Author: drglenndoyle

It’s harder than you might think to get validation for how painful and impactful the experience of peer group bullying in childhood is. 

For all the lip service our culture pays to how bad bullying is, we pay surprisingly little attention to it in therapy. 

Many of the people who seek out my help in their trauma recovery identify childhood abuse as one of the main contributors to their trauma. 

Many people can identify childhood neglect as having contributed to their trauma (though many MORE people experienced neglect than acknowledge it— which is another pervasive cultural problem). 

But relatively few people who seek out trauma therapy tend to identify peer group bullying in childhood as significant to their complex trauma history. 

Speaking partly from personal experience, partly from my experience as a trauma therapist: peer group bullying is one of the most stressful, damaging experiences a kid can have growing up. 

It’s also an experience that our culture loves to mock and trivialize.

Our culture kind of has this thing where a not-small subset of adults think bullying is kind of, sort of, good for kids. 

It’s kind of this “tough love” idea— that kids need adversarial experiences to “toughen” and “grow.” 

I’ve also seen the argument advanced that bullying in the form of social ostracism serves a constructive purpose— that it helps “weirdos” understand that only so much deviance from the social norm is realistically acceptable out there in the world. 

Our pop culture entertainment features lots and lots of examples of bullying framed as funny or ultimately harmless— or, not infrequently, justified, depending on who is bullying whom. 

The realty of bullying is, it can really make a kid’s life hell. 

We almost never choose whether or where we go to school. We rarely choose who we go to school with. Every single day, victims of bullying are literally forced to share space with their bullies. 

That leaves a mark. 

The fantasy that adults can even sort of effectively intervene to stop peer group bullying among kids s a joke. Reaching out for an adults’ help can often make bullying worse— and even the best intentioned adults can’t be around at all times to protect a kid who’s being bullied. 

That leaves a mark. 

Complex trauma is trauma that occurs over time, is often entwined in our important relationships, and is perceived by the victim as inescapable (often because the situation is not, in fact, easily or realistically escapable). 

Childhood peer group bullying hits each one of those points. 

Sometimes survivors of bullying downplay the impact of what happened to them— much like survivors of MANY kinds of trauma downplay what happened to them. 

We want to think that bullying is a thing that happened to us when we’re kids, and we just grew out of it. 

It’s true that some peoples’ experience of having been bullied impacted them more than others’. But that’s also true for every kind of trauma. The impact on survivors varies depending on multiple factors. 

If you need to dig into your history of childhood peer group bullying in your own trauma recovery— dig into it. 

No shame. It’s not stupid or silly or weak. 

Many peoples’ trauma recovery experiences are actually stalled due to their, or their therapists’, reluctance to explore if and how they were bullied as kids. 

(And, yes— bullying isn’t ONLY a problem for kids, either.) 

Most of us had to go to school (or other social situations, like summer camp) every day for years. For many of us, that meant we got virtually zero days off from being bullied. 

That leaves a mark. 

Many of us have to revisit the wound childhood peer group bullying inflicted if we want our trauma recovery to stick. 

No. I don’t believe in playing “nice” with shame in trauma recovery. 

I do believe there is value in understanding, and even “befriending,” many of our trauma responses— notably “fight,” “flight,” “freeze,” “fawn,” “flop,” and even “f*ck it.” 

If we try to avoid or aggressively push back against our “F” trauma responses, they only tend to intensify. 

Our “F” trauma responses represent parts of us that are engaging in those respective behaviors— fighting, fleeing, fawning, flopping, and/or f*cking— as aways to cope with memories or feelings that would otherwise be overwhelming. 

But shame is not a trauma response in the sense that the “F” responses are. 

Shame is a toxic amplification of guilt and embarrassment that trauma CONDITIONS us into. 

Guilt is the feeling of discomfort when our behavior doesn’t match our goals or values. 

It says, “I did something wrong.” 

Guilt can, at least sometimes (arguably often), be used to constructively shape our experience. People who don’t experience guilt are often at a loss when it comes to making needed adjustments to our behavior. 

