Our strengths are real, and they count.

Our strengths are real, and they count. 

Our vulnerabilities are real, and they matter, too— but most people reading this don’t need validation of our vulnerabilities. 

Chances are we’ve had our vulnerabilities laid out for us in excruciating detail, for years. 

In fact, chances are we’ve had our vulnerabilities amplified and elaborated upon for us— often by the very people who should have been helping us see and understand our strengths. 

It’s staggering how often complex trauma survivors reach adulthood with innumerable experiences of their limitations and vulnerabilities being emphasized and fixated upon— but very few, if any, experiences of their strengths being identified and developed. 

A big part of the damage complex trauma inflicts upon us is, it keeps us distracted with survival instead of doing the things we would otherwise do to develop who we are. 

So much of our early lifespan supposed to be occupied by figuring out who we are, what we’re all about, and what we do well. 

We’re supposed to have the support of attentive, non-toxic adults as we do this— because we’re literal children, we have no way of knowing how to do any of it. 

Growing up we ONLY have the feedback from our environment to inform our beliefs about ourselves. 

As children, we’re not in the position to reality test what the people and situations we’re exposed to “teach” us about ourselves.

We don’t have the capacity— or the safety— to arrive at conclusions like “what they’re saying or doing is about them, not me.” 

Or “what they told me about me isn’t true.” 

Or “I don’t deserve what they are doing to me.” 

Not only do we not have the capacity or the safety to realty test those things when we’re children— many of us were told, explicitly, that what we were told and what we were feeling WAS our fault. 

Many abuse survivors believe our abuse was our fault, not just because that’s how it felt, but because it’s what we were TOLD— often by the people in our lives who were, in our world, the ultimate arbiters of “truth” or “reality.” The adults around us. Our caretakers. 

So we arrive in adulthood truly believing all the destructive, toxic messages about ourselves that we were fed growing up. We internalize those messages, and put them on repeat. 

Those messages become what I call “Trauma Brain”— and Trauma Brain becomes our baseline. 

Messages that contradict what Trauma Brain tells us— such as the fact that we have strengths that are just as real an important as our vulnerabilities— don’t resonate. Not because they’re untrue— but because they’re unfamiliar. 

They don’t feel “right.” 

Here’s the thing, though: our strengths really, really matter. 

Why? Because it’s our strengths that we’re going to build on as we design our trauma recovery and our new life. 

We can’t “build down.” We can only build up. So we need to be clear and real about our strengths— even if and when Trauma Brain is telling us we have no strengths that “count.” 

As you may imagine, this involves a certain amount of what we call in Twelve Step recovery “acting as if.” 

I don’t see “acting as if” as “fake it till you make it,” exactly, though some people use that language to describe it, too. 

(I don’t like “fake it till you make it” because I don’t think there’s anything “fake” about acknowledging our strengths— but I understand why people us that phrase. It FEELS fake— until it doesn’t.)

Don’t believe you have strengths that matter? Act as if you do. 

Ask yourself the Recovery Supporting Question (RSQ): if I HAD strengths, what would they be— hypothetically? 

Give yourself something to build up. Give yourself something to develop. 

Just like we can’t regulate emotions we deny exist, we can’t build on strengths we don’t acknowledge— even hypothetically. 

Our strengths matter. 

There is no one reading this who made it this far without tremendous strength and skill. 

Maybe you don’t believe that right now, and I get it. 

Don’t sweat it. I’ll believe it enough for both of us until you’re ready to get on board.