Author: drglenndoyle

The people with whom we most need to set boundaries, are often the people with whom it is the hardest to set boundaries. 

Some people make it very hard to set boundaries with them. 

They can get very reactive to even the gentlest, most polite, most normal or appropriate boundaries. 

Setting a boundary doesn’t mean someone has necessarily done something wrong. It doesn’t mean that a relationship is bad or that we want the relationship to end. 

To the contrary: setting boundaries is something we do when we want the relationship to continue— and when we want to feel good and safe as the relationship continues. 

But some people are going to react as if setting a boundary is a personal insult. 

Some people will react to you setting a boundary as if you are accusing them of something. 

They may demand to know why you want to set a boundary. 

They may put pressure on you to justify the boundary you want to set— and they may expect you to supply concrete examples of their behavior that “proves” the boundary is necessary. 

Here’s the thing; you don’t have to justify your interpersonal boundaries. 

Someone doesn’t have to have done something “wrong” or violating for you to want to set a boundary with them. 

Boundaries exist for our physical and emotional safety— and one of the essential purposes of setting boundaries is to minimize the chances that something violating WILL happen. 

You don’t have to justify your comfort zone. 

You can choose to explain to someone why you feel the need to set a boundary— but that’s your choice. 

You DON’T have to get someone to agree that a boundary is necessary. 

There is a subset of people out there who, for their own reasons, will always bristle when you try to set a boundary. 

They’ll try to convince you that your need or desire to set a boundary represents a problem on YOUR part— and it’s not “fair” for you to put that problem on THEM by setting a boundary. 

For many people, this line of reasoning hooks into the doubt and shame that keeps us from asserting our boundaries and stating our needs in many areas of life. 

Sometimes this even happens with people we don’t know particularly well. 

There is a subset of people who you’ll meet, even socially, who will then feel entitled to be a presence in your life unless they are furnished with a “good enough” reason otherwise. 

(Unsurprisingly, this subset of people tends to find most reasons people give for NOT wanting them in their lives to be “not good enough.”) 

You don’t need a “good enough” reason to not want contact with someone or not want them to have access to your life. 

If you choose to give someone an explanation for why you’re setting a boundary or severing contact, do so for your reasons— and be clear with yourself that you are extending them a courtesy. 

There are absolutely people who will try to leverage your anxiety, self-doubt, and shame, in order to keep you from setting limits with them. 

Whether these people are strangers, acquaintances, professional contacts, current or former romantic partners, or family members, they tend to operate in the same way: they want to make it more of en emotional hassle to set boundaries with them, than to just let them do what they want. 

Their motivations may vary, but the result is often the same: damage to your sense of self-esteem. 

It’s really hard to build realistic, stable self-esteem when we feel we can’t set effective boundaries and limits with people.

If anybody has the power to barge into our life and stay as long as they want, regardless of how we feel about it, it’s difficult to create a life that we can reliably trust and enjoy. 

Setting boundaries can be incredibly difficult when we’re already fighting beliefs about our own “meanness” or “badness” in our own head. 

But not setting boundaries DOESN’T prove how “nice” or “good” or “mature” you are. 

Yes, setting boundaries can generate anxiety. 

But trying to function WITHOUT boundaries generates even MORE anxiety— not to mention actual danger— over the long term. 

There are lots of ways and reasons people get trapped in painful relationships or situations. 

It’s often not as easy as “just walk away if it’s so bad.” 

Sometimes, walking away from a complicated, painful situation is dangerous. 

Sometimes trying to escape a painful situation invites overwhelming questions or problems that we simply don’t have the resources to handle at the moment. 

So we stay. 

Not because we like it. Not because we want to. But because the alternatives just aren’t realistic or safe at the moment. 

There are people reading this who have significantly struggled with the question of why they didn’t try harder to get out of a painful situation. 

There are people reading this who have literally been told that the fact they stayed in, or in some cases returned to, a painful situation means that it couldn’t have been THAT bad. 

Sometimes people are told that the reason they’re NOW saying that the situation was “abusive” is because they want attention or sympathy…whereas if the situation was “really” abusive, they would have spoken up or left it much earlier. 