Shame is a different animal. 

Shame doesn’t say “I did something wrong”— it says “I AM wrong.” 

Shame takes the discomfort we experience with guilt, and it personalizes it.

Instead of framing our decisions in terms of what we value or what we want, shame frames our behavior in terms of who we are. 

Shame is a particularly aggressive monster for trauma survivors because we often do things that we’re not thrilled about. 

We’re not ourselves when we’re triggered. We’re not ourselves when we’re being subjected to tactics of coercive control. We’re not ourselves when our emotions are wildly dysregulated. 

Yet, shame will tell us those moments ARE representative of who we “really are.” 

Shame personalizes EVERYTHING. 

Complex trauma survivors are VERY used to people trying to use shame to control us. 

Shame drives an OVERWHELMING amount of self-destructive behavior for MANY trauma survivors. 

We don’t have things to learn from shame. 

Shame does not represent anything authentic about us. 

There will always be a subset of people in our culture who want to play coy with shame. People who will say “shame is good, actually,” and “the world would be a better place if more people experienced shame.”

Those people are flat wrong, from a behavioral science point of view. 

Shame does NOT work to change behavior long term. 

Shame does NOT work to change attitudes or beliefs long term. 

In fact, we have overwhelming evidence that shame makes many people feel hopeless and helpless about EVER changing their behavior— because shame’s take home message is, “this is who you are.” 

I am sick to death of people suggesting that shame represents anything worth listening to. 

I am sick to death of people trying to use shame to manipulate others, notably trauma survivors who are particularly vulnerable to shame. 

I am sick to death of people trying to intellectualize an “important role” shame plays in understanding ourselves or our experiences. 

Your mileage may vary, but in my book, shame is the result of toxic trauma conditioning and programming. Full stop. 

I’m done playing nice with it. 

Shame is the internalized voice of our abusers and bullies, and I will take the side of any trauma survivor any day against even the echoes of those who hurt them. 

Trauma survivors are used to hearing— and believing— that their struggles in recovery are their fault. 

I wish this wasn’t true. But it is. 

Our culture sometimes TALKS a good game about how victims of abuse, neglect, and other trauma aren’t to blame for what happened to them…but then it often turns around and demands to know why, precisely, survivors of trauma “insist” on making life so difficult for themselves. 

Sometimes our culture pays lip service to the idea that nobody ASKS for trauma. 

But then it turns around and wants to know why, exactly, trauma survivors put themselves in a position to be vulnerable to trauma. 

It is a massive understatement to say that trauma survivors get VERY mixed messages about whether they are to blame for what happened to them— or how difficult it can be to try to recovery from what happened to them. 

Many trauma survivors struggle in therapy and recovery. 

That’s NOT because they are “making” the process difficult— it’s because therapy and recovery after trauma are just DIFFICULT. 

Yet many survivors are used to being blamed for struggling in therapy and recovery. 

You’d think that therapy “should” be a place where it’s okay to struggle. You’d think therapy “should” be a place where someone would’t have to worry about being reprimanded or blamed for finding the process difficult. 

Unfortunately, you’d be wrong. 

There are MANY survivors reading this who have had the experience of others— including therapists— either implicitly or explicitly blaming them for therapy not going well. 

Some survivors specifically have had the experience of being blamed when they have angry or otherwise “unpleasant” verbalizations or other behaviors in therapy. 

Here’s the thing: trauma is awful. Recovery from trauma is no fun. 

NOBODY is doing trauma recovery for kicks; we’re doing it to stay alive. 

It’s VERY common for survivors in recovery to feel hopeless— and sometimes hostile. 

Sometimes this is a manifestation of the “fight’ trauma response; sometimes it’s just a function of the fact that if you’ve been through trauma, chances are you’re feeling pretty sh*tty, and not a lot has helped you over the years. 

