Author: drglenndoyle

Trauma can make us feel stupid. But we’re not. 

It makes us feel stupid for supposedly making “choices” that weren’t, actually, meaningful choices. 

It makes us feel stupid for struggling with feelings and experience that we imagine other people aren’t struggling with. 

It makes us feel stupid for needing certain types of support that other people don’t seem to need. 

Not only can trauma make us feel stupid— it can make us feel lazy, too. 

When we’re struggling with our symptoms, often times our default setting is to shame and blame ourselves for “not trying hard enough.” 

Many of us maintain a cherished fantasy that we could overcome our symptoms and struggles if we were just smarter or had a better work ethic. 

In addition to making us feel stupid and lazy, trauma can make us feel spiritually or morally unworthy. “Bad.” 

Very often we assume that, since “everything happens for a reason” (ugh), the “reason” we were “selected” for this pain, for these struggles, is because we “deserve” them. We must be “bad.” We must be made to suffer. 

Trauma means literally none of those things. Having been abused, even horribly abused, does not make us “stupid.” It does not make us “lazy.” It does not make us “bad.” 

When we’re exposed to traumatic stress, our decision making very often goes to sh*t. It has nothing to do with intelligence, and everything to do with how we reflexively respond to our conditioning.

When we’re exposed to traumatic stress, we very quickly lose perspective on whether we have options, and what options we have. 

When we’re exposed to traumatic stress, we very often lose motivation. It has nothing to do with “laziness” or “work ethic.” It has everything to do with the learned helplessness and hopelessness that characterizes trauma conditioning.

None of this is our fault. None of of this is anything we can avoid if we were just smarter; or a harder worker; or more spiritually pure. Trauma is about psychology and biology— no less, but no more. 

Trauma gets to us with this cognitive distortion called “emotional reasoning.” In emotional reasoning, we strongly FEEL something to be true— so we assume it’s true. 

I’ll spoil the suspense: when we’ve been through trauma, we’re going to FEEL plenty of things are true, that are pure and utter BS (Belief Systems— but the other kind of BS, too). 

You’re going to FEEL worthless. 

You’re going to FEEL lazy. 

You’re going to FEEL stupid. 

You’re going to FEEL bad. 

None of that is true. Trauma doesn’t MAKE any of that true. Having been abused or neglected doesn’t make any of that true. People treating us like garbage does not, in fact, make us garbage. 

A big part of trauma recovery is pushing back on emotional reasoning— learning to say to ourselves, “because this awful thing about myself FEELS true, that doesn’t MAKE it true.” 

It’s not easy. We’re used to believing the bad stuff. We’ve been told the bad stuff over and over again, often by people we love, often by people we trust. Trauma bonds are very real. 

But when it comes to how we view ourselves and what we deserve, feelings are not facts. 

Don’t get me wrong: our feelings about a lot of things are perfectly valid, and often insightful. But it’s part of the injury of PTSD that our feelings about ourselves are often distorted in absurdly negative ways. 

Don’t believe everything you think about yourself after you’ve experienced trauma. 

Remember the trauma responses have nothing— zero, zilch, nada, zip— to do with intelligence, industriousness, or morality. 

No symptom can make you a “bad person.” 

As we recover from trauma or addiction, there will definitely be symptoms we don’t like. We won’t like experiencing them, and we won’t like the impact those symptoms have on our mood, energy level, or behavior. 

But experiencing a symptom doesn’t make us “bad.” 

Your milage may vary on what behaviors might make someone a “bad” person— though, in my experience, many trauma survivors work hard to convince ourselves that we’re “bad” for behaviors that, in anyone else, we’d have sympathy or empathy for. 

But depressions, for example, doesn’t make us “bad.” Nor does it make us “weak”— either “weak minded” or “weak willed.” 

Experiencing anger does not make us “bad.” Anger is a very normal response to some of the things we’ve been through. It would be very weird if we went through some of those things and weren’t angry on the other side of them. 

But anger, itself, does not make us “bad.” There are behaviors we might engage in to manage our anger that we’re not thrilled by or that do not conform to our values— but anger, itself, does not make us a “bad person.” 