I wish this was an uncommon thing. 

But all too many people reading this know all too well how often it happens. 

Many people reflexively disbelieve accounts of abuse— especially abuse that isn’t physical. 

Many people believe that emotional or verbal abuse exists in a “grey area” that can be hard to define and may vary from person to person— whereas physical abuse is “objectively” violent. 

This often results in victims of verbal or emotional abuse doubting their experiences and being reluctant to seek support for them. 

Working to cope with and reduce the frequency and intensity of trauma responses is REALLY hard when we’re reluctant to acknowledge how bad a situation was, or how seriously it impacted us. 

And it’s REALLY hard to acknowledge those things if we’re constantly bombarded with questions and doubts about whether the verbal or emotional abuse we endured was “really” as bad as the “objectively violent” physical abuse others experienced. 

In the end, it doesn’t matter if your trauma measures up to someone else’s idea of “trauma.” 

It doesn’t matter if you had it “better” or “worse” than anybody else. 

It doesn’t matter if someone else thinks your verbal or emotional abuse was as bad or violent as someone else’s physical abuse. 

What matters is how these experiences impacted you. 

What you have to go through every day to stay alive and functional. 

What you need to recover and create a life worth living. 

Be prepared for some people to mess with your head with questions like “why didn’t you leave?” or “why did you go back?”

Be prepared for some people to tell you “at least you weren’t hit.” 

Be prepared for some people to tell you that “words can’t hurt you unless you let them.” 

These are all VERY common things for abuse survivors to hear— and they all reflect the attitudes and beliefs of the person saying them. NOT reality. 

The reality of abuse and neglect is that they are very often woven into our closest relationships, in which we are the most vulnerable, dependent, and isolated. 

There are many types of violence, and they can affect human beings very differently depending upon their personal history and current situation. 

Keep coming back to what YOU need, now, in YOUR recovery. 

Don’t sweat definitions of words like “trauma” and “violence.” 

Don’t sweat stupid questions like “why didn’t you leave?” 

You stay focused on what YOU need to create safety and stability in YOUR day, today. 

Let’s talk about some things many people reading this saw and experienced growing up when it came to anger, violence, and bullying. 

Some people reading this have first hand experience of how, one minute, someone might be smiling and laughing— and the next minute, be angry and on their way to hitting somebody. 

Some people reading this have experienced watching violence happen— in a room full of people, none of whom did anything so stop it…or much of anything after it happened. 

Some reading this have had the experience of, after someone has been assaulted, people opining that the assault was really the victim’s fault— that they were “asking for it,” or that the aggressor “had no choice” but to attack them. 

Some reading this have had the experience of having a vicious “joke” made about them— and then being expected to either laugh along with it or pretend it wasn’t hurtful, because, what’s the matter, don’t you have a sense of humor? 

All of which is to say: what many of us have been seeing and hearing discussed, over and over again over the last couple days, has layers— and many of those layers touch upon sensitive, triggering aspects of our personal history. 

It’s not weird to be triggered by all of it. 

It would be kind of weird to NOT be triggered by it. 

Many of us grew up with a complicated relationship with anger and humor. 

Our culture itself has a very complicated relationship with anger and humor. 

We’re a culture that values “free speech”— though we’re constantly exploring and debating what it means to protect “free speech,” when certain speech can demonstrably (and needlessly) harm vulnerable people. 

We’re a culture that values “personal responsibility”— though we’re constantly exploring and debating the limits of one’s personal agency when they’re exposed to stressors and triggers that they didn’t choose and may not be equipped to handle. 

We’re a culture that values autonomy and choice— but in which it is virtually impossible to escape a viral clip of one person assaulting another person on live television, no matter how carefully we try to curate our social media feeds. 

If you’re reading this, chances are you’re having a reaction to the many discussions that are currently happening about violence, provocation, personal responsibility, and our cultural attitudes toward humor and boundaries. 

Your mileage might vary about who, if anyone, you feel was “right” in the inciting event— and you might have some VERY strong feelings about what unfolded in the minutes and hours after that event. 

