This trauma recovery thing takes patience. So much patience. Infinite f*cking patience.
If you’re reading this, I likely don’t need to tell you that— and if you’re reading this, you’re probably good and fed up with having to be patient.
I get it. Me too.
Here’s the thing: trauma recovery asks us to do things that we never really saw done. Namely, be kind and patient with ourselves.
Many of us grew up with the exact opposite of that.
We grew up with harsh judgment. We grew up with annoyed impatience.
We often grew up with harsh judgment and annoyed impatience being thrown at us in response to very normal kid behaviors.
Don’t get me wrong: I wasn’t a perfect kid. I’m guessing you weren’t either. We didn’t actually need our parents to be perfect, any more than we need be perfect as parents, if we are parents.
But we didn’t need to be shamed or punished for developmentally normal kid stuff. Even the annoying, inconvenient developmentally normal kid stuff.
If we’re shamed or punished for developmentally normal kid stuff, we internalize shame and the impulse toward self-punishment for normal human stuff.
You know the human stuff I mean. Having feelings. Having needs. Having preferences. Having difficulties.
Something many trauma survivors know all about is how we can’t seem to breathe without feeling shame.
We often can’t seem to take up physical space without feeling shame.
Think about that. Breathing and taking up space is literally the least every human being in the history of human beings does. And we’ve been conditioned to feel shame about it.
That’s not because there’s anything shameful about the particular way we breathe and/or take up space. That’s because we were shamed and/or punished for normal, universal kid/human stuff.
It’s a perfect— that is to say, awful— example of what trauma conditioning does to us.
It’s also a perfect illustration of what we realistically need to recover.
We’re not going to recover from trauma while showing ourselves the same lack of patience and grace that was shown to us growing up.
That means we have to do different things than we saw modeled growing up.
It means we have to do things that we are probably not great at— because why would we be great at them? We have precious little experience with them.
Talking to to ourselves with kindness and patience probably will feel cheesy as hell for a good long while after we’ve gotten into trauma recovery. Of course it will. We don’t have many models for kind, patent self talk that are cool and natural.
Extending ourselves the benefit of the doubt probably will feel like selfish self-indulgence at first. Of course it will. We don’t have many models for giving ourselves a break but also holding ourselves accountable.
Giving ourselves time and space and resources to rest probably will feel “lazy” at first. Of course it will. We don’t have many models for realistically letting ourselves recharge and not having that be the rare exceptional instance.
All of which is to say: in trauma recovery, you, we, are trying to become someone we’ve really never been.
In some ways it’s not even “recovery;” it’s creating a new “us” from scratch.
That’s not gonna happen overnight. But it will happen. It happens every day.
Be patient while you create, while you rescue, while you reshape, the recovery version of “you.”
Doing this “trauma recovery” thing consistently and authentically is way more important than doing it quickly.
Breathe; blink; focus.