Author: drglenndoyle

Backsliding and relapse happens. 

It’s not evidence that we suck. It’s not evidence that we’re not trying. 

It’s evidence that recovery is really hard. No more; no less. 

Our depression, addiction, or trauma might try to use a backslide or a relapse to bury us with shame. 

We might hear a voice in our head telling us that we backslid or relapsed because we suck, or because we’re not tough enough, or because we don’t “want” recovery enough. 

It’s not true. 

Nobody LIKES backsliding or relapsing. It’s frustrating. It’s often painful. 

it sucks to see ground we’d gained, lost. 

Sometimes when we backslide or relapse it has very real consequences for those around us. 

It’s perfectly legit to HATE all of that. I hate it when it happens to me. 

We can take responsibility for the pain and inconvenience our struggles cause other people— without letting shame take over and convince us that we are irredeemable as people. 

The truth is, struggling in recovery is not about “toughness” or “character.” 

It’s usually about the fact that we got overwhelmed, and weren’t able to access just the right skill or tool at the moment. 

It happens. 

I’m not saying that backsliding or relapsing “doesn’t matter.” Of course it matters. The stakes are high in recovery, and often we very much do have a lot to lose. 

You bet we’re gonna feel bad when we relapse. We might feel guilty, or confused, or frustrated. 

It’s really important to NOT let a backslide or relapse crack the door for toxic shame to sneak in and make us feel fundamentally horrible about ourselves. 

You are not a bad person because you struggle. 

I don’t care if this is your first time or your hundredth time starting over after a relapse— you are not hopeless. 

Toxic shame tries to tell us that we struggle not because this stuff is hard, but because WE are somehow deficient. 

Toxic shame tries to tell us that other people don’t struggle as much as we do, because they are better or more determined or more moral than we. 

Toxic shame tries to tell us that no matter how hard we try, we’re still going to fail, because we are who we are. 

Toxic shame lies. 

Toxic shame doesn’t care about why this is hard. All it cares about is you feeling a certain kind of way. 

If you notice, toxic shame uses language that tends to be very similar to the language used by certain people in our lives once upon a time. 

Toxic shame wants YOU to pick up where your abusers and bullies left off. 

Toxic shame wants YOU to collaborate in your own abuse. 

Toxic shame wants to take the focus of this whole project off of the skills, tools, and tasks of recovery, and put that focus on you as a person. 

That’s not the route to success. 

You have exactly the same chance at recovery as anyone. I don’t care how old you are, I don’t care what your history is, I don’t care how you arrived at this point. 

Even if you’re starting over right here, right now. Even if you’re at Square One— and even if this isn’t your first time at Square One.

Your job today is the same as anybody else’s in recovery for anything else: managing your thoughts, feelings, and behavior one day, one hour, one minute at a time. 

If you’re reading this, it’s not too late. 

Just handle today. 

Just handle this sixty seconds. 

I believe in you. I really do. 

I’m tired. 

Deeply. Fundamentally. In a way that daily rest or self-care doesn’t always, or even usually, touch. 

You too? 

Something I don’t think we talk about often enough in recovery is the exhaustion. 

It’s not just physical exhaustion. It’s emotional exhaustion; intellectual exhaustion; even spiritual exhaustion— which can be confusing, when we’re not always clear on who we are or what we’re all about “spiritually.” 

All we know is, we’re tired. 

Managing our personal recovery takes an awful lot of energy. A lot of bandwidth. 

Some of the tasks and skills essential to recovery from depression, trauma, addiction, or an eating disorder involve reining in impulses— NOT doing things that our symptoms and struggles are pushing you to do. 

Holding ourselves back from those things can be overwhelming and exhausting— and we don’t often get a break from them. 

We are in recovery 24/7. We have to wake up and recommit to recovery every day. 

That wears on you after awhile. 

Yes, you could make the argument that the exhaustion evoked by recovery tasks is less painful in the big picture than just letting our symptoms and struggles run the show…but that doesn’t change the fact that most of the people reading this are very tired. 

We’re tired of having to think the things recovery asks us to think about every day. 

We wish we could just take one day off. Hell, one hour off. 

Often times our depression, trauma, addiction, or eating disorder whispers in our ear that we “deserve” to take a day off. 

