Our trauma responses are not “stupid.”

Our trauma responses are not “stupid.” 

Calling our trauma responses “stupid” doesn’t help us resolve or transform them— in fact, it does the opposite. 

We cannot resolve trauma responses we belittle. 

Our trauma responses doesn’t come out of nowhere. They don’t exist to frustrate us— even though they are definitely frustrating. 

Belittling our trauma responses is essentially telling our nervous system that we “shouldn’t” be experiencing them— it’s essentially invalidating our nervous system’s experience. 

We’re not going to resolve symptoms and invalidate them at the same time. 

Why do we reflexively invalidate our trauma responses? Mostly because we’ve been conditioned to. 

We’ve had our feelings and responses mocked and invalidated by others— so that’s what we’ve seen modeled, and that’s what we’ve internalized. 

We’ve also often come to believe the very fact that we have feelings is the problem. 

But the problem is not, and has never been, that we have feelings, or even reactions. 

The truth is, our nervous system is reacting the way human nervous systems react to trauma. Those reactions may be painful and inconvenient— but they are not “disordered.” 

What is “disordered” is the trauma that produced them in the first place. 

What is “disordered” is the mockery and other cruelty that we experienced because of our feelings and reactions— and that we’ve been tricked into recycling on our own time. 

What is “disordered” is that we’ve been conditioned by our culture to believe that our normal human reactions to trauma are pathological. 

YOU are not “disordered.” You are injured. 

We heal injuries by caring for them, not by belittling them. 

Trauma responses are many things— sad, infuriating, scary— but calling them “stupid” nudges us dangerously close to calling ourselves “stupid.” 

And you are definitely not “stupid”— especially not for experiencing or struggling with trauma responses. 

One of the undeniably hardest tasks of trauma recovery is rebuilding our self-esteem. 

Multiple variables affect how we think about ourselves, what we believe about ourselves, and how we relate to ourselves— but one of the most important of those variables is literally how we talk to ourselves. 

Abuse survivors very often grow up being told versions of “we’re stupid.” 

We’re told we’re stupid, our feelings are stupid, our reactions are stupid, our needs are stupid. 

That’s very often the script that has sunk into our bones. That’s our baseline. Believing we’re stupid, feeling like we’re stupid, calling ourselves stupid. 

That’s what we’re up against. 

That’s the programming we have to take great care not to play along with. 

It may seem like a semantic point, but calling our trauma responses “stupid” is moving in the wrong direction.

Compassion and care over casual cruelty. 

I don’t love my trauma responses, either. 

But I don’t call them “stupid.” 

The normal responses of my nervous system deserve better than that.