drglenndoyle

Talking– and listening– to ourselves.

You’ve heard me say over and over again that the three main trauma recovery tools are self-talk, mental focus, and physiology.

The self-talk piece is often the one that’s most accessible.

We’re talking to ourselves 24/7/365.

We may not be aware we’re talking to ourselves— but we are. We are in constant communication with ourselves.

We’re constantly telling ourselves stories— some true, some less true— about who we are and what things mean.

What we communicate to ourselves really matters— but how we communicate it really, really matters.

Remember that the backbone of realistic trauma recovery really is the relationship with ourselves— because that’s what takes the hit when we endure complex trauma.

When we endure complex trauma— that is, pain that unfolds over time, is functionally inescapable, and entwines with our relationships—we almost always come out of it with a damaged relationship with ourselves.

We don’t believe we’re worthy.

We don’t believe we’re capable.

We don’t believe we have a future.

And that damaged relationship with ourselves is almost always reflected in our self-talk and other self-communication.

This often takes the form of talking to ourselves like our abusers and bullies talked to us.

We internalize both their vocabulary and their cadences.

And why wouldn’t we? For many of us, our abusers and our bullies were the people we interacted with the most, whether it was our parents or our peers.

Some survivors get skeptical that self-talk plays an big role in either trauma or recovery, because the words “self talk” sound superficial.

But I’m not talking about superficial self-talk.

I’m talking about deep self-talk— the self-communication that is a 24/7/365 live feed inside our head and nervous system. The self-communication that informs and supports our deepest belief systems.

That’s what we have to shift.

Just telling yourself “good job”— while maybe an okay start— isn’t going to do much.

Using your ability to talk to yourself to remind your “parts” and inner child, again and again, that they will not be punished or abandoned— not by you, not inside your own head and heart— can be life transforming.

A good rule of thumb to keep in mind is, you know all the stuff you needed to hear once upon a time, when you were lonely or desperate or in trouble?

You still need to hear that stuff.

But now it needs to come from you, to you— from the conscious, verbal “part” of you, to the more vulnerable, less verbal “part” of you.

(If you’re paying attention, you’ve probably already figured out that self-talk is the way most people get started with “parts” work in trauma recovery.)

Breathe. Blink. Focus.

And talk to yourself.

Talk to yourself like it matters— because it really, really does.

drglenndoyle

Parentification is coercion and neglect. No exceptions.

Anybody who has children knows they can be incredible emotional supports, mostly by accident, mostly in ways that would be impossible to engineer even if one wanted to.

But it’s not the job of kids to be emotional supports for adults.

And kids shouldn’t be put in that position— or the position of doing any job or fulfilling any role that actually requires an adult.

At the heart of the whole thing is consent.

Kids can’t meaningfully consent to being emotional supports for adults— let alone taking on other adult roles.

They couldn’t understand what’s involved if they wanted to.

That’s not to disrespect any children— of course there are remarkably bright and industrious kids out there.

But kids lack the neural wiring to wrap their heads around adult roles.

I don’t care if a kid is an “old soul.”

I don’t care if a kid has triple the raw IQ of their parents.

I don’t care if a kid fervently believes in their own ability to take on an adult role or do an adult job: it’s not for them.

And we, as adults, need to make sure kids are not put in that position.

There are many people reading this who are well aware, who know by experience, what happens when kids are put in the position of being emotional support for adults, or coerced into being “little adults” in other ways.

Yes, I said “coerced.” Because that’s what it is.

Some parents are going to have feelings about this. They’re going to make the case that what they coerced their kids into wasn’t harmful. They’re going to say that it depends on the kid, that there are smart and mature kids out there who can handle it.

One, being smart and mature, even adult-like— in intellect, appearance, or otherwise— doesn’t mean a kid is able to take on adult roles.

Two, adults and kids are not operating on level playing fields, power wise.

Not only are kids incapable of taking on those adult jobs and roles, they are incapable of consenting to do so, due to that power differential. Especially so if the adults in question are their parents, caretaker, or other important people in their lives, such as teachers or clergy.

