drglenndoyle

CPTSD’s long con.

CPTSD tricks us. 

It cons us. 

It gets us talking to ourselves like our abusers and bullies talked to us, often without even realizing it. 

CPTSD gets us believing that we “deserve” bad things to happen to us. 

CPTSD gets us believing we don’t deserve good things to happen to us. 

CPTSD gets us believing EVERYTHING is our fault, and EVERYTHING is our responsibility. 

It’s all a big con— but, like most big cons, it all feels very real. 

Do you know why cons are called “cons?” It comes from the word “confidence”— as in, the con artist has to evoke confidence in us that what we’re thinking and feeling is real. 

But in the case of trauma programming, it’s not real. It just FEELS very real. 

I know, I know. You might have Trauma Brain in your ear right now, telling you that, no, actually, YOUR negative thoughts and feelings about yourself are REAL. That YOUR painful thoughts and feelings represent truth, not “programming.” 

Of course it’s going to say that. Trauma Brain is the internalized voices of our abusers and bullies. 

It’s in on the scam. 

You don’t suck.

You may be vulnerable and you may be wounded, but you’re not “bad.” 

You may be tired, but you’re not “weak.” 

Nobody who has been through what you’ve been through can be called “weak.” 

CPTSD differs slightly from traditional PTSD, insofar as traditional PTSD tends to focus on what we went through— whereas CPTSD tends to focus on who we are. 

That’s what happens when your trauma includes heavy elements of betrayal, deception, coercion, or exploitation.

The trauma endured day after day, year after year, in abusive or neglectful relationships affects us in ways that aren’t captured in the diagnostic criteria of traditional PTSD. 

Betrayal, deception, coercion, and exploitation have effects on the nervous system that weren’t well understood until relatively recently. 

It all adds up to us being conned— conned into believing things about ourselves that just aren’t true. 

Even if you’re not living the life you would prefer to live right now. 

Even if you’ve fallen short of your own expectations. 

Even if you’ve been vulnerable to substances and behaviors of addiction. 

Even if you’re not your best self right now, and your trauma history is contributing to that. 

Even then: the bullsh*t CPTSD is trying to tell you about yourself, other people, the world, and the future, isn’t true. 

You get to decide who you are. 

You get to decide what matters to you. 

You get to decide what are worthy investments of your attention and energy. 

Your future is not set in stone. 

Your “potential” has not been “wasted.” 

Do not buy into CPTSD’s long con. 

Just keep bringing your attention back to right here, right now. Just keep identifying the next teeny, tiny, recovery supporting micro choice in front of you. 

Just keep paying attention to whether your self-talk, mental focus, and physiology realistically supports you in feeling safe and stable, or not. 

You’re not the first or last trauma survivor to get conned by CPTSD. It’s an equal opportunity scam artist. 

But you don’t have to stay a mark forever. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

And work your recovery today. 

drglenndoyle

Here’s to my fellow imperfect survivors.

Chances are, if you’re reading this, you’ve been told what to do and who to be for years. Maybe decades. 

Chances are you’re still being told what to do and who to be, at least by someone. 

We get those messages all the time. 

We get told who we “have” to be, to be “worthy.” 

We get told what we “have” to feel, to be “acceptable.” 

The implicit message that comes with all those things is, if we DON’T happen to be that person or feel those things, that we’ll be rejected. 

Abandoned. Maybe punished. 

Sometimes the people who are laying those messages on us have good intentions, or at least they think they do. 

They truly think that they’re doing us a favor by “making” us be and feel things that will make us more “sympathetic.” 

Here’s the thing about many trauma survivors: we’re not uniformly, perfectly sympathetic. 

We’re human. We’re imperfect. 

We’re going to have our less than sympathetic moments and moods and verbalizations— not because we’re terrible, but because we’re real. 

Us being “worthy” of existence, of support, of understanding, of safety, shouldn’t depend on us being perfect, or even sympathetic. 

