“Should” & shame make us feel like sh*t.

Your mileage may vary, but I’ve never, ever gotten anywhere useful by telling myself I “shouldn’t” be feeling this way. 

There are lots of things we’re going to feel in trauma and addiction recovery that we would rather not. 

In fairness, there are lots of things we feel long before we start working our trauma or addiction recovery that we’d rather not— hence us choosing to work a recovery at all. 

But even after we get into recovery and start working it day to day, we’re often beset by feelings we just wish didn’t exist. 

Notably, a lot of grief tends to surface in trauma and addiction recovery. 

Trauma and addiction recovery work is, at its core, grief work. 

We grieve opportunities lost, relationships lost, old coping tools lost, old beliefs and illusions lost. 

We don’t productively process or move past anything in trauma or addiction recovery unless and until we’re willing to wrap our head around the grief that we’ve been desperately trying to avoid feeling. 

That said: who on earth actually wants to feel grief? No one. I surely don’t. 

So we do everything we possibly can to avoid feeling that grief. I personally have done backflips upon somersaults upon moonsaults to avoid feeling grief. 

But— if we’re honestly working our recovery, we’re going to feel that grief. We’re going to be asked to reckon with that grief. We’re going to have to make choices about how to meet that grief. 

Lots of us are used to greeting that grief, along with other feelings that surface as e work our recovery (or live our lives, for that matter) with shame. 

Many of us are real good, real practiced, at telling ourselves we “shouldn’t” be feeling a particular way. 

As a rule in recovery, every time your brain tries to “should” at you, it should raise a little bit of a red flag. 

It’s usually a sign that old conditioning is trying to influence our behavior. Trauma Brain is trying to get us to do something or not do something— and it’s trying to short circuit our conscious decision making to make that happen. 

Whenever Trauma or Addict Brain try to “should” at us, they often curiously neglect the “why” part. 

If they do try to tell us “why” we “shouldn’t” feel a thing, it’s usually kind of abstract. “You shouldn’t feel that thing because…well, you just shouldn’t.” 

Sometimes they’ll tell us we “shouldn’t” feel that thing because a “good” person wouldn’t feel that thing. 

Or maybe they tell us a “strong” person wouldn’t feel that thing. 

Or maybe Trauma or Addict Brain try to tell us we don’t have “permission” to feel that thing. 

Let me tell you the truth: you have “permission” to feel whatever the hell you’re feeling. 

(Actually, the real truth is, you don’t NEED anyone’s “permission” to feel anything.) 

We don’t ask for feelings. Feelings do not represent some deep fundamental truth about our “character,” our “goodness” or “badness.” 

Feelings just are. They represent an amalgam of our understanding, our conditioning, our values, and quirks of our neuropsychology. 

If we shame our feelings— these things we didn’t ask for, and which we frequently have difficulty regulating if we’ve been through trauma— we kick our self-esteem in the gut. 

“I shouldn’t be feeling this” is a statement that gets us nowhere. We ARE feeling this. Telling ourselves we “shouldn’t” usually only leads to feeling ashamed and helpless. 

I get it. Nobody wants to feel many of the things we feel int trauma or addiction recovery. 

But watch those “shoulds.” 

Maybe swap them out for, “It’s a complete drag I’m feeling this way, I don’t WANT to feel this way, I HATE that I feel this way;” then maybe follow up with “…but the fact that I feel this way makes sense, somehow, some way, even if I don’t understand it now.” 

Swap out judgment and shame for curiosity and acceptance. 

Yes, easier said than done. 

But that’s true of literally every recovery task and tool. 

You’re up to this.