It harms kids to take on adult roles— especially repeatedly, especially in relationships where refusing to take on those roles is awkward or impossible due to the power dynamic.

Why am I writing about this on my trauma page?

Because more than a few people reading this were harmed by the coercion I’m describing.

Raise your hand if you were ever described as an “old soul.” “Mature for your age.”

Raise your hand if it was up to you to take care of your parents.

I understand a certain percentage of survivors reading this are going to say I’m overstating things, that what happened to them wasn’t abuse or neglect, that they were capable of being the emotional or logistical support their parents needed at the time.

I’m not going to tell you what your truth is.

But I am going to tell you, many survivors of this specific kind of neglect, parentification, don’t register it as neglect— but they are impacted by it all the same.

That “fawn” response? The people pleasing, the perfectionism, the anxiety, the guilt?

The vulnerability to relationship conflict, that “freeze” response when things get tough between you and your partner?

Yeah, none of that comes out of nowhere.

Parentification is coercion and neglect. I don’t care who you are or who your parents were.

And by the way, coercing kids to be “adults” in certain spheres, like emotional support, kicks open the door to rationalizing kids fulfilling other “needs” for adults, with the same arguments for it all. “Some kids are mature enough to handle it,” blah blah blah.

Kids deserve better.

You deserved better.

drglenndoyle

Getting cozy with our fear.

Fear is not the enemy.

Fear, properly understood and managed, can actually be quite useful.

Animals that lack fear don’t tend to last too long in the wild. There are definitely things worth being afraid of out there.

What we’re shooting for in trauma recovery is not to become fearless.

What we’re shooting for is to relate to our fear differently.

To not be controlled by our fear.

To not be overwhelmed by our fear.

All that is going to start by acknowledging that fear is not the enemy.

Our enemies were our bullies and abusers.

Conceptually, our enemies now are the beliefs and other conditioning our abusers and bullies have left behind in our nervous system.

That’s what we’re up against— the echoes of old voices, that spike fear responses in us in the present.

Our old conditioning will make us feel more vulnerable than we are.

Our old conditioning will make us feel less resourceful than we are.

Our old conditioning will work, hard, to make us forget who we even are, what our life is all about.

It will work to reduce us to what we’re feeling right here, right now— notably, our focus on and fear of the awful scenario we think is going to happen.

Understand: I’m not saying the awful scenario is never a risk. I’m not saying things will always work out, or any such bullsh*t. They won’t. There are definitely scenarios and situations that will suck, that will be painful— that are worth fearing.

What I am saying is, we manage those scenarios and situations by nudging our focus from our fear, to our resources. Our recovery tools and philosophies. Our safe people and pets.

The problem is not that fear doesn’t feel good.

The problem is, we’ve been conditioned to focus on the fear to the exclusion of everything else.

You, survivor, are more than your fear.

Your fear is real and valid, even if it is being “spiked” by trauma conditioning. But you are not reducible to this feeling or this experience of fear.

Let the fear exist.

Validate it. Thank it, even. It is, after all, trying to do a good thing— it’s trying to keep you alive.

I know this sounds counterintuitive, and I know it’s way, way easier said than done (much like anything anyone can say about any subject).

But embrace your fear. Meet it gently. Breathe into it gently. Acknowledge what it’s doing for you— and also acknowledge that it’s being amplified by old pain and old patterns.

What we very much don’t want is to be making decisions out of fear.

We want our decisions to reflect our goals and values— not our fear.

To do that we’re going to have to be willing to coexist with our fear, sit with it, get to know it.

I know. Easier said than done.

But it beats the hell out of the alternatives, namely, letting fear trigger “flee” and “freeze” responses that put us at even more risk.

Breathe. Blink. Focus.

And nuzzle up to your fear.

It is, after all, October.

drglenndoyle

The stupid sh*t “they” say.

It’s easy for other people to say “let it go.”

Or “don’t let it bother you.”

Or “leave the past in the past.”

But trauma survivors often feel immense shame that it’s not quite so easy for us.

We feel we SHOULD be able to just “let it go.”

We wish we COULD just “not let it bother us.”

And we’re desperate for someone to show us how to “leave the past in the past.”