Given what you’ve been through and what you’re experiencing every day, who WOULDN’T be feeling sh*tty? Who WOULDN’T lash out, at least at times? 

Yet— survivors who struggle are often blamed. They’re told they have a “bad attitude.” They’re told they need to stop being “hostile” or expressing hopelessness. 

Don’t get me wrong— I don’t find it fun or pleasant when someone I’m working with is in bad headspace. And of course I’m not a fan of when that pain comes out sideways at me, the therapist. 

But I don’t blame the patient. 

I assume that every patient is doing the best they can in any given moment. 

Of course therapists are human, and therapists have every right to also find the dynamics of trauma recovery difficult. 

But we really, really need to resist the urge to blame and shame the patient when things aren’t going well. 

We may not like it when therapy isn’t going well— but neither does the patient. 

OF CORUSE we’d prefer if every patient was cheerful and “treatment compliant” in every moment. 

But that’s not how trauma therapy works, because that’s not how trauma recovery works— because that’s not how trauma works. 

Resist the urge to shame and blame, even implicitly. 

That’s easier said than done in our culture. 

But it’s REALLY important if we’re serious about helping ANYONE climb out of the cave of pain that is trauma and dissociation. 

One of the most publicized and researched forms of therapy, especially for depression, is cognitive therapy (sometimes branded as cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT). 

The central idea of cognitive therapy is that our emotional states are primarily responsive to our thoughts and beliefs. 

Cognitive therapists believe that painful emotional experiences, like depression, prolonged grief, maladaptive anger, or post traumatic stress symptoms, are often caused by “distorted” thinking— thinking hat is “catastrophized,” “overgeneralized,” or which otherwise doesn’t conform to reality. 

Cognitive therapists work with their patients to change how they think about themselves, the world, and the future (the “cognitive triad”)— and, the theory goes, as patients begin to think more “realistic” thoughts, they begin to feel better and stand a better chance at responding effectively to life. 

A type of cognitive therapy called Rational Emotive Therapy takes this framework a step further— RET proposes that people “disturb themselves” by buying into distorted beliefs (the founder of Rational Emotive therapy, Albert Ellis, used this language over and over again— people “disturb themselves” with their beliefs). 

Cognitive therapy has a lot of fans in the mental health world, because it is an often-researched form of psychotherapy, and seems to work— with some people, for some problems, some of the time.

(There have been questions raised about how meaningful much of the research “proving” cognitive therapy’s effectiveness actually is, but that’s a different blog.) 

There are ideas in cognitive therapy I like. I’ve found some cognitive therapy concepts useful in my own recovery, particularly in its emphasis on taking action and disputing distorted thoughts and beliefs about myself. 

But cognitive therapy has real limitations when it comes to its usefulness in working with trauma survivors. 

On of the main tenets of cognitive therapy is that people can feel better by thinking differently or revising their beliefs— but, as survivors of trauma can attest, changing how we think and what we believe is rarely as simple as deciding to think or believe differently. 

Trauma conditions us. It conditions what we find believable or plausible. It shapes or ideas about what is and isn’t true or real. 

We can’t just do away with trauma CONDITIONING with a “decision” to “think differently.” 

Cognitive therapy also has a heavy emphasis on determining how “realistic” a thought is or how “likely” a feared scenario is to occur. 

The problem with this is, MANY complex trauma survivors really HAVE experienced things that MANY people consider “unrealistic” or “unlikely.” 

Cognitive therapy frequently warns against the “cognitive distortion” of “catastrophizing”— i.e., making a mountain out of a molehill (Albert Ellis calls this “awfulizing” in RET). The idea being, if you’re unduly upset about something, it’s probably because you’re making too big a deal out of it. 

The problem with this is, trauma survivors are ROUTINELY told they are “making too big a deal” out of what has happened to them or their experiences in the aftermath— and this doesn’t seem to heal their traumatic stress reactions. 

It is my experience that we can’t meaningfully heal post traumatic stress unless we get realistic about how big a deal what happened to us actually WAS. 