Have you ever heard the expression “the perfect survivor?” 

That refers to a trope of a trauma survivor who is “perfectly” sympathetic— vulnerable but not too vulnerable, wounded but not too wounded, wounded in ways that don’t get in the way of being polite or kind…and, often, physically attractive. 

That’s what the culture likes in its trauma surivors, or at least the trauma survivors its interested in acknowledging and supporting and making movies about. 

But that doesn’t perfectly describe all of us, does it? 

It certainly doesn’t describe me. 

The reality is, your resemblance to the “perfect” trauma survivor has f*ck all to do with your “worthiness.” 

It has f*ck all to do with whether you should be believed about your trauma. 

It has f*ck all to do with whether you “deserve” support, or resources, or safety, or kindness. 

Here’s to all my fellow “imperfect” trauma survivors. 

The survivors who, like me, can be a pain in the ass. 

The survivors who, like me, sometimes have a sh*tty attitude. 

The survivors who, like me, often play out our trauma wounds in our relationships. 

The survivors who, like me, don’t immediately get the benefit of the doubt because of the fortuitous placement of our cheekbones. 

(Understand, I don’t have anything against physically attractive people— I’m just acknowledging how our culture’s assumptions about and attitudes toward physical attractiveness impact how our needs get addressed.) 

We’ve been told for years who we need to be and what we need to feel to be “worthy.” 

And it’s been mostly bullsh*t. 

It’s BS that contributed to our BS (Belief Systems). 

And it’s BS that we need to unwind in recovery. 

That can start today. 

drglenndoyle

Validation, distortion, self-trust, & self-esteem.

Validation gets a bad rap. 

Some people seem to think validation means leaning into everything we think or feel. 

It’s not. 

We are going to think and feel plenty of distorted things, thanks to our trauma conditioning. 

Leaning into everything we think or feel would result in us not even trying to work our recovery some nights that are particularly hopeless. 

What validation IS is, when we think or feel something, we don’t immediately reject it. 

We lead off with how this thing we’re thinking or feeling makes sense. 

We give this thing we’re thinking or feeling permission to exist. We don’t demand it go away or be different immediately. 

Why does validation matter in CPTSD recovery? 

Because most of us survivors have, for years, been told that what we think and feel is by definition INVALID. 

We’ve been told we’re “crazy.” 

We’ve been told we’re “weak.” 

We’ve been told, in various ways, that we’re “bad” for thinking and feeling what we do. 

Leaning into THOSE reflexive judgments will mangle our self-esteem, and keep us from building the self-trust we need to climb out of this CPTSD Sarlacc pit. 

I’m a therapist. I listen to plenty of survivors confidently tell me things that I know aren’t true— things like how they don’t deserve to live, how they are unlikeable or unloveable, how they can’t do “anything” right. 

If I responded to all of those things by immediately saying “you’re wrong, crazy and/or bad for thinking or feeling that,” what impact do you think it would have? 

It would have the immediate impact, at least, of those survivors never telling me anything vulnerable again. 

We don’t tend to confide in people who lean into how invalid our thoughts and feelings are— whether they’re our therapist or ourselves. 

When we have thoughts and feelings, we can’t leap right to trying to invalidate them. Not if our goal is to build self trust and self-esteem. 

Nor do we have to go all in and affirm that everything we think and feel is literally 100% accurate— and by the way, that would be true whether or not Trauma Brain was messing with our thoughts and beliefs about ourselves. 

NO human being has “100% accurate” thoughts and feelings all the time. 

What we’re trying to do in realistic trauma recovery is counteract the gaslighting and belittling of our past by validating what we think and feel— but also supporting our recovery by compassionately reality testing it. 

Many trauma survivors are sick to death of cognitive behavioral therapy responding to every one of their self-statements with condescending skepticism, and that’s completely legit. 

Validation is the key to reality testing our inner world without buying into the distorted, destructive thoughts and beliefs Trauma Brain is pumping into our head. 

