Katie Plumb
About My Guest
Katie Plumb is a psychotherapist practicing in Long Beach, California. Katie received her undergraduate degree at Scripps women’s college in Claremont CA, where she majored in psychology; she graduated with an MA in clinical psychology from Columbia University in NY, with a focus on trauma and resilience. She received her MSW from University of Southern California, which allowed her to become a Licensed Clinical Social Worker.
For the duration of her academic years and career, Katie has been dedicated to understanding the impact of, and recovery, from trauma. Having overcome much of her own Complex-PTSD through intensive therapy, Katie is passionate about being beside others on their journeys from victim, to survivor, to thriver. She is trained in therapeutic modalities such as Brainspotting (BSP), and Internal Family Systems (IFS) for true trauma resolution.
When not working, Katie loves to draw, sculpt, and make silly gifts and cards for friends and family. Walking around Long Beach in the sun is another favorite, as is FaceTiming with her (perfect) nephew.
Originally from Washington, DC, Katie came for the education, and is staying for the weather.
Shervin Talieh (00:06):
This is on misogyny, a conversation series exploring sexism and misogyny. Like many men, I have a blind spot when it comes to the female experience, especially as it pertains to the systemic hostility, prejudice, and violence they face on a regular basis. And this has resulted in me believing that I was a better ally than I actually was, and not fully appreciating how little had changed for women and just how much more needed to happen. In each episode, I speak with a guest who wants to help me learn. They share their stories and, in doing so, they're teaching me. While I started this project as a personal quest, the lessons here can help others, too. Pleading ignorance is no longer a satisfactory defense. With that, let's begin.
Today I am joined by a new guest and look forward to learning about her experiences and what I can learn about misogyny and sexism from her. With that, could you please introduce yourself?
Katie Plumb (01:15):
Yeah, I am Katie Plumb. I am a licensed clinical social worker living in Long Beach, California. I'm originally from DC and I moved out here in 2012, which I've heard is around the amount of time that means you're an actual resident in California, because everybody comes here. So it's weird. I miss DC a lot, but I love, love, love the weather out here. I am, like I said, a licensed clinical social worker, but I'm specifically a psychotherapist at this point in my career. I see individuals and couples in my private practice and I run trauma groups at the IOP, an intensive outpatient program that I'm still loosely affiliated with just to do their groups. My niche is pretty exclusively complex trauma and personality/attachment disorders, and grief. One of the jokes in grad school for social work is you can always tell what a therapist has gone through based on what their specialty is.
So having gone through a lot of treatment for my own CPTSD and seeing kind of a light at the end of that, really inspired me to see what I could do to give back. When I'm not with clients, which, to be honest, is like 80% of my life, I know I just said there's more to my life. I am an artist on the side, and I have been all my life. I used to do sculpture and installation. That was my major in college, but now I do just silly drawings and gifts for friends, but that brings me a lot of joy and is a good self-care. I am an aunt to the most perfect nephews and niece in the world. In my life, I have no desire to have children. And especially now that I've met my sister's kids, I'm like set. I've been able to carve out my own path, but then I think I get the blessing of having kids like that in my life.
Shervin Talieh (03:28):
Thank you for that. You used a term that I'm not familiar with, CPTSD. Can you explain what that means?
Katie Plumb (03:37):
Yeah. That's complex post traumatic stress disorder, very similar in the sense that it shares the same symptoms of PTSD, but it has the additional symptoms of, for example, emotional flashbacks. Whereas in classic PTSD, we have those like full-body sensory flashbacks. An emotional flashback is like, you get a scent that crosses across you and you get a wash of shame. That would be something we see in CPTSD. It really occurs after repetitive traumas, sometimes in multiple contexts, sometimes just in one, but where it's kind of inescapable, and each one builds on the next and most notably separate from PTSD. It really requires an insecure attachment history. So you already have this lack of a safe base that you've internalized that the world is kind of not safe, and then you're repetitively traumatized. It has profound effects on somebody's personality and functioning.
Shervin Talieh (04:42):
Is this something that you have personal experience with?
Katie Plumb (04:46):
So I've been with one of my therapists for 11 years, I think. It seems strange. I've mentioned that to clients at times, like when they're like, have I been in treatment too long? And I don't think there's a specific length of time. It just kind of depends on where you're at. CPTSD, one of the core symptoms of it is minimization. So you can look at your life as you know... I am at a point where I'm comfortable with self-disclosure. For me personally, my mom and dad, that specific relationship was very, very impactful for me in terms of my sense of safety with myself, my ability to navigate and validate and all that when it comes to my internal world.
