Giving yourself credit will not make you complacent. Really it won’t.
Trauma survivors often struggle with giving ourselves credit, because we don’t want to lose our edge.
We get worried that if we actually acknowledge when we do something well, we might get cocky— and then the sh*t will hit the fan, when our guard is down.
We don’t believe this out of nowhere. Many of us have had experiences that reinforced for us that constant, constant vigilance was incredibly necessary to stay safe.
We didn’t have time to sit around and pat ourselves on the back. We had to stay sharp. We had to watch for the next threat, be prepared for the next challenge.
Add to that the fact that many of us were taught that giving ourselves credit was a form of “egotism” or “arrogance” that we have to stay away from if we want to be a “good” person.
We were taught that it was unacceptable to even think nice thoughts about ourselves at all, let alone give ourselves actual credit for doing something well or right.
According to our programming, if we start thinking nice things about ourselves, we’re just ASKING for the universe to step in and remind us that we’re not, actually, “good.” That we don’t, actually, deserve good things to happen to us.
Trauma recovery asks us to step back and be realistic about where all this programming comes from.
By and large, this conditioning comes from people and institutions that benefitted from us never cutting ourselves any slack, never giving ourselves credit, never giving ourselves a break.
These people and institutions want us walking around feeling guilty, disempowered, insecure, and uncertain.
It makes us easier to control.
It makes us easier to sell stuff to.
And it makes us less likely to speak up about bad stuff that’s happened to us.
The reality is, in working with hundreds of CPTSD survivors, I’ve never once met one whose main problem was that they were too easy on themsevles, or that they gave themselves too much credit.
I HAVE worked with dozens and dozens of survivors who did not feel they could make a “good” decision, under any circumstances— so they constantly undermined themselves, reversed themselves, or got so stuck in decision paralysis that they lost the chance to actually choose.
It’s true that neither you nor I make EVERY decision well.
But it’s also true that our decision making is almost always a mixed bag— which does include some competent, effective, values-congruent decisions alongside the stinkers.
Giving ourselves credit for decisions we make well and things we do right matters, because realistic trauma recovery requires us to solidify and deepen our self-trust and self-esteem.
Our “parts” are counting on us to listen to them and keep them safe— and they’re not going to buy into our ability to do either if we’re constantly doubting and trashing ourselves in our own head.
We do not have to fall into the toxic positivity trap of telling ourselves EVERY decision we make or EVERYTHING we do is awesome. That’s delusional, and trauma recovery is almost entirely organized around realistically seeing what we see and knowing what we know.
What we have to do, is be real with ourselves.
Giving ourselves credit will not make us vulnerable in the way we’ve been conditioned to believe it will.
It will not make us “arrogant” or “cocky.”
Giving ourselves realistic credit will point us to our strengths— yes, believe it or not, you have strengths, right here, right now— and help us understand where we get stuck, where we miss things, where we need to pay extra attention.
Giving yourself credit will not get you into trouble.
Not with anyone who realistically supports your trauma recovery, anyway.
Breathe. Blink. Focus.
And give yourself a break and a pat on the back today.
Use Your Damn Skills 