drglenndoyle

Sacrificing self harm, so we don’t become the “sacrifice.”

Trauma recovery is going to ask us to do some hard things— no all of which have to do with confronting trauma memories & feelings. 

Some of the hardest things trauma recovery asks us to do, are the things it asks us to not do. 

For example: trauma recovery is going to ask us to not harm ourselves. 

That’s harder than it seems for a lot of survivors. 

For a lot of survivors, harming ourselves is what we’ve been trained to do. It’s what we’re used to doing. 

For some survivors, harming ourselves is the only way we’ve found— yet— to change how we feel. 

For many survivors, self-harm is what we’ve been conditioned to believe we “deserve.” 

Yet: trauma recovery is going to ask us to not do that. 

Why? Not because we’re “bad” for doing it. 

It’s because trauma recovery is fundamentally about reshaping our relationship with ourselves to be safe and sustainable— and it’s hard to build a safe, sustainable relationship with someone you’re harming. 

It’s also because, as we get deeper into trauma recovery, we start to understand that we’re still carrying around younger versions of who we once were — “parts” of us— in our head and heart, and it very frequently scares and hurts them if we harm ourselves, even as a self regulatory strategy. 

I know better than most that not harming ourselves is sometimes not so simple or easy, any more than giving up other addictions are simple or easy. 

Self harm can be a deeply ingrained behavior pattern that we’ve come to rely on. I’ve known people who have considered self harm their only “friend,” in exactly the way I once considered my substances and behaviors of addiction as “friendly” and familiar. 

But self harm is something we just cannot take with us into recovery. Not if we want it to be realistic, not if we want it to be sustainable. 

Trust me, I know what Trauma Brain is saying to you right now. 

“He just doesn’t get it.” 

“He’s just saying that because it’s what therapists are supposed to say.” 

“He doesn’t know you, maybe you’re the exception, the one survivor who can recover while hiding your self harm. F*ck that guy.” 

(Believe me: you’re not going to be the one survivor who figures out how to drag their self harm habit into recovery. You’re not The Exception, any more than I am.)

Trauma recovery is about thinking, believing, feeing, and doing unfamiliar stuff— and also giving up some stuff that is familiar, but which communicates to our “parts” and inner child that we are “deserving” of pain. 

Ultimately, self harm imitates our bullies and abusers. 

And we’re done with that noise. 

We need to sacrifice self harm— so our recovery does not become the sacrifice. 

drglenndoyle

Nope. Not “stupid.”

That thing you think or feel, that you keep telling yourself is “stupid?” Is not stupid. 

There is nothing you can think or feel that is “stupid.” 

What we think and feel is just what we think and feel. No more; no less; no shame. 

Why do we hurl those labels at ourselves? “Stupid?” “Childish?” “Pointless?” 

Mostly because we’ve had those labels hurled at us. Sometimes over a long period of time; sometimes by people who claimed to “love” us.

We’re doing what we saw modeled. 

It’s true that we can, and often do, think and feel things that get in the way of our goals. 

Sometimes we think and feel things that make us feel not so great. 

Even those things aren’t “stupid.” Or “childish” or “pointless,” for that matter. 

If we’re serious about trauma recovery, we’re going to have to get out of the habit of mocking or dismissing or disparaging what we think and feel. 

Even when we don’t understand it. Even when we don’t love it. 

Here’s the thing: we don’t think or feel the things we think or feel on accident. 

They all make sense. 

They’re all tied to something important. 

Even the ones that seem “stupid” or “childish” or “pointless”— they’re important. They’re hooked into “parts” of us that are important. 

I don’t love everything I think or feel. There’s actually a lot that I think and feel that seems to work against my goals, that gets me behaving in ways that almost sabotage myself. 

It took a long time to get out of the habit of attacking myself when that happened. 

Our nervous system, our “parts,” our inner child— they’re not trying to sabotage us with the thought and feelings they throw our way. 

They’re just experiencing what they’re experiencing. They didn’t ask for those thoughts or feelings any more than we did. 

Meet thoughts and feelings you don’t love with acceptance and patience and realism. 

For that matter, meet the “parts” of yourself you don’t understand or love with acceptance and patience and realism. 

I’ve said it before: the quality of our trauma recovery is the quality of our relationship with ourselves. 

