Author: drglenndoyle

Trauma recovery is not about “control.” 

But we sure want it to be. 

We want to feel “in control” of ourselves— of our feelings, our reactions, our symptoms, our story. 

We feel that “controlling” our self and our environment would surely “solve” this entire problem of trauma symptoms and struggles— right? 

The problem is: control is pretty much an illusion. 

We don’t “control” our feelings— and, what’s more, we really can’t “control” them. 

We feel feelings. They arise in us in response to internal and external stimuli, very little of which we meaningfully “control.” 

If we keep telling ourselves we need to “control” our feelings and reactions to “successfully” recover from trauma, we’re going to disappoint ourselves— again, and again, and again. 

The First Step of the Twelve Step tradition brings us face to face with the illusion of “control.” 

It encourages us to accept that we are struggling with something we can’t, by definition, “control”— and it’s not a coincidence that they made that the very first step. 

Until we was our head around the fact that “control” isn’t the key to clawing our way out of this, we’re going to stay stuck. 

I’ll spoil the suspense: nether you nor I are going to be in perfect “control” of our emotional and physical reactions. Striving to “control” them is going to solve zero problems— and create infinite problems. 

We need to stop thinking in terms of “control.” 

Try swapping out the word “control,” in your mental vocabulary, for the word “influence.” 

Our goal in trauma recovery isn’t to “control” anything— it’s to influence and manage our emotional life and behavioral choices. 

Does this distinction matter? To me, it matters a great deal. 

“Control” is all or nothing. You’re either in control— or you’re not. And for most of us human beings, let alone most of us trauma survivors, we’re going to expense ourselves as not in control approximately 100% of the time. 

We can, however, work on gaining progressively more influence over how we feel. 

Every day we can learn more and more how what we say to ourselves, what we focus on, and how we use our physiology and breathing influence the emotions we find it easy or harder to feel. 

Every day we can learn to make distinctions in how to realistically manage— not control, manage— our behaviors in the moments and hours after we’re triggered. 

Demanding of ourselves that we be “in control” of ourselves is unrealistic and counterproductive. 

Getting curious and proactive about how we can influence ourselves is the way change actually happens in the real world. 

Trauma Brain is gong to tell us, if we’re not “in control,” that means we’re undisciplined, we’re sh*tty, we’re lazy, we’re immature. 

As we work our recovery, we come to realize: imagining that we NEED to be “in control” is a trap— a trap laid for us by Trauma Brain, which wants to keep us stuck and discouraged. 

We trauma servers can get absolutely obsessive about control. Trauma Brain will insist to us that the only way to be truly “safe,” is by controlling everything and everyone around us. And because we literally can’t do that, it will conclude that no place and nobody is, or can ever be, “safe.” 

“Control” is kind of a garbage concept, when it comes to realistic, sustainable trauma recovery. 

Yeet “control.” 

Start getting real curious and real serious about influence. 

The Recovery Supporting Question (RSQ) I, personally, get the most mileage out of on a daily basis is: “does this support the life I’m trying to create?” 

That might sound simple, and it is— but, in my experience, it’s the simple tools that I’m most likely to use on a consistent basis. So I keep it simple when I can. 

That RSQ— “does this support the life I’m trying to create?”— can apply to decisions, entertainment choices, time management, relationships…almost anything and everything we encounter during the day. 

I don’t know about you, but one of my biggest vulnerabilities in my trauma and addiction recovery is missing opportunities to make recovery supporting micro decisions. 

I tend to go on autopilot more than is helpful— and my autopilot, probably like yours, was programmed by people and situations that do not prioritize my safety and stability. 

We need to remember this isn’t our fault. Everyone reading this is a victim (yes, I said “victim”— it’s not a bad word, guys) of our old conditioning. Our autopilot defaults to Trauma Brain— and that’s not a “choice” we’re making. 

Consciously looking for opportunities to ask, “does this support the life I’m trying to create?” helps keep me present. 