Contrary to the default attitude of cognitive therapy, most trauma survivors AREN’T “catastrophizing”— they almost always MINIMIZE the impact of what happened to them, and blame themselves for “making too big a deal of it.” 

I do think cognitive therapy can be useful in helping us talk to ourselves, ABOUT ourselves, more fairly and accurately. 

But if cognitive therapy isn’t used in a meaningfully trauma informed way, it can VERY quickly side into a form of gaslighting or victim blaming of the type trauma survivors know all too well. 

The truth is, thoughts AREN’T the only, or even the main, factor in how we feel, especially if we’ve been through trauma. In fact our thoughts are often kind of a byproduct of the train wreck that’s happening in our nervous system when we’re having trauma reactions. 

Cognitive therapy is like many tools offered by the mental health field— it can have its uses, but used carelessly or arrogantly, it can be enormously destructive. 

And, as many trauma survivors can attest, the mental health field is really good at handling its tools carelessly and arrogantly. 

Predators don’t care about our boundaries. 

This might seem obvious— why WOULD predators care about our boundaries? 

But it’s important to acknowledge, because in our culture there is a subset of people who will blame victims of abuse for failing to set appropriate boundaries. 

This point of view is often expressed as, “you teach people how to treat you.” 

People who find meaning in this phrase often cite it as a reminder that it’s important to set boundaries in all relationships— that if we default on our responsibility to set boundaries, then we can’t expect other people to adhere to boundaries that were never set. 

This is true— in a narrow set of circumstances. 

“You teach people how to treat you” might be valid in relationships in which there isn’t a particular power differential, and in which the people in question are already inclined to respect you and any boundaries you set. 

The problem is, many people reading this have life experience with people who are NOT inclined to respect us or our boundaries. 

Many people reading this have been victimized by predators. 

Predators benefit from our cultural assumption that pretty much anybody can set effective boundaries, and it’s everybody’s responsibility to set boundaries if they don’t want to get mistreated. 

When someone is hurt in our culture, our first response is often to ask some variant of, “Well, what were they doing to invite that hurt?” 

“What didn’t they do to stay safer?” 

“What did they do to put them at risk?’ 

Contrary to the rhapsodizing of many mental health gurus on social media, boundaries aren’t magic. 

The truth is, it’s really hard for a lot of people to set boundaries that other people will respect. 

And it’s virtually impossible to set boundaries that a committed predator will respect. 

The core assumption on which boundary setting rests is that you’re able to walk away from a situation if the other person chooses not to respect your boundary. 

We can’t FORCE anyone to respect our boundaries— all we can do is disengage and walk away if the other person fails to respect it. 

But not everybody CAN safely or easily walk away from a situation. 

Yes, boundaries can be very important— but our cultural blindness to the fact that not everybody is in a sufficient position of power to be able to set effective boundaries is MADDENING. 

It can be impossible, for all practical purposes, to walk away from a relationship on which we are economically reliant— and particularly impractical to threaten to walk away from that relationship every time you need to set a boundary. 

It can be practically impossible to walk away from a relationship with an organization or institution that all your social and familial relationships are entwined with. 

When predators are in a position where they know you are unable to realistically set boundaries, they know they can target you with impunity— and you’ll likely be blamed for whatever happens. 

Because, you know, “we teach people how to treat us.” 

Make no mistake: the victim blaming bias of our culture caters directly to predators. 

We do not “allow” predators to target us. They choose to do that. 

We do not “allow” predators to violate our boundaries. They choose to do that— and our cultural misunderstanding of how boundaries work often aids and abets them. 

It is not your fault that you were, or are, targeted by a predator. 

You cannot realistically halt a predator in their tracks by magically waving a “boundaries” wand. 

As it turns out: predators don’t give a sh*t about our boundaries. 

And our victim blaming culture will often give them cover. 

In my view, our primary tools in working to regulate our emotions after trauma are our self-talk, our inner focus, and our outer focus. 

