CPTSD is going to have lots of opinions on whether you are competent and intelligent enough to “deserve” opportunities.
Most of those opinions are going to be negative. Shockingly.
Very often, trauma survivors work really, really hard to get good and be good at things— but, no matter how hard we work, we often still get sh*t from Trauma Brain about how undeserving we are.
Intellectually, we might understand we objectively deserve that promotion.
We might understand we’ve put hours toward mastering that skill.
We might even know that we’ve tried really, really hard to be a good relationship partner.
And yet, Trauma Brain— the internalized voices of our abusers and bullies— will still give us 2,447,276 reasons why we don’t deserve professional success, why we’re probably not very good at that thing, and why we DEFINITELY don’t deserve the love or attention of a quality relationship partner.
And those reasons may sound CONVINCING.
One of Trauma Brain’s most devastating weapons is a cognitive distortion called “emotional reasoning.”
When we’re deep in emotional reasoning, we believe things not because they add up logically— but because we FEEL they’re true.
We may even buy into things that DON’T particularly add up logically, specifically because they FEEL true.
When something FEELS true to us, it can be really hard to convince ourselves those things— like our supposed undeservingness— are actually untrue.
The problem with that, of course, is that those things that FEEL true to us have usually been heavily conditioned by our trauma.
When we’ve been abused or neglected in relationships, especially over time, we get LOTS of practice at feeling undeserving. Quite against our will, mind you.
Whatever we get practice thinking, feeling, or doing, over and over again, we get good at. Those things get easier to think, feel, or do— and our brain often mistakes “easy” for “right.”
It is easy for most trauma survivors to feel undeserving, because those neural pathways have been strengthened and deepened by repeated use.
And because it’s easy to feel undeserving, we get it in our head that that feeling must be “normal,” “natural,” “correct.”
The reality is, it’s just familiar. Not right.
Doesn’t matter: because it FEELS familiar, which we mistake for “right,” emotional reasoning kicks in— and any attempt to logic our way OUT of that feeling of undeservingness gets met with skepticism, and is usually rejected.
It’s one of the most common struggles of CPTSD survivors: emotional reasoning affirming that we don’t deserve success, we don’t deserve happiness, we don’t deserve safety— and that train of thought being impervious to any kind of intellectual or logical challenge.
You are not alone in struggling with this.
What we need to do— which is not easy— is remember that us FEELING a thing is correct or incorrect may not be a reliable guide to its truth value.
That what we FEEL about a thing’s accuracy— including our subjective feelings of deservingness or lack thereof— reflects our CONDITIONING. Not necessarily reality.
I often get responses to my writing to the tune of, “I’m the one person this doesn’t apply to. I’m the one person who truly IS undeserving. I’m the one person who truly CAN’T recover from trauma. I’m the one person who truly DOES deserve to die.”
That, my friends, is a rundown of emotional reasoning’s greatest hits when it comes to CPTSD survivors.
If you truly think or feel that, know, without a shadow of a doubt, that is Trauma Brain f*cking with you. That is emotional reasoning f*cking with you.
That is your bullies and abusers f*cking with you, from INSIDE your head— even if they’re no longer in your life, even if they’re dead.
You 100% deserve opportunities.
Yeah, yeah, I may not know you, but I don’t need to know you to assure you of that.
You deserve safety and the same opportunities for happiness and intimacy that any human being in the history of the world has ever deserved.
Realistic trauma recovery is going to ask you to stand up to CPTSD’s BS (Belief Systems— also bullsh*t). And it’s not going to be comfortable. It’s not going to feel intuitive. I’m telling you that right now.
CPTSD doesn’t get to tell you “no” on this one.
Though it will try.
