drglenndoyle

Recovery supporting decisions, big and small.

Want to get good at making big, values consistent, recovery supporting choices? 

Then start with making tiny values consistent, recovery supporting choices. 

I mean teeny tiny. 

I mean little decisions minute by minute, hour by hour, that support your recovery. 

Decisions about what? Say it with me, because you’ve heard me say it before: self-talk, mental focus, and physiology. 

We can always make recovery supporting choices when it comes to our self-talk, mental focus, and physiology— even little, minute by minute choices. 

Right here, right now, you’re talking to yourself. So am I. 

Right now, I’m asking myself, “how can I write this so that my people will understand it?” 

Right now, you’re asking yourself, “is he making sense? Does this apply to me? What is he even trying to say?”

That’s all self-talk— and many of us aren’t even aware we’re doing it. But we are, all day, every day. 

Once we get clear about the fact that we ARE talking to ourselves all day, every day, we can start to see how trauma has mangled our self-talk— and we can start making some values consistent, recovery supporting choices when it comes to how we talk to ourselves. 

It matters, because our self-talk “autopilot” has usually been programmed by our abusers and bullies. It usually echoes what THEY used to tell us, in content and tone. 

Once we’re aware of it, we can make .01% better choices about what to say to ourselves and how to say it. 

Understand: I’m NOT saying that the reason you’re suffering is because you haven’t been talking to yourself nicely. 

What I AM saying is that the way we talk to ourselves is the result of our trauma— and trauma driven self-talk tends to reinforce the wounds we’re trying so hard to heal. 

Recovery is all about these little, teeny, tiny, recovery supporting decisions at first. 

We want to practice identifying and making those .01% decisions, and then give ourselves credit for making them, so our nervous system can get used to it. 

If we try to start making big, huge, 99% recovery supporting decisions all at once, it’s very likely our nervous system will freak out at the unfamiliarity of it all— we’ll get overwhelmed, probably dissociate to Siberia, and find ourselves flat on our back. 

If we want to get good at big recovery stuff, we start with little recovery stuff. Tiny facsimiles of the big stuff we eventually want to do. 

Start with self-talk, but start thinking about little choices you can make about your mental focus and your physiology, too. 

Don’t think too big. Don’t bite off too much. 

Just think teeny, tiny, recovery supporting decisions. 

“If my recovery was firing on all cylinders, what would I be saying to myself right now? What would I be focusing on in my mind? How would I be breathing?” 

We build our trauma recovery decision by decision, and we build our decisions micro choice by micro choice. Recovery Supporting Question by Recovery Supporting Question. 

You can do this. 

I understand the entire project of trauma recovery can feel overwhelming, but I mean it: you really can do it. 

If you start small and stay realistic. 

And meet every choice and question along the way with uncompromising self-compassion and presence. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

drglenndoyle

Nope: it wasn’t about you.

When I say “it’s not about you,” I’m not asking you to make an “excuse.” 

I’m not asking anyone to deny or disown their role in anything they genuinely had a role in. 

I’m not saying we’re powerless over every situation we find ourselves in. 

But when I say “it wasn’t about you” in reference to how you were treated by your parents or caretakers growing up, that’s literally what I mean: that wasn’t about you. 

We cannot “make” our parents or caretakers do their jobs. 

We cannot “make” someone abuse us. 

We cannot “make” someone neglect us. 

I don’t care if you were the most difficult kid in the world to parent: it was your parents’ responsibility to figure that sh*t out. 

It was emphatically NOT your responsibility to be an “easy” kid for them to raise. 

It was NOT your responsibility to be THEIR parent or caretaker. 

It was NOT your responsibility to figure out how to “make” them love or care or you. 

Some people read stuff like this and say, “Well, that’s OBVIOUS. Why are you saying OBVIOUS things that EVERYBODY knows?” 

Because, believe it or not, there are complex trauma survivors out there who really haven’t internalized this. 

They truly think it was their fault that they weren’t cared for. 

They truly think they were unloved because they were, or are, essentially “unlovable.” 

