drglenndoyle

Just “reach out,” oh really?

You’re going to be told to “reach out,” that trauma “only” heals in “safe relationships.” 

I understand why this is said. 

And, I think that dramatically oversimplifies things for many trauma survivors. 

It’s true that safe, stable relationships can help us regulate our nervous system. 

It’s true that safe relationships now can support us in healing the damage done by unsafe relationships in the past. 

But it’s also true that “reaching out” is not simple or easy for many trauma survivors. 

The truth about trauma recovery that many people dislike talking about is, many survivors are STILL not in safe situations. 

Many survivors reading this don’t actually HAVE safe connections they can realistically reach out to today, even if they wanted to. 

The world often treats survivors’ reluctance to “reach out” as a manifestation of their trauma symptoms, and sometimes it is— but very often “reaching out” is just not that straightforward. 

When therapists and others state that “trauma only heals in safe relationships,” that can lead survivors to whom safe relationships are not currently accessible to believe there’s no point in even trying to develop trauma recovery tools. 

The trauma recovery community is not good at supporting survivors who are not in a position to “reach out” or who have legitimate reasons to limit their reliance on other people right now. 

Of course I’d prefer every survivor feel realistically able to reach out— and I’d prefer if safe relationships were realistically available to every survivor reading this. 

And, I know that’s a fantasy. 

We, the trauma recovery community, need to get better at supporting survivors whose healing for whatever reason right now isn’t going to involve many other people. 

If you’re in the position where you simply can’t safely or reliably involve other people in your healing, you need to know you’re not screwed. 

You can still develop recovery tools that help soothe, ground, and regulate your brain, nervous system, endocrine system, and your physical body. 

You can still do trauma processing work— though doing it on your own is obviously going to require you to be realistic about risks, safety, and pacing. 

I want everyone to have safe relationships available to them as a healing tool, including a safe therapy relationship with a competent, trauma informed therapist. That would be my ideal world. 

We do not live in that world. 

So don’t feel bad if “reach out” is advice that makes you despair— or infuriates you. 

Some of us understand it’s not that simple— and that it’s not your fault that it’s not that simple. 

Just do what you can with what you have, today. 

Easy does it. 


Breathe; blink; focus. 

drglenndoyle

CPTSD doesn’t have to mean anything about us.

The fact that you were abused or neglected means literally nothing about you. 

It means things about the people who should have cared for you. 

It may mean things about the environment or community you grew up in. 

But it doesn’t mean anything about you. 

We trauma survivors are really good at assuming our abuse or neglect mean things about us— mostly negative things. 

We assume it “means” we were unloveable. 

We assume it “means” we were unimportant. 

We assume it “means” we cannot go on to live a normal or happy life. 

The fact is, just because the people who should have loved us, didn’t, doesn’t mean we’re “unloveable”— it means there was some deficit on their part. Not ours. 

Just because the people who should have prioritized us, didn’t, doesn’t mean we were “unimportant”— it means those people failed. Not us. 

And because we were hurt in the past, does not mean our future is set in stone. 

It means we have wounds to heal. Patterns to unwind and recondition. 

No more; no less. 

Our trauma does not mean what we think it means. What we were conditioned to believe it means. 

It does not mean we are cooked. 

It does not mean life is meaningless and the world is only dark. 

It does not mean we are helpless in the face of emotional dysregulation and trauma memories. 

Nothing about CPTSD or CPTSD recovery is “easy”— but we are not stuck with what we were handed in life. 

The facts of our past are the facts. 

But the meanings we attach to those facts are more up to us than we realized. 

drglenndoyle

What “they” see is not the whole story of your CPTSD recovery.

What people see of our CPTSD recovery in public is only going to be a teeny, tiny percentage of the real story. 

The real story of trauma recovery happens in private. 

Private moments of doubt. 

Private moments of pain. 

Private moments of really, really wanting to hurt ourselves. 

