Use Your Damn Skills

October 13, 2026 drglenndoyle

Trauma recovery is hard. But not impossible.

Yes, trauma recovery is hard.

But Trauma Brain, the internalized voices of your abusers and bullies, is trying to tell you it’s “impossible.”

Trauma recovery is not impossible.

There have been survivors recovering from their trauma for centuries. Long before therapy or Twelve Step were things.

And, there will be survivors recovering from trauma long after therapy, Twelve Step, or any other recovery tool we use today is long forgotten.

You, working your trauma recovery, are in some incredible company.

Some of the most brilliant, important people in history were survivors who figured out the “combination lock” to their own trauma recovery.

Hell, some of the greatest human accomplishments have been achieved specifically because survivors took their recovery seriously.

Trauma recovery is hard.

But it is possible.

And the extent to which we do recover is largely within our control.

Do not, do not, do not misunderstand me to be saying that all we ever have to do is work on ourselves. That’s not what I believe.

The world absolutely needs working on, too.

There are ongoing traumatic situations in the world that, I believe, can only be meaningfully altered by survivors working our recovery.

Because who else is going to do it?

Who else has the tools and the focus and the determination to do it?

It’s going to be trauma survivors working our recovery. That’s who will change things. That’s almost always who changes things.

But my point is, I’m not trying to see you some version of radical personal responsibility (though I do lean toward the “radical personal responsibility” in my own, personal recovery frame, for what it’s worth).

I’m not trying to see you some bootstraps fantasy.

Of course there are things outside of us that come to bear on our recovery. It’s not all up to us. It’s not all about our choices.

But a lot of it is.

And it’s our job to find that proportion of trauma recovery that we can meaningfully influence (not “control”).

That’s why we start with self talk, mental focus, and physiology.

That’s why we keep turning back toward self-esteem and our relationship with ourselves.

Trauma recovery is hard.

But it is not impossible.

And it starts as an inside-out job.

Breathe. Blink. Focus.

October 12, 2026 drglenndoyle

Working our trauma recovery makes us less vulnerable to manipulation.

Working your trauma recovery will make you less easy to control.

Why?

Because working your trauma is going to require you to get real clear and serious about who you are— who you choose to be, not who they told you you were “supposed” to be.

For most of our lives, we try to operate on that basis: being who we were told we were, or who we were “supposed” to be.

Our earliest self-judgments are us comparing who we were to who our parents or teachers said we “should” be.

In the best possible world, childhood and adolescence are about breaking free of those ideas, and defining our own identity.

But what happens if our childhood and adolescence was mostly comprised of us trying to stay alive, physically or emotionally?

What happens if we lack the safety and support to do what we’d have to do to figure that out?

Speaking for myself, my childhood and adolescence was mostly spent just trying to not hurt (which, ironically, often involved literally, physically hurting myself).

I spent much of my childhood and adolescence— and young adulthood, and not-so-young adulthood, for that matter— trying desperately to manage emotional states that I didn’t understand, and didn’t have much help in understanding.

Figuring out who I really was, independent of the parental expectations I was constantly falling short of, wasn’t really on my radar screen as a project.

I was too busy hating myself for not being whoever I needed to be to keep my family and my peers from bullying me.

Which is to say, when I finally came around to understanding that my life had to be about working a recovery, I had some work to do in learning who I was and what I was all about.

As long as we’re unclear or conflicted about that, though— as I was, and as you may be— we are incredibly vulnerable to manipulation.

This has nothing to do with intelligence. It has everything to do with unmet emotional needs.

When we grow up abused or neglected, we often have at least one “part” of us that would do anything for validation and safety.

We feel the instability of never having had real safety or support, and that makes us vulnerable to “fawn” flavored responses that will have us people pleasing like our life depends on it (because “part” of us might honestly believe that our life DOES depend on gaining others’ approval or affection).

As long as “fawn” is a central organizing principle of our psychology, we are vulnerable to manipulation.

We’re vulnerable to false promises.

We’re vulnerable to love bombing.

We’re vulnerable to young, lonely “parts” of ourselves taking the wheel, especially when it comes to relationship decisions.

Working our trauma recovery doesn’t immediately solve this problem— but it puts compassionately, realistically managing that “fawn” trauma response squarely at the center of our focus.

Proving to ourselves, again and again, that we WILL be there for ourselves; that we DO have our own back; that we ARE on our own side— that’s what progressively insulates us against manipulation.

We are vulnerable as long as “they” have something— approval— that we really, really want.

We may still want approval— but the self-esteem work we do every day in trauma recovery keeps us from needing it to the point of self-abandonment.