Your mileage may vary, but I think the emotional regulation tools and techniques taught by many types of therapy all trace back to different ways of using our self-talk, our internal focus, and our external focus. 

(There are also techniques for using our breathing and our physical body to help regulate our emotions, but even these, I feel, eventually anchor back to shifting our internal and external focus.) 

Perhaps the most important thing to remember when thinking about emotional regulation is that it is not easy, and no skill, tool, or philosophy that I know of MAKES it suddenly easy. 

The goal of emotional regulation skills and tools in trauma recovery is to make it EASIER to turn the volume up or down on our emotional states— but we need to remember that post traumatic emotional dysregulation is rooted in the PHYSICAL harm that was done to our nervous system when we were traumatized. 

When we try to change how we habitually respond to emotional states that feel overwhelming or dangerous, we are making PHYSICAL changes to our nervous system— namely, rerouting neural pathways. 

The point is that this takes time. And sometimes the project of altering neural pathways can be actually, physically uncomfortable. 

Another thing to remember when working on post trauma emotional regulation is, many of the skills and tools we try in the moment may not SEEM to make much of a difference right then. 

If emotional regulation really were as simple as thinking about something specific or saying something specific or using our body in a specific way during periods of intense emotion, there wouldn’t be so many trauma survivors struggling with it. 

What I found in my own trauma recovery was, I would learn an emotional regulation technique— then, when it came time to practice it, I would try it…and it would seem pretty weak sauce. 

A LOT of things seem like weak sauce in the face of the hurricane that is post traumatic emotional dysregulation. 

The reason I even mention this is because I know, very well, that many trauma survivors are sick and tired of trying sh*t that doesn’t work. 

The flood of emotions and physical sensations that happens when we get triggered is no joke— and in that moment we’re NOT in the mood to try some weak sauce self-talk or visualization technique that might not seem to make much of a dent in what we’re experiencing right now. 

The paradox of learning post traumatic emotional regulation is that we have to push through our irritation and despair at how stupid and ineffective some of these techniques seem if we ever want them to start to work. 

The truth is, we learn to regulate our emotions in little, bite sized chunks. 

Instead of experiencing an emotion at 100% intensity, we experience it at 99%. Then maybe at 98%. 

Mind you: your trauma is going to try to tell you that a 1% downtick in how intense an emotion feels isn’t worth the hassle of learning and practicing emotional regulation techniques. 

That post traumatic hopelessness is the single biggest enemy of learning effective post traumatic emotional regulation. 

Don’t get me wrong: we arrive at that hopelessness honestly. Nobody reading this is resistant to trying emotional regulation skills and tools because they are “difficult,” or because thy are not “trying hard enough” to learn and practice emotional regulation. 

It’s just absolutely the case that, if we really want to develop this skillset, we’re GOING to need to push through that hopelessness and cynicism, and accept that this is a 1% at a time project. 

The last thing I’ll mention here about learning post traumatic emotional regulation is that there really aren’t any completely universal skills, tools, or philosophies that will work for every trauma survivor— because we all have different strengths, vulnerabilities, traumas, symptoms, resources, and memories. 

The self-talk and focus skills that help ME manage MY emotions might strike YOU as ineffective at best— because MY strategies are tailored to my cognitive and emotional “cheat code.” 

Emotional regulation is about finding YOUR unique cognitive and emotional “cheat code.” 

Post traumatic emotional dysregulation is a bitch. It is overwhelmingly the most common and most life disrupting symptom for the VAST majority of my patients. 

But, with creativity, patience, and practice— it IS a solvable problem. 

One day at a time. 

Part of being trauma informed is understanding that trauma survivors often use suicidal thoughts as a coping tool. 

If you haven’t noticed, the world sometimes freaks out if we express thoughts of suicide. 

Many people reading this have had the experience of expressing such thoughts, and a healthcare provider (or a family member, or a friend) react…poorly. 

It’s not necessarily their fault. All they hear is what they hear: that we’re possibly a step closer to ending our own life. 