And good relationships are not built by hating on the things the person we’re trying to have a relationship with thinks or feels. 

drglenndoyle

Trauma recovery and the zen of checking in.

One of the hardest parts of trauma recovery for many people is the check-ins. 

Trauma recovery thrives on self-check ins. 

So many of us were taught to deny, disown and ignore what was going on with us when we were growing up— physically, emotionally, spiritually. 

It’s really hard to meaningfully recover from trauma without reversing that habit of self-avoidance. 

That is to say: we need to check in. Take our own temperature. 

We need to ask good questions of ourselves— all day, every day. 

If we leave ourselves on CPTSD autopilot, we’re going to fall back into old patterns of self-neglect. Not because we want to, but because that’s our conditioning. 

Realistic trauma recovery means taking care of ourselves— and we can’t realistically take care of ourselves if we’re not paying attention to ourselves. 

Thing is: that’s hard. Checking in with ourselves is a hassle. 

Frequently we’ve gotten into the habit of not checking in with ourselves, because we don’t love what we see when we do. 

We avoid our sh*t for a reason. 

So those self-check ins, that are so important to meaningful trauma recovery, are harder than maybe they “should” be. 

You’re not alone in being reluctant to do it. 

You’re not alone in finding it hard. 

The key to the self check-ins is to not make them harder than they have to be. 

A self check-in doesn’t have to be comprehensive. You don’t need to go down a checklist. 

The main purpose of the self check-in is to communicate to yourself, to your nervous system and “parts.” 

We’re communicating to ourselves that our feelings matter. 

That our needs matter. 

The self-check in communicates to ourselves that, even if we were neglected for years by the people who were supposed to love us the most and pay the most attention to us, we’re no longer invisible. 


We’re no longer expendable or forgettable. 

Something I say to my patients a lot is, “recovery dies in silence.” 

What I mean by that is, we need self-communication in trauma recovery. We need to rewire and recondition how we talk to ourselves, how we direct our mental focus. 

We need to reshape our BS— our Belief Systems. 

All that requires constant, intentional communication inside. 

And that starts with the self check-in. 

“How’s everybody doing in there?” 

Don’t make it any more complicated than that. 

And don’t get discouraged if you don’t get anything back at first. 

Like every relationship, your relationship with yourself is going to take time to develop. 

Easy does it. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

And check in. 

(Now’s a good moment to start.) 

drglenndoyle

Trauma recovery and the zen of not overreacting.

If you’re reading this, you know that one of the hardest parts of trauma recovery is not overreacting. 

We don’t “choose” to overreact— we’re conditioned into it. 

We’re conditioned to believe we “have” to massively respond to many thoughts, feelings, and sensations. 

We’re conditioned to believe we “have” to punish ourselves for failures. 

We’re conditioned to believe we “have” to give up when we hit certain speed bumps or pot holes. 

The truth is, we don’t “have” to do nearly as much as our nervous system is convinced we “have” to— but we struggle to believe that, because so many of our reactions feel so urgent and unmanageable. 

Learning to not overreact, to not panic, takes a minute. 

And it also takes a steadfast willingness to not shame ourselves for the overreactions we’ve been conditioned into in the past. 

We didn’t ask for this conditioning. We don’t want it. 

The fact that we were conditioned to overreact to body sensations, thoughts, memories, or stimuli out there in the world— triggers— doesn’t make us “dramatic.” 

It makes us vulnerable to conditioning— just like every other human. 

So much of early trauma recovery especially is meeting our overreactions with acceptance, compassion, patience— and reminding ourselves that while there is no shame in this reaction, we can sit with it, breathe into it, manage it, and not amplify it. 

We don’t choose our reflexes. 

But we have some choices when we clock what’s going on. 

We don’t often have the choice to simply shut the reaction down— but we can choose how we talk to ourselves about it, how we explain it to ourselves, how we meet it, and what we do with our body and breathing in response to it. 

“Easy does it. Don’t overreact,” is one of my go-to self-talk statements. 

Putting some time and space between trigger, reflex, and reaction is a game changer for many trauma survivors. 

It all starts with acknowledging our vulnerability to overreaction— and getting curious about how we can reel it in, without getting judgmental or aggressive with ourselves.

Breathe; blink; focus. 

drglenndoyle

This is your brain on CPTSD. Any questions?

Trauma responses literally scramble our brains. 