My addiction is VERY active in trying to convince me I “deserve” a night of relapsing every now and then, just to, you know, realign my perspective. 

When I’m tired and discouraged, that argument makes more sense than it should. 

You’ve probably heard it said again and again that recovery is a lifestyle, not an achievement— and it is. 

The thing about lifestyles, though, is that they are created by consistency doing something again, and again, and again, and again. 

Sometimes when we think about having to stick to the recovery lifestyle for years— let alone the rest of our lives— our exhaustion and disillusionment intensifies even more. 

Depression, addiction, trauma, and eating disorders are patient. 

They will happily wait for us to get so tired and jaded that we don’t have the energy to outwit or resist them. 

You’re not wrong to be tired. I’m tired. Everybody who has ever successfully recovered has experienced the sense of exhaustion that you and I are experiencing right now. 

In these moments, how we think about this project of recovery is REAL important. 

Don’t think about “the rest of your life.” 

Don’t think about having to get up, day after day after day, and recommit yourself to your recovery. 

Just think about today. This hour. This minute. 

I don’t know how long the rest of my life is even going to be. If I try to think about the rest of my life, it’d be a guess anyway. 

I know I have this minute to manage, though. 

This minute to get through without using my substance of addiction, engaging in my behaviors of addiction, diving into the self-hate or self-cruelty that my depression or trauma wants me to swim around in. 

Whatever happens for the rest of my life is gonna happen. I can’t directly control it from right here, right now, in this minute. 

I can, however, manage this minute. 

I can control, at least sort of, the pace and depth of my breathing. 

I can control, at least a little, what I say to myself and how I say it. 

I can control, to a certain extent, what I “see” in my mind’s eye— who I envision, whose voice I hear on purpose, what they are saying. 

I don’t control everything in my world, inner or outer. 

But I can control what I can control. 

i can influence this minute. 

I can manage my symptoms and struggles for this sixty seconds. 

It doesn’t have to be perfect, and it might not be. 

But I can be exactly as tired as I am— and still stay in recovery right here. Right now. 

So I think I will. 

Nobody reading this needs to be told that they need to step outside of their comfort zone in order to grow. 

We know. And if we didn’t know, the internet is here to remind us about a dozen times a day. 

Yes, growth often involves discomfort. 

Yes, growth often involves taking risks. 

But if ALL we do is push ourselves in uncomfortable ways or take uncomfortable risks, we probably won’t “grow” all that much— because we’ll always be having to cope with the anxiety and effort that comes with pushing ourselves. 

Growth doesn’t actually happen as a result of pushing ourselves. 

Growth happens when we get a chance to slow down, rest, and recover. 

Lifting weights doesn’t make muscles grow. It actually damages our muscles in the moment. 

The growth and strengthening occurs when we recover from the damage we did lifting the weights. 

The “comfort zone” gets a bad rap. 

It’s true that if we never step out of our comfort zone, it’s hard to achieve different results in our lives. If we always do what we’ve always done, we’ll always get what we’ve always gotten. 

That said— if we want the risks we take in stepping out of our comfort zone to pay off, we often need to step back INTO our comfort zone to recover and consolidate our gains. 

I see a lot of therapists posting on social media about how the therapy relationship is supposed to “challenge” clients, make them uncomfortable, push them— and that is what some clients need, sometimes. 

But in my experience, many, if not all, clients also need the therapy relationship to be a place of safety and certainty as well as challenge.

If we want to grow, we don’t just need relationships that push us. We also need relationships that are safe. 

A lot of recovery— especially trauma and addiction recovery— is about establishing safety and comfort inside our own head and heart. 

It’s about creating a comfort zone that is actually comforting, restful, and safe— first and foremost inside of us. 

If we can’t feel safe in our own head, it won’t especially matter what’s going on outside of us. 

We can be in the “safest” external relationships possible, but we still won’t feel safe and good if we’re constantly attacking, disrespecting, and bullying ourselves. 

One of the ways psychotherapy can help us is in establishing a relationship in which we do not have to guess whether we are liked, wanted, respected, or believed. 

The idea is, if we experience that in the therapy relationship, it can show us how to recreate that on the inside of our own head. 

Yes, therapy can hold us accountable. 

Yes, therapy can challenge our assumptions, automatic thoughts, and distorted beliefs. 