So many of us are so used to considering ourselves “bad” when we feel bad.

Many trauma survivors, especially before we effortfully started working our recovery, feel bad a lot. We walk around feeling like garbage. Our mood is garbage; many of our compensatory behaviors are not our favorite choices in retrospect. 

Many of us were sold a story that “good” people are rewarded by consistently feeling good— but the truth is, feeling good rarely has anything to do with how morally “good” we are. 

There are lots of reasons people may feel good or bad— but feeling good or bad has zero to with how “good” or “bad” of a person we are. We all know examples of “bad” people who have no problem sleeping at night. We all know examples of “good” people who struggle with sadness or anxiety. 

Many of the thoughts, beliefs, and reactions we experience after traumatic stress are best understood as post traumatic symptoms— and they don’t reflect on our “goodness” or “badness,” either. 

Suicidality and self-harm urges are symptoms. They don’t make you “bad,” either. 

Everyone’s mileage is going to vary when it comes to whether the choices we make in reaction or response to what we’re feeling contributes to us being a “good” or “bad” person, but it’s my experience that even those choices are heavily informed by our beliefs about how “good” or “bad” we are, based on our symptoms. 

That is to say: it’s real important that we not condemn ourselves because we’re experiencing symptoms. 

It’s real important we get clear on what symptoms of traumatic stress actually look like, so we don’t confuse our symptoms with our personality or our basic nature. 

Everyone reading this is humans, and humans experience reactions and symptoms in response to certain events. It’s how we’re designed. It has nothing to do with how virtuous or not we are.

Many of us fall into the trap of believe that, because we’re unhappy with ourselves, we must be “bad.” Because we hate what we’re experiencing, we assume we must have done something “bad,” or we must be “bad”— otherwise, why would we be struggling with this? 

Humans struggle. The world doesn’t pick and choose who struggles based on how “good” or “bad” we are. Those of us who experienced trauma got enormously unlucky. It wasn’t our fault. It wasn’t our “choice.” 

Even if you made what seemed to be “choices” that you think contributed to your trauma or symptoms, you’re STILL not experiencing those symptoms because you’re “bad”— and you’re not “bad” because you’re experiencing those symptoms. 

The best people I’ve ever met, I’ve met in trauma recovery— and almost all of them thought they were “bad.” A “bad  person.” A “bad mother.” A “bad friend.” A “bad therapist.” 

None of that’s true. Our symptoms do not make us “bad,” or reflect on our “badness.”

You are as deserving of support, resources, compassion, and kindness as anyone who has ever existed. 

Yes, you. I’m talking to you. 

An under appreciated trigger for many trauma survivors can be something simple: our name. 

Many people don’t understand how something as simple as our name can be a trigger— but our name, or certain nicknames, can yank us right back to very painful times in our life. 

It’s a common joke that kids know they’re in trouble when their parent uses their full name, or their first and middle name. But the reason the “joke” resonates with so many people is, it’s actually true. 

For many abuse survivors, hearing their name meant they were in trouble. 

For some survivors, only abusers used certain forms of their names or nicknames. 

For some survivors who were abused by family members, their name represents a decision that was made for them by their abusers— and sometimes their name is the same as, or a form of, the actual name of their abuser.

This is the kind of trigger many in the broader culture might mock. But for trauma survivors who are triggered by their name, it’s enormously inconvenient and painful— and a situation they often can’t easily escape. 

Yes, it’s often possible to change one’s name— but it’s also the case that, for multiple reasons, changing one’s name isn’t as simple as it seems. 

Often legal or financial identities are inextricably tied to one’s legal name, and educational accomplishments have been recorded under their name. 

Just leaving our name behind is often not a simple matter, emotionally or logistically. 

Many trauma survivors are in this position a lot: they’re triggered by something that the culture considers unimportant and/or something we can’t avoid— so they wind up low-to-medium key triggered all the goddamn time. 

One of the main reasons so many trauma survivors under appreciate how dissociative they are on a daily basis is, they’ve HAD to develop dissociative defenses of varying levels of opacity— just to get through the day. 