Well, “scramble” may not be exactly right. But trauma responses really do hijack specific areas of our brain— specifically the hippocampus (memory central) and the prefrontal cortex (decision making central). 

Most brain functions and areas aren’t quite as well understood as many sources seem to advertise— but we do know a few things about how fight, fight, freeze, fawn, and flop seem to impact our brain. 

For example, we know that when triggers slam into us, the hippocampus doesn’t process, consolidate, or retrieve memories particularly effectively. 

It’s one reason why post traumatic memory seems to “behave” so much differently than other memories— it’s being “regulated” and filtered by a brain structure that is on the fritz after being triggered. 

We also know that, when the sympathetic nervous system— the branch of our nervous system that throws the switch on trauma responses— is active, the prefrontal cortex seems to go largely offline. 

That is to say: we literally can’t think straight when we’re gripped by fight, fight, freeze, fawn, or flop. 

I’m not, actually, a believer that neurobiology can explain everything we need to know about trauma or recovery— but I do think a baseline knowledge of what CPTSD physically, chemically does to our brain can be helpful in easing off the self blame. 

How we feel and behave in the midst of trauma responses really are not “choices.” 

They’re the product of cortisol and adrenaline and dopamine surging through our most sensitive tissues, and knee-caping the organ that creates and consolidates our integrated experience of identity. 

Nobody’s “choosing” their way out of that neurochemical onslaught. 

Give yourself a break. 

You’re up against alterations in brain chemistry, structure, and function that ANY human, regardless of intelligence or “character,” would have trouble managing. 

The situation is not hopeless— but we need to be realistic where we actually have choices, and where we really, really don’t. 

Focus on the moments right AFTER you realize a trauma response has kicked in— when you start to regain some meaningful influence over your self-talk, mental focus, and physiology. 

That’s where your wiggle room is. 

That’s where we can start hacking back into our brain. Not before. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

drglenndoyle

Who are you “performing” for?

Who were you conditioned to “perform” for? 

Because something many trauma survivors have in common is that we were all conditioned to “perform” for somebody. 

Many of us were conditioned to believe that we did not have worth if we did not “perform.” 

Or we were not safe if we did not “perform.” 

Maybe we were conditioned to believe we would be abandoned if we did not “perform.” 

Our “performances” take many forms. Some of us were programmed we had to look a certain way. 

Some of us were heavily programmed to believe we had to weigh a certain amount. 

Maybe we were programmed to believe we had to be funny. 

Some of us were programmed to believe we had to be sexually available. 

Whatever it was, we were programmed to believe that our life literally depended on our “performance.” 

We couldn’t opt out. Not realistically, not safely. 

Fast forward to now: many of us believe that we still have to “perform.”

The person or entity that we were originally conditioned to believe we had to perform for may not even be in our lives anymore— may not even be alive anymore— yet we STILL believe we have to “perform” for them. 

Who it for you? 

For me, it tends to be a combination of my father, and my former mentor in the trauma treatment field. 

For as much as I develop my self esteem and work my trauma and addiction recovery, my brain still steers right back to imagining what ether or both of them would think or say about how my life and career are going. 

It’s no way to live. 

“Performing” for people from our past will exhaust and demoralize us. 

It’s important to know that we’re not “choosing” to “perform”— we were conditioned, programmed, brainwashed to believe we “have” to. 

Stopping it is going to take more than a one time decision. 

It’s going to require us to be patient, realistic, and self compassionate with ourselves when we stop “performing”— and our anxiety spikes. 

Because it will. 

Neither you nor I have to “perform” in the way we were once upon a time conditioned to believe we had to. 

We have worth and our lives and careers have value, whether or not our father or mentor would approve of them or not. 

But we’re going to have to sit with those “parts” of us that are so afraid of abandonment and punishment if we stop “performing.” We’re going to have to sit with those “parts,” in their uncertainty and their anxiety and their urge to just do what they were told they “had” to. 

Show time is over. 

And that’s okay. Really. 

drglenndoyle

Welcome to the sh*t show; we got fun and games.

So what do we actually do if the last day, or the last hour, was a sh*t show? 

Because sh*t shows happen, don’t they? 

Maybe we relapse. Maybe we self-harm. Maybe we get sucked into a shame spiral. 

It happens. Not “maybe;” this is the real world, and the sh*t show sometimes wins for a minute or two. 

