabess.com/

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Part Two with Erica Bess
• 1:40 Breaking Down Childhood Trauma at 12
• 4:15 The Escape and Abandonment Effects
• 7:30 Hotel Life and Starting Over
• 10:00 PTSD and Long-term Effects
• 13:30 Planning Violence and Protective Instincts
• 17:53 Healing Through Sharing Stories
• 19:26 Mind-Shifting Moment: From Victims to Healers

Transcript

Fatima Bey: 0:01

Welcome to MindShift Power Podcast, the only international podcast focused on teens, connecting young voices and perspectives from around the world. Get ready to explore the issues that matter to today's youth and shape tomorrow's world. I'm your host, fatima Bey, the MindShifter, and welcome everyone. This is part two and I have my guest here, erica Bess. She is the trauma master and this is the perfect episode to have someone on who specializes in trauma, since I just told you about mine. So I'm going to mostly be quiet for this episode. I'll be here to respond and answer questions, but Erica is going to take over as the therapist who specializes in trauma and she's going to pick apart everything I just said. Erica.

Erica Bess: 0:56

Hi everybody. I am going to dissect everything pretty much that Fatima just told us and shared with us, and I want to thank you for even being able to share that, because I know that that experience was very traumatic and even though it's years later, it still has a certain effect on anybody who would have gone through that. So I really appreciate the fact that you were able to tap in and share that with everybody, all of your viewers, because I'm sure that that helped a lot of people who are actually going through it currently as a child, or a child who's actually dating somebody who is similar to somebody who was like the man that your mother was dating. So I appreciate that. So let's break it down.

Erica Bess: 1:44

So at 12 years old, that's a very fragile age. It's right before becoming a teenager. So it's like the last little bit of adolescence about to go into teenage years, which is like the hardest time, especially for a female transitioning into becoming a confident young woman. And because Fatima's foundation was sort of rocked at such an early age, it created a lot of instability as far as like when she explained that her mother was being beaten and then hospitalized. Whenever a person's, a child's caregiver and their safety is being challenged or threatened, it causes a child to go through a period of instability and just being plain scared, because their mother represents safety and protection for them. So if their safety and protection is being threatened in their mom's life, it creates the same fear and lack of protection for a child as well. So a lot of times when women hear, oh, you know, your kids are going through something because you're in an abusive relationship, a lot of them think that they're going through the majority of the trauma. But your kids are going through just as much as you are, if not even more, because they have a natural instinct to want to protect you, just like a parent wants to protect a child. So your child, especially a 12-year-old child who's a little bit older, who has a lot more awareness than you would expect to be at 12 years old, they are able to realize that, hey, my caregiver's safety is being threatened. This threatens my safety and my sister's safety. I'm the oldest out of the three. I have to do something to protect them and I don't want to see this anymore because that's daily trauma of that experience that she's gone through.

Erica Bess: 3:41

So the next part about it I want to talk about is the abandonment part and having to escape, so having to abandon your home from Minneapolis and then escaping, and then having to just wake up one day thinking you're going to school and then your mom's telling you to go, pack your bags and put whatever you can in your bag, as much as you can fit, that in itself is a trauma because you are leaving your stable household, told to get up and pack what you can, and then you're leaving everything behind. A lot of times when children are uprooted especially in this situation where you actually had to escape for your own lives it causes something called adjustment disorder in children. Adjustment disorder could also happen with adults, but in children. In this case, it shook your foundation, which was your household, and it took you from everything that you knew that was stable and it just uprooted you. And then having to then escape and hide, that created a sense of fear and having to look over your shoulder while you're trying to get to safety and imagine, like a 12-year-old feeling that and then your younger sister's feeling that, on top of it, that must have been so traumatic for you guys having to hide in the back seat when you guys were making that escape route.