I was sexually abused as a kid, outside the family. I was raped when I was 16, and my dad died when I was 14, which really kind of shook the foundation, so when these other traumas happened, I didn't have the mooring that I may have otherwise. It was a long road of working through a lot of that. I will say the most effective thing that I went through was Brainspotting. I'm now a Brainspotting therapist for my trauma clients. It's a modality that really gets to the most deepest regions of the brain to release trauma in... It's hard to say this with psychotherapy, but in a truly curative way. We do talk therapy, but that's up in the neocortex; trauma lives in our subcortical brain, and Brainspotting is the only one that can go as deeply as it can. So there is hope. I have a wildly different life now than I ever thought I possibly could.
Shervin Talieh (06:47):
You filled out a form on our site to volunteer to be a part of this conversation. Why did you do that?
Katie Plumb (06:59):
I was just speaking with my older sister today. She's like, where are you going to even start? Because it's not just my experiences, I think, especially as you know, and this is a gender stereotype, but as a very interdependent connected person, I feel quite a bit of those indirect and insidious traumas. So it's really been around me my whole life, so stepping out of my experience, even. I have a lot of passion in this area because I work with all age ranges and not just with women anymore. I was terrified to work with men. And I was a bit of a misandrist for a while. I hate admitting this, but now that I see men as more human, misogyny and these prescribed roles and assumptions are so hurtful to both, both genders I mean.
Shervin Talieh (07:56):
Let's dig into that a little bit more because that's one of the first things that I had to unlearn was that just like racism impacts everyone, misogyny impacts everyone and, in fact, these oppressive systems, as I'm coming to understand them, require knowing and unknowing participation from many different groups in order to enable it. If you could share with me your own, it seems like you went through a critical transition where I would assume to protect yourself, you said all men are hurtful because of the obvious trauma that you had to endure, which is unthinkable, but you've come sort of through that. You've able to work through that. Can you talk to me a little bit about that?
Katie Plumb (08:59):
As I was mentioning about working with men, there's this incredible privilege and blessing as a therapist, that as you see other people heal, it has an immense effect on you. So I mentioned my own therapy, Brainspotting, and what I mean about the healing is, my heart really got very hardened for a while. And it is very scary to let somebody in when intimacy is dangerous, because those were the big ones. But as we'll probably talk about, there's those countless little aggressions or violations. So my heart being closed down makes it very difficult to have relationships out in the real world, and that's been something that was one of my goals forever in therapy, be able to let somebody in, work through the fear of somebody being close.
With the love, it's a therapeutic love, it's not the way I might love somebody outside of the room, but the way a client has expanded my heart, it's almost like a physical feeling of when I'm in the room with these individuals, now men as well, I hold so much just truly, just love for them. And it really shattered a lot of those rules I had to keep me safe, and it's been the most fulfilling growth process for me outside in the real world, too, and getting to see that these men I work with aren't monsters.
I was very uncomfortable in the first men that came into the room. I was like, okay, okay, they're here to heal. Let me talk myself into being able to see them as okay people. But if they would mention anything that would bring their sexuality into the room... I had one client who had kidney stones, and he talked to me about passing them, and I don't mean to be crass, but it just made me very aware that he had a penis, and it made me so, like I just wanted to reject him in that moment.
I've been able to see so differently, though, just like I can for the inner childs of my female clients, these hurt boys that have had so many violations and transgressions and microaggressions that no wonder there's the same hardened hearts in them.
Shervin Talieh (11:45):
Would it be appropriate to use a term, compassion?
Katie Plumb (11:50):
Yeah. I remember, when you start in grad school for therapy, they talk a lot about empathy versus compassion. And I think our culture is so obsessed with empathy, but I think there's a difference, one, between that kind of paralyzing empathy, where you see somebody suffer and you're like, oh, I'm taking it all in. I can't do anything about it. And then it kind of becomes like a self-serving empathy. There's actionable empathy, which is wonderful, that kind of feeling it so that you can be there in whatever way that person needs. I feel most connected to compassion, though, in the sense of my role as a therapist. Compassion is being open to hold and bear witness to somebody's experience. And within that, there's empathy. I don't know that I could have the compassion I do if I wasn't an empathic person, but compassion allows you to step back and say I'm just here for it.