For some survivors, hearing their name is inextricably linked to hearing the voice of their abuser. 

For some survivors, hearing their name is linked to being in legal or financial trouble. 

For some survivors, their name is a permanent link to a family who didn’t support them, a relative who abused them, or a parent they’ve tried desperately to not be like. 

You need to know there’s no shame in being triggered by your name. 

Yes, it’s an enormously inconvenient trigger, given how much of our daily lives involve us interacting with our legal name. 

But it’s not silly, or even all that weird. 

Our name necessarily evokes our childhood. It’s one of the few unchanged things we carry directly from our childhood. 

One of the boundaries we often need to set with the people around us is asking them to call us the name we prefer— but, as you probably know if you’re reading this, boundaries aren’t exactly easy for many survivors to set. 

But you do, actually, get to set that boundary. ‘

Safe relationships are ones in which your preferences for things as fundamental as your name are acknowledged and respected. 

There’s literally no reason anyone “needs” to call you by your legal name. 

And there’s absolutely no reason why you “shouldn’t” be triggered by your name, especially if you grew up in the kind of family that makes you want to forget you share anything with those people.

You don’t have to share anything with your abuser— including your name. Especially your name. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

Many trauma survivors have been told we’re strong. And we are. 

The thing is, many people seem to think that acknowledging trauma survivors’ strength is all we need in order to feel and function better. 

They seem to think that because we’re so strong— so “resilient” (ugh, that word)— we don’t, or shouldn’t, need additional support to recover from what happened to us. 

Many people seem to think that because what traumatized us is entirely or mostly in the past, “the worst is over.” 

Those people haven’t suffered from complex trauma. 

It’s often— but not always— the case that our initial trauma is in the past. 

But what people don’t understand is that living with complex trauma s itself a traumatic stressor— one that itself meets every criteria of complex trauma (it occurs over time; it’s functionally inescapable; it entwines with all of our important relationships). 

Yes, complex trauma survivors are strong. But here’s the thing: we shouldn’t have had to be. 

And, going forward, we shouldn’t have to be as strong as we were back then just to build a life we don’t to end every day. 

You there, reading this, are strong. 

But I think your strength is meant for something more than just survival. 

I think your strength was meant for creation. 

I think your strength was meant for love. 

I think your strength was meant for supporting people and causes you care passionately about. 

I don’t think the destiny of anybody reading this is to just get by. 

Coping is really important— but I don’t believe it’s the end all, be all of trauma recovery. 

We are not doing this in order to cope. 

We have to cope in order to do the things we really want to do. The things we were meant to do. 

The things that our bullies and abusers tried to take away from us. 

Trauma has this way of dragging us away from the things we love. 

Not just the people we love— though it does that, too— but the interests and passions and journeys that make life meaningful. 

Trauma has this way of consuming us such that every single day becomes about trauma. 

I don’t think we were meant to live like that. 

I don’t think that’s an ideal use of your strength; or your creativity; or your life. 

There is a myth out there that committing to trauma recovery means you make surviving trauma your identity— but nothing could be farther from the truth. 

We commit to trauma recovery precisely because we DON’T want trauma reactions and symptoms to become our identity. 

In the best possible version of trauma recovery, we get so adept at using the skills, tools, and philosophies of trauma recovery that we can, paradoxically, kind of forget about them. They’re just second nature to us. 

When trauma recovery becomes the lens through which we live our lives, trauma ceases to be the centerpiece of our lives. 

When, then, is the centerpiece of our lives, if not trauma?

It’s whatever and whoever you want it to be. 

Your strength was not meant to bear suffering. 

Your strength was meant to create your unique life and legacy. 

That’s what I think, anyway. 

When you’re tempted to apologize for feeling a feeling: tap the brake. 

When you’re tempted to apologize for having a need: tap the brake. 

You are going to feel pressure from your trauma programming to apologize for all kinds of things. 

The truth is, your trauma programming doesn’t think you should exist, let alone have feelings or needs. 

Your trauma programming, if followed to its logical conclusion, will have you disappearing from the planet entirely. 