It’s comparatively difficult to go on autopilot if you’e consciously, intentionally looking for chances to ask any RSQ— but especially that one. 

There might be a small subset of times we really won’t know if what we’re looking at in this moment does or doesn’t support the life we’re trying to create— but the vast majority of the time, we’ll know. 

If we can think to ask the question, the answer will probably be fairly straightforward. 

It’s remembering, and being willing, to ask the question that can be the tricky part. 

Sometimes our hopelessness can get in the way of asking RSQ’s. 

Sometimes we get distracted— by anxiety, by triggers, by symptoms. 

Sometimes I’ve even been in the position of not asking RSQ’s, because Trauma Brain gets to whispering in my ear that I don’t “deserve” to make distinctions between what will and won’t support the life I’m trying to create— that I should just shut up and take what life gives me, because “other people have it worse.” 

Understand: Trauma Brain will do everything in its power to keep us from consistently asking Recovery Supporting Questions. 

Trauma Brain knows that if we get in the habit of asking RSQ’s, its BS (Belief Systems— but the other kind of BS, too) won’t hold up. 

We cannot let the fact that asking RSQ’s is often hard, keep ups from asking RSQ’s. 

Questions are one of the most useful recovery tools we can leverage in our healing. Questions are literally how we think. 

Right now, I’m asking myself questions: how can I express this so my audience will find meaning and support in my words? 

Right now, you’re asking yourself questions: is what he saying correct? Relevant to me? Helpful in my recovery? 

See? We think by asking and answering questions. Questions are the primary focus tool of our conscious and unconscious mind. 

Making sure we consistently ask Recovery Supporting Questions is how we scramble old patterns of thinking, and redirect our focus to Recovery Supporting Rituals and Recovery Supporting Behaviors. 

Make no mistake: Trauma Brain is going to do everything it can to get us asking sh*tty questions, that can only have sh*tty, recovery interfering answers. 

Don’t let it. Assert influence over the tools of self-talk and mental focus by inserting the RSQ, “does this support the life I’m trying to create?”, at every opportunity.

Shoot to ask it at least three times for the rest of your day today— for starters.  

Trauma Brain is going to try to trick you into wasting your focus and bandwidth on the past. 

Don’t take that bait. 

When we’ve struggled with a trauma response or made a recovery inconsistent decision, the temptation is going to be to judge ourselves harshly— to replicate the behavior of our bullies and abusers by kicking ourselves. Repeatedly. 

Trauma Brain is going to try to get us to keep kicking ourselves by telling us that if we stop kicking ourselves, we’re “letting ourselves off the hook” and “not taking responsibility” for our struggles or poor decisions. 

We definitely know we don’t want to do that— so we keep kicking ourselves. 

Every moment we spend judging and kicking ourselves is a moment not dedicated to strengthening our recovery tools or making a better decision. 

Most everything Trauma Brain does to us is an attempt to distract us from asking Recovery Supporting Questions (RSQ’s) or following through with Recovery Supporting Rituals (RSR’s). 

Trauma Brain knows that if we constantly as RSQ’s and perform RSR’s, then we recover— but it knows if it can distract us from our RSQ’s and RSR’s, we’ll eventually burn out and revert back to our autopilot. 

Our autopilot, of course, was programmed by our trauma experiences. Trauma Brain IS our autopilot. 

Think of Trauma Brain as an autopilot enabled with artificial intelligence— that will work overtime to get us to quit trying to take the wheel ourselves. 

I’m a firm believer in accountability. Accountability is super important in both addiction and trauma recovery. Without accountability, recovery is impossible. 

But kicking ourselves for the last recovery inconsistent decision we made is not accountability. 

Refusing to stay focused on our last bad decision is not “letting ourselves off the hook.” No one is asking us to like or approve of the last recovery inconsistent decision we made. 

We need to be realistic about the fact that recovery is largely about allocating resources. 