Shervin Talieh (12:57):
I heard this, I'm paraphrasing here, but a non-binary trans poet by the name of Alok, and for the listeners, I highly recommend that you Google Alok, A-L-O-K. They were on a show, a podcast called Man Enough. There was a statement that Alok made around basically moving beyond comprehension to compassion. We've spent a lot of time seeking to understand, and the point that Alok makes is compassion is just because the other person is human, that's good enough. Just coming from this place, and for you to work through your own trauma, to the point where you are now helping men, it seems like the circle of compassion, if you will, which leads me to this topic that I'd like to explore with you: safety, physical and emotional and psychological safety.
I've heard other guests on the show talk about how they had to think about getting in an Uber or what time to get home. And if they're going out on a blind date or something, the way that they have friends monitor them and procedures that they have to undertake. I think about my own daughter, who's 18, living with a roommate in LA now, going to college, and I think about her physical and emotional and psychological safety. What is that like navigating your day to day? What was that like in the past, and has that changed? Are there things that you do differently now that you no longer do? Are there new things that you do? If you could teach me about that.
Katie Plumb (15:08):
Shortly after the rape when I was 16, I began working at Children's Hospital in DC doing this program that we would teach how to say no to sexual pressure, how to demand sexual protection, and self-defense. I started a little club for the girls. And so I got to do self-defense as part of that program. I took boxing as a teenager, and I started to feel more powerful in my body. If you look at me, it's not like I'm a force to be reckoned with physically, but there was something about really feeling strong, that it helped me just to feel like I... Because it's crippling. It is crippling when you feel like a victim in the world. When I first moved to Long Beach, it was kind of... Because I'd have to park wherever, it's very difficult to park in neighborhood, and you do do that thing where you carry your keys.
But when I talk to other girls who don't have the same experience of trying to work it out with their body, it's much more of a timid, like a small feeling. And I do feel strong within myself now. Now, part of that change came from realizing my defense style changed. With sexual violence, especially rape or abuse, a lot of women who end up blaming themselves for not fighting, there's this misperception that that's really an option. And I think there's that question from men. I've received that question when I've disclosed to men, like what'd you do to fight him off? And that shame I had about being a girl, a young girl, and not fighting off a grown man that was holding me down.
Yeah, I didn't fight, I froze, and that's actually so much more universal when it comes to sexual trauma, because that's what the brain does. That's the way we're wired. So there are those women who have that defense style that somehow they do fight back, but that's something I really want women and men to know, that that's not how we're wired, that's not the common defense. So when somebody doesn't fight back and they freeze, I look at that as your body did what it needed to do to help you survive.
When I say my defensive style changed, I did get assaulted at a show, and it wasn't sexually assaulted. I got hit. I realized that there's no way to be a hundred percent safe in this world. But those times where I fight back feel really good. And I'm lucky that I have had those times where I've gotten to reclaim power through that, even if it's something I don't want to tell clients, like, yeah, go out, get in a fistfight. It'll make you feel good. I felt lucky that I got to prove it to myself.
Shervin Talieh (18:29):
Continuing with that theme, I can't help but think of the term victim-blaming, as we're asking women to learn self-defense and to carry mace, and then once they're assaulted or raped, the question of, well, what did you do to fight them off, that that feels like there's the trauma of being raped, and then there's the ongoing perpetual guilt and trauma, if I'm understanding this correctly, associated with this, well, why didn't you do something? And in that moment, what men and really what society is doing is that they are washing their hands of the system that allowed for this to take place. Is that accurate?
Katie Plumb (19:17):
That is accurate. I do think it's worth mentioning, too, that just when we talk about the pervasiveness of all this, the first person I disclosed to, and it happened when I was on spring break in St. Lucia. The person who I disclosed to when I got back was my best friend at this new school I had just started at. We were sitting against the lockers and she said, well, "Katie, haven't you already slept with people already?" I just felt so silly all of a sudden, where I was like, "It wasn't the same thing." Having a woman say it, or a girl at the time, say that to me, was so... It really added to that feeling of what did you do? I don't blame her. We're actually still friends.
Shervin Talieh (20:14):
[inaudible 00:20:14].
Katie Plumb (20:15):
But I think that was part of, maybe as a woman she didn't know how to even really rectify, like this is my friend and this happened to her. It's hard to think that this is a world where this could happen to me. I don't know.
Shervin Talieh (20:30):
It sounds like part of the whole normalization process, right?
Katie Plumb (20:34):
Yeah.
Shervin Talieh (20:35):
Where you're already hurt and hurting and maybe confused, and then to receive that.