However, since you haven’t disappeared from the planet entirely, your trauma programming will flood you with feelings of guilt, blame, and shame for taking up space. 

Your trauma programming will try to tell you everything you experience our need is a burden on someone else. 

Your trauma programming will try to tell you nothing you feel, need, or have to say is important. 

Your trauma programming will try to tell you that there is something fundamentally wrong, something fundamentally flawed or gross or otherwise f*cked up, about everything that makes you, you— especially your feelings and needs. 

Thus, every time a feeling or need escapes our brain in the form of words, we very often feel this need to apologize. 

It can be hard for someone whose nervous system has not been crispy fried by traumatic stress, to understand why we’re apologizing for so many things. 

They don’t realize that many of the things we hear ourselves saying or asking for or otherwise expressing sound, to us, dramatic and stupid. 

They don’t understand that we very often feel like we’re about to be in trouble, we’re about to be yelled at, or we’re about to be mocked, for any utterance that escapes us. 

For many of us, expressing feelings or needs makes us feel insufferably vulnerable. 

We often apologize because part of us, at least, thinks we can limit our vulnerability if we communicate, via our apology, that we too are annoyed by and impatient with our own “stupid” feelings or “burdensome” needs. 

It’s a maneuver Trauma Brain often tries to trick us into: agreeing with, or getting on the same side of, our abusers, by trashing ourselves. 

The thing is: apologies never work to limit our vulnerability. They don’t. They might soothe our anxiety— for a minute— but if we’re vulnerable in the presence of somebody, an apology isn’t going to make us less so. 

What constant apologies DO do, however, is shred our self esteem. 

Constantly apologizing communicates to our inner child that we are bad, and we need to apologize. 

Constantly apologizing reinforces the belief that so many survivors struggle with: that we are burdensome, and we need to compensate for that burden. 

Don’t get me wrong: many trauma survivors, myself included, are, in point of fact, an acquired taste. No, we’re not for everybody. 

But that’s not the same thing as “every feeling or need we experience is necessarily a burden we need to apologize for.” 

Catching yourself when you’re tempted to apologize for a feeling or need is a habit worth getting into. 

Communicating to yourself in those moments that, actually, you have nothing to apologize for, is also a habit worth getting into. 

You’ve had decades of programming that have entrenched the idea that your feelings and needs are stupid and embarrassing. That programming probably isn’t going to dramatically shift overnight. 

But it will shift if, every time it rears its head, you meaningfully, consistently, compassionately talk back to it. 

Scratch the record. 

It’s okay to outgrow things. 

It’s okay to outgrow relationships; it’s okay to outgrow jobs; it’s okay to outgrow an identity.

It doesn’t mean those relationships; those jobs; or that identity didn’t serve you well in the past. 

It doesn’t mean we’re rejecting those relationships, jobs, or identities with negative feelings or extreme prejudice. 

It means what it means: we grow. We change. Our needs change. Our abilities change. 

As we work our recovery, we tend to outgrow a lot of things— and many survivors tend to have complicated feelings about that. 

It’s okay to have complicated feelings about outgrowing things as we recover. Many of us aren’t used to positive growth in any sense— nor are we used to releasing old attachments with gratitude and certainty. 

Many of us have had the exact opposite experience: every relationship that we end, has ended involuntarily or with acrimony. 

To quote a common recovery poster: “everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it.” 

Something we learn in recovery is that it doesn’t have to be that way. 

We can let ourselves outgrow things. We don’t have to judge it. We don’t have to resist it. 

We can have whatever feelings we have about outgrowing things— sadness, or excitement, or a combination thereof. 

When we outgrow something, when it’s time to move on, parts of us might freak out a little. 

There might be a part of us that truly believes that if we outgrow this thing, we’ll never have another thing like it. 

Right now I’m grappling with giving up something that I know I’ve probably outgrown, but which has been a source of security for me at a time when I really needed it. 

And, I’m having all the feelings that go along with all of it: guilt, insecurity— but also excitement. 

This is what happens when we work our recovery: we get the chance to feel certain things, without judgment, without pressure to feel the “right” thing, without shame for feeling the “wrong” things. 