Yes, the work involved in trauma recovery can be a hassle.

But it is infinitely less exhausting— and less dangerous— than letting our “fawn” response make our decisions for us.

Breathe. Blink. Focus.

And have your own back today.

October 11, 2026 drglenndoyle

You got skills, they’re mutiplyin’.

There are going to be trauma recovery tools that can actually move the needle for you, but which get absurdly oversimplified in pop culture.

Breathing is one.

Grounding is another.

Meditation is one.

Journaling is a big one.

Each of those can be game changers in your trauma recovery— but they get watered down and trivialized in the public discourse, so much so that each one, at first mention, sounds like weak sauce.

Don’t get me wrong, there are absolutely superficial ways to “try” any of the above.

If you really think breathing is as straightforward as “in and out,” you’re probably not impressed by all the reminders to “breathe.”

If you think grounding is just “five things you can see, four things you can hear, three things you can touch,” blah blah blah, you’re probably not convinced it can be useful tool to manage dissociation or flashbacks.

If you think meditation is just sitting on the floor going “ommmm,” you’re probably unmotivated to try to establish a mediation practice as part of your recovery.

And if you think journaling is just “write about your feelings,” then not only do you probably not buy that it is a tool (I would call it a fundamental tool) in trauma recovery, but you probably think it’s a questionable idea that could make you vulnerable to flooding.

All fair.

The reality is, I can’t give you a full on seminar on each of those tools here. There isn’t space for that here— but more to the point, teaching and learning each of those four tools in ways that are applicable to your recovery could fill not just four books, but four times four books.

That is to say, there’s more to each of those tools than many people realize, because they get flattened out and caricatured in public discussions.

Truth is, breathing is the most accessible lever to toggling your vagus nerve and intentionally shifting between sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system dominance. Entire books have been written about the centrality of breathing to mental and physical health.

Truth is, without grounding skills— that go beyond the well-known 5,4,3,2,1 technique— are not just helpful at managing dissociation, flashbacks, and even nightmares, they’re foundational. Other skills don’t work well, or at all, if we don’t take connecting to the here and now seriously.

Truth is, meditation and self-hypnosis are the type of intentionally, naturally altered states of consciousness that make the neural rewiring trauma recovery requires possible at all.

And the truth is, guided journaling is the single most effective lever I’ve ever developed in processing my own trauma. It’s not even close. More so than therapy, even.

My point is: if a tool sounds like weak sauce, look closer.

Pop culture drastically oversimplifies most tools of emotional regulation and behavior change.

What you see in movies and on TV when people make significant changes in their lives is rarely how it works.

Don’t toss out a potential tool just because it sounds stupid or superficial.

Breathing, grounding, meditation, and journaling, among other tools, have been around for a long time and continue to be part of the trauma recovery conversation for one main reason: they work.

(And but also, not for nothing, they’re free, at least once you learn to use them well.)

Look closer.

Dive deeper.

There are recovery levers you haven’t known to pull because of how they’ve been presented to you— but which can seriously change how you feel and function.

October 10, 2026 drglenndoyle

Caterpillars and butterflies.

Something many people don’t understand about trauma recovery is that it is a crash course in a lot of things.

Psychology.

Philosophy.

Health.

Art appreciation. Music appreciation.

Sociology. Hell, even history.

You know how I keep saying that trauma recovery is about life, in some ways even more than it is about trauma? This is what I’m talking about.

People who succeed at trauma recovery don’t learn everything there is to know about trauma, and find themselves recovered.

Knowledge about what we’re up against is always useful. Know thy enemy.

But what many trauma survivors find even more useful is learning about life.

Much of trauma recovery is actually learning life skills that we didn’t have the safety or support to master once upon a time.

Very few people were taught a straightforward course of “how to regulate emotion.”

They were taught about life— if they were lucky.

Many of us had to figure out the “life” thing on our own— to the extent that we figured it out at all.

By the time we get around to working a trauma recovery, we have become field experts on a lot of things.

Successful trauma recovery means becoming an expert on applied psychology. Applied philosophy. Applied art and music therapy.

And here’s the thing about all that: the stuff we trauma survivors have to meaningfully think about every day can make us difficult to relate to, to people who haven’t had to think about all that stuff.

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably had the experience of running into many people who just don’t dive as deeply as you do.

Who don’t feel as deeply as you do.

Whose sense of life isn’t as gothic or neoclassical as yours.

And the reality of that is, it can feel isolating at times.