It’s really, really important that you give yourself room to have and explore whatever feelings and reactions you ARE having. 

Pay attention to what’s coming up for you. 

Get curious— and compassionate— about what memories and feelings all this is scraping up. 

Give yourself room to be confused or upset about both what happened, and other peoples’ strong reactions to it. 

Staying present when we can’t seem to get away from a triggering image or video clip— or the endless discussion of a triggering event— can be really hard. Our nervous system may very much want to get some distance from it all by dissociating. 

Yeah. Even though we weren’t directly involved, an event that’s in our face again and again can ABSOLUTELY trigger a dissociative response. 

Easy does it. Remember your grounding skills. Go through your senses one at a time. 

Talk yourself through the tough moments. Remind yourself of who, where— and even when— you are. 

Our culture isn’t great at holding these conversations in a trauma-informed way— so we have to use our tools, skills, and supports to manage our own reactions. To stay as safe and stable as we can, even as triggering images and conversations swirl around us. 

You can do this. 

It might not be easy— but you can do this. 

Some nights we’re going to be sad or lonely— and we’re not going to be sure why. 

We’re going to want to feel better, or even just differently— and we’re not going to be sure what, if anything, we CAN do to change how we feel. 

I wish choosing recovery meant that we’d never have sad or lonely nights. But it doesn’t. 

In fact, in some ways recovery means certain nights will seem sadder or lonelier than they used to, because in choosing recovery we’ve committed to not using the self-sabotaging or self-destructive shortcuts to changing our feelings that we used to. 

So we’re left with the sadness and the loneliness. 

Sometimes we’re left with memories that we’d do anything to NOT be aware of. 

Perhaps we’re left with feelings of worthlessness or emptiness that, in the past, we were ether not aware of, or had developed self-harmful distractions to cope with. 

On nights like this it’s hard to take a step back and remember why we’re choosing recovery instead of immersion in depression, anxiety, addiction, trauma, or an eating disorder. 

We know we “should” be in recovery. We know we’re “supposed” to fight. 

But what do we do when the struggles of our recovery are in our face— and we can’t clearly remember why it’s supposedly preferable to be in recovery at all? 

I wish there were magic words I could write here to make it all make sense on a sad, lonely night. 

I wish there was an airtight argument I could make here that would instantly get you motivated and hopeful about recovery. 

But the truth is: sad, lonely nights are going to happen. 

Nights when we feel lost. Unloved. Unworthy OF love. 

Even if we know in our head that these feelings are the results of distorted thoughts or beliefs, even if we intellectually know that past trauma is clouding our thinking and judgment, even if we know that addiction or anxiety is whispering in our ear a worst-case-scenario interpretation of everything we’re experiencing…the fact is that nights like this STILL hurt. 

Yes, we can learn coping skills. And yes, those skills often take the edge of of some of the sadness or loneliness. 

But even the most effective coping skills sometimes feel like trying to combat a forest fire with a squirt gun. 

So why be in recovery? Why stay in recovery? Are sad, lonely nights all we ever have to look forward to? 

No. 

Our quality of life DOES improve as we stay in recovery. 

That may  not feel realistic on a sad, lonely night— such as you might be experiencing right now— but it’s true. 

We DO feel better as we heal. 

There’s no denying that it happens tiny bit by tiny bit— and there’s no denying that we have to endure plenty of awful nights where we’re going to wonder if any of this is worth it. 

I can’t speak for you. I can only speak for me. 

I believe it is worth it. 

I believe it’s worth it because I believe you and I are worth it. 

I don’t believe we were born to suffer. 

I don’t believe we were born to quit— or to lose. 

I don’t believe we were born to live at the mercy of depression, anxiety, trauma, addiction, or an eating disorder. 

Don’t get me wrong: there are frequently parts of me that doubt or dispute that assertion that “I’m worth it.” 

Those parts remind me of me when I was a kid— wondering or doubting whether I was “worth it.” 

At the time, I could have used a safe, consistent adult to tell me I WAS, in fact, worth it— and to stay with me even as I doubt it, even as I disputed it. 

