Spy Game: How Childhood Trauma Births Covert Coping Mechanisms & Extreme Survival Adaptations

The Friday Edition | No. 26

Spy Game: How Childhood Trauma Births Covert Coping Mechanisms & Extreme Survival Adaptations

Have you ever felt like a spy in your own life? Secretly, watching from the outside, attempting to break the code of how to enter a tense or hostile situation with parents or family or work situation. Moving through your life hypervigilant and hyperaware of every person that comes and goes, their facial expressions, demeanor, tone of voice, turn of phrase, past habits and actions, and how they align or match with a present situation. Does it make sense and if it doesn’t how do you navigate this change and survive? Do you get many of your essential needs met by being pleasing, and conforming to another’s expectation of you by being good, pleasing, subservient, or perfect?

After watching the (Apple TV) documentary, “The Pigeon Tunnel” on the life of David Cornwell, (pen name: John Le Carré), MI5 spy turned renowned author, I found a profound resonance between the world of espionage and my own journey through childhood and life with complex trauma. I had an immediate flash of realization and saw that I had lived (unwittingly) like a spy in my own life. It scared me a little, but I was intrigued by this new resonating awareness so I delved deeper into the sources and methods to understand it more fully. Much like a spy, my early experiences of childhood abuse, neglect, and exploitation of my innocence and female gender turned me into a girl and then a woman of many faces, donning masks, and identities to navigate a world that felt chaotic and unsafe. This skill, a survival tactic reminiscent of a spy’s covert operations, became my way of concealing inner turmoil, fear, and insecurity beneath a composed and collected exterior. If you suffer from complex trauma, my guess is that this will resonate with you, along with other points to follow.

The more identities a [wo]man has, the more they express the person they conceal.

_John le Carré, “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”

From a child's innocent view, love often becomes a transactional concept fraught with potential danger. As le Carré poignantly expresses,

Love is whatever you can still betray. Betrayal can only happen if you love.

_John le Carré, “The Looking Glass War”

This profound insight captures the complex relationship with love in the context of trauma, where vulnerability and trust are intertwined with the potential for betrayal. For those navigating the intricacies of living with complex trauma, love can be a delicate dance, a negotiation of trust, and a constant awareness of the potential for further hurt. In a world shaped by survival instincts and self-preservation, the cautionary scales often tip in favor of guarding ourselves at all costs versus taking risks, leading to a reluctance to fully embrace love, trust, or vulnerability with others.

Living with complex trauma often feels like being on the outside looking in, a perspective that echoes the detachment and observation prevalent in the life of a spy. Much like gazing through a looking glass, our reflection of ourselves is distorted by the lens of trauma. The search for a true sense of identity becomes a quest, with survivors grappling with the impact of the past on their present selves and relationships. The spy comparison offers a lens to explore the emotional landscape of trauma survivors, acknowledging the challenges of connection, trust, and self-perception.

Much like an outsider observing from the margins, individuals with complex trauma may find themselves detached from their own experiences. The emotional distance created as a coping mechanism can lead to a constant state of observation without fully engaging in the present moment. The world becomes a stage, and survivors feel like spectators rather than active participants in their own lives.