Trauma recovery your way.

Sometimes survivors struggle with working our recovery because we think it means becoming a certain kind of person— a certain kind of person we can’t stand. 

We have these preconceptions about what a person “working their recovery” looks like. 

We might think the kind of person who “works their recovery” is kind of preachy. (Sometimes we have this stereotype because, well, we’ve met people who were, in fact, preachy about working their recovery.) 

We might think the kind of person who “works their recovery” is kind of boring. I did, for a long time, anyway. 

We might think the kind of person who “works their recovery” is a lot of things— but one thing they emphatically are not is someone like us. 

Here’s the thing: “working our recovery” does not “have” to look any one particular way. 

I’ve met literally hundreds of survivors who are working their trauma recovery— and I can tell you they are incredibly diverse as people. 

You cannot tell, from appearances, who is or isn’t a survivor working their trauma recovery. 

There IS a way for you to work your trauma recovery that is totally consistent with your personalty, your aesthetic, your temperament. 

Put another way: you do not need to become a different person, let a lone a person you don’t like, to successfully work your trauma recovery. 

On the contrary, if we’re doing trauma recovery right, we actually start to feel MORE like ourselves— not less. 

The thing many people don’t understand about trauma s how profoundly it distracts us from who we really are. 

Trauma responses consume so much of our bandwidth and require so much energy to manage, that it often leaves us exhausted and dazed. 

There’s an old joke among trauma survivors that we frequently feel like we’re not even people anymore— we’re just a pile of trauma responses in a trench coat. 

When we are struggling to keep our head above water every day, we’re not left with much time, energy, or focus to simply be ourselves. 

All of which is to say: it is trauma, not recovery, that turns us into someone we are not. 

Authentically working our recovery brings us back home to who we are and what we’re all about. 

Why does any of this matter, on a practical level? 

Because it’s real important that we design and work a recovery that works with our personalty, not against it. 

If we have BS (Belief Systems) that insist we’re “not the kind of person” who is “cut out” to work a trauma recovery, we’re going to struggle with it— needlessly. 

There is a way to be authentically you, and work a trauma recovery. 

There is a way to fit your trauma recovery into your personal aesthetic. 

There s a way to use trauma recovery tools that is consistent with who you are. You don’t need to adopt language or metaphors that do not resonate with you. 

One of the main reasons I resist giving super specific “advice” about trauma recovery on the internet is because everybody’s trauma recovery is intensely personal to them. 

I don’t know what works for you tonally, or thematically, or aesthetically. 

I know general principles that make trauma recovery work— but the way you apply those principles to your specific vibe, only you can determine. 

You get to design your trauma recovery. Not me. Not anyone else, even if they are supposedly an “expert” in the field. 

You don’t need to become someone you’re not to recover from trauma. 

Design a recovery that looks, sounds, smells, and vibes like YOU.