Erica Bess: 5:01

Another thing that I thought was important to point out was your mom's lack of support that she received when trying to make that escape having to take three children and herself to safety and then only being able to rely on her mom for a little, a few weeks, and then thank God for Aunt Lizzie being able to drive you there and then you guys being able to hide in the backseat. But the lack of support that mom received, that's a huge factor, because when you're going through something like that, you need support from wherever you can get it from, whether it's financial, whether it's oh, let me donate you some blankets or some clothes, because you guys didn't have much on you. So it's like whatever kind of support that she could have received at that time, I know she would have accepted it with open arms, but not everybody was available, for whatever reason. So that's a trauma within itself. Also, having to deal with the lack of financial stability and then also having to deal with the physical trauma that your mom went through and then the emotional trauma that you and your sisters experienced when you had to move into the hotel. That was another environmental trauma, you know, just a lower level of lifestyle. So you were probably exposed to things around the area of the hotel that weren't the best situation. So that could also cause a little uncertainty and a little instability, because there's a lot of negative things going around you Not to say that that stuff was going on in your specific hotel room, but just stepping out of that safety of the hotel room and then becoming used to living in a hotel and then having to stay there for nine months and then, mom, finally being able to get an apartment at nine months which sounds like a great thing because it's your own place, but it's still not like the house that you came from and what you're used to and then having to stuff the clothes and the pillows and not having the furniture.

Erica Bess: 7:01

That's another trauma, because you don't have the finances to be able to make the house warm and cozy again and you have to wait until you get enough money to buy furniture and buy pillows and buy clothes and kind of like restart. It's like you guys had to essentially start over a few times and there's nothing wrong with that, but it's traumatic in the sense of having to do that over and over again, having to adjust to that and not having the things that you need once you did move into the apartment. It does create that sense of not being on the right level, that you need to be societal-wise. It makes you feel less than, and then feeling less than can develop low self-esteem, like Fatima mentioned in the part one of episode. She said that her self-esteem wasn't where it needed to be but that was because her foundation was shaken so many times at such a young age and I don't know if therapy was a thing back then for your family, was that like normalized back then? Yeah, so Fatima navigated all of this stuff pretty much on her own and then I know Aunt Lizzie was able to help her with some things as far as navigating and learning and growing on her own. But navigating basically all that trauma at such a young age on her own, she's a force to be reckoned with. I have to say that for sure. For sure, because that's not easy for an adult to have to do, let alone a 12-year-old. That's amazing.

Erica Bess: 8:29

Moving into that new space, it's a whole new adjustment and I believe that because of what she went through, she became aware of other people's trauma. So triggers as far as like maybe walking down the street and seeing somebody else putting their hands on their girlfriend. That's an immediate trigger, because what that trauma manifested in Fatima was a diagnosis which a lot of people don't even realize they have when they've gone through something. It's called post-traumatic stress disorder. So we've got the adjustment disorder from the uprooting and the instability and then the PTSD from the post-traumatic experience that causes things in you today that could be like such as hypervigilance, where you're always kind of looking over your shoulder or just kind of hyper aware of possibilities of, of unsafe situations, and having to look over your shoulder and feel like that all the time creates instability and kind of like anxiety within yourself because you're always having to be ready and prepared for something and that drains somebody. Having to always be alert and always ready for something to happen, because even when something doesn't happen, you're always ready for it, and that just drains a person after a while. So that's a lot on top of that as well.

Erica Bess: 9:54

I'm not sure if I touched on it too much, but when, like I said, when her caregiver was being endangered, it shook her foundation and she realized just even if she never saw her mother get physically hit, just hearing her mother screaming in the next room or fighting for her life, that is enough to mess your child up for years to come. When your child is not able to save you and hears you screaming in the other room, imagine the trauma and just the horror inside that they feel that they can't help save their mom. Their mommy is their everything, their savior, their comfort, where their love comes from. And because they're not able to even feel safe as far as that, they can't even protect their mom. And a child wants to protect their mom just as bad as a mom wants to protect their child. So don't think, because you're the adult, that you're the one always supposed to be doing the protecting your child. If they're old enough and smart enough, they're going to want to make sure that you're okay too, and so the fact that you're not okay and you're choosing to stay in a relationship that is being abusive to you, you're abusing your children just as much, if not even more.

