You’re going to need some new “rules” for this “trauma recovery” thing in the past than you’ve had for yourself in the past.
I’m not talking about “rules” other people have laid down for you. You’ve had enough of those.
I’m talking about “rules” that you choose, for your reasons— that keep you on the rails in your trauma recovery, toward your goals, aligned with your values.
Because they’re your rules, it’s not up to me to tell them to you. I can only make suggestions.
But here’s a strong suggestion I have for a rule: no more investing in people or situations without a reasonable expectation of a return on that investment.
CPTSD tricks us into making bad energetic investments.
It tricks us into believing in people and ideas that are not worth our belief.
It tricks us into staying in relationships that have hurt us, not supported us.
CPTSD tricks us into believing that we don’t have the “right” to expect things from people and situations.
An example I hear every day is survivors who need specific things from their relationships with their therapists or other health care professionals, but who aren’t getting those things— but who have been convinced that their lack of return in those relationships is “probably” their fault.
(This actually happens an awful lot.)
Over and over again, we make investments of various kinds— energetic, social, financial, even spiritual— in relationship partners, health care providers, and spiritual mentors…and when those investments do not pay off, we blame ourselves.
This is part and parcel of a very common trick Trauma Brain pulls on us— that “everything is our fault and everything is our responsibility” BS (Belief System).
Breaking out of this pattern requires us to switch up our personal rules.
We need to yeet the old rule of “I don’t have the right to make changes when I’m not getting what I need.”
And I suggest replacing that old rule with the new rule of, “I only continue investing when there is a realistic, identifiable return on that investment in a reasonable time window.”
What does this mean?
This means you don’t have to stay in relationships of any kind— including therapy or other health care relationships— that are not meeting your needs.
This means you don’t have to keep having conversations with people who are committed to not understanding or considering your point of view.
This means you don’t have to keep investing in a specific religion or spiritual identity if engaging with it only makes you feel like garbage, and doesn’t bring you demonstrably closer to the God of your understanding.
A perspective that has served me well in trauma recovery is, everything I pay attention to is an investment. It’s an investment of my focus, my time, and my energy— all things that, as a trauma survivor working my recovery, I have to be very selective with.
If I’m going to make certain investments of focus, time, and energy, they need to pay off. After all, you and I, as survivors in recovery, do NOT have an unlimited reservoir of ANY of those things.
Add to that the fact that if you and I, as survivors working our trauma recovery, allow ANY of those investments to go on auto pilot, Trauma Brain will cheerfully steer all of them in directions that make us feel like garbage and kneecap our recovery…you begin to see the importance of being unapologetically picky when it comes to our investments.
So: your rules in trauma recovery are your rules. A BIG part of recovery is how the rules you devise and adhere to differ from the rules laid down for you by your bullies and abusers.
Your rules are going to reflect your needs and wounds— which is why they have to be so individual to you.
But in my experience, a good place to start is rules around what you will and won’t invest in— especially over time, especially after you have lots and lots of data about who and what will “pay off” if invested in long term.
Thank you for the investment of time and focus you made in reading this post.
Now go out and make some other good recovery investments today.
Breathe; blink; focus.
Use Your Damn Skills 