Yes, sometimes a lot of the stuff we confront in therapy can be uncomfortable or even painful. 

But I do not understand the pride certain therapists take in creating a relationship that is seemingly constantly, intentionally uncomfortable. 

Many people who seek mental health support already have enough relationships in which they are made plenty uncomfortable. 

Part of what most people need to heal is a relationship in which they are given the benefit of the doubt. 

A relationship in which they don’t have to justify what they feel or who they are. 

A relationship in which they know they will be seen and valued as a person— not because they have achieved something or have been able to “be” an “acceptable” version of themselves. 

All of which is to say: the comfort zone serves a purpose, both in your head and in your relationships. 

Instead of avoiding the comfort zone altogether, consider how you might USE your comfort zone as an essential tool. 

It’s not weird to miss certain things about a situation that was, on the whole, painful. 

It’s not unusual to miss a person who hurt you more than anything else. 

Our memories and attachments are often complex. 

Sometimes, being abused was the most attention we got, positive or otherwise— and that was preferable to the emptiness and yearning of being ignored or neglected. 

It’s very common for victims of sexual abuse to be confused about sensations they experienced in their body while they were being abused. 

Especially if we were living lives that didn’t include a lot of physical affection or pleasure, our nervous system may not have known what to make of some of what we experienced while being abused. 

Later on, our mind may not have known what to make of the fact that many perpetrators of sexual abuse don’t use physical coercion s their weapons of choice— but often gaslight their victims into believing that the victim had in fact “seduced” perpetrator. 

Even as adults, we can have mixed feelings about people who we know, on the whole, were abusive to us. 

We may be attracted or drawn to someone we know was toxic for us— even after a painful relationship has ended. 

We may have mixed feelings when someone who abused us moves on with their life, experiences milestones like getting married or having children, or dies. 

It would be much easier if we humans were wired to think in black and white terms about people with whom we’ve been close. 

But we often don’t. 

Painful memories and knowledge may be entwined with stimulating or even comforting memories and knowledge. 

Some survivors of abusive relationships even experience regret about how a relationship ended, or guilt about their role in how the relationship played out or ended. 

If any of this sounds familiar to you, you need to know you are not crazy— and you’re not alone. 

It doesn’t mean it was your fault that you were abused or victimized. 

It doesn’t mean you “asked for it.” 

It doesn’t mean you must want it back, or that you have a fetish for abusive relationships. 

It means that trauma often scrambles our wiring when it comes to attachment— especially if our early attachments weren’t all that positive and stable to begin with. 

Many of the distorted beliefs that trauma survivors develop about themselves stem from how we interpret things we experienced and felt in certain relationships. 

When we get distance on an abusive relationship, it can be easy to feel stupid or complicit in our own pain— and others sometimes implicitly or explicitly reinforce those feelings. 

We need to be super clear about the fact that human emotions and relationships are always complex and frequently paradoxical. 

Missing a childhood abuser, at least in some ways, is pretty common among survivors. 

Wanting a parent who abused or neglected us to apologize or approve of us in adulthood is VERY common among survivors. 

You’re not weird and you’re not bad. 

And missing aspects of a person or relationship does not mean that we need or want that person or relationship back. 

We can feel what we feel and still be realistic about what we need to heal and protect ourselves. 

Always, always, always come back to accepting WHATEVER you are feeling with curiosity and compassion. 

Always, always, always come back to meeting the kid who you once were, and who you still carry around with you in your head and heart, with radical acceptance and care— no matter what they’re feeling. 

Always, always, always remember that what you FEEL is not “wrong”— it’s just what you feel— but that DOESN’T mean it must be acted upon…or that it’s the final word on “who you are.” 

If you’re reading this, you probably don’t need to be told that life is difficult. 

You probably know all too well. 

And you’ve probably been told this, over and over— by parents, teachers, coaches, peers, the culture at large. 

Yeah. We know life is hard. 

We know that painful things are going to happen. 

And we know we’re not entitled to either a perfect childhood or a perfect adult life. 

Nobody goes into therapy to be told how difficult life is, or how they’re going to have to suck it up if they want to get better. 

Yet there is a subset of people out there who seem to think that’s what we “need” to hear. 