They truly think the problem was that they were a “difficult” kid to raise, and their parents, who were “just doing their best,” shouldn’t have to bear the blame for the sh*t show that was their childhood. 

If you follow my work, you know I’m not big on “blame.” 

I feel “blame” paradigms unduly center abusers and bullies, instead of the recovery work of survivors. 

But over and over again I encounter survivors blaming themselves, often harshly, for how they were treated growing up. 

I’m not saying kids need “perfect” childhoods. 

I’m not saying parents need to be “perfect.” 

I’m not saying that poor parenting is the only cause of CPTSD. (In fact, I think childhood bullying gets vastly UNDER-discussed in CPTSD spaces in contrast to bad parenting.) 

What I want everyone to understand, though, is that, no matter how you feel about your parents or caretakers, no matter what their situation or challenges were, no matter what they have or haven’t taken responsibility for or apologized for since, it was not on you to accommodate them growing up. 

It was not on you to be their therapist. 

It was certainly not on you to be any kind of “partner” to your parents in any kind of adult sense. 

I don’t care how smart you were. 

I don’t care if you were an “old soul.” 

That sh*t was not on you. Shouldn’t have been on you. 

Adults who turn to children to get needs met that should be meet by other adults, harm children. 

You are not the exception. 

And it wasn’t about you. 

But— letting that go can be a b*tch. 

Give it the time it needs. 

drglenndoyle

If nothing changes, nothing changes.

Our nervous system doesn’t do ultimatums. 

Trying to command it to do or not do something is a setup to feel frustrated and overwhelmed. 

Trying to shame it into doing or not doing something is a setup to feel like garbage. 

Our bullies and abusers very frequently tried to control our behavior via shame— so it’s real important we not fall into that trap when we’re trying to shift how we feel and behave in recovery. 

As a rule, if our bullies and abusers did it to us, it’s real important we do the opposite as we work our trauma recovery. 

What hurt us will not be what heals us. 

Many of us have been taught that pressure is an effective way to change behavior. 

The reality is, the more we pressure ourselves, the more tense we’ll feel. 

The more inadequate we’ll feel. 

The more like saying “f*ck it” we’ll feel. 

I feel strongly about keeping us as far away from the “f*ck it’s” as possible— so pressure as a behavior shaping strategy is out. 

Besides, ultimatums only work if we’re willing to walk away from a situation if the ultimatum isn’t respected— and what are we going to do, “walk away” from our nervous system? 

No, we’re not. We can’t. Even the “magic” of dissociation only gives the illusion of walking away, not the reality. 

We live in and with our nervous system. 

The quality of our recovery is going to be the quality of our relationship with said nervous system— and our “parts,” and our inner child, an our endocrine system. 

The quality of our trauma recovery is really the quality of our relationship with ourselves— and many of us have been conditioned to either abuse that relationship or take it for granted. 

It’s not our fault. Whether we developed CPTSD through childhood experiences or experiences in adulthood, we’ve likely never been taught how to relate to ourselves in realistic, respecrful, communicative ways. 

I don’t think anybody reading this wants to relate to themselves like a bully or an abuser. I just think that’s what we’re taught, what we saw modeled. 

And it’s what we need to change. 

It’s what CPTSD recovery is all about changing, actually. 

One of the biggest differences between PTSD and CPTSD is that PTSD symptoms tend to focus on what happened, whereas CPTSD patterns tend to focus on what we’ve come to believe, think, and feel about ourselves and other people as a result of what happened. 

That means realistic CPTSD recovery, by definition, has to get past the level of our reactions, to the level of our beliefs. 

We only do that by relating to ourselves in consistently safe, patient, self-compassionate, and realistic ways. 

Don’t try to pull out ultimatums on your nervous system. 

When you notice yourself trying to pull out ultimatums on your nervous system, press pause. Breathe. Blink. 

And focus in on communicating and collaborating with your nervous system, instead of trying to command it. 

Easy does it. This is a new skill and you’re becoming a new person. Give it time. 

drglenndoyle

Self talk, mental focus, and physiology. Every day.

It is not my impression that trauma survivors are especially interested in “shortcuts.” 

Trauma survivors are many things, but “afraid of hard work” is typically not one of those things. 