Private moments of wanting to give up. 

Navigating those hard private moments, day after day and, especially, night after night— that’s what CPTSD recovery is really all about. 

The stuff other people see— us looking better, functioning better, showing up, engaging more— that stuff is all kind of gravy. 

For that matter, many of us survivors have lots of practice doing all that public stuff, even when we’re circling the drain. 

The truth is, nobody really knows how we’re leveraging our tools. 

How we’re talking to ourselves. 

How we’re using our mental focus. What we’re visualizing. The mental safe spaces we’ve created for ourselves, our “parts,” and our inner child. 

Nobody knows how we’re relating to our body and using our breathing to stay grounded and soothe ourselves. 

Only we know the full story. 

Only we know how hard we’re working. 

Only we know the real journey we’ve been on— and what point on that journey our current state represents. 

Don’t confuse what other people see with what’s really going on. 

They won’t see it all. 

They probably won’t see the most important aspects of our CPTSD recovery. 

But those milestones really, really f*cking matter. 

Whether or not I, personally, can see them,  I want you to know I understand how much work is happening beneath the surface. 

And I want you to know how overwhelmingly proud of you I am. 

That’s true whether or not I personally know you. 

Even if I don’t know you— I know you. 

We’re all in the same fight tonight. 

Keep on keeping on. 

Breathe; blink; focus— one minute at a time.  

drglenndoyle

We need support when we’re struggling, not judgment.

When we’re triggered, we need support, not shame. 

We certainly don’t need to shame ourselves for struggling. 

But— that’s what many of us have been programmed to do. 

We’ve been conditioned to lead off with telling ourselves all the reasons why we “shouldn’t” be triggered. 

To tell ourselves all the reasons why this trigger “isn’t a big deal.” 

We’ve been programmed to invalidate our reactions, our feelings, and our needs— and for that to be our reflexive FIRST take when we get triggered. 

Many survivors are profoundly embarrassed that we even get triggered. 

We’ve been told over and over again, that we’re “safe now,” that a trigger is “from the past” ad therefore “shouldn’t” be evoking the reaction it is. 

Okay— let’s say for a moment that’s true. Maybe we’re having a reaction to something that is NOT right here, right now— what are we supposed to do with this understanding? 

The fact is, we’re still reacting. 

We’re still being flooded with feelings and memories. 

Our nervous system is still melting the f*ck down. 

Do we really think all that’s going to halt the minute we accept that we “shouldn’t” be having the reaction? 

I’ll tell you what happens far more often: we tell ourselves we “shouldn’t” behaving this reaction— and then not only do we have the ongoing trauma response to contend with, but we have an extra layer of guilt for experiencing something that we’ve decided is invalid. 

Don’t do that to yourself. 

The truth is, if we’re having a reaction, that reaction IS proportionate to SOMETHING— even if it doesn’t happen to be something right here, right now. 

Our triggers reflect our wounds, and our trauma responses reflect our needs. 

Both our wounds and needs are valid. 

Neither our wounds or needs disappear because we don’t want to deal with them or because we’re embarrassed by them. 

If we try to deny or disown our wounds and needs, guess what happens? They grow. 

Ignore a wound, it festers. It gets infected. What was a wound that was painful turns into a systemic threat, maybe even to our life. 

Ignore a need, it gets more urgent. It becomes harder to ignore. It grows to the point where it WILL commandeer our attention, whether or not we want it to. 

Remember: trauma responses are not “choices.” 

There is nothing shameful about experiencing trauma responses, any more than it’s “shameful” to experience the reflex of pulling our hand away from a hot stove. 

Our nervous system is designed to keep us alive— and if we’re fighting, fleeing, fawning, freezing, or flopping in response to a trigger, it’s because some “part” of us honestly believes that’s what we have to do to keep on keeping on. 

We need support in those moments, not judgment. 

Just like broken limbs need X-rays and a cast, not to “try harder” to flex. 