It’s hard to explain to someone not in our head, let alone someone who hasn’t experienced complex trauma, that the role suicidal thoughts play in our journey can be complex. 

Do suicidal thoughts mean that there might be a desire to die? Of course. 

But can they mean a lot of things other than, or in addition to, that? Yes. 

To live with complex trauma is often to live in pain. 

That pain is almost always emotional, and not infrequently physical as well. 

It’s very frequently pan we can’t just lay down or take a break from. Sometimes it’s not even pain we can adequately distract ourselves from. 

Trauma survivors are used to getting told versions of, look, you wouldn’t be in such pain if you weren’t FOCUSING on it all the time. 

The problem with that is, trauma survivors aren’t making a “choice” to “focus” on their pain. (If only we HAD such a choice, am I right?) 

For many trauma survivors there’s quite often literally NO escape from the emotional and physical pain of post traumatic stress— especially in early recovery. 

The pain of our trauma traps us. Corners us. Does not give us an out. 

Suicidal thoughts are often that out— mentally and emotionally, anyway. 

Some people reading this might be familiar with some diets that recommend discipline on six days a week— but one “cheat day” per week, on which the dieter gets to eat anything they want, particularly the things they denied themselves the rest of the week. 

The reason diet “cheat days” often work is, fantasizing about that “cheat day” can provide a dieter with the focus to power through the “discipline” days— with the promise of something sweet ahead, if the dieter just hangs in. 

Suicidal ideation can kind of work in the same way for trauma survivors. 

We might have a perfectly awful time carrying on day to day, when there is no end to our pain in sight. 

When we feel trapped, cornered, forced to carry on, to keep living despite the enormous pain we’re in, we can REALLY go down the rabbit hole of despair. 

But if we have a potential “out”— the possibility of suicide— that transforms our “have to” to a “choose to” situation. 

We’re no longer being FORCED to endure the pain we’re in— we’re now CHOOSING to stay alive and work toward healing, because we DO have an alternative. 

All of this might sound bizarre to someone who has never experienced trauma or suicidal ideation. 

I guarantee I’m going to get at least someone yelling at me for this blog, to the tune of, “you’re not discouraging suicide strongly enough.” 

To be clear: I would strongly, strongly prefer that everybody reading these words right now stay alive. 

I think everybody reading these words right now has realistic reasons to believe that life, and they, will get better. I really do. 

But if we’re going to realistically deal with trauma OR suicidal ideation, we need to understand the function that suicidal ideation often plays in the sh*t show that is complex trauma. 

At least sometimes— if not often— we don’t fantasize about suicide because we want to die. No entirely, anyway. 

Sometimes— maybe often— we fantasize about suicide because it seems to give us OPTIONS— and that freedom might just give us enough wiggle room to keep going today. 

The “fight” trauma response might be the most misunderstood of the classic “fight,” “flight,” freeze,” and “fawn” responses. 

(I like to add two more— “flop” and “f*ck it”— but we can get into that later.) 

The “fight” response happens when we get triggered, and our impulse is to lash out. 

This happens in a lot of ways. It’s not just physically fighting (in fact, physically fighting someone might be the very LAST thing many trauma survivors would be inclined to do). 

Many trauma survivors develop a reputation among people who don’t understand trauma responses as being “difficult.” 

We get called “stubborn.” Sometimes we even get called “combative.” 

Very frequently we get blamed for behaviors that are actually instinctive manifestations of the “fight” trauma response. 

Trauma responses don’t mean we have ZERO control over what we do and say when we’re triggered— but it does mean that, in those moments, we are overwhelmed by a nervous system reflex that cannot be ignored. 

That is to say: when our “fight” response gets triggered, we struggle to do anything BUT fight in that moment. 

Sometimes our “fight” response” looks like interpersonal aggression. We snap at people. We push back more forcefully than might be expected, given the situation. 

Sometimes it looks like verbal aggression. We latch on to something that may not need elaboration, but we take the opportunity to fully articulate EXACTLY what we think of it. 

