Garbage in, garbage out.

What we read and watch can be food for our recovery; or, what we read and watch can be poison for our recovery. 

We have to pay attention. 

I think it really, really matters what we read and watch. 

I used to have a mentor in the trauma treatment field who didn’t think what our patients read and watched on the internet was particularly important. She would discourage me from exploring what they were into, what they were pouring into their head 23 out of 24 hours a day.

I wholeheartedly disagreed. 

We, therapists, get fifty five minutes a week with our patients. Maybe one hundred ten, if we’re lucky. 

That leaves…so many minutes we don’t get with our patients every week. 

And it’s in those minutes, the minutes OUTSIDE of therapy sessions, that trauma recovery really lives or dies. 

Especially in those night time minutes. 

Many survivors reading this have the experience of trying desperately to figure out what to read or watch at night time to manage triggers. 

Our brain, our nervous system, registers EVERYTHING we expose it to. 

And Trauma Brain, the internalized voices of our abusers and bullies, will absolutely direct us toward things to read and watch that make us feel like garbage— you know, like it directs us to most anything and everything that will make us feel like garbage. 

(Because that’s Trauma Brain’s mission: make us feel like garbage, by any means necessary.) 

I’m not saying you “have” to fill your brain up with “toxic positivity” between therapy sessions. 

I’m not saying there is a list of “acceptable” things to read and listen to to support your recovery and avoid getting triggered. 

(Even if I did think there were “acceptable” and “unacceptable” things to watch and listen to in trauma recovery, I couldn’t provide a universal list— because my triggers are not your triggers, and my recovery inspo is not your recovery inspo.)

Something that CPTSD can sometimes do to us is “install” beliefs that it simply “doesn’t matter” what we read and listen to, because nothing can particularly hurt us or help us after what we’ve been through. 

I just don’t buy that. 

I believe every day, every hour that passes, we’re either reinforcing our trauma conditioning, or reinforcing our recovery. 

Many people don’t understand that CPTSD is not just what happened to us back then. 

It’s also what’s happened to us every day since— not just our initial trauma, but the experience of living with our trauma.

Every day, every hour, “counts.” 

Pay attention to how your media consumption affects you— specifically, how present you can be, how hopeful or hopeless you are during and after you consume it, how triggered you are. 

I completely understand the drive to consume media that resonates with feelings, including painful feelings. I, too, like to listen to sad songs and watch horror movies. 

Just make sure you’re making intelligent choices overall. 

Take breaks when you need to. Switch it up when you need to. 

I love reading and watching and listening to evocative stuff. 

But I also love survivors being smart about how we manage our habits, because I love survivors staying alive and realistically recovering from trauma. 

Breathe. Blink. Focus.