I could have used an adult to just stick with me, even when I felt I didn’t deserve it. 

Many people reading this didn’t have that adult then. 

We have to BE that adult for that young, anxious, doubting, despairing part of us now. 

I choose recovery because I refuse to abandon myself— either the adult I am now, or the child I once was, who I still carry around with me in my head and heart. 

Yes. The night can be dark, and cold, and lonely, and sad, and long. There’s no denying that. 

It’s when the night is darkest and coldest that we need ourselves more than ever. 

Many people who have survived complicated, overwhelming circumstances get confused about why they seemed to be “fine” at the time— but then kind of fall apart in the weeks, months, or even years after. 

It can feel strange to kind of coast through what most people would consider a traumatic event— only to melt down AFTER the event is behind us, when we “should” feel safe. 

Our nervous system very often knows how to get us THROUGH trauma. 

One of the ways it gets us THROUGH it without us falling to pieces is, it compartmentalizes the impact of what’s happening to us so we can prioritize survival. 

Many survivors are familiar with the narrowing of attention that happens when we’re under the gun. 

Even when things seem overwhelming, even when the pressure seems like it’s mounting, many survivors experience an almost Zen-like state of calm as they deal with what needs to be dealt with. 

Often we’re even complimented on our ability to handle what to the entire world looks like an incredibly stressful or painful situation. 

However, it’s very often AFTER we get a little bit of time and distance on what happened that we really start to feel the impact. 

It’s a lot like getting a sunburn on a summer day: you may not feel it AS you’re out in the sun…but that evening, after the sun has gone down, everything starts to sting; and the next morning, you can barely move, because the sunburn is so painful. 

Sometimes the impact of trauma can be so delayed, or is so seemingly unrelated to what we went through, that we’re not at all sure it’s related. 

Many trauma responses may seem almost random when we first experience them. There’s often not a straightforward connection between what happened to us and the thoughts and body sensations we’re experiencing now. 

Often we convince ourselves that what we’re experiencing isn’t even a trauma response— maybe we’re just “weak” or “crazy” or “childish.” 

Often we do this because that’s what we’ve been told by someone. 

It’s absolutely frustrating to try to wade through our own responses and reactions, trying to make what we do and feel make sense— especially when our memories are a little (or a lot) fragmented, as trauma survivors’ memories often are. 

Don’t get up in your head about making all of your symptoms, reactions, and responses “make sense.” 

After all: you’re experiencing what you’re experiencing, whether it “makes sense” or not. 

The commonality between may trauma responses is that they are some part of you trying to protect itself (or you); and/or, they are some part of you enacting what they think they (or you) “deserve.” 

Whether a reaction, feeling, or behavior is or isn’t a trauma response, we’re going to get a LOT more mileage out of meeting it with curiosity and compassion rather than frustration and shame. 

I know. I hate it when my body and nervous system throw up confusing, inconvenient, and energy-consuming reactions and responses, too. 

i wish they didn’t. I wish my body and nervous system just did what I told them to do. 

But if there’s a part of me that’s carrying something that it needs me to know about or it needs my help with, it’s going to keep trying to get my attention until I listen. 

Don’t be shocked when you seem to have a response to something that you thought you’d handled well. 

The truth is, maybe you did handle it well in the moment— after all, you got through that moment. 

Now your body and emotions are catching up. 

They’ve been holding back while you did what you did to get through— and we can be ENORMOUSLY grateful to the parts of you that held on to those feelings and reactions while you attended to the business of getting by. 

Now we have to be open to feeling what we feel— or, rather, feeling what we didn’t have the safety to feel in the moment. 

Easy does it. 

The parts of you that got you through, need you now. 

There are lots of people out there who are hurting— but who have to keep functioning. 

As it turns out, life doesn’t pause, or even slow down, for us when we’re in emotional— or even physical— pain. 

Lots of people reading this know exactly what I mean. They’ve been in the spot of really struggling with depression, anxiety, trauma, addiction, an easting disorder, or something else— but having to keep going out in the world every day to “function.” 

Many of us have jobs or roles that simply don’t let us pump the brakes, even for a day. 