Many people want to oversimplify validation. Validation is not, actually, a simplistic or black-and-white recovery tool. 

It’s a perspective shift that hooks into a larger recovery supporting mindset: our absolute refusal to shame or attack ourselves, no matter what we’ve been conditioned to do by our bullies and abusers. 

Validation is not a touchy-feely, pop psychology thing. 

It’s part of a practical, hard nosed commitment to relate to ourselves fairly and compassionately. 

Our thoughts and feelings are 100% valid. 

And, they can get distorted by our trauma conditioning, especially when it comes to how we feel and what we believe about ourselves and the future. 

Investigate and realist test your thoughts and feelings— even as you acknowledge that they make sense, that they’re important, and that they don’t mean anything toxic about you. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

drglenndoyle

Handling Wednesday.

Not all of our triggers are these huge, dramatic, obvious things. 

Sometimes we’re just getting the sh*t kicked out of us by, like, a Wednesday. 

Sometimes it really is just a day that’s hard for us— no special reason. 

Those days can be confusing. 

In trauma recovery sometimes we can extend ourselves some grace for getting triggered by something obviously related to our trauma, or something particularly stressful— but just, like a weekday? 

Those moments can be dangerous for our recovery. 

Those are the moments when we’re at risk of minimizing or belittling our triggers. 

The reality is, there are going to be lots of times when we’re not quite sure why we’re triggered. 

Something is obviously going on with us, but we can’t quite put our finger on it. 

In those moments our old programming can take over, and we can really sh*t on ourselves for supposedly being “weak” or “dramatic.” 

“What’s the matter with you, you can’t handle a normal WEDNESDAY?”, Trauma Brain will sneer at us. 

But the fact that we can’t identify quite why we’re struggling on a weekday isn’t all that weird— and it’s not a reason to ignore or belittle our struggle. 

So we’re struggling on what appears to be a pretty “normal” day. And? 

That doesn’t mean we’re “weak” or “dramatic.” 

It means something’s happening beneath the surface that we’re not quite consciously aware of— but our nervous system is responding. 

It’s real important we approach those moments with compassion, patience, and realism. 

Compassion matters because sustainable trauma recovery requires us to give ourselves the benefit of the doubt— to be on our own side when symptoms spike, whether or not we understand or like what’s going on. 

Patience matters because we’re not always going to immediately understand what’s going on— we’ll need to sit with it until we understand it a little better, until it tells us what we need to know about it. 

And realism matters because we can’t get swept up in our fantasies about how we “should” feel or respond to life— we have to deal with what we’re actually experiencing. 

Struggling with a “normal” day or night is one of the most common experiences of trauma survivors. 

It doesn’t mean we “can’t handle” life— it means that our trauma symptoms and struggles get their hooks into our everyday existence. 

That’s really kind of the essence of CPTSD (and DID, for that matter): it’s trauma that permeates into our minutes, our hours, our days, often in ways that aren’t “obviously” related to what happened. 

Struggling with Wednesday happens. Don’t overthink it and don’t over interpret it. 

Just keep coming back to the tools you have every day in trauma recovery, including on a hard Wednesday: self talk, mental focus, and physiology. 

We’re not going to shame ourselves into being able to handle Wednesdays better. 

After all, if shame worked to positively or permanently change before, it would have worked by now, don’t you think? 

Easy does it. Breathe; blink; focus. 

Wednesdays will get easier. 

drglenndoyle

Keep it in the day.

One of my own challenges in trauma and addiction recovery has been what they call “keeping it in the day” in the Twelve Step tradition. 

What that means is, manage today. 

We can get freaked out by thinking of trauma or addiction recovery as a lifelong process. 

Trauma survivors in particular are sensitive to feeling overwhelmed and inadequate— and the idea that recovery is this hard, complicated thing we have to “do” every day for the rest of our lives can really mess with us. 

