Don’t take CPTSD’s lies at face value.

Spoiler: your trauma conditioning will find every possible way to label every halfway positive thought you ever have about yourself as bullsh*t. 

Trauma Brain, what I call the internalized voices of our bullies and abusers that we play on repeat for years and years, has absolutely no interest in what’s actually true. 

But it’s very good at telling us we suck. 

Trauma Brain is so skilled, so gifted, at telling us we suck, that it will find new and creative ways to inform us we suck, almost daily. 

There isn’t a positive or gentle thought about ourself we can think, without CPTSD stepping in and telling us how none of that “positive” stuff is true— but every negative thing we think about ourself is “obviously” the “real” truth. 

You need to know that has nothing to do with reality. 

You need to know that has everything to do with conditioning. 

I talk a lot about how trauma conditions us— what it conditions us to think, to believe, to feel, and to do. I do this because I believe conditioning is at the heart of our CPTSD wounds. 

I don’t believe CPTSD is entirely about what happened to us. I believe it’s about what the things that happened to us, did to our nervous system going forward. 

People think CPTSD is about “the past.” It’s not. It’s about what’s going on in our nervous system, inside our head and our heart, right here, right now. 

It’s about how all that conditioning makes it hard to live life. To hold down a job. To manage relationships. To manage money. To manage feelings. 

Nobody reading this is “stuck in the past.” Not the way people think we are, anyway. 

We are stuck in patterns of thinking, believing, feeling, and behaving that were powerfully shaped by the past— and that sh*t doesn’t change overnight. It doesn’t change with a one time decision. 

That’s what I wish people understood. 

That’s what I need you to understand. 

Trauma Brain is going to try to tell you you can’t do anything right— but that has nothing to do with whether you can or can’t do anything right. 

Trauma Brain is going to try to tell you you can’t make a relationship work— but that has nothing to do with whether you can or can’t make a relationship work. 

Trauma Brain is going to tell you there is no hope for you. But that has nothing— nothing— to do with whether there actually is hope for you. 

Trauma Brain is an unreliable narrator. 

Remember that. 

No matter how convincing or vivid or familiar CPTSD’s lies are, they are still lies. 

Lying to us about us is what trauma does best. 

Don’t take CPTSD’s lies at face value.