But the reality is, no trauma survivor is making a choice to run any of those patterns.

Those patterns were conditioned into us. Programmed into us. Sometimes beaten into us, quite literally.

People who suggest that it’s a “choice” to just “let it go” are implying that we’re suffering because we’re “choosing” to “hang on” to our past or our pain.

Conditioning is not a choice.

Trauma responses are not choices.

CPTSD and DID are not “choices.”

If we had “choices” in these matters, we would choose something different, every single time.

Most of us don’t even realize we’ve been conditioned in these pattern soft believing, thinking, feeling, and behaving.

Rather, we think it’s just “how we are.”

We assume the way we’ve been experiencing the world is just our experience of the world— and we can’t imagine it being different.

Which is exactly what Trauma Brain, the internalized voices of our abusers and bullies, wants us to think.

The truth is, we can recondition our patterns of believing, thinking, feeling, and behaving— but, realistically, it’s going to take both time and some specific tools and support.

It’s not as simple as making a one time decision to “let it go.”

It’s not as simple as just deciding “something doesn’t bother us.”

And it’s nowhere near as simple as “leaving the past in the past.”

The vast majority of trauma survivors I’ve ever met would happily let go of the past— if only the past would let go of us, of our nervous and endocrine systems.

All of that stuff is going to be easy for other people to say.

But remember, the stuff they say has zero to do with the reality of your situation or your needs.

Rather, the stuff people say is about their projection, their biases, their fantasies, their misconceptions.

Your project is rewiring yourself, reconditioning yourself, building sustainable habits and routines and tools that will realistically impact how you feel and function.

Don’t let their stupid sound bites distract or discourage or shame you.

Stay on target.

Breathe. Blink. Focus.

drglenndoyle

When the little things are not so “little.”

It’s one of the most normal things in the world for trauma survivors to struggle with seemingly “little” tasks.

This includes tasks that you wouldn’t think would have anything to do with surviving trauma.

Going to the grocery store.

Keeping our space clean and organized.

Personal hygiene.

Many people take these tasks for granted— which can amplify survivors’ shame when we struggle with them.

For many CPTSD survivors, these tasks have subtle triggers embedded in them that we don’t fully appreciate.

The variety of items at the grocery store and people all around stoke anxiety.

Being at the grocery store scrapes up memories of being there with a parent when we were young.

Trying to keep our space clean and organized stokes shame and feeling trapped, controlled, or in trouble.

Attending to our personal hygiene requires looking in a mirror— which many survivors hate— or reminds us we have a physical body about which we have conflicted beliefs and feelings.

Non-CPTSD survivors may be oblivious to those sorts of triggers— but for CPTSD survivors, they’re the kind of thing that rules our world.

They’re also the kind of thing that is virtually impossible to explain to someone not in our head or our nervous system.

You need to know there’s zero shame in struggling with these kinds of “little” things.

You need to know that just because you can’t immediately or directly trace a trigger back to what happened to you, doesn’t mean your reaction is invalid or not a trauma response.

We meet any and every symptom spike we experience with compassion and patience and realism— including those symptoms we don’t quite understand, and especially those symptoms about which we feel reflexive shame.

There is no symptom that indicates we’re “too broken” to recover. Really.

We do not choose trauma responses or other symptoms.

Trauma responses and other symptoms are not resolved or managed by insisting we “suck it up” or “get our sh*t together.”

For each “little” task you struggle with, break it down into its smallest component tasks, then use the tool of self talk to supportively, realistically talk yourself through it.

Imagine I’m there, on your shoulder, in the grocery store. What would I say?

Probably not “suck it up.”

I’d remind you to breathe. To blink blink blink. To focus on just the next thing.

And I’d also remind you that this is not your fault— and that this will get better with practice and self-compassion.

Easy does it.

You are not the first, last or only CPTSD survivor for whom the supposedly “little” things are not so little.

drglenndoyle

It was not on you to change them. Even if you wanted to.

Something many CPTSD survivors have in common is our strong desire to fix things we couldn’t possibly fix if we tried. 

You know, like our families of origin. 

