Don’t believe what trauma tells you, about you.

Trauma can make us feel stupid. But we’re not. 

It makes us feel stupid for supposedly making “choices” that weren’t, actually, meaningful choices. 

It makes us feel stupid for struggling with feelings and experience that we imagine other people aren’t struggling with. 

It makes us feel stupid for needing certain types of support that other people don’t seem to need. 

Not only can trauma make us feel stupid— it can make us feel lazy, too. 

When we’re struggling with our symptoms, often times our default setting is to shame and blame ourselves for “not trying hard enough.” 

Many of us maintain a cherished fantasy that we could overcome our symptoms and struggles if we were just smarter or had a better work ethic. 

In addition to making us feel stupid and lazy, trauma can make us feel spiritually or morally unworthy. “Bad.” 

Very often we assume that, since “everything happens for a reason” (ugh), the “reason” we were “selected” for this pain, for these struggles, is because we “deserve” them. We must be “bad.” We must be made to suffer. 

Trauma means literally none of those things. Having been abused, even horribly abused, does not make us “stupid.” It does not make us “lazy.” It does not make us “bad.” 

When we’re exposed to traumatic stress, our decision making very often goes to sh*t. It has nothing to do with intelligence, and everything to do with how we reflexively respond to our conditioning.

When we’re exposed to traumatic stress, we very quickly lose perspective on whether we have options, and what options we have. 

When we’re exposed to traumatic stress, we very often lose motivation. It has nothing to do with “laziness” or “work ethic.” It has everything to do with the learned helplessness and hopelessness that characterizes trauma conditioning.

None of this is our fault. None of of this is anything we can avoid if we were just smarter; or a harder worker; or more spiritually pure. Trauma is about psychology and biology— no less, but no more. 

Trauma gets to us with this cognitive distortion called “emotional reasoning.” In emotional reasoning, we strongly FEEL something to be true— so we assume it’s true. 

I’ll spoil the suspense: when we’ve been through trauma, we’re going to FEEL plenty of things are true, that are pure and utter BS (Belief Systems— but the other kind of BS, too). 

You’re going to FEEL worthless. 

You’re going to FEEL lazy. 

You’re going to FEEL stupid. 

You’re going to FEEL bad. 

None of that is true. Trauma doesn’t MAKE any of that true. Having been abused or neglected doesn’t make any of that true. People treating us like garbage does not, in fact, make us garbage. 

A big part of trauma recovery is pushing back on emotional reasoning— learning to say to ourselves, “because this awful thing about myself FEELS true, that doesn’t MAKE it true.” 

It’s not easy. We’re used to believing the bad stuff. We’ve been told the bad stuff over and over again, often by people we love, often by people we trust. Trauma bonds are very real. 

But when it comes to how we view ourselves and what we deserve, feelings are not facts. 

Don’t get me wrong: our feelings about a lot of things are perfectly valid, and often insightful. But it’s part of the injury of PTSD that our feelings about ourselves are often distorted in absurdly negative ways. 

Don’t believe everything you think about yourself after you’ve experienced trauma. 

Remember the trauma responses have nothing— zero, zilch, nada, zip— to do with intelligence, industriousness, or morality.