Something many CPTSD survivors have in common is our strong desire to fix things we couldn’t possibly fix if we tried.
You know, like our families of origin.
Something many CPTSD survivors also have in common is the steadfast belief that the only reason we “couldn’t” fix those things is because we didn’t try hard enough.
Again and again, we survivors tend to blame ourselves.
I’m not talking about taking realistic responsibility.
I’m talking about constantly erring on the side of assuming that it was our fault things weren’t different in our family or environment growing up.
The difficult truth is, most of us did not choose the environment in which we grew up.
We certainly didn’t choose the parents to whom we were born.
And if that environment or those parents were f*cked up, there was realistically very little— in fact, usually nothing— we could do about it.
This is true even if we fell into “parentified” roles in our family— being expected to function as adults, despite the fact we were children.
This is overwhelmingly common among CPTSD survivors.
Despite the actual, literal fact we were kids, we might have been expected to care for either the adults or other kids in our environment— often, both.
And the fact that we could kind of pull it off might have f*cked with our head about fault and responsibility.
I have ment so many survivors who, even if they can concede the fact that they were expected to be “adults” in their childhood environment, struggle to see the harm it caused them.
They truly think they were the one kid that didn’t affect. The one kid who could or did pull it off.
The fact that you were put in the position of being a caretaker or problem solver for your family growing up doesn’t mean that level of responsibility was appropriate.
And it certainly doesn’t mean that you had the power the meaningfully change how your family or environment operated back then.
You were a kid.
Your family and the environment were happening TO you.
That’s not an “excuse;” that’s reality.
Here, now, as an adult working your trauma recovery, you’re working to be proactive and accountable— to no longer let life happen TO you, but rather FOR you.
But that’s hard when you’ve been made to feel, over and over again, that you “failed” to change what you “should” have been able to change in the past.
I truly believe that if we could have changed it, we would have.
If we didn’t, it’s because we didn’t— and by the way, that’s not weird, considering the fact that we were kids.
Forgive yourself. Forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn’t know, and not being able to do what you couldn’t do, back then.
I understand that what I’m saying right now is going to make a subset of survivors roll their eyes. It’s a little touchy feely for some.
What I need you to understand is, that’s as much of a CPTSD symptom as anything else— specifically, an artifact of trauma conditioning.
It was not on you to change them.
It was not on you to change that world.
You couldn’t have, if you wanted to.
And that’s not a “failure,” in any sense of the word.
Sad— but not a “failure.”