Something many CPTSD survivors also have in common is the steadfast belief that the only reason we “couldn’t” fix those things is because we didn’t try hard enough. 

Again and again, we survivors tend to blame ourselves. 

I’m not talking about taking realistic responsibility. 

I’m talking about constantly erring on the side of assuming that it was our fault things weren’t different in our family or environment growing up.

The difficult truth is, most of us did not choose the environment in which we grew up. 

We certainly didn’t choose the parents to whom we were born. 

And if that environment or those parents were f*cked up, there was realistically very little— in fact, usually nothing— we could do about it. 

This is true even if we fell into “parentified” roles in our family— being expected to function as adults, despite the fact we were children. 

This is overwhelmingly common among CPTSD survivors. 

Despite the actual, literal fact we were kids, we might have been expected to care for either the adults or other kids in our environment— often, both. 

And the fact that we could kind of pull it off might have f*cked with our head about fault and responsibility. 

I have ment so many survivors who, even if they can concede the fact that they were expected to be “adults” in their childhood environment, struggle to see the harm it caused them. 

They truly think they were the one kid that didn’t affect. The one kid who could or did pull it off. 

The fact that you were put in the position of being a caretaker or problem solver for your family growing up doesn’t mean that level of responsibility was appropriate. 

And it certainly doesn’t mean that you had the power the meaningfully change how your family or environment operated back then. 

You were a kid. 

Your family and the environment were happening TO you. 

That’s not an “excuse;” that’s reality. 

Here, now, as an adult working your trauma recovery, you’re working to be proactive and accountable— to no longer let life happen TO you, but rather FOR you. 

But that’s hard when you’ve been made to feel, over and over again, that you “failed” to change what you “should” have been able to change in the past. 

I truly believe that if we could have changed it, we would have. 

If we didn’t, it’s because we didn’t— and by the way, that’s not weird, considering the fact that we were kids. 

Forgive yourself. Forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn’t know, and not being able to do what you couldn’t do, back then. 

I understand that what I’m saying right now is going to make a subset of survivors roll their eyes. It’s a little touchy feely for some. 

What I need you to understand is, that’s as much of a CPTSD symptom as anything else— specifically, an artifact of trauma conditioning. 

It was not on you to change them. 

It was not on you to change that world. 

You couldn’t have, if you wanted to. 

And that’s not a “failure,” in any sense of the word. 

Sad— but not a “failure.” 

drglenndoyle

Feeling good is a recovery priority.

A trauma recovery priority that not enough sources talk about is developing ways to feel good without hurting ourselves. 

You don’t hear much about feeling good in trauma work. 

You hear a lot about coping with feeling bad— but not so much about feeling good. 

I happen to think learning non-toxic, non-self-destructive ways to feel good is really important. 

We trauma survivors often have a fraught relationship with feeling good. 

Some of us get suspicious of feeling good. We don’t trust it. 

If we start to feel too good, we get anxious— wondering when the other shoe will drop. 

Other trauma survivors were taught that feeling good leaves us vulnerable. We let down our guard. 

Still other trauma survivors were taught that it was “selfish” to feel good. 

Who are we to feel good, after all, when other people are so miserable? 

Yet other trauma survivors get all up in our head about feeling good to the tune of, “could it really have been abuse or trauma, if I’m feeling good in this moment?” 

Our complicated relationship with feeling good often leads to us trying to stay away from it entirely. 

Which, in turn, has us feeling all these trauma-driven states— depression, anxiety, fear— without anything to even sort of balance them out or take the edge off. 

I happen to think feeling good is more than just nice— it’s a human need. 

And to the extent that trauma recovery is about more than just coping with trauma symptoms or resolving trauma— it’s actually about restoring and enhancing our quality of life— we really, really need to develop ways to feel good that are accessible and sustainable. 

This is why I believe it’s so important we incorporate more than just talking or writing about our trauma or symptoms into our recovery. 

I believe we need pleasure and release, too. 

We need art. 

We need music. 

We need poetry. 

We need movies and shows that make us laugh, make us cry, make us think. 

We need books that keep us up all night reading because we just HAVE to find out what’s going to happen next. 