Erica Bess: 11:10

So I think that when she mentioned speaking to her stepfather and that she had mentioned something about oh, you're not going to do that to my mom, or something like that, and he got upset, he took it a certain way, but that's because he didn't know that she was saying that coming from a traumatic place because she had overcome such a big trauma and honestly, like she said, if her mom didn't move her and her sisters out at that time, that that murder would have been committed. And I know her she would have done it Whether her sisters were on board or not. She would have found a way to get it done. So thank God mom did leave when she did, because it would have probably been within that next couple of weeks for it to go down. She's like, oh yeah, we were planning it. And when she says that she's planning something, it's going to happen.

Erica Bess: 11:56

So I think that the fact that her stepfather took it a certain way she maybe didn't mean for it to come off that way to him and that he took it that way because he didn't realize the impact of the trauma that she had experienced dealing with this previous person who had dealt with her mom and handled her in the wrong way. Previous person who had dealt with her mom and handled her in the wrong way. And I think that when you go through such an experience like that, you become extreme with it and you're like, hey, this is never happening again, so don't even think in your mind that you're going to do something like this to my mom because it ain't happening, you'll be dead before it happens. And it's like, oh, I'm serious. But I hope it never has to come to that extreme. And luckily, because he's a great man, it would never come to that experience.

Erica Bess: 12:41

But because of Fajima's trauma she had to let him know that hey, I don't know you that well If it does get to that extreme, that this is going to happen. So she had to let it be known. But that is a scary place to have to be and have to say to somebody when you've gone through something like that, because it's so real for her the fact that she couldn't talk about it for years, up until she was in her twenties. It was a lot because she had to process everything and probably couldn't even process it with her mom. Like she said, she told her mom a few years ago and that's big in itself that she was able to say it out loud.

Erica Bess: 13:17

Talking about trauma is very difficult. The experience itself is horrible and then having to speak about it is sometimes makes you relive your trauma and it's like it's supposed to heal you in the same time. But it's hard to get through it. Sometimes when you've gone through something and you're trying to explain it to somebody, you can't get through it without your throat choking up and you getting that rock in your throat and then your eyes start tearing and it's like dang. This happened so many years ago. You don't even realize how much it has affected you, let alone the children in the world who are experiencing it right now and, like she said, her tears were for them because she knows what it's like to be in you guys' shoes. So any of the children, teenagers who are going through this situation and your parents or your mom is being abused or your caretaker is being abused, she knows exactly what that feels like and the tears are just flowing and that's what makes this so raw and real. And I hope that the right people heard this episode today and know that there is hope and you can get out of that situation and encourage your loved ones who are going through this to get out, as well as your parents.

Erica Bess: 14:33

The planning of the murder that's the juicy stuff. Grateful that you left that situation, but I do believe that when you've gone through such a traumatic experience and you've experienced your mother getting hurt over and over, I think there a coldness develops inside of the children, who are starting to think violent, because they become violent too. And it's like you're not a normally violent person but because of what you've gone through and experienced through the trauma vicariously, through your mom and what she was experiencing, you experienced it just as if you were going through the same thing. What she was experiencing, you experienced it just as if you were going through the same thing. So it makes you a little tougher than you have to be and makes you a little bit more violent, because that's what you're exposed to. So she was going to fight violence with violence and end it all by murdering him. Thank God she didn't have to do that and that things worked out the way they did, but I do believe that if her mom chose to stay and continued to stay with the man, that I think I really do believe that it would have happened as well and that would have caused even more trauma.

