Don’t neglect work or finances in your trauma recovery blueprint.

CPTSD or DID can be hell on our ability to make a living and support ourselves. 

And that’s more than an inconvenience. 

Anything that compromises our ability to support ourselves the way CPSTD and DID do threaten our autonomy— and that’s no small thing for complex trauma survivors. 

Feeling dependent can be overwhelmingly triggering for us. 

We know first hand how dangerous it can be to not be able to escape a situation because we’re economically dependent. 

The three major triggers of all complex trauma survivors— feeling controlled, feeling trapped, and feeling “in trouble”— ALL come into play when we feel economically dependent on something or someone. 

Financial insecurity makes walking away from painful situations difficult or impossible— and that in turn triggers us into deeper and deeper levels of resistance or paralysis. 

It’s a vicious, vicious cycle. 

One of the things I get most frustrated with about trauma “treatment” is, it rarely addresses the problems our symptoms and struggles cause at work. 

Trauma “treatment” tends to focus on the struggles we experience with with self harm, suicidal ideation, and relationships— and, of course, those are important struggles that need to be understood and addressed. 

But figuring out to function at work and manage our money is its own super important thing that absolutely NEEDS to be addressed in any realistic trauma recovery blueprint. 

Work and finances have their unique triggers. 

The behaviors working and managing our finances require of us go beyond trauma treatment tropes like self-care and self-love. We’re not going to “care” or “love” ourselves into showing up on time, focusing on our tasks, and keeping track of our account balance. 

When designing your trauma recovery blueprint, get realistic and specific about what triggers and challenges crop up regarding work and managing your money. 

The good news is, the basic tools of trauma recovery— self talk, mental focus, and physiology— are all relevant to managing our symptoms, reactions, and needs around work, finances, and realistic economic independence. 

(That goes beyond trauma recovery, by the way: EVERYONE in history who has mastered their finances has used those tools of self talk, mental focus, and physiology to do so.)

I know, it’s triggering as hell, but we need to roll work and finances into our recovery blueprint. 

Turns out: we don’t suddenly become not-trauma-survivors when we clock in.