Feeling good can get trivialized and overlooked in a culture that tends to overly medicalize mental health care. 

For many of us, the only “tools” we’ve learned to help us feel good put us at risk. 

But we deserve pathways to pleasure and release that don’t harm us. 

Coping skills are important. Trauma processing is important. I’m not telling you to avoid those in favor of chasing dopamine or serotonin. 

But I absolutely think if were realistically going to cope or process trauma, we need tools standing by that can take the edge off. 

Prioritize feeling good. 

You deserve it and you need it. 

drglenndoyle

Trauma recovery is hard. But not impossible.

Yes, trauma recovery is hard. 

But Trauma Brain, the internalized voices of your abusers and bullies, is trying to tell you it’s “impossible.” 

Trauma recovery is not impossible. 

There have been survivors recovering from their trauma for centuries. Long before therapy or Twelve Step were things. 

And, there will be survivors recovering from trauma long after therapy, Twelve Step, or any other recovery tool we use today is long forgotten. 

You, working your trauma recovery, are in some incredible company. 

Some of the most brilliant, important people in history were survivors who figured out the “combination lock” to their own trauma recovery. 

Hell, some of the greatest human accomplishments have been achieved specifically because survivors took their recovery seriously. 

Trauma recovery is hard. 

But it is possible. 

And the extent to which we do recover is largely within our control.

Do not, do not, do not misunderstand me to be saying that all we ever have to do is work on ourselves. That’s not what I believe. 

The world absolutely needs working on, too. 

There are ongoing traumatic situations in the world that, I believe, can only be meaningfully altered by survivors working our recovery. 

Because who else is going to do it? 

Who else has the tools and the focus and the determination to do it? 

It’s going to be trauma survivors working our recovery. That’s who will change things. That’s almost always who changes things. 

But my point is, I’m not trying to see you some version of radical personal responsibility (though I do lean toward the “radical personal responsibility” in my own, personal recovery frame, for what it’s worth). 

I’m not trying to see you some bootstraps fantasy. 

Of course there are things outside of us that come to bear on our recovery. It’s not all up to us. It’s not all about our choices. 

But a lot of it is. 

And it’s our job to find that proportion of trauma recovery that we can meaningfully influence (not “control”). 

That’s why we start with self talk, mental focus, and physiology. 

That’s why we keep turning back toward self-esteem and our relationship with ourselves. 

Trauma recovery is hard. 

But it is not impossible. 

And it starts as an inside-out job. 

Breathe. Blink. Focus. 

drglenndoyle

Working our trauma recovery makes us less vulnerable to manipulation.

Working your trauma recovery will make you less easy to control. 

Why? 

Because working your trauma is going to require you to get real clear and serious about who you are— who you choose to be, not who they told you you were “supposed” to be. 

For most of our lives, we try to operate on that basis: being who we were told we were, or who we were “supposed” to be. 

Our earliest self-judgments are us comparing who we were to who our parents or teachers said we “should” be. 

In the best possible world, childhood and adolescence are about breaking free of those ideas, and defining our own identity. 

But what happens if our childhood and adolescence was mostly comprised of us trying to stay alive, physically or emotionally? 

What happens if we lack the safety and support to do what we’d have to do to figure that out? 

Speaking for myself, my childhood and adolescence was mostly spent just trying to not hurt (which, ironically, often involved literally, physically hurting myself). 

I spent much of my childhood and adolescence— and young adulthood, and not-so-young adulthood, for that matter— trying desperately to manage emotional states that I didn’t understand, and didn’t have much help in understanding. 

Figuring out who I really was, independent of the parental expectations I was constantly falling short of, wasn’t really on my radar screen as a project. 

I was too busy hating myself for not being whoever I needed to be to keep my family and my peers from bullying me. 

Which is to say, when I finally came around to understanding that my life had to be about working a recovery, I had some work to do in learning who I was and what I was all about. 

As long as we’re unclear or conflicted about that, though— as I was, and as you may be— we are incredibly vulnerable to manipulation. 

This has nothing to do with intelligence. It has everything to do with unmet emotional needs. 

When we grow up abused or neglected, we often have at least one “part” of us that would do anything for validation and safety. 