Katie Plumb (20:50):
I would say of all of my clients, they make their way into thera- There's lots of people who are traumatized and they don't develop those symptoms of the PTSD or CPTSD, but of those clients that have made their way to me, it's pretty across the board that it's not just that they experience trauma, it's that they experience contextual, within the context of sharing with somebody later or having no support, or having victim-blaming. I think that's one of the biggest contributors to why they actually end up as pathologized, I guess you could say, as they are. I was lucky as life went on, those experiences didn't last, but they were so profound that, and I know this is the case for a lot of women. I turned it against myself so much that I was burning myself, I didn't know how to make sense of anything.
I could function during the day at school, I would get home at night and all those thoughts, all of those feelings just became self-loathing. I took that into a couple of relationships as an adult with two really just classic narcissistic abusers, and I internalized that so much about like my own damage, but it, again, through being a therapist at the same time as doing my own therapy, it's much easier for me to see, okay, that was the darkness that they had within them, because narcissism in a man is just as heartbreaking to me as like borderline personality disorder for a woman. They both come from a great wound and a deep pain.
That being said, I don't want have another relationship with the narcissistic abuser, but I was able throughout those years, really apart from them, I've had wonderful men in my life, and it's taken me, like I was saying, going back to the topic of being a therapist, it took me a while to put that in perspective of like I had this art teacher when I was that age, who unconditional support, and just thought I was the bee's knee, and was so into my art and was the safest man I've ever met. I couldn't have survived, I don't think, without that, not just the support, but to have men feel safe again.
Shervin Talieh (23:40):
I can't help but want to know, obviously the numbers are really grim. The majority of women will experience something traumatic, at the very least, if not deadly. Given that, all men need to know how to make women feel safe and, beyond the basic things, like walk on the other side of the street and don't get in the elevator at the same time, that's fundamental blocking and tackling. Maybe for women who are closer to them, how do they make it safe for them to talk about these experiences, and what can we do? Let me just start with myself. There are women in my life who have experienced horrific acts of violence by the hands of men, and others who have the sort of day-to-day rudimentary, persistent stuff that I think all women experience on a daily basis. What can I do? How should I start that conversation? What can I ask? What can I do to be supportive? Should I even bring it up with them? Maybe let's start there.
Katie Plumb (25:06):
One thing that I thought was so important with me, too, kind of taking shape as it had in the past few years, is that idea of those insidious traumas that happen, sexual harassment, for example. We have the subjective experience of women, like I can tell you all day long how uncomfortable, and I think a lot of men have heard that, that women don't like it, but then there's the questions in their minds. But when you do research, there's qualitative and quantitative research about the effect of just taking sexual harassment, for example, the impact that has on a woman shows up in eating disorders, which are some of the most deadly pathologies somebody can experience, the sense of safety that one is robbed of when they're consistently under the gaze of someone who's sexualizing them, makes it really hard to know what is safe and what is not.
So I really respect and recommend just the validation that this is real. It's not women just making too much of something. And I think that is so important, because as much as we talk about Me Too right now, I don't see it in my clients. I don't see them stepping into the truth that they deserve all the safety and vitality of white cis men in this society. And I think encouraging women to be angry and to use their voice, that was something that I didn't get into yet, but with my parents being, do no harm, take no shit. My mom was the do no harm and my dad as conservative and not feminist as he was, really was the take no shit, Katie. Notice the bullshit and call it out. The power to get angry at what happens to other women, once you can internalize that and say, "I'm angry for what happened to me, too," that's so important to have somebody witness that and validate it and say, "Yeah, get loud about it," without this question of why didn't you do that before?
It goes back to what you were saying about compassion, just holding and bearing witness. But I do think asking questions is important, because these are things that, anything that prompts shame, our urge is to hide, and not being able to be vulnerable and have that connection happen through compassion. Shame begets shame. So nobody asking those questions gives you that message of like, keep it quiet. This is a you issue. Normalizing it, talking about it as like, "Hey, I know a lot of women this has happened to, what's your story?" And that's what you're doing. For you personally, I love this project. It matters. I feel like your voice is being heard.
Shervin Talieh (28:34):
That's actionable and direct guidance, and I'm grateful for that. I happen to have women in my life who have suffered from eating disorders, and I did not know of that connection. I think intellectually at some place, I probably felt that the system of body perfection and all of that probably had something to do with it, but listening to you frame it in a much more direct way that, in fact, one of the manifestations or one of the-
Katie Plumb (29:12):
Real consequences.
Shervin Talieh (29:13):
Consequences, right, thank you, is an eating disorder. Then that shows how the cycle of suffering continues beyond the act, beyond the violent act itself. I guess that's where the C for the PTSD also comes in as, well, as I understand what you're sharing.