For that matter, we survivors tend to be allergic to most shortcuts. We’d feel guilty if we allowed ourselves to take them. 

No, instead of taking shortcuts, most trauma survivors actually crate more work for ourselves with our standards and our insistence on “earning” every little inch of progress we ever make at anything (and even then, we often STILL don’t feel like we “deserve” it). 

All of which is just as well, because there is no shortcut to trauma recovery. 

The trauma recovery tools— self talk, mental focus, and physiology— ARE the “shortcut” to feeling and functioning better, insofar as they are the only tools that actually work. 

Any and every effective trauma recovery tool reduces down to self talk, mental focus, and physiology— which, by the way, is not to disparate any technique or system. 

Tools like EMDR and EFT and the entire alphabet soup of therapies, including CBT, DBT, and ACT, are all ways to leverage self talk, mental focus, and physiology— all helpful ways to leverage the basics, as far as I’m concerned. 

The reason I keep repeating that trauma recovery comes back to self talk, mental focus, and physiology, is to give survivors something concrete to grab on to when they’re not quite sure where to start. 

Yes, there are dozens of ways to leverage those three tools, but everything is going to keep coming back to whether we’re using those tools in recovery supportive or recovery destroying ways. 

Having identified the basics of trauma recovery, we also have to acknowledge that leveraging self talk, mental focus, and physiology isn’t “easy”— specifically because those are the things that trauma conditioning hijacks, year after year, until we’re stuck in patterns that make us miserable and endanger our safety. 

CPTSD gets us using self-talk to kick the sh*t out of ourselves. 

CPTSD gets us using mental focus to visualize and mentally engage with things and people that make us feel like garbage. 

CPTSD gets us breathing shallow and physically “armoring up.” 

If we’re serious about trauma recovery, we truly need to address each leg of the “stool”— self talk, mental focus, and physiology. 

We also need to push back against Trauma Brain, the internalized voices of our bullies and abusers, telling us the effort we invest in trauma recovery isn’t “pointless.” 

Yes, all of this sucks. No, we shouldn’t “have” to do any of this. 

What we SHOULD have had was a life free of abuse, neglect, coercion, and other trauma. 

You and I shouldn’t “have” to think about trauma OR recovery, ever. 

But that’s not the life we had— and the work in front of us is the work in front of us, even if we didn’t ask for it. Even if we deserve something better and different in our life. 

The fact that we DO deserve something better and different in our life is why we do this, actually. 

Don’t overthink this and don’t lean into despair. Both of those will create more work than necessary on this trauma recovery journey— and neither you nor I need MORE work than is already on our plate. 

When in doubt, check the basics: what am I saying to myself? Where is my mental “spotlight?” How am I using my breathing and my body? 

If we can think to ask those Recovery Supporting Questions (RSQ’s), they’ll almost always yield useful, actionable answers— even if we’re new to recovery. 

drglenndoyle

Trauma identity and recovery identity.

To me, an unexpected challenge of trauma recovery is keeping our recovery identity top of mind. 

Most of us have been conditioned, sometimes for years, in what can be called our “trauma identity. 

We’ve been sold a bill of goods— about who we are, what we “deserve,” what we’re capable of. 

We’ve been conditioned in a whole set of beliefs about ourselves that aren’t grounded in reality— they’re based on what our bullies and abusers told us and made us feel about ourselves. 

We end up with this smorgasbord of beliefs and habits that aren’t really us— but which we are very attached to and entwined with. Our “trauma identity.” 

It’s one of the reasons so many survivors kind of confuse our symptoms with our “personality”— we’ve been basically brainwashed by our abusers and our experiences to believe that’s who and what we are. 

If we want to realistically recover, we’re going to need to give our nervous system an alternative, a recovery identity, to shoot for and flesh out.

Our recovery identity is everything about our life that we’re trying to create. 

It’s how we want to feel. 

It’s how we want to think. 

It’s the habits we want to cultivate. 

It’s even how we want to look. 

Think of our recovery identity as our roadmap— what we’re trying to make of our lives in trauma recovery. 

