Try a little love.

Many CPTSD survivors get hung up on this idea that we’re supposed to love the person we were when we were hurt— whether we were a child or an adult when that happened. 

The fact that complex trauma unfolds over time means that many of us were hurt both as children and as adults. 

But CPTSD survivors often want to instinctively hate or reject that person. 

CPTSD survivors are often told that it was somehow that person’s fault. 

We’re told that so frequently, in so many direct and subtle ways, that we often come to believe it— to just download that belief into our nervous system. 

It’s not that CPTSD survivors wake up and make a “choice” to hate or reject the person we were when we were hurt. 

We just wake up and register that’s how we feel. What we feel we’re “supposed” to do. 

One of the characteristics of CPTSD, as opposed to traditional PTSD, is that if f*cks with our sense of who we are. 

The symptoms experienced by CPTSD survivors don’t always center on what happened, like in PTSD. 

Rather, many of CPTSD survivors’ symptoms focus on us— specifically our identity and our worth. 

That’s what happens when you’re taken advance of in relationships that should be safe, as almost every CPTSD survivor has been. 

Realistic recovery from CPTSD asks us to extend grace and patience to the person we were when we were hurt. 

We don’t have to love the fact that we were hurt— but it’s real important we not let our hatred of the situation spill over on to us. 

There are CPTSD survivors reading this who will respond to what I just wrote by saying, “okay, but I DID do things that made me more vulnerable. I may not be totally responsible for what happened to me, but I DO bear SOME responsibility.”

We have to be really, really careful how we engage with that idea— that there may have been something we could have done different. 

The reality is, whether we could have done something different or not, things unfolded the way they did. 

There is absolutely no realistic benefit to going back and kicking the sh*t out of ourselves for what we “could” or “should” have done. 

Most CPTSD survivors have been immersed in shame and self-blame for as long as we can remember— don’t you think if that helped, it would have helped by now? 

Shame and self-blame are never going to be realistic, effective tools in CPTSD recovery. Never. 

Instead of coming at your past self— again, whether you were a child or an adult— maybe try holding your past self. 

Just hold them. Don’t judge them; don’t yell at them; don’t rush them. Don’t demand they be different. Don’t demand the past be different. 

CPTSD tries to get us constantly demanding that we somehow be different. 

Turns out our nervous and endocrine systems don’t give a sh*t what we “demand.” 

Try a little love instead. 

You know, just see how it goes. 

Breathe. Blink. Focus.