“One day at a time” isn’t just a catchy recovery slogan. It’s a very practical mindset tool. 

It may seem obvious that all we can manage today IS today, but that can be easy to forget. 

We trauma survivors in particular tend to think in big, dramatic, overachieving chunks. 

We tend to go big or go home. 

So it can be hard for us to “keep it in the day”— to focus on this twenty four hours. 

A recovery tool that changed things for me was the morning exercise I learned while listening to a Nathaniel Branden audio program about self esteem: starting each day writing down not only what I wanted out of life, but identifying things I could do that day to nudge toward those goals. 

The rule with that exercise is, ONLY things we KNOW we can realistically do within these twenty four hours can go on that list. 

So, for example: while my “what do I want” goal may have been to “become a psychologist,” “earn a doctorate” couldn’t go on the “things I can do today” list, because that’s a multi-year project.

What COULD go on the “things I can do today” list? Maybe identifying a doctoral program; maybe starting an application; or, later, doing my daily studying or paper writing.

I didn’t actually make progress toward becoming a psychologist until I learned to “keep it in the day.” 

Every recovery goal or task is like this. 

We can look at the larger arc— in fact, it’s important to regularly check in with where we are with our big, little, and medium scale goals— but we have to, have to, have to keep returning to what we can do today. 

We also have to be realistic about what our specific trauma recovery challenges are, today. 

Yes, we can identify larger issues and challenges in our trauma recovery— and, again, it’s important to check in with our recovery arc on the regular— but we have to keep coming back, again and again, to what’s actually on our plate today. 

If we’re not managing today’s symptoms and triggers, we’re not managing our trauma recovery.

When in doubt, keep it in the day. 

Also when not in doubt. 

An always relevant Recovery Supporting Question (RSQ) is, “what are my strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats today?”

(This is known as a “SWOT analysis, and it’s another powerful, practical recovery mindset tool.) 

“Keeping it in the day” doesn’t mean we lose sight of the overall arc. 

It means that our top priority is always our safety and stability today. 

Another recovery mindset tool I value is a perspective from the Rational Recovery tradition that is related to Addiction Voice Recognition Technique (AVRT), which reminds us that the rest of our life is always going to be a series of present moments. 

That is to say, if you can effectively manage the present moment, you can manage your recovery— indeed the ONLY way to manage your recovery IS to manage the present moment. 

All that said: I’m not, actually, one of those therapists who believes survivors should NEVER think about the past or the future. 

I think visualizing the past and the future can be incredibly useful mindset tools, especially when the present moment sucks. 

I think the key to utilizing memories of the past and fantasies of the future effectively is to be really conscious about how and why we’re doing it— rather than letting those memories and fantasies “hijack” our focus against our will. 

But even when we’re leveraging memories of the past or fantasies of the future to influence how we feel and function, we’re STILL managing the present moment and “keeping it in the day.” 

Using those mindset tools produces a result here and now— i.e., it’s part of our toolbox for managing these twenty four hours (specifically, this sixty seconds). 

Whatever recovery tools work for you, leverage them in the context of managing today. 

Don’t freak yourself out about the rest of your life. 

Focus and refocus on the day in front of you, the hour in front of you, the minute in front of you. 

Manage the present moment, and the rest of your life will take care of itself. 

Breathe, blink, focus. 

drglenndoyle

Gotta start somewhere to get somewhere.

For years, we were doing our best with what we had. 

There’s no shame in that. 

Many of us trauma survivors fall into this trap of shaming and blaming ourselves for struggling in the past. 

We tell ourselves we “could” have or “should” have done better, sooner. 

We tell ourselves we could have gotten out of situations. 

We tell ourselves we could have made better choices. 

We tell ourselves we could have just done better in life. 

The reality is, many of us were functioning remarkably well, given what we were dealing with. 

The reality is, many of us were doing more than anyone could have reasonably expected of us, given the lack of safety and support we endured. 