So we soldier on. Even through the pain, through the dissociation, through the fatigue. 

I wish we lived in a world that was better at acknowledging the need to recover even if we’re not quite at the point of complete meltdown or burnout— but we don’t. 

The world will often look at us and say, well, if you can get up in the morning and make it in to work, you must not be all THAT bad off. 

If you can still “produce,” even in a reduced capacity, your pain must not be THAT bad. 

They don’t get it. 

It’s not that our pain “isn’t that bad.” 

It’s that our life doesn’t give us the option of taking time and space to recuperate. 

Some people will never know how frustrating it is to be hurting, emotionally or physically, every day— but to not have that pain considered particularly important, because you’re still “functional.” 

There are plenty of people out in the world who are “functional”— right up to the point where they’re not. 

We also live in a world that frequently does not acknowledge how hard we’re working to push through our pain and fatigue. 

We’re told we shouldn’t get special credit for doing things we’re “supposed” to do, like working or parenting. 

This often leaves us feeling very alone, very invisible— and very hopeless that anyone will EVER appreciate the enormous effort it often takes to just get out of bed and exist in the world day after day. 

Trying to live up to our responsibilities when we’re dragging around the weight of a mood disorder, a trauma history, or an addiction, is more exhausting and discouraging than words can express. 

It takes a tremendous amount of courage to face the day when you’re carrying an invisible thousand pound load that you can’t really explain to anybody. 

For many people, recovery has to begin in teeny, tiny increments— teeny, tiny changes in the way we talk to ourselves, in what we focus on, in what we do. 

We have to start with those teeny, tiny changes because we often don’t have the time or emotional bandwidth for bigger changes. 

Asking someone who is living a full, busy life— in SPITE of whatever they’re struggling with emotionally or behaviorally— to make massive changes just isn’t fair or realistic. 

Almost nobody has the opportunity to make recovery a full time job. So we have to start small, and we have to stay realistic. 

We start recovery with harm reduction because a day that hurts or harms us 1% less because of a teeny, tiny change we purposefully made, is realistic. We MIGHT be able to wrap our head around that. 

ANY recovery program NEEDS to take your real, daily life and responsibilities into account. 

ANY recovery program that doesn’t treat your real world priorities and responsibilities as important is in trouble from the start. 

If you’ve been going out in the world and “functioning”— whatever the hell that means— despite the emotional or behavioral load you’re carrying, you deserve to be seen, acknowledged, celebrated. 

Even reading a blog like this when you’re feeling awful isn’t easy. But you’re doing it. 

Just reading this blog counts as a baby step. 

The baby steps are realistically gonna get you there. I promise. 

The name of the game is not changing to please someone. 

It’s not changing so you’ll be more acceptable to someone. 

It’s DEFINITELY not changing so you’ll be loved by someone. 

In recovery, the name of the game is accepting some things and changing other things to make your life more livable— for you. 

If you make changes to your life to please, satisfy, or attract somebody else, but those changes make it harder for you to feel good or function well, you haven’t really gained anything worth gaining. 

Lots of us tend to forget that we have a right to create a life that we like living and that we find meaningful— regardless of what anybody else thinks or says. 

Your life doesn’t have to be oriented toward pleasing or satisfying everyone around you all the time. 

Yes, I also prefer it when the people around me or the important people in my life like and approve of what I’m doing…but we can really fall down a rabbit hole if we make other peoples’ approval the MAIN thing we’re driving at every day. 

For a lot of us, this goes back to childhood. 

When we’re kids, we’re VERY aware that the quality of our life depends greatly on pleasing the adults around us. 

We spend a LOT of our childhood trying to figure out how to make the adults around us not yell at us— or, even better, say nice things for us. 

We’re rewarded for being “good.” So being good becomes a HUGE thing in our child brain— and our only real measuring stick for whether we’re “good” or not is the approval of the adults around us. 

The thing is, neither we as children, nor the adults around us, tend to be very good at making the distinction between “good” behavior…and a “good” human being. 

Many people reading this had the experience of being told they were “bad,” based on a thing they did. 