Sometimes our fight response DOES involve some form of physical aggression. We throw ourselves into a physical activity, like boxing or even running, and really go all in until we’re exhausted. 

Sometimes our “fight” response might be passive aggressive. We don’t directly “attack” someone or something, but we engage in behavior we know will cause them inconvenience or frustration. 

The “fight” trauma response gets misunderstood, because people who happen to be in our way when it gets triggered often get the brunt of it. 

It’s easy to assume a trauma survivor in “fight” mode really wants to, well, fight— and it’s not an unfair assumption, given that other people can’t read our minds. 

It can be easy for us to get down on ourselves for our “fight” responses. 

Personally, I HATE when my own “fight” trauma response kicks in. 

I can get ACIDLY sarcastic when that happens— and I do NOT like myself at those times. 

Often in psychotherapy, trauma patients will have a “fight” response triggered— and therapists who aren’t terribly trauma informed will assume that the patient is “acting out,” and get defensive.

(Unfortunately, such therapists often wind up blaming the patient for this response kicking in.) 

When we enact a trauma response that we’re not thrilled with, including the “fight” response, we need to remember: we didn’t ask for this. 

We’re not in full control of what our nervous system does when it gets triggered. 

We ARE responsible for our behavior, including “cleaning up” any hurtful situations our behavior creates— but we NEED to relate to our trauma responses, even the ones we dislike, with compassion. 

If our nervous system’s “fight” switch gets flipped on, we’re running a pattern— not making a decision. 

We are not going to shame or bully ourselves out of “fight” responses. 

We are not going to punish ourselves out of “fight” responses. 

The only way we CAN diminish the frequency and intensity of “fight” trauma responses is to create safety INSIDE our head and heart— internal safety that our nervous system truly registers. 

If we’re having “fight” trauma responses, it’s because our nervous system thinks it NEEDS to fight to survive. 

We only counter that by creating safety— outside if possible, but DEFINITELY inside. 

Easy does it. One day at a time. 

I don’t know that I have anything new or interesting to say about grief. 

That’s how you start journaling about something that you don’t know what to say about. 

Sometimes it starts with “I don’t know if I have anything to say.” 

Sometimes all we know is that we’re feeling or experiencing a thing…but we may not even be clear what we’re feeling or experiencing. 

I’m experiencing what the culture calls “grief.” 

Someone I love died. 

We’d been in a romantic relationship when we were both about 19 to 20. It was a long time ago, and we’d both moved on, romantically and in our lives. We were on good terms, and we messaged every few weeks or months, usually when something out in the world reminded us of inside jokes we shared. 

Now those inside jokes only live on the inside of my head and heart. 

Trauma and addiction recovery generally involve a lot of loss. A lot of grieving. 

In trauma and addiction recovery we lose a version of ourselves. We may lose it on purpose— we may actually set out to “lose” that version of us— but it’s still a loss. 

In trauma and addiction recovery there is plenty of grieving. Specifically grieving the life we should have had, with the people we should have had it with. 

Heather knew me at a time when I was very, very depressed. 

She was one of the main reasons I was not at greater risk of ending my life during that time. 

When you’re 19 or 20, you think you know what the rest of life is going to look like. I guess we always think we know what the rest of life is going to look like, at any age. 

But we don’t. 

Many people reading this know what it is to lose someone special to them. Death is more than an abstraction for many people reading this. 

When we lose certain people we lose a little piece of ourselves. 

There were little jokes and stories and songs that only Heather and I got. Now I have my memories of them— but I’m the only person on the planet who has those memories. 

Did Heather know that she played a part in saving me once upon a time? 

I don’t know. 

In my line of work, we talk about the future a lot, especially as it pertains to the idea of “hope.” Very often mental health providers throw a lot of energy at convincing their clients that tomorrow can, will, be better— that there is reason for hope. 

I think there are a LOT of reasons to believe that we can meaningfully change our lives. I’ve seen it happen over and over again. 