Of course they don’t relate to us— they haven’t had to dive as deeply as we have into what makes humans and reality tick.

Another way of expressing it: caterpillars don’t speak butterfly.

Which doesn’t, of course, mean there’s anything wrong with butterfly speak.

So don’t let the caterpillars convince you you’re “crazy.” Or weird. Or “dramatic.”

You keep working your trauma recovery, one day, one minute at a time; and remember all the tools you have at your disposal to help regulate.

I’m not just talking about tools I or another mental health professional gave you. I’m also talking about the type of tools Beethoven and Nietzsche and Jung and Lennon passed down to us survivors to help get us by.

Breathe. Blink. Focus.

And don’t look back at the chrysalis.

October 7, 2026 drglenndoyle

“Wallowing?” Nope.

Exactly zero percent of the survivors reading this are “wallowing.”

I know, that’s what the culture tells us— that we “wallow.”

Maybe there are trauma survivors out there who “wallow.” But I haven’t met them.

I have met hundreds of survivors who feel stuck in their past.

I have met hundreds of survivors who would give literally anything— up to and including their life or safety— to NOT be stuck in their past.

I have met hundreds of survivors who have seriously thought about giving up on recovery— and/or life— because people in their lives misunderstand them to be “wallowing.”

Being stuck in depression, or flashbacks, or addiction, is not making a decision to “wallow.”

“Wallowing” implies we’re not trying to change. But the survivors reading this know how desperately we’ve tried to change, again and again.

Struggling to change is far more often a “skill” issue than a “will” issue.

Do you know how few realistic tools our upbringing and culture give us to change deeply entrenched patterns of feeling and functioning like CPTSD?

Our upbringing and culture give us gems like “suck it up.”

Or “let it go.”

Or “get therapy”— which, while it’s often a good idea and a useful tool, is not an immediate cure-all for the deep, complicated injuries of CPTSD.

What looks like ‘wallowing” is very often exhaustion and/or learned helplessness.

“Learned helplessness” is what we call it when we’ve tried, and tried, and tried to make a change, but we haven’t been able to (often because haven’t had the necessary tools or support)— so we lose all faith in our ability to change, and quit trying.

But that’s not a “choice.”

That’s not “wallowing.”

People who accuse trauma survivors of “wallowing” in their pain are implying that recovery from CPTSD is largely an attitudinal problem.

Don’t get me wrong, attitude matters. But believe me when I tell you attitude does not fix flashbacks.

Attitude does not banish self harm urges or addiction cravings or suicidal ideation.

CPTSD is not an “attitude problem.”

If you’re a trauma survivor who has been accused of “wallowing,” you should know that that is not how smart, kind people talk about other peoples’ pain.

Smart, kind people get interested in what someone who is hurting needs.

They get interested in what has contributed to what they’re seeing in front of them.

They understand that, for all we may be able to observe of someone’s behavior on the outside, there are dozens and dozens (and dozens) of internal pain points and influences that we simply cannot see by looking at someone.

Yes, I too love the fantasy that CPTSD could be fixed by something as simple as an “attitude adjustment” or an admonition to “stop wallowing.”

But I had to stop believing in fairy tales when I got serious and realistic about trauma recovery.

Let them wallow in their stupid, superficial ideas about how trauma and recovery work.

You work your recovery today.

Breathe. Blink. Focus.

October 5, 2026 drglenndoyle

It’s not about trauma; it’s about life.

We will not recover from trauma by focusing exclusively on trauma.

That’s a mistake made by some people who don’t understand trauma or recovery— you know, the “get over it” crowd.

They think trauma survivors’ “problem” is that we focus too much on our trauma.

Because, you know, trauma survivors only have one problem, which can be solved by a one-time decision, right?

I wish it were that simple.

If we could “get over” our trauma with a one time decision, we would.

But the reality is, CPTSD involves way more than coming to terms with what happened to us.

One reason why trauma recovery is so hard is that it’s more complex than just “processing” our past.

It involves us reshaping our beliefs and behaviors about our life right now.

It frequently involves us building self care and life skills we didn’t have the safety or support to develop in years past.

Realistic, sustainable trauma recovery very frequently asks us to change how we think about and mange our relationships— with people, with jobs, with institutions.

One of the main reasons complex trauma is “complex” is that CPTSD ropes in so much more than the trauma.

The trauma is the core wound, the starting point.

But our shadow work extends far beyond that starting point.

If we only focus our trauma recovery work on the past, we don’t address our eating issues.

If we only focus our trauma recovery work on the past, we don’t address our money issues.

If we only focus our trauma recovery work on the past, we don’t address our intimacy issues.