First thing’s first, it’s not evidence you can’t do recovery. 


The sh*t show is actually part of recovery. Or dealing with it is, at any rate. 

Come on: how realistic was it ever going to be that you committed to trauma recovery, then everything was perfect or easy? 

That was never going to happen. 

You and I have been immersed in our trauma conditioning for years. Decades, most of us. 

That’s years and years of Trauma Brain, the internalized voices of our abusers and bullies, beating the sh*t out of us in our head. 

That’s years and years of neither our head nor our heart being truly safe for our “parts” or inner child. 

That was never going to go away all at once. 

The more realistic situation was always going to be reconditioning ourselves, one day, one hour, one decision— one MICRO decision— at a time. 

Which means we’re going to have rough moments. Moments where the sh*t show pops up for a return engagement. 

That actually doesn’t matter to our overall recovery arc. 

You know what does matter, though? How we respond. 

How we understand that rough moment. 

How we talk to ourselves during and after the sh*t show. 

How we direct our mental focus, or at last that sliver of mental focus we can influence, when the sh*t show pops up. 

What we do with our breathing and body in those rough moments. 

Those patterns really, really matter to our recovery arc. Those patterns CREATE our recovery arc, actually. 

Trauma responses are not “choices.” 

What realistic trauma recovery is all about are the choices we make when we realize what’s going on, and we actually have some options again.

That is to say: don’t overreact to the sh*t show. Don’t panic. Don’t get discouraged. 

Don’t amplify or prolong the sh*t show with what you do next. 

Breathe; blink; focus; and remember who you are and what you’re all about. Remember your recovery blueprint and plan. Check your impulse scale. 

The sh*t show is not the end of recovery. It is part of recovery. 

Every survivor who has ever realistically recovered from trauma has gotten slapped with the sh*t show. 

And every survivor who has ever recovered from trauma has learned how to respond to it by doing the next right thing, with compassion, patience, and realism. 

Easy does it. 

drglenndoyle

Your pain matters, too– not just your trauma.

There are going to be things that cause us pain, that aren’t directly related to what we consider our “trauma.” 

Those things can be easy to overlook or minimize. 

We can fall into the trap of believing that, because these pain points aren’t the ones we’re “working on” in our trauma recovery, that they don’t “count.” That they can wait. 

I’m going to tell you that all of your pain points, matter. 

I’m also going to tell you that a significant part of this trauma recovery process is about respecting your pain and your needs, regardless of their origin. 

Yes, recovery from trauma often involves processing the specific pain from identifiable moments in our past. 

But just as often, it is about healing and developing our relationship with ourselves, day to day, minute to minute— and that task often doesn’t directly involve engaging our past. Not consciously, anyway. 

Part of developing our relationship with ourselves is taking our pain seriously. 

That can be hard, when we don’t even understand or pain, or have trouble putting words to our pain. 

We survivors like to feel in “control.” We like being able to draw nice, straight lines between our past trauma and our current pain and needs. 

When we can’t do that, we get squirrely. And when we get squirrely, we get avoidant. 

And when we get avoidant, trauma recovery stalls. Every time. 

For my money, self-care is the backbone of realistic trauma recovery. 

I know, I know, a lot of people think the term “self care,” alongside the term “trigger,” is overused— but whether or not the term “self care” is actually overused, I can tell you it is definitely under-PRACTICED. 

The kind of self care that is the foundation of realstic trauma recovery means doing what we need to do every day to minimize and resolve pain points in our life— that is, attending to and developing our actual quality of life. 

Put another way: pain in your life that is not directly related to the events and relationships that evoked your CPTSD is STILL valid, still deserves attention and care and self-compassion.

You are not taking away from your trauma recovery by attending to those pain points. 

To the contrary: every time you take care of yourself, every time you do something concrete to feel less pain and more lasting, authentic pleasure in your life, you are working your recovery. 

I’ve said it before: so much of real world trauma recovery doesn’t even involve engaging with our trauma feelings or memories. 

But it ALWAYS involves treating our relationship with ourselves as the most important bond we have— and a relationship that absolutely must be nurtured and protected at every opportunity. 

drglenndoyle

CPTSD is a lying liar that lies.

CPTSD will straight up lie to us. 

Thats’ what CPTSD does best, actually. Lie. 