All of us have a limited amount of energy and time and bandwidth. Most of us survivors actually have less of these resources than many people, because we’re exhausted from having been in survival mode for months and years at a time. 

Kicking ourselves over our last bad decision is simply not a wise investment of those scarce resources. 

Kicking ourselves will never result in us being able to un-make that recovery inconsistent decision. 

What kicking ourselves will do is make us feel like garbage— which doesn’t exactly help us make the NEXT decision any better.

Behavioral psychologists know that punishment simply isn’t a particularly effective at lasting behavior change. 

Most animals, when they are punished for making a decision, only learn to avoid similar choices in the short term— but they come to hate whoever is doling out the punishment in the long term. 

When we punish ourselves for recovery inconsistent decisions, we are not making it any more likely that the next decision will be recovery consistent— but we are teaching ourselves to hate and distrust ourselves. 

That’s not how we build self-esteem, and it’s not how we make better choices. 

Trauma Brain knows all that. Which is why Trauma rain wants us kicking ourselves whenever we make a recovery inconsistent decision. 

We do not have to love every decision we make. We do not have to approve of every decision we make. I know I neither love nor approve of every decision I’ve made, even in the last twenty four hours. 

But if we’re working a realistic, sustainable recovery, we do have to manage our self-talk and mental focus in such a way that we are facing forward, not backward. 

Neither trauma nor addiction recovery can be navigated looking backward. 

Don’t take the bait. Refocus. Again, and again, and again. And again. 

Trauma recovery doesn’t work without our commitment to communicate with ourselves respectfully and consistently. 

Many survivors get real sick of the back and forth in our head and the tug of war in our nervous system. 

We get frustrated with how we think, feel, and function— and very often we take out this frustration on ourselves, in how we talk back to our “parts.” 

Whether or not we happen to have Dissociative Identity Disorder, many trauma survivors experience the “parts” of ourselves as inconvenient and stubborn. 

Especially if dissociation is a big part of our symptom picture, our “parts” can often seem like they exist to interrupt our day, complicate our relationships, and make it hard to focus on our job. 

So, we get in the habit of trying to ignore our parts— or, if we converse with them at all, expressing our frustration with and disdain for them. 

It’s totally legit to be frustrated by trauma reactions and symptoms. Our symptoms and struggles can be profoundly life interrupting. 

It’d be weird to NOT get frustrated with them, especially the longer we’ve lived with them. 

It’s also understandable to wish that our “parts” would just “go away.” 

We look around and see other people whose personalties and ability to function hasn’t been splintered by trauma, and we’re sorely tempted to pressure ourselves to “get our shit together.” 

Here’s the thing: no survivor is going to realistically recover from trauma while ignoring or antagonizing our “parts.” 

Trauma recovery is, fundamentally, about repairing and nurturing our relationship with ourselves— and that means our “parts.” 

You’re not wrong or weird for being frustrated with your parts, and you’re not alone in wishing they would just go away and leave you alone to function like a “normal” person— but in trauma recovery we have to remind ourselves, again and again, that functioning like a non-traumatized person isn’t our journey. 

To deny, disown, or ignore our “parts” isn’t a realistic option. Not if we actually want to recover from trauma. 

We are going to have SOME kind of relationship with our “parts.” They’re not going away. 

You are probably not going to be the one trauma survivor whose symptomatology does NOT include splintering between knowledge, memories, feelings, and functions. 

Many reading this may be familiar with the technology called “Internal Family Systems,” which refers to one way of conceptualizing and relating to “parts”— and while many survivors find IFS useful, it’s not the only or necessarily the best way to do “parts work” in your trauma recovery. 

If you follow my work, you know that I believe everybody’s recovery needs to be first and foremost tailored to them. Your recovery needs to work for you— whether or not it fits neatly into anyone else’s conceptual model. 

So what can I recommend about “parts work,” broadly? 

Any work you do around “parts” needs to be rooted in respect and compassion. 