Easy does it. Breathe; blink; focus. 

drglenndoyle

Experiencing anger doesn’t make you an “angry person.” But denying and disowning it…

You’re going to hear it said that anger is just “sadness’s bodyguard”— but I don’t believe that. 

I believe that anger, while it frequently occurs alongside sadness, is its own thing— as real and valid and independent as any experience, emotional or otherwise. 

Remember that anger evolved for a reason. 

The cave-people who could get angry when other cave-people tried to encroach upon their territory and steal their mates and wooly mammoths and stuff, had a survival advantage over those cave-people who couldn’t. 

Anger, evolutionarily speaking, gives us a rush of focus and energy to defend our territory. 

Anger is important. Anger is valid. Anger matters. 

It it sometimes the case that our anger in a specific situation is actually about a different situation, maybe from the past? Sure— but that doesn’t make it invalid. 

The worst thing we can do for and with our anger is to dismiss it as nothing more than the “bodyguard” of another feeling. 

Anger, properly understood and responsibly managed, can be one of our most important trauma recovery tools. 

Of course, denied, disowned, misunderstood, and mismanaged, our anger can be as destructive to us as our abusers’ anger was back then. 

That’s why it’s so important that we take time to understand, validate, and manage our anger— precisely so we DON’T become our abusers in how we react (instead of respond) to our anger. 

Sometimes I get sh*t for being pro-anger— but I don’t know what to tell you. Anger is as important and valid as anything else we can experience. 

Meeting our anger with denial or shame is psychologically and even physically harmful to us. 

I recommend meeting anger just like we meet anything and everything else in trauma recovery: with compassion, patience, realism, and respect. 

Experiencing anger doesn’t make you an “angry person.” 

But denying and disowning your anger probably will. 

drglenndoyle

You deserved to be loved, not used.

When we’ve been used, over & over again, by the people or institutions that were SUPPOSED to love and protect us, it changes us. 

It changes how we think about ourselves. 

It changes how we engage with the world. 

It changes how we understand our worth and role in life. 

This is how CPTSD develops: exposure to abuse and/or neglect that was prolonged, inescapable, and entwined with our relationships. 

Being used instead of loved is exactly this kind of trauma. 

We’re uniquely vulnerable to complex trauma as children, but in truth humans can develop CPTSD throughout the lifespan when we’re used instead of loved. 

It happens in families, it happens in churches, it happens in communities, it happens in political movements, it happens in cults. 

It happens whenever and whenever a person or institution that claims to have the best interest of someone in mind actually just uses them— for their body, for their money, for their vote, or whatever. 

Many of us don’t like to admit we were or are vulnerable to complex trauma. 

We’ll do backflips to explain how what we experienced, ether in the distant or recent past, wasn’t “really” traumatic— how, yeah, maybe we were used, but it really wasn’t a “big deal.” 

Psychologically, it’s always a big deal when humans are used instead of loved, particularly by people or institutions that claim to love them. 

We often try to deny this— because we don’t like to feel we “need” anything that the people or institutions that abused us “should” have offered us. 

We want to seem “tough.” 

But neither you or I are “tough” enough to not need love— or be be unaffected when love is replaced by exploitation. 

It’s a specific kind of betrayal. 

And the reality is, most CPTSD involves betrayal. 

Parents betraying their roles. 

Clergy betraying their vows. 

Churches betraying their missions. 

Political parties betraying their supposed purpose. 

There can be many paths to developing CPTSD, but those paths often converge at the point of human beings being used instead of loved. 

CPTSD recovery involves us beginning to see ourselves as human again— that is to say, worthy of love, worthy of belief, worthy of care, and worthy of protection. 

Affirming our humanity— our essential deservingness and our essential agency, in particular— is core to realistic, sustainable CPTSD recovery. 

You shouldn’t have been used. 

You should have been loved.

We still need and deserve that.

