Allow me to spoil the suspense: your old trauma conditioning will always find reasons why you should quit this whole “trauma recovery” thing.
It’ll always find reasons why you “can’t” meaningfully recover.
It’ll always find reasons why the people around you or the people you love would be “better off” if you didn’t exist anymore.
If asked, your trauma conditioning will find many reasons, many of them seemingly quite convincing, that you don’t “deserve” to feel or function differently— that you somehow “opted in” to your current pain, and you should either just accept it and suffer or end everything.
That’s why we don’t listen to our old conditioning when it comes time to make important decisions. Because our old conditioning quite literally has nothing new for us.
Our old conditioning is not “objective.” It’s just familiar.
It feels “right” because it fits into the literal, physical grooves that have been carved in our nervous system over literal decades of thinking, feeling, and behaving in certain ways.
Our trauma conditioning comes disguised as offering some sort of wisdom or value— but the truth is, it’s just a propagandist.
Our old conditioning has an agenda— and, I hate to tell you, that agenda has nothing to do with what you “deserve,” what you actually can or can’t do, or what’s actually “best” for the people around you.
Your trauma conditioning wants you miserable and it wants you dead. It’s that simple.
Oh, I know— it makes a big deal about how it ACTUALLY wants you “safe.” I have no doubt someone will be down in my comments telling me that I misunderstand the “real” mission of trauma programming, that it actually centers around keeping us “safe” from past, present, and future threats.
Believe me, I do not “misunderstand” this. And it’s true: all trauma responses have their roots in nervous and endocrine system reflexes that did, in fact, evolve in us humans because they had survival value in a dangerous world.
But the internalized voices of bullies and abusers that I call Trauma Brain? None of that is about keeping you “safe.”
Telling you you do not “deserve” to live or improve your functioning is not about “safety.” Not really. Trauma Brain might pretend it is— but it’s not.
Telling you you “deserve” to drown in your pain because you somehow “opted in” to it is not about “safety.” Trauma Brain might bend over backwards to make some sort of argument that this is actually about “justice” or some such— but it’s not.
Over the years I’ve been writing about these subjects, I’ve gotten plenty of feedback that I need to give Trauma Brain and/or the inner critic the benefit of the doubt— and I’ve devoted a lot of thought to this viewpoint. I am, after all, very inclined to relate to all facets of ourselves and our experience with patience and compassion.
But at a certain point I decided, you know what? The price of playing nice with Trauma Brain s too high. I’ve seen Trauma Brain try to kill too many people i care about to give it the benefit of the doubt anymore.
So: I recommend you relate to your trauma conditioning, to Trauma Brain, like you would relate to a political candidate who very much wants your vote, and who very much wants to convince you that they are on your side and have your best interests at heart— but who, in the end, wants what they want, irrespective of whether it’s good for you or not.
Remember that Trauma Brain has a narrative— and that you don’t have to go along with it.
Remember that Trauma Brain has an agenda— and it’s usually not consistent with your goals, values, or commitments.
Remember that Trauma Brain wants you to quit reading material like this, because it would much prefer you stay up in your head, listening to its stories and pitches.
Remember that Trauma Brain does not want you empowered and autonomous and happy.
Just like your bullies and abusers, whose voices and behavior shaped your trauma conditioning in the first place, Trauma Brain wants you feeling inferior, uncertain, and supplicatory.
There is no negotiating with Trauma Brain because Trauma Brain has no reason to compromise. It can campaign in your head and body 24/7, and it knows it can wait out any weak willed opposition.
That old programming has nothing for you.
I say, scratch the record up so badly it cannot play the same way ever again.
I say, as the saying goes, if you need to burn your whole wold down in order to heal, strike all your matches.
(I forget where I read this, but it’s burned into my brain. So to speak.)
Your mileage may vary.
But I recommend losing all patience with and tolerance for Trauma Brain.
Use Your Damn Skills 