I’ll spoil the suspense: you’re going to outgrow a lot of things. It doesn’t matter how old you are, or where you are in life. Human beings that continue to live and breathe, outgrow things. 

And that’s okay. 

It’s not disloyal to outgrow a thing. 

Human beings were kind of designed to outgrow things. That’s the only reason why new things are created— from new songs, to new professional roles, to new psychotherapy practices, to new relationships, to new people. 

The feelings of anxiety and guilt you have about outgrowing things— hold them gently. They’re not there to make your life difficult. They’re there because you have precious few role models when it comes to realizing attachments with compassion and gratitude. 

When we’re growing up in traumagenic environments, compassion and gratitude aren’t things we see a lot of to emulate. 

If you’ve outgrown something, you’ve outgrown it. 

No need to leave claw marks on it. 

Not anymore. 

We have to take care of ourselves, even when we’re tired. 

Even when we’re angry. 

Even when we’re angry at ourselves. 

Even when we don’t like ourselves. 

In fact— it’s kind of especially important we take care of ourselves when we’re angry at ourselves or when we don’t like ourselves. 

Here’s the thing: many of us grew up believing that our worth and safety are conditional. 

We grew up believing we had to “earn” worthiness and safety. 

We grew up believing we had to “earn” the “right” to care. 

This is especially true if we grew up neglected, emotionally or otherwise. 

When we’re neglected by the people who should love us, who should nurture us, who should protect us, we don’t process that as a “them” issue. We almost always understand it as an “us” issue. 

We understand it as an “us” issue— and we often internalize the belief that we need to pay for it. We need to be punished for it. And/or we need to make it “right.” 

We grow up believing we have to “earn” things that we don’t, actually, have to “earn.” 

Like love. 

Like attention. 

Like safety. 

Like care. 

Then, if we don’t get love, or attention, or safety, or care, we assume it’s because we didn’t “earn” it. 

We didn’t crack the code. We didn’t figure it out. We weren’t worthy of it. 

We continue to process it as an “us” issue. We personalize the hell out of it. And over time, all of this becomes a core part of our trauma conditioning— the internalized voices of our bullies and abusers that I refer to as “Trauma Brain.” 

In trauma recovery, our job is to overwrite that old programming. Scratching that old record. Reversing that old conditioning. 

We do this by caring for ourselves— even when Trauma Brain tells us we don’t “deserve” care. 

We do this by showing ourselves patience— even when Trauma Brain tells us we don’t “deserve” patience. 

We do this by showing ourselves love— even when Trauma Brain insists that we couldn’t possibly be worthy of love. 

The thing about Trauma Brian is, it doesn’t actually have an argument for why we don’t “deserve” those things. All it has is what we call “emotional reasoning”— the fact that we must not BE lovable, for example, because we don’t FEEL lovable. 

I’m here to tell you: that’s garbage reasoning. 

How we FEEL does not represent the fundamental truth of what we deserve. Most often it reflects our conditioning. Our programming. What we had told to us, again, and again, and again. 

It’s BS. Belief Systems. Nothing less— but nothing more. 

Be nice to yourself, even when you don’t feel you deserve it. 

It’s when we feel least lovable that we MOST need self-love— because it’s in those moments that we have the opportunity to REALLY challenge and scramble our old conditioning. 

We don’t really have the option to not feel our feelings. 

We can try. And many trauma survivors do try to not feel our feelings. 

We have all sorts of ways to try to not feel our feelings. Some ways we choose; some ways our nervous system chooses for us. 

Why wouldn’t we want to feel our feelings? 

Many of us experience such extreme emotional dysrgulation, that feeling anything is like feeling everything. I mean all the feelings, all at once. And that can be overwhelming. 

Some of us were programmed to believe feeling anything was “weak.” Or “wrong.” Or “gross.” 

Many of us are worried that if we let ourselves feel things, we’ll lose our tightly held grip on our behavior. That the only thing keeping us from acting out is the distance we’re keeping on our feelings. 

In sum: we’ve been conditioned to believe that feelings are intolerable, darkly untamable and unpredictable things. Things that are not safe. Things that are not okay. 