The script that “good people do good things, i.e. things that the people around them approve of and reward them for,” and “bad people do bad things, i.e., things that the people around them disapprove of and tell them to stop doing,” dies hard. 

It’s a script that misses a LOT of nuance. 

“Goodness” and “badness” are infinitely more complicated than “do the people around me like or approve of what I’m doing?”…but when we’re kids, we often don’t have the cognitive or emotional complexity (let alone the guidance and support) to realize that. 

So we often carry that script into adulthood. 

Right now, there are LOTS of people out there living their lives on the same assumptions that guided their childhood behavior: “If I’m a good kid, the people around me will approve of my behavior. If the people around me don’t approve of my behavior, that must mean I’m a bad kid.” 

Inside of many of us is just a kid who wants to know they’re “good.” Who wants help being “good.” Who wants to be “good” because being “good” is the only way they know to guarantee they’ll be safe and wanted and protected. 

So we try to be “good”— that is, we try to please others with our behavior. 

We often experience great anxiety when others disapprove of our behavior— because inside of us there’s a kid who is deathly afraid that disapproval means shame, rejection, and abandonment. 

Old programming dies hard. 

Many adults don’t like to think of it as anything so simple. We want to think that we’ve grown beyond what drove us as kids. We want to think that we’re smarter and stronger than the child we once were, who would give anything to just be “good”— that is, be assured that they’d be safe. 

But for a lot of us, it really is that simple, deep down. 

And it’s not a problem we can solve without assuring that kid deep inside us that they really WILL be safe— even if we, as adults, happen to displease the people around us. 

That kid inside needs us to provide the UNCONDITIONAL love that we might not have gotten. 

That kid inside needs us to prove to them that their worth— that is, their safety— doesn’t depend on others’ acceptance. 

That kid inside needs us to reassure them that they can be a “good kid” EVEN IF someone is mad at them, displeased with them, dismissive of them. 

That kid inside needs…us. 

You’re going to run into people who straight up deny that your experience is your experience. 

You’ll try to tell them what you’ve been through, and they’ll say, “nah, that didn’t happen.” 

You’ll try to tell them what you’re feeing, and they’ll say, “are you sure?” 

You’ll try to tell them what you need, and they’ll say, “no, you don’t. You need this other thing.” 

You’ll try to tell them how something impacted you, and they’ll say, “well, THAT’S the wrong reaction.” 

Again and again we run into people who refuse to take our account of our experience at face value. 

This happens all the time when our past includes painful, complicated relationships or traumatic events. 

As hard as it is for survivors to put words to what they’ve been through, it can be even harder to share those words with another human being. 

Survivors are very often used to their experiences being questioned, doubted, or ignored. 

One of the great ironies of the overdue conversation we are now having about trauma and its consequences is that, while it’s given survivors more opportunities than ever to speak out about what it’s like to try to recover, it’s also provided opportunities for survivors’ narratives to be picked apart and cross examined— often publicly. 

The more we, as a culture, learn about what trauma does to our nervous system, our relationships, and our decision-making, the more some people will feel the need to judge and gatekeep whether other peoples’ experience was “really that bad.” 

Some people truly think they’re doing the world a service by announcing that some peoples’ pain isn’t “bad enough” to justify their level of injury or impairment. 

Here’s the thing: nobody’s else’s opinion about how much you “should” be hurting, changes how much you’re ACTUALLY hurting— but their opinion CAN add another layer of shame, self-loathing, and secrecy to what you’re already carrying. 

Somebody else’s opinion on whether the word “trauma” is overused in popular culture doesn’t change how ACTUALLY traumatic your life has been. 

Somebody else’s judgment on whether or not your diagnosis is real or not doesn’t change what you’re ACTUALLY struggling with in your head and heart— but their judgment CAN make you doubt what you’re experiencing such that you feel conflicted and guilty for seeking help or trying to soothe it. 

Speaking as both a trauma survivor and a psychologist who specializes in the treatment of complex trauma and dissociation, I can tell you: I don’t actually care what anybody thinks about the prevalence or use of the word “trauma” in the popular culture or on the internet. 