The reality is, many of us STILL overachieved relative to our peers— even while telling ourselves we “should” be doing “better.” 

You and I only had to work with what we had to work with. 

Our coping patterns represented our attempts to make chicken salad out of chicken sh*t. 

How on earth were we supposed to develop emotional regulation, when the adults around us were anything but regulated? 

How were we supposed to escape defensive, self-defeating relationship patterns, when we never saw healthy relationships modeled?

How were we supposed to set goals and work toward them in realistic increments, when the expectations of us were arbitrary and constantly changing? 

None of this is an “excuse.” 

It’s just the reality that many of us had to work with. 

There was, and is, no shame in doing what we can with what we have. 

The only difference between a survivor who is further along in our trauma recovery and a survivor who is struggling in early recovery is that the more experienced survivor has tools and perspectives that early recovery survivor doesn’t yet have. 

It’s not shameful to lack tools you were never given. 

It’s not shameful to not be good at things you never had the opportunity to practice. 

Here, now, you and I are learning and practicing trauma recovery tools grounded in realistic, recovery supporting self-talk, mental focus, and physiology. 

We’re giving ourselves the grace to be as inexperienced with them as we are, and the room to grow as we practice and develop them. 

That’s what trauma recovery truly is: an ongoing process of realistic, sustainable learning. 

As it turns out, learning doesn’t happen if we’re busy shaming ourselves for not knowing what we didn’t know, or not being able to do what we couldn’t do. 

I know, it’s not always fun to be a learner. Believe me, I know. 

Being a work in progress sometimes sucks. We want to be the master, who whips out skills and tools effortlessly and intuitively. 

We’ll get there. 

But the first step to being good at something, is sucking at it. 

Gotta start somewhere to get somewhere. 

Dare to suck today. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

drglenndoyle

What to do about that pesky “freeze” response.

When we’re trying to shake out of a “freeze” response, we have to think small. 

After all, frozen things don’t “melt” all at once. 

And, for that matter, you can’t “force” a frozen thing to melt. 

To me the best way of getting out of a freeze state starts with wiggling my pinky finger. 

Not even a wag— just a little, teeny, tiny movement. 

The essence of “freeze” is that a part of us believes if we move, we’ll be seen, and we’ll be in danger. 

It’s like that scene in “Jurassic Park,” when Dr. Gran asserts that the tyrannosaurus’s vision is based on movement— so to staying still means staying safe. 

Our nervous system has no interest in suddenly, charismatically bursting out of that “freeze” state. That would feel overwhelmingly dangerous. 

What our nervous system needs is a little, teeny, tiny bit of proof that it’s safe to move. 

We can give that to it, by wiggling our little finger. 

It’s such a teeny, tiny movement, and usually one we can manage, even when we’re “frozen.” 

Not only does wiggling our little finger start building momentum, but, more importantly, it demonstrates to our nervous system that movement is safe. 

We wiggled our little finger, and the world didn’t end. The T-Rex didn’t eat us. 

That being the case, our nervous system might let us wiggle a few adjacent fingers— just testing the waters, seeing if it’s safe. 

That’s how we get out of “freeze”— not by telling, but by showing, our nervous system that movement is safe. 

We wiggle our little finger; then a few more fingers; then maybe we open and close our hand 

Then maybe we move around our wrist a little; then maybe we move our forearm. 

Bit by bit, body part by body part. Imagine your body parts warming up, after being physically cold and frozen. 

Imagine how you might gently, gingerly move your body parts, to get warmth and circulation moving again. 

You wouldn’t aggressively jerk or shake your fingers or other body parts if they’d been frozen or had fallen asleep. You’d be gentle. You’d move from little appendage to progressively bigger ones. 

We need to meet every trauma response, including “freeze,” with validation and respect— not a demand that it immediately change. 

Trauma responses are not “choices,” and they don’t happen for the hell of it. 