What BS (Belief Systems— but the other kind of BS, too). 

The truth is, anything would feel overwhelming and dark if we thought about it and avoided it the same way we think about and avoid feelings. 

Many trauma survivors have been led to believe that we just can’t tolerate this “feeling” stuff. 

The thing is, though: we can. 

It takes skill, and it takes practice, and it takes a willingness to not judge ourselves harshly when we struggle with it— but experiencing and managing our feelings is absolutely a skill we can learn and get better at. 

What’s more: we really NEED our feelings— and we really NEED to feel our feelings. 

I’m not saying we need to fell all our feelings at once, turned up to 11. I don’t think I’d enjoy that, anyway. 

I am saying that it’s hard to live an authentic life while at the same time waging a war on our feelings. 

Our feelings reflect our needs, our priorities, our values, and our experiences. 

They are not random neural and/or hormonal events. Our feelings have purpose and meaning; rhyme and reason. 

Because we cannot always hear that rhyme or decipher that reason in a given moment doesn’t mean it’s not there. 

Getting on good terms with our emotional life is part and parcel of the larger project we face in trauma recovery: getting on good terms with ourselves, period. 

We cannot recover from trauma, or anything sense, while simultaneously fighting and shaming ourselves.

If we’re going to have our own back, like we need to in trauma recovery, we have to meet our feelings like we meet every other part of our body, mind, or soul in recovery: with patience, with acceptance, with love. 

Yeah, I said it: love. 

You are not going to like everything you feel. I don’t like everything I feel. We don’t have to like or approve of every feeling that we experience. 

But we do have to accept our feelings. 

We do have to love our feelings, in the sense that we accept and care for them, even (especially!) when we don’t like them. 

If we keep trying, and trying, and trying to not feel our feelings, to deny and disown our emotional life, our feeling don’t go away. 

They will be acknowledged, and they will be expressed— as symptoms. 

Speaking for myself, I’ve had enough of that sh*t. 

How about you? 

You did not “choose” your trauma. 

You did not choose to be abused. You did not choose to be neglected, physically or emotionally. 

You did not choose how your trauma impacted you. 

And you do not choose the symptoms and struggles you experience today. 

You’re going to run into plenty of people who will feed you some version of “you chose that” and/or “you’re choosing this”— but it just ain’t so. 

If we truly could “choose” what happens to us and/or how it impacts us, don’t you think we would choose something very, very different? 

We absolutely would. Every time. 

Yet, the “you chose that” myth refuses to die. 

It mostly refuses to die because our culture has a highly conflicted relationship with control. 

We love control. We kind of worship control. 

Who do we consider to be awesome in our culture? Those people who can “control” themselves. 

We worship physical fitness in our culture, largely because we associate fit bodies with “control” and “self discipline.” We assume people who are fit are able to “control” their appetite and their behavior in specific ways. 

We worship wealth and celebrity, at least partly because we assume millionaires and celebrities experience a degree of control over their lives that most of us don’t.

Conversely, we absolutely scorn people we perceive to lack “control.” 

We scorn poverty, at least partly because we assume poor people must lack agency and control, over themselves and their destiny. 

Every time we brand someone a “loser,” what we’re really saying is that they lack control. 

We scorn addicts, because we assume they must lack control over their cravings. 

We are f*cking obsessed with control here. 

We’re so obsessed with it that we fantasize that we have control over things we couldn’t possibly have control over— such as how we were treated and related to when we were young or otherwise vulnerable. 

We hate— absolutely hate, hate hate hate— the very idea that things could happen to us and impact us that we have zero control over. 

Of course, everybody reading this blog knows the truth about that. Things happen to us and impact us all the time, that we have literally zero control over. 

But the culture doesn’t like that. The culture doesn’t accept that. The culture is in deep, deep denial about that. 

The culture FEARS the basic lack of controllability of the human experience. 

So they project that fear and hate toward survivors of trauma. 

Hence, the victim blaming that saturates our culture at every. F*cking. Turn. 

You need to know: none of this is about you. 

This is entirely about “them,” and their refusal to see what they see and know what they know. 