Even if a “part” of us is threatening, angry, or otherwise aggressive, we need to start out from the premise that its viewpoint, needs, and role are all valid. 

Internal communication, which is what I call the skillset of relating to and integrating “parts” into our life and functioning, needs to include an affirmation that we and our “parts” are all on the same side— and that we do not desire our “parts” to shut up or disappear. 

I often see “integration” in “parts work” discussed in ways that might make your “parts” believe that we’re out to make them disappear. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

If we’re doing internal communication and other “parts work” right, our “parts” will feel— and be— MORE heard and respected than they ever have been…and their priorities factored into our decision making in meaningful ways than has ever been the case before. 

Make no mistake: “parts work” can be complicated and confusing at times. Which checks out, because it’s trauma recovery work— not to mention relationship work. Both trauma recovery and relationships can be complicated and confusing at times. 

But, if we’re doing “parts work” with intelligence, consistency, and humility, it can be a game changer in our trauma recovery. 

Again: we don’t have the option of NOT somehow relating to our “parts.” 

The only decision we truly have is whether our relationship with our “parts” will be conscious, communicative, and productive, or nah. 

Complex trauma was trauma we had to adapt to. 

We didn’t WANT to adapt to it— we had to, because it was woven into our everyday life and relationships. 

Traumatic stress was normalized to the point that we didn’t register it as “traumatic,” and we barely even registered it as “stress”— it was just life. 

We had to continue “functioning”— such as it was— so we adapted. But not in the positive sense of that word. 

Adapting to chronic, pervasive traumatic stress rarely involves positive or healthy changes— because environments that produce traumatic stress rarely also include resources and support kids need to change in positive, healthy ways. 

It’s not that we lacked the capability of adapting or changing in positive, healthy ways— it’s that we almost surely lacked the safety and role modeling necessary to do so. 

So— we adapted the way we adapted. 

We dissociated. We self-harmed. We acted out. 

We developed ways of denying and disowning and psychologically distancing ourselves from an existence we couldn’t distance ourselves from physically. 

Why is it important to understand that complex trauma is all about adaptation? 

Because when we’re looking to change our patterns of feeling and functioning, we have to think in terms of reconditioning ourselves— changing patterns that have been reinforced due to their adaptive value once upon a time. 

For most survivors, it’s NOT the case that we’re going to realize something— have an “ah-HA!” moment— and then suddenly our symptoms and struggles will disappear. 

Breakthroughs and other “ah-HA!” moments are cool, and they can be important— but in my experience they are rarely the key to significant changes in how we feel and function. 

For our pattens of trauma-influenced emotion and behavior to sustainably change, we have to think in terms of interrupting old patterns, again and again and again— and replacing them with new patterns that acknowledge or meet the needs our old patterns did. 

This distinction can make the difference between recovery being realistic and sustainable— or not. 

 Asking about the “why” behind our patterns of feeling and functioning can be important— but at least as important is the question of “how.” 

How do we feel what we feel? What actually happens in our head, in our body? What is the sequence? What is the syntax? 

When we do what we habitually do, what is the pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaving that typically occurs? If we had to make an accurate flowchart of how that all worked, could we? 

We may know “why” we feel and do what we do, at least broadly (the broad answer is almost always some version of, “because trauma”)— but changing those patterns requires we get hands on and specific about the sequence of internal events that produce those feelings and behaviors. 

We can’t interrupt a pattern we haven’t thoroughly observed and analyzed. 

Changing how we feel and function requires us to develop understanding and respect for how our patterns of feeling and functioning worked to keep us sane (relatively speaking, anyway) and safe (relatively speaking, anyway) in chronically stressful circumstances over time. 

Those patterns served a purpose, and they had structure. We need to realistically understand both if we want to change them. 

We shouldn’t have HAD to adapt to traumatic stress. 

We should have had the safety and support to develop more positive, less harmful coping tools. 

The fact that we didn’t have that safety and support is not our fault. 

But we no longer have to be at the mercy of support and safety we didn’t have back then.