There really is a subset of people out there who think “entitlement” and the desire for a good life without work or pain are the big problems many people bring to therapy. 

This hasn’t been my experience. 

My experience is that many people who come into therapy or embark upon recovery have plenty of experience with “sucking it up.” 

Many of them have been “sucking it up” for years— treating themselves with the “tough love” that had been shown to them their whole lives (well…the “tough” part, anyway). 

Chances are you already have plenty of relationships in your life where you have to prove how “tough” you are. 

You’ve had plenty of situations where you felt you had to “earn” your success or prove your worth. 

If you’re seeking the support of psychotherapy or a recovery community now, you’re probably not seeking yet another environment in which you’re going to be reminded that life has sharp edges and the world doesn’t owe you anything. 

Different therapists have different approaches to their work. I would’t dare tell any other therapist how to apply their skills. 

But the people I see most in therapy aren’t there because they want to find the “easy” way out of suffering. 

And they don’t need yet another relationship in their life where they feel their worth is conditional. 

I don’t want my patients leaving my office wondering if I like them, if I support them, or whose side I’m on. 

They deserve one relationship in their lives in which they can feel secure and safe. 

It’s not, at all, that I want the therapy relationship to replace the flawed attachments they may have experienced growing up. I couldn’t be their “surrogate parent” even if I wanted to. 

But I do not believe in therapy relationships that reenact the childhood dynamic in which they were left alone in times of fear or pain to “cry it out.” 

As I say: different therapists have different training, styles, and goals. I like to say every therapist out there is right for someone, and every patient out there can make HUGE strides when paired with the right therapist. 

My perspective is undoubtedly colored by the fact that I work mostly with people who have experienced trauma, often in their closest relationships. 

Complex trauma survivors have had enough relationships in which they’re not quite sure if they’re liked, wanted, or respected— and what they’ve experienced is not their fault. 

They don’t need the therapy relationship to recreate the doubts and pressures of relationships past. 

You deserve to know I like you. 

You deserve to know I’m on your side. 

You deserve to know that, while we might disagree and I may not agree with or approve of everything you say or do, my regard for your worth as a person is unconditional. 

You deserve to know that you are— for once— emotionally and physically safe in my presence. 

I don’t think that’s unreasonable to ask for or expect in a meaningful therapy relationship. 

A bad mood or bad day doesn’t have to knock you out of recovery. 

I’m in a bad mood right now. Bad moods happen to humans. 

Often when we have a history of depression or trauma, our bad moods are particularly intense. We can really go down the rabbit hole of feeling irritable or sad— and it can often be unclear if or when the mood will lift. 

On days when we’re feeling awful, it can seem pointless to stay on course with our recovery. 

Recovery for depression, trauma, addiction, an eating disorder, or other emotional and behavioral struggles doesn’t require us to feel awesome every day. 

Lots of days in recovery are going to feel less than awesome. 

What recovery does ask of us is that we don’t let an awful-feeling day push us into relapsing into old habits. 

Recovery is a routine of things we DO every day to minimize the chances we go tumbling down a destructive rabbit hole, and maximize the chances of us being able to live our values and create a meaningful life. 

When we’re in a terrible mood, the temptation to say “screw it” is strong. 

Why bother with recovery, we might wonder, if I’m going to experience days like THIS in recovery? 

It’s not a dumb question. 

The point of recovery, after all, is to eventually get to the point where every day doesn’t FEEL awful, and we’re not tempted to DO self-destructive things to cope with those awful feelings. 

Recovery is going to ask us to wait out some bad days. 

I wish there was a guaranteed way to ensure that bad days would never happen, but there’s not. 

If we’re human, we’re going to have bad days. 

It’s not that you’re “failing” at recovery. It’s not necessarily that something is irreparably “broken” in your life, and that’s why you’re feeling this way. 

To stay in recovery, even on a bad day, we need to engage the skill of meeting our feelings with honesty and compassion— and without judgment. 

Yes. We have to meet this awful feeling with compassion. 

A BIG part of recovery involves getting on our own side, having our own back— and a big part of THAT is directing compassion toward ourselves when we’re hurting. 

For many of us, this is a new, maybe uncomfortable idea. 

But we’re NOT getting out of this emotional slump by demanding we do or feel something that we just can’t do or feel at this moment. 