Katie Plumb (29:33):
Yeah. And I do want to say one thing about that in terms of what men can understand. There's this well-researched theory, objectification theory. It was Fredrickson and Roberts who first formulated this, and it's not just the male gaze that happens, it's not just the violence that happens, but being under constant scrutiny, whether it's feeling threatened with safety, told that you need to wear a certain amount of makeup. It's not just that it becomes these male gaze, many women I know have the experience of like you're walking in the world almost like you can see yourself.
It's a kind of dissociative experience women have where they've taught themselves, I don't want to say they taught themselves, but it's been internalized, that it is so important to be a certain way, that you have to monitor and monitor and check at all times. And that disrupts flow, which is that peak state that we attribute to so much like great feelings and outcomes and success. It is related to eating disorders, it's related to acceptance of what happens to us as just a part of life. That's another thing I'd recommend. There are fascinating researchers and work out there that really make it accessible to understand some of those impacts.
Shervin Talieh (31:17):
Admittedly, I do not know anything about objectification theory, but I've made a note to do some reading on it. To what extent, Katie, do you connect some of what you've been sharing, as I hear you talk about the objectification theory, I can't help but think a little bit about the fourth wave of feminism. And, it seems like, again, please tell me, that one of the mantras, as I understand in the fourth wave, is to really, one is around intersectionality, but the other one is around really taking ownership of the physical body and the persona and how it's not for men's pleasure, if you will, anymore. Is there a connection there?
Katie Plumb (32:10):
Yeah, I would say so. I think there is at times this understandably, this feeling like we need to explain ourselves. If I'm a woman who shaves my head, wears no makeup, baggy clothes, I need to explain why. There's something wrong with what I'm doing. If I'm a woman who, I put on makeup for this interview, I was very nervous. I didn't know what I was going to be expecting. So if you're that woman, you need to explain yourself, do you actually care about women's rights? I think that justifying comes so much from the entitlement of the patriarchy, I guess I would say. We are entitled to be however we want. I think we do need to get away from the prescribed roles, whether it's, of course, like the old time-y specific gendered boxes, or if it's just kind of the expectations and what we demand of our fellow humans. I don't know if that was as articulate as I wanted it to be.
Shervin Talieh (33:30):
No, it's great. Again, sort of it supports a statement that Alok made, which is that gender normative thinking protocols, behavior, et cetera, contribute to and support patriarchal control systems, power, all that. I think you've come at this from a very different angle, but now I'm seeing this connection very, very clearly, and really this is one of the gifts of speaking to many women and hearing all their stories. It's like a big puzzle for me and just sort of see how this thing works. It's clear that feminism, not as defined by men as a way of them against us, but this idea of the feminine energy and the feminine perspective and sort of how all of us, regardless of gender, and it doesn't have to be one gender. Even with an individual, as it turns out, it could be a spectrum. Moving away from these prescribed, often toxic ideals into, as I heard you describe it, the freedom to just be. That is going to be critical, and that's scary for the people who benefit from the system of misogyny, because then they just don't know how to react to that. That's super powerful.
Katie Plumb (35:18):
Yeah. And I think that none of it is about who's to blame for me, but I was just talking to one of my best friends because of this conversation I knew we were going to be having, I've heard her say in different contexts, like, oh my god, no, I'm not a feminist. And that's always been so interesting to me. Like, why the hell wouldn't you be? I was just curious about it, so we talked. Her thing is just as valid. She's like, I like some of the gender roles. I like feeling taken care of. And that's not really where I'm coming from, but hers is situationally derived from her upbringing. We all bring different fears and needs to the table based on our experience. Of course, men are no different. I think when you were asking about actionable things, the other important thing is for men to just talk to men and make it safe. I have these clients that would've never dreamed of going to a male therapist, because it's scary for men to talk to men, but it's very, very powerful, too.
Shervin Talieh (36:41):
That's a really powerful closing thought and full disclosure. After 15, 16 years of being with a female therapist, I finally switched to a male therapist. I am guilty as charged. Also, I think, again, full disclosure, the first five years of therapy, I just wanted her to like me, so I did not go very deep. That's what shame and our ego does, but finally being able to speak to another man and seeing that I was not the only one who was broken and there was shared experiences there. Thank you for taking the time to also explain that. Katie, thank you for your time, your honesty, the vulnerability, the direct guidance to me, your taking the initiative to express interest in participating in this project. I am so, so grateful to you, and I wish you continued healing throughout your journey.
Katie Plumb (37:40):
Thank you so much for giving me this space. It really does mean a lot. I appreciate it.