If we only focus our trauma recovery work on the past, we don’t address our spirituality issues.

I will die on the hill of, trauma recovery isn’t only, or even mostly, about what happened to us— it’s about developing a quality life worth living, while accounting for the injuries we sustained once upon a time.

Processing our past is of limited use if we’re still enacting toxic patterns today.

Processing our past won’t help us if we’re eating or spending ourselves into oblivion today.

Processing our past can set the stage for developing greater emotional regulation— but many of our triggers for feeling overwhelmed and self-harmful are here and now, not in the past.

It’s my experience that many trauma survivors (and many professionals who speak out about resolving PTSD) need to broaden our vocabulary and framework when it comes to recovery.

Yes, processing trauma and detoxifying trauma memories can be enormously helpful.

But those are only part of this larger, ongoing project called “trauma recovery”— which, itself, is only the gateway to the REAL project, which is called “life.”

Breathe. Blink. Focus.

October 5, 2026 drglenndoyle

Hey, you.

Hello, trauma survivor reading this thinking that everything is going wrong, you’re doing everything wrong, and everybody hates you.

Nope, you’re not the first, last, or even the only trauma survivor thinking that.

CPTSD tends to do that to us.

Standard PTSD tends to be focused on what happened to us— whereas CPTSD is very often focused on who we are, what we deserve, what we can do, how our life is working out.

The reason for that is, PTSD is usually the result of one, big, identifiable, outside-the-norm stressor.

CPTSD, by contrast, is most often the result of pain, usually relationship-focused pain, accumulating over time— and often the events that make it accumulate are so familiar to us that we don’t even register them as “traumatic.”

When we grow up abused or neglected, or if we’re the victim of coercive control over time in adult relationships, there is no one big traumatic stressor to fixate on— so CPTSD goes after us, personally.

What this looks like in practice is us feeling like garbage about ourselves.

It looks like us feeling like we’re in trouble all the time.

It looks like us truly believing that everybody hates us— regardless of what they happen to be telling us or how they happen to be behaving toward us in the moment.

Many people don’t understand that these feelings and experiences are actually symptoms of complex trauma.

We think of “PTSD” as “war trauma”— and it doesn’t occur to us that years of being controlled, being manipulated, being subtly (or not so subtly denigrated), being financially or sexually exploited by people or institutions we trusted, all add up to significant traumatic stress.

That is to say, CPTSD survivors often don’t think of ourselves as “trauma survivors.”

We just think we suck.

We just think we can’t do life.

We just think we’re terrible at relationship partners.

I can’t tell you how long I went believing that my “main” problem was social anxiety— and don’t get me wrong, I suffer from plenty of social anxiety— while not registering that the literal reason I was anxious around people was because I had been heavily bullied as far back as I could remember.

Both PTSD and CPTSD can increase our vulnerability to suicidal thoughts— but in my experience, the suicidal ideation of CPTSD survivors tends to be very chronic and very personal, rather than focused on specific memories of a specific trauma, as in PTSD.

That “I suck and everybody hates me” thing is very CPTSD-coded. As is the “fight” response flavored “…and I hate everybody right BACK” chaser; as is the “fawn” flavored chaser “…but I hope they don’t hate me for hating them!”

Turns out there’s a reason they call it “complex” trauma.

Anyway, survivor reading this who thinks everything is going wrong, you’re doing everything wrong, and everybody hates you: it’s not that straightforward.

Yes, there may be things going wrong. Yes, you may be struggling with some things. Yes, people might have feelings about you.

But it’s rarely as black and white as “EVERYTHING” sucks.

That’s Trauma Brain, the internalized voices of your abusers and bullies, f*cking with you.

I’m not saying you’re perfect. I’m not saying you’re delusional.

I’m saying you’ve been programmed by complex trauma to sh*t on yourself because you feel like sh*t. And that’s not fair.

It’s tough to feel like everything sucks and everyone hates you. And I’m realistic enough to know that a post on the internet from someone who doesn’t know you may not help all that much.

Still, I need you to know: I’ve been where you are, and lots and lots (and lots) of other CPTSD survivors have been, too.

It’s kind of unlikely we ALL suck the way our CPTSD has tried to convince us we do, don’t you think?

Breathe. Blink. Focus.

And meet what you’re feeling right now with compassion, patience, and realism.

And for what it’s worth, I like you.

(If people are allowed to DISLIKE you without even knowing you, then I’m allowed to like you without knowing you, too, wouldn’t you say?)

October 3, 2026October 3, 2026 drglenndoyle