No toxic positivity bullsh*t— you and I still need and deserve to be loved instead of used.

drglenndoyle

All we can do, is what we can do.

All we can today, is what we can do today. 

We can’t go back and re-do yesterday. Or last year. Or ten or twenty years ago. 

Have you ever made decisions you’ve regretted? I have. 

Have you ever been your not-best self? Same. 

Are there things you’d do differently, all the way up to this last minute, if you had a time machine and could re-do them? There absolutely are, for me. 

But— we can’t. 

Our past was what it was. 

Our choices in the past were what they were. 

We have to accept that what has happened up until now, has happened. 

We don’t have to LIKE that fact— but we have to accept it, because it IS a fact. 

All we can do is the next right thing. The next thng that is aligned with our goals and values. The next authentic thing. 

My own Trauma Brain gets absolutely vicious with me about decisions I made in the past— about the person I was in the past. 

It’s real easy to get into a spiral about how I “deserve” to be punished for it all— and how I don’t “deserve” the opportunity to feel good or better here, now, in the present. 

Sound familiar? 

Here’s the thing: punishing myself now does not erase what happened then. 

It doesn’t erase any of the things that happened to me, and it doesn’t erase any of the not-so-great decisions I made. 

The me-of-back-then was doing the best he could with the tools he had— and while I wish he had different tools and more support than he did, that doesn’t change how things actually happened. 

All we can do is what we can do, now. 

All we can do is get really clear about who we are and what we want out of our life, day by day, now. 

All we can do is make the next decision in front of us in as goals-and-values aligned way as we can, with the tools and support we have, now. 

I was not perfect in the past, and I am not perfect now. There’s a very good chance I won’t be perfect tomorrow, either. 

But that doesn’t mean I, or anybody else shouldering regret about the past, deserve open ended punishment going forward. 

That doesn’t help anyone. That doesn’t make anything “right.”

I will never feel good about some past decisions or some past versions of myself.

But I don’t have to feel good about them, to extend myself grace. 

All we can do is what we can do. 

We create our future one day, one minute, one decision at a time. 

Real accountability is not self punishment; it is changed behavior. 

Everybody reading this could stand to extend themselves a little more grace— and to focus on making amends, if they need to, by doing the next right thing. Not agonizing over their last not-great choice.

drglenndoyle

Why naming our emotions can be a useful trauma recovery tool.

Naming our emotions can be a powerful, underused CPTSD recovery tool. 

Naming our emotions as we experience them helps pry us out from feeling overwhelmed by them, immersed in them. 

It shifts us, at least a little, to an observer of our emotions, not just who experiences them. 

Naming our emotions communicates to our nervous system and “parts” that our emotions are important, and worth identifying. That we respect and value them enough to be specific. 

Naming emotions can help reduce their intensity. There’s a difference between feeling “sadness” or “fear,” for example, and “AHHHHHHHHHHHHH.” 

Naming our emotions enlists the left hemisphere of the brain. Anything that gets us using words when we’re overwhelmed hooks into that left hemisphere— which is the “coolant” to the “nuclear reactor” that is our overheated right cerebral hemisphere. 

(This is one reason talking in therapy or to a friend when we’re emotional often calms us down— using words and giving structure to what we’re experiencing taps into that “cooling” left hemisphere, instead of leaving us stranded with a right hemisphere that is melting down.)

Naming our emotions gives us a chance to actually devise a realistic strategy for processing and responding to them. Sadness requires a different strategy than fear, requires a different strategy than anger. 

What we’re experiencing matters when it comes to realistic strategy and tool selection. 

Naming our emotions can be a step toward validating them— and validation needs to be worked into any and every effective CPTSD recovery tool and strategy. 

Naming our emotions might take practice and patience, especially if we’ve been conditioned to deny and disown our emotional life— as most CPTSD survivors have been. 

So— don’t pressure yourself. 

Maybe even start with an emotion chart or wheel. Think of getting to know your emotional world like learning a language— you might need some vocabulary “flash cards” at first. 