“Radical acceptance” is an idea often associated with Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, and a lot of people have a lot of mixed feelings about it— but the idea of meeting WHATEVER is going on inside you without judgment or without demands for immediate change is KEY to our recovery not crashing with every bad mood. 

Chances are, if you’re reading this, you’ve had enough of being judged for things you experience and feel. 

Once we meet what we’re feeling with honesty and compassion— and WITHOUT demanding of ourselves that we immediately do or feel something different— only THEN can we realistically look at what we can do to feel differently. 

Don’t shoot for changing your mood 100%. That’s not gonna happen. 

Start experimenting with what MIGHT change your mood .01%. 

Start experimenting with what you can realistically do, given the resources you have— what you can focus on, what you can say to yourself, what teeny, tiny variable you can shift to feel .01% different. 

That can be a TALL ask when the only things that have been successful in changing how we feel in the past have been self-destructive. 

I’m not asking you to believe in miracles. 

I’m not suggesting that the tools we know about in terms of changing how you feel are going to work perfectly for everyone all the time. 

What I’m saying is, don’t let a bad mood freak you out and ditch your recovery. 

Sometimes the name of the game is waiting it out. 

Radical acceptance and baby steps are the skills to focus on. 

Self-compassion is the essential frame. 

You— and I— can do this. 

I really believe that. 

We’re not going to be ready to pull our sh*t together and move on from a traumatic stressor until we’re ready. 

We’re DEFINITELY not going to be ready to do so in the immediate aftermath of a traumatic stressor. 

Still: we might feel pressure to pull ourselves together and look to the future— right after a big, painful thing has happened to us. 

Sometimes that pressure comes from the world or the people around us— but sometimes it comes from within us. 

We don’t want to look “weak.” 

We don’t want people to see us reeling or crying. 

We don’t want the world to assume that we are incapable of handling whatever just got thrown at us. 

When a traumatic stressor happens, we’re most often thrust into a cycle of emotional and behavioral responses that look a lot like the classic model of grieving— which starts with a period of shock and/or denial. 

Humans are just not wired to endure a traumatic stressor and immediately look to the future. 

Rather, we’re wired to cycle through certain emotional states, such as denial, anger, and depression, and to engage in certain compensatory behaviors, like bargaining, as we come to terms with what has just happened to us. 

It’s NOT a process that happens instantaneously. 

The fact that we need to take a minute to absorb the shock of a traumatic stressor doesn’t mean that we’re incapable of handling it or moving on— eventually. 

It means that reality has shifted, and we need time to adjust our model of the world. 

We need time to catch up to how the world is now, compared to how it was before the thing happened. 

The culture around us tells us that it is the epitome of resilience and mental toughness to accept a tragic event in stride and look to the future. 

This often gets oversimplified in “look on the bright side” takes. 

Whether or not a stressful event contains the seed of an opportunity or the potential for personal growth isn’t really the point— the point is that, right after the event happens, our brains are simply incapable of thinking in those terms. 

The temptation to immediately pivot to “what’s next” or “how am I going to fix this” in the wake of a traumatic stressor is often a shock response or a bargaining behavior. 

Part of us might think that if we can immediately come up with a plan for how to make lemonade out of the lemons that were just launched at us, it just might seem as if the thing didn’t happen. 

But it did. 

And we need time to absorb what that means. 

In the hours, days, and weeks after a traumatic stressor, your job isn’t to come up with a comprehensive plan for how to move forward. 

It’s to be gentle and compassionate with yourself. 

It’s to be there for yourself. 

It’s to keep yourself safe— and away from the sometimes self-harmful behaviors that can get tempting during times of emotional dysregulation. 

We don’t know what comes next— and in the immediate wake of a traumatic stressor, we don’t need to know. 

We need reassurance. 

We need to know that we haven’t lost everything. That we still have the right to basic dignity and safety. 

We need to be there for ourselves in ways that we needed a caring adult to be there when we fell down and hurt ourselves as kids. 

We need to know there IS no rushing— and there is no rush. 

We WILL pick up the pieces. 

AFTER we’ve had a chance to absorb what’s happened and feel what we need to feel about it. 

Follow Dr. Glenn Patrick Doyle on Twitter and Instagram at @DrDoyleSays.

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.