What is that “in trouble” feeling all about, anyway?

Many complex trauma survivors go through the day feeling like we’re “in trouble.” 

Not only do we often feel like we’re “in trouble”— we often experience shame for feeling it. 

After all, what the hell is that about? We’re adults. How on earth are we “in trouble?” 

Some survivors leap to the conclusion that they must have a “guilty conscience”— why else would we feel “in trouble” all the time? 

I can assure you: feeling “in trouble” is not necessarily a sign of a “guilty conscience”— nor is it any kind of indication that you are, in fact, “guilty.” 

It’s very often a product of trauma conditioning— specifically, being blamed and shamed when we were growing up. 

Many trauma survivors were heavily conditioned to believe that everything is our fault— and everything is our responsibility. 

(This is one of many reasons, by the way, why I believe the assertion that trauma survivors have a “victim mentality” is almost always bullsh*t— if you’ve ever met a trauma survivor, you know that we hav ZERO problem “assuming responsibility” for everything that’s ever happened in our world. Or, you know, the rest of the world, for that matter.) 

Many abuse survivors, specifically, were explicitly told that what was happening to them was their fault— and if they tried to escape “responsibility” for their situation, they would be punished and ostracized. 

When you’re growing up in that kind of environment, you learn to not question or reject the blame and shame that is being shunted you way. 

You learn to accept it. 

Fast forward a decade or two, and you find yourself trying to navigate the world as an adult who has an overdeveloped sense of fault and responsibility. 

Any trauma survivor can tell you: we can find ways to make ANYTHING negative that happens in the world around us our fault, somehow. 

(Conversely, any trauma survivor can tell you: we can find reasons why ANY positive thing that happens in the world around us is mere coincidence, clearly not connected to anything we did.)

Survivors of neglect in particular struggle with feeling “ in trouble.” 

When you grew up mostly ignored, you find yourself inventing reasons why you were so “bad” that the people who “should” have been interested and invested in you, “weren’t.” 

When you’re used to coming up with reasons you’re bad, it’s a short leap to finding reasons why you’re “in trouble.” 

The feeling that we’re “in trouble”— and the conviction that everything is our fault and everything is our responsibility— are all about trauma conditioning. These are attitudes and beliefs that were programmed into us from an early age— not evidence that we’re actually “in trouble” or “at fault” for something. 

Trauma recovery is about undoing that programming, and reconditioning ourselves in attitudes and beliefs that serve us, rather than hurt us— but it’s not easy. 

That old record has been playing for so long, we barely even register it anymore. It’s become the background music of our lives. 

For trauma recovery to “stick,” we not only have to tune not the record being played— we have to scratch it. 

At first that’s gonna feel weird. After all, we were told that you don’t scratch records— if you do, you’ll be in trouble, right? 

There’s that “in trouble” thing again. 

Doing the things we need to do to work a realistic, sustainable trauma recovery will make us feel like we’re “in trouble”— because we will be defying years of conditioning that were created by some of the most important people in our lives. 

It’s gonna be scary. It’s gonna feel like a risk. 

But I’m gonna ask you to scratch that record. Scratch the hell out of it. 

Yes, you would have been “in trouble” for scratching that record once upon a time. 

But not now. 

Not ever again.