Defining a recovery identity, and keeping that “roadmap” handy, really matters, because otherwise we fall prey to the “pink elephant” problem. 

You know the “pink elephant” problem, right? Try this: DON’T think about a pink elephant. Come on, I said DON’T. Think about ANYTHING other than a pink elephant. 

Hard, right? That’s because our brains are not designed to NOT think about things. 

If we go around thinking about our “trauma identity” and telling ourselves DON’T think about those things, DON’T do those things, come on I said DON’T, no really DON’T…guess what our nervous system is going stay fixated on? 

That’s right: our “trauma identity.” 

It’s not enough to just define what we DON’T want. Most of us have been thinking non-stop about what we DON’T want for years. 

What we need is a template for what we DO want. What we value. What we’re trying to create. 

I’m a big believer in defining our recovery identity so specifically that we could crate a list of the characteristics we’re trying to cultivate in recovery— and I’m a big believer in checking that list often, to remind ourselves of what we’re doing here. 

It’s a big risk in trauma recovery, losing sight of what we’re doing here. 

The project can be so exhausting, so frustrating, so annoying, that if we don’t have a clear vision of why we’re doing this, we can lose momentum, develop the “f*ck it’s” real fast. 

So: define your recovery identity. Keep a running list of all of the the characteristics of the recovered version of “you.” 

Remember that your recovery identity isn’t a “perfect version of you— that doesn’t exist. 

It’s the version of you that prioritizes consistency, integrity, self-compassion, and personal responsibility. 

It’s the version of you that works every day to communicate with and take care of your “parts.” 

It’s the version of you that refuses to kick the sh*t out of yourself for setbacks or mistakes. 

Those are some starter examples— but you’re going to come up with a lot more. 

Make that list and keep it handy. Remember that the process of trauma recovery is about reconditioning our thoughts, beliefs, and habits, in patterns WE choose and that serve US. 

Think of your recovery identity not just as a goal, but a tool for shaping your self-talk, mental focus, and physiology. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

And remember who you’re becoming. 

drglenndoyle

Trauma recovery is all about authenticity & autonomy.

I cannot overstate the importance of authenticity and autonomy to trauma recovery. 

So, so, so many trauma survivors get up in our head about whether or not what we’re being asked to do feels real or true— or whether we’re being coerced. 

We come by that anxiety honestly. 

Whether we developed CPTSD as a result of childhood abuse or neglect, or as the result of coercive control or exploitation or harm in adulthood, we know what it’s like to be controlled, manipulated, forced. 

We know what it’s like to have someone else trying to supplant what we want and need. 

We know what it’s like to have someone trying to download their template of who we are, or who we “should” be, into our brain, without our consent. 

Feeling controlled can really evoke that “freeze” trauma response in particular. 

Our nervous system senses that someone is trying to make us do something, and it just shuts the f*ck down. 

This happens especially when we feel we can’t realistically “fight” the influence of whomever is trying to control us, and the option to “flee” doesn’t seem to be available. ‘

So: we freeze up. Everything stops. We “resist” “their” control by resisting everything, even motion itself. 

Procrastination is a behavior often rooted in the “freeze” trauma response, that gets triggered ins response to feeing controlled. 

We can’t resist, we can’t run away— but our nervous system will be damned if it’s going to just go along with the coercion. 

So it seizes up— and time slips away, often to the point where we miss both deadlines and opportunities. All to avoid feeling controlled. 

If we don’t want our aversion to feeling controlled and our “freeze” response grinding our recovery to a halt, we have to, have to, HAVE to ground our recovery tools and goals in our authenticity. 

Our trauma recovery blueprint has to look and feel like it was specifically designed for us— not thought up by some “expert” in trauma who could cook up the same plan for any survivor, sight unseen. 

This is one reason why, for all the trauma focused content I write and post on the internet, I don’t write out super specific templates for individuals’ trauma recovery— because not only would those not work, but they would trigger many survivors’ fears of being controlled.

You have, and have had, enough people trying to control you your entire life. You don’t need some rando on the internet pretending he can design an authentic trauma recovery plan for you from afar. 