But people learn languages. 

Just like survivors can get good at naming our emotions. 

It’s a straightforward, free recovery tool that we have nothing to lose, and potentially a lot to gain, by trying. 

drglenndoyle

No trauma survivor “likes” chaos.

I’ve never met a trauma survivor who “liked” chaos. 

But I’ve met plenty who are USED to chaos. 

Plenty who get anxious when they’re NOT immersed in chaos. 

Plenty who have returned to chaotic situations after initially escaping them— but that’s not about “liking” them. 

Trauma survivors have very often learned to function in chaos. 

Not just function— to handle it effectively. To be “good” at functioning in chaos, whatever that means. 

We’re good in a pinch. Good in a crisis. 

When things calm down, though, we don’t quite know what to do. 

The adrenaline and sympathetic nervous system responses that feel our decisions in crisis are missing. 

Chaotic situations ask trauma survivors to focus on short term survival, which we know how to do— but less chaotic situations ask us to focus on long term plans and goals, which can be unfamiliar, confusing, or off-putting to us. 

Thinking about or planning for the future is often not a priority for trauma survivors who didn’t even expect to live this long— or who were conditioned to believe that positive long term outcomes never happen anyway. 

So we might retreat back into chaos. 

Chaotic relationships. Chaotic living situations. 

Then we might get sh*t for what looks to other people like a “choice”— but what, in reality, is a trauma-driven retreat into our comfort zone. 

Trauma recovery is going to ask us to confront our addiction to (not our “liking of”) chaos. 

It’s going to ask us to realistically develop the skillset of functioning in NON-chaotic environments, which is a novel concept for many of us. 

Recovery is going to ask us to forgive ourselves for supposed “choices” that landed us back in chaos in the past. 

And trauma recovery is going to ask us to accept the fact that, while we survivors may be good in a crisis, we should never have had to develop that skillset. We should have had safety and support growing up— not to be left on our own to MacGuyver our way through. 

Chaos may be all you know. That’s not your fault. 

But you’re not in recovery to handle more chaos. 

You’re in recovery to realistically learn how to tolerate peace. 

drglenndoyle

The food struggle is real.

There is zero shame in struggling with food. There are lots of reasons why CPTSD survivors struggle with it. 

But the world can be real judgmental about our struggles with food— and we can be real judgmental of ourselves when it comes to our struggles with food. 

Food is connected to all sorts of touchy, triggery stuff for us. 

It’s connected to literal survival. 

It’s connected to body image. 

It’s connected to comfort. 

It’s connected to pleasure. 

It’s connected to shame. 

Dissociation can make food and eating even more complicated. It’s hard to manage a literal survival behavior that requires presence and consistency when you’re unpredictably in and out of the present time, place, and person. 

We need to meet our struggles with food and eating just like we meet any other trauma symptom or struggle— with realism, patience, and compassion. 

You need to know you don’t have to figure out the eating thing today. Or figure it out perfectly. Or figure it out to anyone else’s satisfaction. 

Eating is one of those things where we often don’t like to even admit we’re struggling, because it’s a “normal” behavior that “normal” people “shouldn’t” struggle with or freak out about. 

F*ck that. This is CPTSD recovery. We left “normal” a few turns back, if you haven’t noticed. 

Navigate the food thing on meal, one snack, one crumb, at a time. 

Know you’re definitely not the first or the last CPTSD survivor to struggle with food or eating.

Know that it gets easier the more we accept that we’re going to struggle with it— and the more we forgive ourselves for struggling with it. 

Know that you deserve to eat, and to even enjoy eating. 

And know that if you don’t right now believe you deserve to eat or enjoy eating, it’s okay. No shame. 

Know that nobody’s mad at you and you’re not in trouble for struggling with eating. 

It’s just something we’re working on, something we’re figuring out. 

No more, no less. 

Easy does it. Breathe; blink; focus.