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. 

drglenndoyle

You deserve…

You deserve people in your life who see you. 

Who are proud of you. 

Who are not embarrassed by you. 

Who take the time to understand you. 

Who give you the benefit of the doubt. 

Who have your back. 

Who care about your projects. 

Who don’t project on to you. 

Who don’t use you. 

Who value you for more than what you look like. 

Who value you for more than what you can do for them. 

Who are not looking to you to compete them. 

Who are interested in seeing you feel good, function well, and succeed. 

You deserve people in your life for whom love is a verb, not just a feeling. 

Just in case you have Trauma Brain trying to tell you you don’t. 

drglenndoyle

Don’t let “trauma” or “survivor” language trip you up or scare you away from recovery.

You don’t “have” to use any language that doesn’t feel right, to you, to describe yourself or your experience. 

Maybe “trauma” feels right; maybe it doesn’t. 

Maybe “survivor” feels right; maybe it doesn’t. 

Some people find it useful and validating to call themselves “survivors” and what they went through “trauma;” others find those labels stressful or distracting. 

Most of the people reading this have had others try to define and police their language when it comes to describing their experience— which is condescending, invalidating, and controlling. 

F*ck that. 

Whatever language you prefer to describe yourself and what you went though, we can agree that your experiences conditioned you to feel, think, believe, and behave in certain patterns; and that to undo that damage, we need to choose and condition alternative patterns of feeling, thinking, believing, and behaving. 

I choose to call those formative experiences “trauma” and reconditioning those experiences “recovery,” but call them what you want. 

The language we use is less important than the consistent, incremental effort we put in, hour by hour, day by day. 

You get to choose. 

Don’t let the language trip you up. 

Focus on the tools and strategies that will realistically lead you to feeling, doing, and experiencing more of what you want and value, and less of what you want to leave behind. 

drglenndoyle

CPTSD and DID do not exist for the hell of it.

You need to know you didn’t develop these CPTSD patterns or DID patterns for the hell of it. 

That’s what CPTSD and DID are: patterns. Conditioned patterns of attention, experience, and reflexive behavior. 

CPTSD and DID are NOT “incurable diseases.” 

CPTSD and DID are NOT who you are or your “personality.” 

CPTSD and DID are NOT “choices.” 

They are patterns that have been conditioned in you, likely for years or even decades— meaning you may not even remember a time when those patterns didn’t define your life experience. 

Patterns that have been conditioned, can be unconditioned and reconditioned. 

That doesn’t mean it’s “easy.” That means it’s possible— with consistency and commitment and support and strategy. 

The patterns of thinking, believing, feeling, and behaving that add up to CPTSD and DID developed for reasons— most often, to keep us safe on some level. 

What many people don’t understand is, the overwhelming majority of trauma “symptoms” have their roots in self-protection. 

What WE need to understand is that giving up those “symptoms”— up to and including self-harm and suicidal ideation— is probably going to feel UNSAFE on some level, especially at first. 

We do not develop CPTSD or DID to be “difficult.” 

Nobody reading this “chose” CPTSD or DID. (Given the actual “choice,” literally everyone who struggles with either would absolutely choose differently 10 times out of 10.)

The most painful, frustrating trauma “symptoms” we experience are purposeful. 

And if we’re going to realistically reduce our vulnerability to them, we need to understand and respect what they’re all about. 

We have to give them their due. 

All of this is part of a larger project of steadfastly refusing to hate or reject “parts” of ourselves or our experience. 

For as ashamed or confused as we are by aspects of what we’re experiencing, realistic recovery is going to ask us to deal with our “parts” and our experiences with respect, patience, and openness. 

CPTSD and DID do not exist, either in general or in us, “for no reason.” 

And if we’re going to ask our nervous system to run new, different unfamiliar patterns, instead of the patterns we’ve been running for years, we’d better be prepared to demonstrate that we understand what a significant “ask” that is. 

drglenndoyle

CPTSD is overwhelming. No need to deny it.

CPTSD can be overwhelming. No need to deny it. No need to minimize it. 

The fact that we can meaningfully recover from CPTSD and create a life worth living doesn’t take away from the fact that trauma absolutely sucks— nor is it to say that it’s our fault if we haven’t yet recovered. 

People so want to to think about CPTSD and the suffering it causes in black and white terms— but it’s just not that simple. 

Many of us feel ashamed for feeling overwhelmed by CPTSD. We blame ourselves for “letting” it get the better of us, especially if we grew up believing we had to be “tough.” 

The problem with that whole mindset is that it’s not just that CPTSD “feels” overwhelming— CPTSD IS overwhelming. Literally. It overwhelms our capacity to cope and function. 

That’s not our fault— but Trauma Brain, the internalized voices of our bullies and abusers, will try to tell us it is. 

Many of us feel ashamed for not having gotten our lives back on track yet, especially if we were raised to believe that feeling or functioning poorly is both our fault and our responsibility. 

The problem with THAT whole mindset is that we can’t “get our lives back on track” until we have the tools and support to do so— and we’re actually READY to do so. 

We’re not ready for trauma recovery until we are. 

And there’s no forcing it if we’re not yet at that point. 

The temptation to deny and disown how overwhelming CPTSD is can be very strong in survivors, especially if we’ve been shamed and punished for struggling in the past. 

After all, we’re not supposed to “let” anyone see our weaknesses, are we? 

We’re not supposed to “let” anyone know we’re struggling or hurting. 

We hear terms like “self compassion” and “validation,” and part of us might assume it’s a trick— a trap to get us to cop to vulnerability, only then to be mocked or taken advantage of. 

No, it’s not easy to admit how overwhelming CPTSD can be, let alone how overwhelmed we feel trying to manage it. 

Recovery is going to ask us to consider the fact that maybe we’re NOT overwhelmed by CPTSD because we’re “weak.” 

Maybe we’re overwhelmed by it because it is overwhelming. 

Maybe feeling overwhelmed is not a character flaw— maybe it’s something that human beings experience when our resources are exhausted, or when we’re pitted against stressors that we were not designed to face. 

Bones get broken when they are subjected to pressure that they were not designed to withstand. Brains are no different. 

When we turn toward recovery, and realize there are realistic things we CAN do to feel and function differently, the temptation is often to blame ourselves for not doing those things earlier, or more consistently, or not having figured out those things on our own. 

The realty is, CPTSD recovery asks us to forgive ourselves— over, and over, and over again. 

Forgive ourselves for what? For not getting into recovery earlier. For not knowing what the hell recovery— or trauma, for that matter— was before we did. 

For not being ready until we were. 

For trying to white knuckle our way through experiences that were never going to be managed in the long term by “white knuckling.” 

Yes, CPTSD can be overwhelming. 

But neither you nor I owe anyone an apology for being overwhelmed. 

Nor do we owe anyone an apology for when or how we discovered recovery. 

We’re here now. 

That, and the next decision we make, is what matters.