I care that trauma survivors get what they need to stay alive and start reclaiming their lives. 

Please, please, please: don’t get wrapped up in the discussions you see on the internet about whether an experience someone has had actually qualifies as “traumatic.” 

Don’t get wrapped up in arguments about whether “trauma” is over diagnosed, overused, or overemphasized in our culture. 

Focus in on what happened to you, and how it affected you. 

Focus in on what you need to get through the day alive. 

Do NOT dive in and try to sort through how much your experience “should” have affected you, based on somebody else’s opinion or standard. 

Deal with what happened, and what is happening, to you. 

You don’t have to pick sides in any debate about trauma. 

You don’t have to meet anyone’s standard for “hurt enough” to deserve support and help. 

You don’t have to use any words you don’t want to use to describe your experience. I honestly don’t care if you use the word “trauma” to describe what happened to you or the reactions you now have to deal with. 

What I care about is you staying invested in creating a life that works for you. That is livable for you. That makes sense to you. 

Yeah. They’re going to deny, question, and doubt your experience. Sometimes even the people who are close to us are going to do this, which is a drag. 

Your responsibility is still to you. 

Your quality of life. Your priorities, values, and loved ones. 

Not to their expectations, definitions, approval, or their “side” in any bigger debate. 

Feeling ignored can trigger something very specific in a complex trauma survivor’s nervous system. 

A lot of our woundedness tends to revolve around the feeling that we were unwanted or unimportant to the people who were supposed to want us, care for us, protect us, love us. 

When we get the feeling in our adult lives that we’re being ignored, that we are dispensable— it pokes at that wound. Hard. 

It’s not a matter of feeling “entitled” to attention.

To the contrary: many complex trauma survivors struggle to feel they are entitled to ANY attention or care at all. 

Our conditioning has often left us believing we don’t “deserve” love— or, often, even to take up the space we take up, to breathe the air we breathe. 

The reason feeling ignored or unimportant triggers so many complex trauma survivors so badly is, it activates a very specific fear of abandonment that has haunted us…well, ever since we can remember. 

When we’re kids, especially young kids, to be abandoned by the people who are supposed to care for us isn’t just a bummer— it’s a threat to our very existence. 

Kids can’t physically survive on their own. We instinctively know that. That’s why we’re wired to attach to the people who are meeting our physical needs. 

When the care and attention we receive are inconsistent or conditional, part of us is very aware that our actual lives are in danger. 

Fast forward to adulthood— here we are, survivors of complex trauma, out in the world trying to hold down a job and have friendships and relationships…and our nervous system is STILL on the lookout for signs that we are about to be rejected or abandoned. 

Our nervous system STILL thinks our actual LIFE is in danger if we are rejected or abandoned by the people who we’re supposed to be ale to count on for intimacy and safety. 

Lots of people reading this know what I’m talking about. 

It’s one of the most perplexing things in the world to many survivors, why they feel like the end of a romantic relationship actually, literally is the end of the world— how we really do feel like we can’t live without that person in our lives. 

It’s confusing and discouraging to many complex trauma survivors that we get SO anxious and SO preoccupied by nightmarish fantasies of everyone we love suddenly deciding that they hate us— that we’re too much work, we’re too screwed up, we’re not worth the effort. 

Why on earth are we— adults, mind you— so hypervigilant to even the most subtle or ambiguous signs that a friendship or relationship MIGHT be even a LITTLE in trouble? 

It’s because our nervous system learned early on that attachment and attention might be withdrawn at any moment— without warning, without reason. 

It’s because we learned early on that to be close to someone involves being ready for them to turn on us or run away from us at any given moment. 

It’s because we may have internalized the idea along the way that stretches of silence can only mean one thing— that the relationship is in trouble, and we need to either scramble to save it…or preemptively blow it up to avoid being hurt. 

The “lessons” we learn when we grow up with scrambled attachments tend to be pretty toxic. 

Many survivors tend to blame themselves for struggling with attachment, both in the past and in their adult lives— when the truth is, no kid ASKS for inconsistent or negative attention from their caregivers. 

If you weren’t cared for with consistency, patience, and love, it’s NOT because you weren’t worth caring for. 