It lies to us about who we are. 

It lies to us about what we deserve. 

It lies to us about what we can do. 

Survivors know this, but everyone needs to know this. 

CPTSD specifically gets in our head and f*cks with our beliefs. 

People have this idea that PTSD is about what happened to us, and it is— but CPTSD is mostly defined by what it gets us to believe. The lies it gets us to believe. 

That’s why it ruins our relationships. Or threatens to, anyway. 

That’s why CPTSD f*cks with our ability to work. 

It’s why CPTSD has us self harming and self sabotaging all day. 

Because of the BS (Belief Systems) that inescapable, long term, relationship-flavored trauma installs in our head and in our heart. 

CPTSD is about more than flashbacks. 

It’s about more than hypervigilance, although CPTSD survivors can experience both flashbacks and hypervigilance. 

It’s about our self concept. The lies CPTSD gets us to believe about our very essence. 

This is what so many people don’t understand. 

Exposure therapy doesn’t undo this. 

Superficial cognitive therapy doesn’t undo this. Not entirely, not deeply. 

CPTSD and DID start to heal when we understand that this is overwhelmingly about our relationship with ourselves— and that the key to our healing is creating realistic safety inside our head and heart. 

CPTSD lies. 

CPTSD is probably lying to you right now, as you read this, actually. 

It’s probably telling you, “this doesn’t apply to you.”

It might be telling you, “you’re the exception.” 

It’ll tell you all sorts of things to get you to not think about things that matter to your recovery. 

Trauma Brain, the internalized voices of our abusers and bullies is nothing if not persistent. 

But remember: it lies. 

It lies, and it’s happy to use its lies to make you feel like garbage. Maybe even to get you suicidal. 

But once you understand how full of sh*t Trauma Brain is, you can’t un-know it. 

Nor do you want to. 

CPTSD is a lying liar that lies. 

Don’t mistake it for anything resembling your gut instinct. It’s not. 

Though it will do an amazing impression of it sometimes. 

drglenndoyle

Go ahead. Hear some voices.

On today’s edition of Realistic Sustainable Trauma Recovery, I’m going to ask you to hear voices. 

But not just any voices. 

Certainly not the voices you’re used to hearing in your head— the voices of your abuses and bullies, which I call Trauma Brain. 

No, you’ve head those voices enough. On repeat, for years. So much so that you might not even realize those voices are still coming at you, every day, every hour. 

Instead, I want you to install some voices to listen to. 

I want you to hear the voices of mentors. 

I want you to hear the voices of guides. 

I want you to hear the voices of therapists who have had helpful things to say. 

(Maybe not the voices of therapists who let you down or made you feel worse.)

The voices you hear don’t have to be “real” people or entities. They can be fictional characters, figures from mythology, or other people or entities that don’t have “real” voices in the “real” world. 

Maybe the voices you need are voices from historical figures. Once upon a time I was way, way into presidential history, and I got a lot of mileage out of communing with presidents from decades ago. 

Maybe the voices you need are figures from your spiritual tradition that are no longer physically here. Many people describe “hearing” the voices of saints or evangelists that offer them hope and guidance. 

Maybe I’m even one of your voices. Chances are, if you’re reading this, you probably know my toolbox and worldview well enough to guess at what I might tell you in a given situation.

Whoever your “voices” are, I want you to feel safe with them. 

Whoever they are, I want them to evoke in you feelings of realistic hope and measurable calm. 

You remember a few years ago when “What Would Jesus Do” bracelets were all the rage? I’m asking you to think similarly— only your mantra is going to be, “What Would (Insert Your Inspiring or Comforting Mentor Here) Say?” 

Have them mentally on your shoulder. 

Have them mentally in your ear. 

Have them handy, to turn to when Trauma Brain wants to steamroll you with old voices saying old sh*t that only results in you feeling like garbage. 

Think of your “voices” as your cheering section, your support crew, your advisory committee. 

We are talking to ourselves all day, every day, in our heads— and we’re often doing so in “voices” that aren’t quite ours. 

There’s no reason those voices should be voices we find painful. 

Choose who you want in your cheering section. Choose who you want having your back. 

Then, practice “hearing” them in daily situations. Get good at listening for them on purpose. 

This is how we reprogram trauma conditioning. 

This is how we choose something other than our old, default tapes.