Don’t worry about pretty or perfect. Get through the day.

Trauma recovery tip: focus on getting through the day. Don’t worry if it’s pretty. Don’t worry if it’s perfect. 

(Trust me: it’s not gonna be pretty OR perfect. Not now, anyway. And that doesn’t matter.) 

For many survivors working our trauma recovery, it’s a daily battle to not get into our head about whether or not we’re dong this “right.” 

“This” could be anything, from recovery, to parenting, to our professional role, to being a son or daughter. 

Our trauma conditioning really, really loves to tell us that we’re doing most of what we do “wrong.” 

Trauma Brain will have a whole list of things we’ve done wrong, in the short term and the longer term, if we ask it. 

Remember what what Trauma Brain is: it’s the internalized voices, beliefs, and attitudes of our bullies and abusers— whether those bullies and abusers happened to be people, or communities, or churches. 

Trauma Brain represents what we took in— what now feels “right,” because it feels familiar. 

Much of our everyday programming is just us regurgitating what we were told and what we saw modeled. 

For many of us, that means we’re telling ourselves how much we suck, and we’re reenacting patterns of being cruel to ourselves— because we were often told how much we suck, and we often experienced people being cruel to us. 

For many of us, the self-cruelty kicks in so automatically, so reflexively, that we barely notice it. It just feels “right.” We don’t even acknowledge it as something that was conditioned in us— and something that may not represent reality. 

When we do have the thought that maybe the the things we have on repeat in our head may not be exactly true, we often use it as an opportunity to be even crueler to ourselves— because how could we think such stupid things? 

It’s real important to remember: these patterns of mental focus and self-talk that are kicking our ass aren’t “choices” were making. We are responding to conditioning. We are running programs that were “installed” by repeated experiences. 

The fact that we can, with practice, learn to shift our focus and choose different self talk doesn’t mean we suffered for years because of poor “choices.” 

We didn’t know what we didn’t know; and we couldn’t do what we couldn’t do. 

We do better as we learn better; as we take the risk, again and again, of being kind to and patient with ourselves, in defiance of old programming that insists we don’t “deserve” it. 

We do not need to radically shift how we talk to or behave toward ourselves today. That would be awesome; but that’s not how realistic, sustainable trauma recovery tends to work. 

Don’t worry about switching up everything in your nervous system today. Remember: the name of the game is getting though today, 1% safer, 1% more stable. 

I will take realistic, sustainable, 1% nudges over dramatic, unsustainable shifts every day. 

Usually the quest to do our trauma recovery— or anything else— “perfectly” is a distraction. A trap. A red herring. 

Usually the drive toward “perfection”— can you imagine, “perfection,” in a project as gritty and chaotic as trauma recovery?— is Trauma Brain trying to derail us with an unrealistic, unnecessary side quest. 

Don’t worry about pretty or perfect. My own recovery has been anything but. As has the recovery of almost everyone I know who has stuck with it. 

You just focus on getting through the day. 

Which means getting through the hour. 

Which means getting through this minute. This one, right here. 

Spending these few minutes reading this blog was a good start. 

See, lookit you— making Recovery Supporting Decisions (RSD’s) even as you sit there. 

You’re on the right track.