If you weren’t loved, it’s NOT because you’re unlovable or don’t deserve love. 

And if you’re hypervigilant about how relationships of all sorts— professional, personal, romantic— feel, it’s NOT because you’re crazy. You’ve likely had experiences in your past that programmed you with beliefs and reactions that fuel that hypervigilance. 

Unlearning those reactions and reprogramming ourselves in realistic ways takes time, patience, and compassion. 

We have to be willing to step outside of our comfort zone— and return to it often enough to rest and consolidate our gains. 

But more than anything we have to be open to the idea that we CAN change— that the beliefs and reactions that were conditioned in us over the course of decades can be reconditioned, with consistency, focus, and purpose. 

You can change. 

How you feel can change, how you react can change, what you believe can change. 

Given enough time, raindrops carve canyons and glaciers reshape continents. 

We don’t have to be “grateful” for the pain that made us who we are. 

It’s true that trauma often shapes us— how could it not?

And it’s true that some of the most empathic, loving, service-oriented people have been profoundly shaped by the painful things that have happened to them. 

But that doesn’t have to lead to the conclusion that it was somehow a “good” thing that abuse, neglect, or other trauma happened to us. 

I don’t know who I would be without the painful things that have happened to me. But I know I probably would’t be a psychologist. 

I know I probably would’t be writing these words right now, or the words that I write every day on my social media pages. 

I do think— or hope, anyway— that my words are helpful to people. That’s why I write them. 

But that doesn’t mean I am “grateful” for the painful experiences that inform what I write. 

Many people very much want to find some “good” in painful events. Of course they do. 

Some things are so painful that it feels like the fact of them is too much to bear. We feel as if we have to find SOME way of balancing out the sheer enormity of their awfulness. 

I imagine everyone reading this can relate to being told some version of “at least they’re at peace now” or “they’re in a better place” after the loss of a person or a pet. 

Similarly, if you’ve done any trauma work, and if you’ve been open about doing that work, I’m sure you’ve had at least somebody try to tell you that what you went through made you “stronger.” Or “kinder.” Or that it provided you the opportunity to show the world how “resilient” you were. 

Speaking for myself, I could have lived without the opportunity to prove how “resilient” I was. 

I’d have lived without being made “stronger” or “kinder.” 

I’d have preferred safety and connection. 

I once heard addiction referred to as “the sacred disease.” The person who said this was trying to emphasize how battling addiction essentially forces us to develop strength of character we wouldn’t have developed otherwise. 

As someone whose character has ostensibly been shaped by “the sacred disease,” I can affirm that I did not ask for or appreciate the “growth opportunities” addiction has afforded me. 

My point is that you’re going to feel pressure to find the “upside” of your pain. 

At some point someone, probably more than one person, is going to press you to reframe your pain as an opportunity to grow, emotionally or spiritually. 

You need to know that you don’t HAVE to feel (or not feel!) any specific way about your pain. 

Failing to find the “upside” of trauma or depression doesn’t mean you’re emotionally or spiritually underdeveloped. 

You didn’t ask for this pain. 

You’re under no obligation to be grateful for the chance at “post traumatic growth.” 

Deciding to “forgive” people or institutions who hurt you ISN’T the ultimate or only measure of spiritual growth or maturity. 

You don’t have to have positive feelings about situations or people that hurt you. 

There are a lot of paths to healing. Some people can and do find growth and solace in learning to appreciate who they’ve become in the wake of what happened to them. 

But “getting over it’ such that you can say “thank you” to the universe for that experience is NOT a prerequisite of healing. 

You have a right to be exactly as angry and hurt as you are. 

You’re under no obligation to reframe your strong negative feelings into anything more gentle or forgiving. 

Repairing the damage to our nervous system done by trauma, depression, or addiction requires, above anything else, authenticity. 

Being true to ourselves, our experiences, our reactions, and needs. 

Successful recovery requires a HELL of a lot of honesty— with ourselves and with the world around us. 

And that honesty is more important than “gratitude” or any other positive spin anyone says we “should” put on what happened to us.