But it’s also the case that at a certain time we run out of tomorrows. 

Heather was my age. In the grand scheme, we’re relatively young. Not as young as we were, but not as old as we would be. 

Not as old as we were supposed to get. 

Turns out I knew and loved Heather at about the midpoint of her life. 

That’s not f*cking fair. 

But I don’t get to make the rules. 

I don’t even get to make the rules about how much time I have, let alone how much time anybody else has. 

It had been years since Heather and I said “I love you” to each other in a romantic sense, and at least months since we said it in a platonic sense. 

But I would have gladly given her any, or all, of my tomorrows. 

My days are spent trying to support the most courageous people I ever get to meet, my patients, to improve their lives in realistic, sustainable baby steps. 

I never, ever want them to take their tomorrows for granted— or to believe that their tomorrows don’t matter. 

Your tomorrows matter. 

You matter. 

I don’t write that lightly or flippantly. 

You f*cking matter. 

Don’t ever doubt it. Don’t ever let anyone convince you you don’t. 

Goodbye, baby. 

You’re gonna run into people who make you feel young. Anxious. Scared. 

You’re gonna run into people who make you feel like everything— and I mean EVERYTHING— is your fault. 

You’re gonna run into people who explicitly BLAME you for everything— and I mean EVERYTHING. 

When we’ve had certain experiences growing up, it’s really easy for certain people and behaviors to push our buttons. To trigger us. 

One of those buttons is shame. 

You WILL get people coming at you intentionally trying to evoke the experience of shame. 

Why? Because they know: shame tends to make us more compliant. 

When we feel shame, we very often will bend over backwards to NOT feel it.

Shame can very often be used to control us, because it WAS very often used to control us, sometimes over the course of decades and in our most important relationships. 

Shame can make us feel young. Helpless. Unresourceful. 

The people who intentionally evoke shame often do so with the intention of making us feel or believe we are dependent upon them for safety and self-esteem. 

After all, the narrative they’re trying to advance is: if you don’t do what I want you to do, I will continue making you feel this way. And you don’t WANT to keep feeling this way, do you? 

The people who try to use shame to control us are intentionally creating a power dynamic in which we necessarily feel “one down.” 

When people try to evoke shame in us, they are communicating that we are “less than;” and if we ever want to NOT be “less than,” we need to change our behavior to…whatever they’re trying to get us to do. 

Here’s the irony about those people who attempt to evoke shame in us: they’re actually the ones acting like children. 

Spoiled, petulant children. 

Kind, compassionate adults do not attempt to control other people via shame. 

Kind, compassionate adults do not throw temper tantrums when other adults don’t do what they want them to do. 

Kind, compassionate adults do not leverage their perceived interpersonal power to make other adults feel “less than.” 

That’s not grown up behavior. That is behavior that reflects the incomplete, impulsive interpersonal toolbox of a chid. 

In essence, people who attempt to evoke shame in order to control us are emotional “children” who are trying to drag us down to their developmental level. 

This is REALLY important when we get dragged into emotional flashback by these people. 

It’s REALLY important to remember that WE are not children. They are the ones behaving like children. 

It’s REALLY important to know that these people are engaging in a form of what psychologists call “projective identification:” they are projecting qualities of themselves, in this case emotional immaturity, onto others, and then they are behaving toward those others in such a way as to evoke the feelings and behavior they projected. 

In other words: they are emotional children who can be really good at making the people around them feel like emotional children. 

Setting boundaries with people who make us feel this way is essential. And hard. 

Setting boundaries with ANYONE can be fraught for trauma survivors. It’s not about you; it’s about what trauma does to our self-esteem and how primed the “fawn” trauma response is in our nervous system. 

But setting those boundaries can START with acknowledging, again and again, inside your head and heart: you are not a child. You are not lost. You are not unresourceful. You are not “bad.” 

Don’t let an emotional child turn you into an emotional child. 

Remember who you are.