You don’t owe anyone an apology for having feelings or reactions.

You don’t owe anyone an apology for having feelings. 

You don’t owe anyone an apology for having reactions. 

Human beings have feelings and reactions. All human beings have feelings and reactions. 

Yet, trauma survivors habitually feel all kinds of shame for having feelings and reactions. 

Not only do we get to have feelings and reactions— we need to remember that many of us have been through some pretty f*cked up situations. 

Whether what we’ve been through was a little f*cked up or a lot f*cked up, what we’ve experienced often falls outside the range of “normal” human experience. 

You very much get to have strong, complicated reactions to f*cked up experiences that humans were not built to process. 

And yet— we’re often told we don’t get to have those reactions. 

We’re often told, implicitly or explicitly, that the feelings we’re having are “wrong.” 

We’re often judged and shamed for our feelings or reactions, because they don’t happen to align with what somebody else thinks we “should” feel or how we “should” react. 

I’ll spoil the suspense: our nervous system could literally not care less how anybody else thinks we “should” feel or react. Our nervous system is in the business of emoting about and reacting to what’s in front of us. 

Sometimes we get into our heads about how we owe people apologies for our feelings and reactions, because either we think or they’ve communicated that our feelings and reactions inconvenience or hurt them. 

It is entirely possible that someone might find our feelings and reactions not to their liking. It’s entirely possible someone might be inconvenienced by what we feel or how we react. 

That doesn’t mean you are “wrong” for your feelings or reactions. 

So much of the damage trauma inflicts upon us is rooted in invalidation. 

Abuse and neglect fundamentally invalidate our personhood. We come through the experiences of abuse and neglect literally feeling less like human beings, who deserve love and safety. 

When someone communicates to us that our feelings or reactions are “wrong,” they are also invalidating our personhood— because, again, emoting and reacting is what humans do. It’s what all humans do. 

You do not owe anyone an apology for being human, reacting like a human, having feelings like a human, behaving like a human. 

You do not have to “earn” the “right” to be human. 

You do not have to apologize for your feelings or reactions being strong or complicated— especially when what you’ve been through was complex and painful. 

For my money, trauma recovery is built on two principles: self-awareness and self-acceptance. 

We need self-awareness because it’s hard to change how we feel and function without being aware of how we feel and function. 

We need self-acceptance because it’s hard to change anything if we don’t accept that it exists exactly as it is, right here, right now. 

When we’re constantly apologizing for normal, universal human experiences— that we didn’t choose, by the way— like feeling and reacting, we’re kicking our self-acceptance right in the stomach. 

I know. It’s a hard habit to break. That “fawn” response dies hard. 

But it’s worth trying to unravel. It’s a pattern worth interrupting, worth scrambling. 

Because you don’t owe anyone an apology. Not for things you didn’t choose. Not for things, like feelings and reactions, that have been built into every human since the beginning of time.