You don’t “deserve” to feel bad or be punished for feeling bad. Really.

Trauma has this way of turning any challenge or pain we’re currently experiencing into a referendum on who we are as a person. 

We get it in our head that if we’re suffering, it means we’re garbage— or we’re suffering because we’re garbage. 

For many trauma survivors, we can’t just have a bad day or a rough patch. 

Trauma Brain is constantly in our ear, telling us that our bad day or rough patch is actually hard evidence that we suck, we’re weak, we’re stupid, we’re not doing recovery right, blah, blah, blah. 

Cognitive therapists have identified a thought distortion they call “personalization,” where we assume everything negative in our life is about us. It’s a distortion many trauma survivors, including (especially!) me, really struggle with. 

It took me a long time to finally accept that some sh*tty or painful things just happen. It’s statistically unlikely that I am the proximal cause of ALL the pain in my life. 

Unfortunately, we trauma survivors are often subject to cultural messages that encourage us to “take responsibility” for the pain or setbacks in our life— and we survivors take those messages and enthusiastically run with them. 

And why wouldn’t we? Those “take responsibility” messages perfectly align with what we already believe: that everything is our fault, and everything is our responsibility. 

When someone like the trauma recovery guy on the internet comes along and tries to tell us that NOT everything is our fault or our responsibility, our trauma conditioning is right there to whisper in our ear that he’s just “coddling” us. 

For the record, I have never met people who desired “coddling” LESS than trauma survivors. 

Trauma survivors will kick your ass. As a group, we are tough as nails. We’ve had to be. And the very idea that anyone would coddle or condescend to us is often personally offensive. 

Anyway: we trauma survivors have this default setting where we assume everything bad or painful is our fault— and our habitual way of responding to this is to feel ashamed and kick the sh*t out of ourselves. 

We ask ourselves, why can’t we be “normal?” (As if “normal” in our culture is any great shakes?)

We ask ourselves, why can’t we be “tougher?” (As if our problem is that we’ve been insufficiently “tough, with all we’ve survived?)

We ask ourselves, what the f*ck is wrong with us? (As if that’s a Recovery Supporting Question that will ever yield a useful or empowering answer?) 

In other words, when we experience pain or struggle, our trauma conditioning kicks in and uses it as an opportunity to make us feel worse. 

Working our trauma recovery means understanding that our default filter is always going to be “it’s my fault and I deserve to suffer for it.” 

Working our recovery also means having something to say back to that reflexive BS (Belief System)— and having the willingness to keep working toward our recovery goals even if we thoroughly believe we deserve to suffer for struggling. 

Don’t get me wrong: I, personally, am quite capable of making choices that contribute to my own suffering. I’m sure you are, too. I’m not saying that we never do things that invite pain into our life. 

What I am saying is that, no matter how we arrived at this place of struggle, we don’t deserve to suffer more BECAUSE we’re struggling— and we’re not going to get out of this spiral by blaming and punishing ourselves. 

This is where the recovery tool of self-forgiveness comes in real handy. 

“Forgiveness’ tends to be a very fraught word for us trauma survivors, and I’m not a fan of how the word is thrown around as an imagined cure-all for trauma symptoms and struggles. 

I do, however, believe in selective, mindful use of self-forgiveness as a tool to interrupt, to the extent we can, shame spirals. 

You’re going to read that term, “self forgiveness,” and if you’re in a spiral, you’re going to say to yourself, “I don’t deserve that. He doesn’t understand. I’m really bad, and everything really IS my fault AND my responsibility…and…and…and…” 

I get it. I get that’s what Trauma Brain is saying, anyway. 

That tells me self-forgiveness is a more important tool than ever for you right now. 

Easy does it. Breathe; blink; focus. 

You can do this.