CPTSD doesn’t have to mean anything about us.

The fact that you were abused or neglected means literally nothing about you. 

It means things about the people who should have cared for you. 

It may mean things about the environment or community you grew up in. 

But it doesn’t mean anything about you. 

We trauma survivors are really good at assuming our abuse or neglect mean things about us— mostly negative things. 

We assume it “means” we were unloveable. 

We assume it “means” we were unimportant. 

We assume it “means” we cannot go on to live a normal or happy life. 

The fact is, just because the people who should have loved us, didn’t, doesn’t mean we’re “unloveable”— it means there was some deficit on their part. Not ours. 

Just because the people who should have prioritized us, didn’t, doesn’t mean we were “unimportant”— it means those people failed. Not us. 

And because we were hurt in the past, does not mean our future is set in stone. 

It means we have wounds to heal. Patterns to unwind and recondition. 

No more; no less. 

Our trauma does not mean what we think it means. What we were conditioned to believe it means. 

It does not mean we are cooked. 

It does not mean life is meaningless and the world is only dark. 

It does not mean we are helpless in the face of emotional dysregulation and trauma memories. 

Nothing about CPTSD or CPTSD recovery is “easy”— but we are not stuck with what we were handed in life. 

The facts of our past are the facts. 

But the meanings we attach to those facts are more up to us than we realized.