Meeting our “freeze” response with gentle, tiny movement that gets progressively bigger is us meeting it with care. It’s us working with our nervous system and “parts,” not against them. 

So— don’t overthink “freeze.” 

Just wiggle your pinkie finger. 

And then go from there. 

drglenndoyle

Trauma, choices, and “choices.”

Ever not been your best self? Me too. 

Ever had your trauma symptoms contribute to you not being your best self? Me too. 

The fact that sometimes our trauma symptoms contribute to us not being our best self, doesn’t negate our responsibility in those situations. 

And, the fact that we’re responsible for our behavior doesn’t negate the fact that trauma can contribute to our vulnerability to certain moods and decisions. 

It’s complicated. 

Many of us walk around feeling guilty for even having trauma symptoms. 

Those aren’t, actually, our fault or “choice.” 

The choices we DO have often get obscured by our trauma symptoms— by how overwhelming they are, by how painful they are. 

Some of us made poor “choices” because we truly didn’t see any survivable alternatives. 

Some of us made certain choices because we did not have the safety or support to realistically choose otherwise. 

And some of us made certain choices because we were never taught how to make different choices. 

As a rule, I’m not a fan of shaming ourselves over our supposed “choices.” 

Whether we could have made different choices or not— we didn’t. And we can’t change the past. 

Shame is just not an effective behavior change lever, in my experience. Not for long, and not without destructive side effects, anyway. 

And but also, I am a big fan of identifying choices we do realistically have. 

We do have choices when it comes to self-acceptance. 

We do have choices when it comes to living consciously or going on autopilot. 

We do have choices when it comes to learning about our basic needs— predictability, novelty, significance, connection, growth, and contribution— and making teeny, tiny micro choices every day that move toward meeting our needs. 

We do have choices when it comes to acknowledging, validating, and communicating with our “parts,” including our dissociative self-states. 

We don’t have the choice to just not have CPTSD or DID. 

We don’t have the choice to forget or “stuff” our past experiences indefinitely. 

We don’t have the choice to just not do any of this “trauma recovery” stuff, and expect to be safe and stable. 

Sometimes we’re not our best self, and sometimes our trauma symptoms contribute to that. That’s reality. That describes everybody reading this, and definitely the person writing this. 

Realistic trauma recovery hinges on identifying and leaning into the choices we realistically have. 

(Notice Trauma Brain piping up right now, telling you you actually don’t have any meaningful choices? That’s Trauma Brain being predictable and tiresome— and a pretty good indication that you have more choices than Trauma Brain has let you believe over the years.)

Breathe; blink; focus. 

drglenndoyle

Trauma Brain is neither “objective” nor “reliable.”

Don’t mistake Trauma Brain for a reliable source of information. 

Trauma Brain is the internalized voices of our abusers and bullies. 

It’d be like if our abusers and bullies bought a cable news network, the subject of which was us and our lives. 

All day, every day, their reporters would produce stories about us— but do you think those stories would be accurate, coming from our abusers and bullies? 

Not hardly. 

They’d probably focus disproportionately on how we suck. 

They’d focus on how our problems were our fault— and definitely not the fault of our abusers and bullies, who just happen to own the network. 

Those stories would focus on how we’re probably doing life entirely wrong— especially if we’re working a trauma recovery and trying to break free of our bullies’ and abusers’ influence. 

If our bullies and abusers had a cable news network, that’s what we’d expect. 

What we need to understand is that the cable news network that our bullies and abusers do have, and which is broadcasting 24/7/365, is Trauma Brain. 

Trauma Brain is particularly tricky, too, because it is the result of conditioning over time— meaning we often don’t realize that what we’re “hearing” from it is anything other than our own, spontaneous, “natural” thoughts. 

We readily acknowledge when a cable news network run by people with whom we disagree, runs news stories with a particular “slant.” 

We understand that cable news networks that have an agenda are going to omit certain facts and spin others, such that their point of view is strengthened.