We feel the instability of never having had real safety or support, and that makes us vulnerable to “fawn” flavored responses that will have us people pleasing like our life depends on it (because “part” of us might honestly believe that our life DOES depend on gaining others’ approval or affection). 

As long as “fawn” is a central organizing principle of our psychology, we are vulnerable to manipulation. 

We’re vulnerable to false promises. 

We’re vulnerable to love bombing. 

We’re vulnerable to young, lonely “parts” of ourselves taking the wheel, especially when it comes to relationship decisions. 

Working our trauma recovery doesn’t immediately solve this problem— but it puts compassionately, realistically managing that “fawn” trauma response squarely at the center of our focus. 

Proving to ourselves, again and again, that we WILL be there for ourselves; that we DO have our own back; that we ARE on our own side— that’s what progressively insulates us against manipulation. 

We are vulnerable as long as “they” have something— approval— that we really, really want. 

We may still want approval— but the self-esteem work we do every day in trauma recovery keeps us from needing it to the point of self-abandonment. 

Yes, the work involved in trauma recovery can be a hassle. 

But it is infinitely less exhausting— and less dangerous— than letting our “fawn” response make our decisions for us.

Breathe. Blink. Focus. 

And have your own back today. 

drglenndoyle

You got skills, they’re mutiplyin’.

There are going to be trauma recovery tools that can actually move the needle for you, but which get absurdly oversimplified in pop culture. 

Breathing is one. 

Grounding is another. 

Meditation is one. 

Journaling is a big one. 

Each of those can be game changers in your trauma recovery— but they get watered down and trivialized in the public discourse, so much so that each one, at first mention, sounds like weak sauce. 

Don’t get me wrong, there are absolutely superficial ways to “try” any of the above. 

If you really think breathing is as straightforward as “in and out,” you’re probably not impressed by all the reminders to “breathe.” 

If you think grounding is just “five things you can see, four things you can hear, three things you can touch,” blah blah blah, you’re probably not convinced it can be useful tool to manage dissociation or flashbacks. 

If you think meditation is just sitting on the floor going “ommmm,” you’re probably unmotivated to try to establish a mediation practice as part of your recovery. 

And if you think journaling is just “write about your feelings,” then not only do you probably not buy that it is a tool (I would call it a fundamental tool) in trauma recovery, but you probably think it’s a questionable idea that could make you vulnerable to flooding. 

All fair. 

The reality is, I can’t give you a full on seminar on each of those tools here. There isn’t space for that here— but more to the point, teaching and learning each of those four tools in ways that are applicable to your recovery could fill not just four books, but four times four books. 

That is to say, there’s more to each of those tools than many people realize, because they get flattened out and caricatured in public discussions. 

Truth is, breathing is the most accessible lever to toggling your vagus nerve and intentionally shifting between sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system dominance. Entire books have been written about the centrality of breathing to mental and physical health. 

Truth is, without grounding skills— that go beyond the well-known 5,4,3,2,1 technique— are not just helpful at managing dissociation, flashbacks, and even nightmares, they’re foundational. Other skills don’t work well, or at all, if we don’t take connecting to the here and now seriously. 

Truth is, meditation and self-hypnosis are the type of intentionally, naturally altered states of consciousness that make the neural rewiring trauma recovery requires possible at all. 

And the truth is, guided journaling is the single most effective lever I’ve ever developed in processing my own trauma. It’s not even close. More so than therapy, even. 

My point is: if a tool sounds like weak sauce, look closer. 

Pop culture drastically oversimplifies most tools of emotional regulation and behavior change. 

What you see in movies and on TV when people make significant changes in their lives is rarely how it works. 

Don’t toss out a potential tool just because it sounds stupid or superficial. 

Breathing, grounding, meditation, and journaling, among other tools, have been around for a long time and continue to be part of the trauma recovery conversation for one main reason: they work. 

(And but also, not for nothing, they’re free, at least once you learn to use them well.) 

Look closer. 

Dive deeper. 

There are recovery levers you haven’t known to pull because of how they’ve been presented to you— but which can seriously change how you feel and function.