You are not “choosing” your symptoms and struggles. You ARE choosing to understand them, manage them, and recover from them. 

You did not choose what happened to you once upon a time. You ARE choosing to develop skills, tools, and philosophies that decrease your vulnerability NOW. 

Do not get up in your head about all these f*cked up messages the culture floods us with, about control and “choice.” 

You look for the little pockets of choice and influence you DO have, in your everyday experience. 

Look for the wiggle room. 

That’s where your agency is. That’s where your recovery is planted and grows. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

Eh, sometimes we’re not our best selves. It happens. 

Sometimes a “fight” trauma response gets the better of us. 

Sometimes we lash out, recreating an old relationship pattern. 

Sometimes we lash out because we feel our feelings were not heard or invalidated by someone we really want to hear and validate us. 

Sometimes we lash out because the constant stress of managing all of this sh*t in our body and mind has us exhausted, and we just ran perilously low on bandwidth. 

It happens. We’re human. Humans lash out sometimes. 

Sometimes, when our central nervous system gets stuck in a “fight” trauma response as its default, we lash out more than sometimes. 

It happens. It doesn’t feel great, to anyone involved, but  it happens. 

I don’t believe trauma responses let us off the hook for our behavior, especially toward other people. That’s what I’ve never understood about those “personal responsibility” fetishists who are always harassing trauma advocates— there is nothing, in philosophy or practice, in the trauma informed movement that is anything but extremely pro “personal responsibility.” 

I do, however, think we have to look at all our behavior in context. And that means seeing triggers and trauma responses for what they are. 

We are responsible for our behavior— but we also have choices when it comes to interpreting our behavior. 

Trauma Brain— which is what I call the sum of all the trauma conditioning and brainwashing we’ve endured over the years, the collective voices of our bullies and abusers we’ve internalized— is going to try to tell us that we lash out because we’re “bad.” 

It’s going to try to tell us that we lash out because we’re “too much.” 

It’s going to try to tell us that we lash out because we are “immature.” 

It’s kind of ironic that the one explanation Trauma Brain will NOT offer as contributing to our lashing out is, actually, trauma. 

Anyway, you need to know that lashing out doesn’t mean you suck. It doesn’t mean you’re “immature.” It doesn’t mean you’re “too much” for the other humans. 

All it means is that a trauma response got the better of you for a sec. No more; no less. 

If it happens repeatedly, it means that your nervous system’s stuck in a default “fight” mode— which is worth paying attention to as a recovery issue, but it is NOT a judgment about who you are as a person. 

The truth is, most trauma survivors I know would really, really love to connect to people in non-toxic ways. 

The overwhelming majority of trauma survivors I’ve ever worked with would sell their kidney for the tools necessary to relate and be close to the other humans WITHOUT lashing out or melting down. 

Relating to the other humans involves interpersonal and emotional regulation skills most of us survivors weren’t taught growing up. If you grew up like me, you were bullied and shunned, and your emotional management “skills”— such as they were— developed without much healthy guidance or modeling from the adults around you. 

It happens. Them’s the breaks. Not your fault; not my fault. 

Interpersonal effectiveness and emotional regulation are absolutely skills that we can learn— but before we’re even at that point, we need to commit to not judging or punishing ourselves for struggling with it now. 

That’s the deal we have to make in trauma recovery generally: no judgment and no punishment. 

Even if we do sh*t we don’t love in trauma recovery— and let me tell you, I have ABSOLUTELY done sh*t I haven’t loved in trauma recovery— we have to meet our struggles and not-great decisions with patience and compassion. 

We have to give ourselves the benefit of the doubt. 

If we wanna break the pattern, we have to avoid that reflex to kick the sh*t out of ourselves— because I can assure you, people who are busy kicking the sh*t out themselves are actually MORE likely to lash out and push people away, not less. 

If we want to relate more constructively to people, that’s great— but we absolutely have to start with ourselves. 

That means being cool to you. 

Even when you’re kind of a dick. 

Especially when you’re kind of a dick. 

Being a dick to yourself when you’ve been a dick only reinforces Dick Culture within. And that’s not recovery behavior.