Erica Bess: 15:49

I believe that there's a lot of healing that took place today through Fatima even telling her story, and I think that what she did here today was basically healing herself on the podcast, but through healing you guys, by sharing her story. So her healing is coming through healing you guys and telling you to get out of that situation, get away from if you're a teenager and you're in that type of relationship, get out now, don't become the grownup woman that has to deal with a certain kind of partner like that and to open your eyes now. So there's a lot of healing taking place right now, in this very moment of this episode, for these other women to hear, to get out and have the strength to walk away and not to be afraid to walk away. I think that it was very important when she mentioned that if she hears a certain bang or a noise, that it could trigger the trauma that silenced her until her twenties and now she's able to speak about it and now able to share it with you guys. So hopefully you guys won't have to wait 20 years to be able to speak about your traumas and be able to say what you need to say and stand up for what's right, and also to help wake up your caregiver as well, so that they can get out of that situation, because the longer you stay, the harder it is to walk away. And children that witness any violence against their caregivers I think it completely shakes their core foundation and then you begin to have low self-esteem when your tend to go to places or people looking for love in the wrong places, because you don't know what it really is, because it was never really fully established for you and the trauma kind of takes over and overpowers that. But what love you did experience. So I think that once your self-esteem is in that negative place and it doesn't get addressed or you don't go to therapy to build it up Because, let's be honest, a lot of people, a lot of families back in the day were not taking their kids to therapy for traumas.

Erica Bess: 18:07

We were told to not talk about it. We were told to just move on. We were told to just sweep it under the rug and act like oh, we'll just act like it didn't happen. But that doesn't do anybody any good. It's just a lie, and to sit there and continue to live your life as a lie is only going to just breed more toxicity within you and then it causes more trauma after that. So we just need to be honest and that's the only way we're going to heal. And I really just want to thank Fatima for having me come on as a commentator about trauma, to break down each segment of her trauma and be able to identify the things that she's gone through and overcome, and I just want to say thank you for the opportunity, fatima for coming on, and I once again want to say to anyone listening if you're in the situation and you heard my pleas, you believe what I just said.

Fatima Bey: 19:03

But I just said in episode one, and you want to get out, go to FatimaBeycom, go to the other help page, Click. If you just go to the other help page, you can find the people around you that are willing to help. It's a national service and only within America. It's a national service that we can find services around you wherever you are. Please do it today. And now for a mind-shifting moment. The mind-shifting moment is about planting a thought seed, so I want to plant this thought seed in your head, young ladies, women.

Fatima Bey: 19:45

What I didn't mention before was that this took place in the 80s. There was no domestic violence awareness back then. There wasn't people around that understood what that even was, knew how to recognize it. There weren't organizations out there that specifically were there to help victims. There was just the police, who may or may not care or may or may not believe you or may or may not act like it's a big deal.

Fatima Bey: 20:12

As a victim back then especially, you were truly alone. My mother was truly alone and she had three girls to take care of while trying to manage all of this on her own. She stayed because she was scared, not because she wanted to, because she didn't know what else to do. But she finally got shook enough to say I got to do something. And let me tell you, ladies, where there's a will, there's a way. My mother's living proof of that. She made the decision to finally get out. But I want to point this out to you as well. Your children are learning right now. They're watching you right now. When you get out, they will see how strong their mother was. They may not see it right now, but when maturity hits and they get to see the whole picture because now they're mature enough to actually understand the whole picture they're going to see things differently and you may be the hero in their story. When they begin to recognize, like I do with my mother, I recognize now wow, she's amazing With all of that. She didn't turn to substances, she didn't turn to drugs, she didn't latch on to the next loser. She worked very hard and kept taking care of her girls. And I also want to point something else out. We did get something out of that situation. If we hadn't moved to New York, my mother would have never met my stepfather, which was one of the best things that ever happened to her.

Fatima Bey: 21:33

Not only that, but I'm Fatima Bae, the mind shifter. I'm a mind shift coach. I'm public. My other sister is a doctorate therapist, Dr Bae, and my other sister is a spiritual healer. She focuses on healing people and then helping them to have a better future. So what you hear there is all three of us got into therapeutic fields, just differently. All three of us are about helping and healing other people. If you get out, your children may take all of this garbage and turn it into something good. I just want to plant that thought seed today, something good. I just want to plant that thought seed today. Thank you for listening. Be sure to follow or subscribe to MindShift Power podcast on any of our worldwide platforms so you too can be a part of the conversation that's changing young lives everywhere. And always remember there's power in shifting your thinking.