I’m telling you, Trauma Brain is doing that right now, inside the head of every survivor. 

Trauma Brain omits facts. 

Trauma Brain spins other facts. 

Trauma Brain is NOT an objective source of information, any more than the cable news network run by your least favorite political actors is. 

Yet, we know that the biases and agendas of cable news networks don’t keep some people from watching them, and believing everything they broadcast. 

Any smart, objective person understands that the real truth is probably not what is being broadcast by those networks. 

And survivors who succeed at trauma recovery understand that Trauma Brain is not so much a truth-seeker or truth-teller, as it it is a spin doctor or an advertising executive. 

Trauma Brain is in the business of persuasion and coercion— not information. 

Yes, Trauma Brain can be convincing. So can cable news networks. 

But remember who is pulling the strings. 

Remember what the real agenda is. 

Remember that in order to see what we see and know what we know, we have to step back from the “news” ticker. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

And look closer. 

drglenndoyle

Go ahead. Be needy.

Realistic trauma recovery is ultimately about self-care. Radical self-care. 

And radical self-care requires radical acceptance— but that’s a different subject. 

What do I mean when I say self-care? I don’t mean it in the abstract way it’s often thrown around. 

I mean self-care in the literal sense: are we caring for ourselves? As in, are we meeting our needs? 

Trauma survivors often have a complicated relationship with our needs. 

We’ve often been conditioned to believe our needs don’t matter. 

We’ve been conditioned to believe even HAVING needs, let alone expressing them, makes us “too much.” A “burden.” “High maintenance.” 

I’m going to tell you the exact opposite: getting in touch with our needs and taking realistic steps toward meeting our needs is essential. Non-negotiable. 

What are our needs, beyond survival needs like nutrition and hydration and rest? 

Different theorists are going to have different answers to that question, but the framework I like the best posits six psychological needs that are shared by almost all humans: predictability, novelty, significance, connection, growth, and contribution. 

Most psychological needs I hear expressed by most people trace back to one or more of those. 

Predictability is a particularly important need for trauma survivors, insofar as our experiences have “taught” us that the world is unpredictable and uncontrollable— often in tragic, painful ways. 

But we also have a psychological need for novelty— to not have EVERY event of our life scripted out in advance, which would lead us to becoming bored and unmotivated. 

(In my experience, the tension between our needs for predictability and novelty often help explain our relationship and career choices— for better or worse.) 

Similarly, trauma survivors tend to have a conflicted relationship with our need for significance— to know we matter, that our existence and happiness is important— because we’ve been told over and over again by our bullies and abusers that we DON’T matter. 

The need for connection can also throw us survivors for a loop— I’m not sure we simultaneously crave and fear anything as intensely as connection on a daily basis. 

Growth can be a tricky need for trauma survivors, especially when we’ve gotten the sh*t kicked out of us by Trauma Brain to the tune of, “your life is over, don’t bother trying to learn anything new or develop any new skills.” 

Likewise, Trauma Brain can get us sideways with our need to contribute, insofar as it can convince us we don’t HAVE anything to meaningfully contribute to other people or the world. 

There’s no denying that we trauma survivors can have enormously tumultuous, complicated relationships with each of the six basic psychological needs— but we cannot let that stop us from taking each need seriously, and taking realistic steps to meet each need in some way. 

We do not recover from trauma by pretending certain of our basic psychological needs “don’t matter.” 

We don’t recover from trauma by deciding we’re just going to ignore needs that we feel weird or icky about. 

Radical self-care of the kind that heals trauma asks us to take our needs seriously. 

I recommend writing them down— predictability, novelty, significance, connection, growth, and contribution— and keeping them handy. Check in on them every now and then, and ask how your life patterns are or aren’t serving them. 

We can’t escape our needs. 

And, as it turns out, we don’t need to. 

Regardless of the bullsh*t Trauma Brain is whispering in your ear right now.