I know I sound like a broken record with this, but the quality of our trauma recovery truly is the quality of our relationship with ourselves. That’s what CPTSD breaks; that’s what we have to fix. 

The tools, skills, and philosophies that will fix my relationship with myself won’t necessarily work for you— and what resonates with your authentic self may not do anything for me. 

Realistic trauma recovery truly is not about you “having” to do anything that is not authentic to you (beyond challenging beliefs and habits that Trauma Brain has convinced you are “natural,” but which are really trauma programming trying to keep you miserable). 

Actual trauma recovery is about you feeling more like yourself than maybe you ever have— in a positive sense. 

“Recovery” that does not emphasize authenticity and autonomy is not real recovery. 

It’s a recipe for eventually feeling trapped, controlled, and “in trouble”— that is for getting triggered and setting yourself up for saying “f*ck it.” 

drglenndoyle

Outer safety requires inner safety.

It would be awesome if we could somehow guarantee that others won’t try to attack us— that we’re truly safe from external threat. 

But, we can’t. 

We can’t guarantee our safety from anyone else, because we can’t control anyone else’s actions. 

If we could control anyone else’s actions, we wouldn’t have endured what we’ve endured. 

But, again, we can’t. 

Any assertion that we’re “safe” that depends on someone else doing something or not doing something, is not rock solid. We just never know for sure what is in someone else’s mind, or what they might do. 

All we can do when it comes to external safety is maximize the odds that we’ll be relatively safe, and minimize the odds we’ll be in a vulnerable position— while still living life, still having relationships, still going out in the world and living life. 

We can’t make a guarantee of “safety” our requirement for going out and engaging with the world— because there are no guarantees of external safety. 

We’ll be waiting for ever. Sequestering forever. 

(I know, there are some people reading this saying, “I don’t see the problem with sequestering forever?”)

We can’t guarantee external safety. Some survivors reading this are in positions where they can’t even influence their external safety all that much— who are in danger situations or abusive relationships that are not yet safe to leave. 

Realistic trauma recovery has to account for the potential lack of external safety out there. 

We can’t pretend “it’s safe now.” We don’t know. 

What can we do when it comes to safety, then? 

The most important thing we can do when it comes to safety is make sure that, if a threat is coming at us, it won’t be coming from us. 

We can make sure the threatening phone call is not coming from inside the house, so to speak. 

Many of us have been conditioned by our bullies and abusers to be mean to ourselves. 

More than that, even: many of us have been conditioned to respond to our painful situations by shaming, blaming, or harming ourselves. 

Many of us even have experience with responding to painful situations by threatening or trying to take our own lives. 

But if we’re serious about trauma recovery, we truly need to make our head and our heart safe territory, especially for our “parts” and our inner child— and that means we have to put a hard limit on the self-aggression. 

It doesn’t matter how we earned those patterns of self-aggression, or how long ago we learned them. We NEED our nervous system to be able to trust us. 

We need our “parts” to know they can feel what they feel and express what they need to express, without us freaking out and trying to harm or kill ourselves. 

We need to be truly safe with ourselves— even in a world that is not objectively “safe” otherwise. 

I want you to be safe from threats out there in the world. 

But the only true, relative safety from those threats comes from our commitment to handle them when they arise— and we can’t do that if we’re busy kicking the sh*t out of ourselves. 

The ability to protect ourselves from threats “out there” hinges on our self-trust. 

Can we trust ourselves to handle those threats, fight when we need to, flee when we need to?

Can we trust ourselves to stay present, size up the threat, and do what we need to do to keep our physical body, our “parts,” and our inner child safe? 

Remember that the primary impact of CPTSD is to damage our relationship with ourselves— and that has a direct impact on our overall safety. 

The world outside of us is not safe. We have to realistically manage that. 

And the only way we can is by making the world inside of us meaningfully safe— and that means no self-aggression, even if it is a long standing pattern. 

Even if self-harm or suicidal ideation is a comforting pattern. You know what I’m talking about. Even then. 

Realistic safety in trauma recovery is an inside out job— and a non-negotiable one. 

Sorry, that’s just how this “recovery’ thing works. I don’t make the rules. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

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.