Author: drglenndoyle

What might “success” actually mean, anyway? 

Some people define it by the achievement of specific goals. A particular job; a particular salary; a particular relationship; a particular general life situation. 

Some people might define it by the absence of negative feelings or sensations, particularly if they’ve been struggling with negative feelings— anxiety, depression, PTSD— for a long time. “Success” for them might mean simply feeling better. 

I happen to think the essence of “success” is finding oneself in situations where one is increasingly free to choose what one is exposed to every day. 

Where one gets to choose who one interacts with every day— as opposed to being forced to interact with people one would prefer not to. 

Where one gets to choose wha tone looks at and listens to every day— as opposed to being forced to look at and listen to things one would prefer not to. 

Where one gets to choose what one does every day— as opposed to being forced to do things that one would prefer not to. 

Where one gets to choose, finally, what one thinks about and focuses on every day— as opposed to being forced to think about and focus on things that one might prefer not to. 

When it comes down to it, I struggle to define success as anything more or less than increasing amounts of freedom of choice. As best I can tell, other definitions of success seem to hinge upon being free to choose our surroundings, situations, and behavior…and other definitions of success tend to lose their meanings if one ISN’T free to choose one’s surroundings, situations, and behavior. 

If success is, essentially, increasing opportunity and freedom to choose…then it opens up an interesting, and in my view productive, way to look at our lives in a goal-directed way. 

Specifically: how much freedom do I have, right now, in order to think what I want, focus on what I want, look at and listen to what I want, and do what I want? 

The answer isn’t zero. 

For most of us, the answer is probably something less than we’d prefer…but it’s not zero. 

Of 100% of our time, energy, and focus, we have the freedom to dedicate SOME percentage of it to what we choose. 

That percentage might be in the single digits, but it’s not zero. 

If we acknowledge that— that we do have at least SOME freedom and flexibility in what we’re able to focus on and do— then the equation of success starts to look less like an overwhelming, perplexing conundrum…and it starts to look more like a math problem. 

Specifically: what can we do, on a day by day basis, to make that percentage of freedom we DO have go up by even a tiny bit? 

Our days, our weeks, our months, our years, our lives…how can we take that resource, that gift, of whatever time we have available…and make that “freedom percentage” tick up just a little, tiny bit? 

Day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year? 

It will only tick upward if we take responsibility for looking for ways to make it tick upward. 

The reason I present this definition of success, and this equation of how to go about achieving it, to you in this way is because I want to make the project seem less overwhelming. 

We don’t have to figure everything out. 

We don’t have to understand the universe. 

We don’t have to perfectly control our symptomatology. 

We don’t have to make a million dollars. 

All we have to do is figure out how to make that percentage number— the percent of our resources that we are free to direct— go up, little by little. 

We can figure out ways to do that. 

That’s a project that starts in small ways. 

That’s a project that develops in small ways. 

That’s a task we are up to. 

And if we’re up to that task…success— real, measurable success— is in our grasp. 

It’s all in how we think about it. 

 

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There is no question: mental health requires us to make sacrifices. That’s what many people consider the bad news. 

The good news, though, is this: most of the stuff we need to sacrifice in order to be emotionally healthy, to psychologically heal from trauma, depression, and anxiety, is stuff we don’t really need anyway. Not really. 

One of the most straightforward examples of this is addiction. 

In order to overcome addiction, we necessarily need to sacrifice the pleasurable feelings we get from our substance of choice. 

Most substances of addiction provide a temporary high. They activate our nervous systems in such a way that is pleasurable. That pleasurable high, however, is always temporary— hence our need to continue to use the substance, thus creating an addictive pattern. 

There is no way around the fact that in order to conquer our addiction, we need to figure out how to do without this temporary high, this momentary spike of pleasure. 

For non-addicts, this doesn’t sound like a big deal. You just do what you have to do, they figure. You can’t always get what you want, so you do without. Case closed. 

What non-addicts don’t realize, however, is that for addicts, the sources of pleasure and comfort in our lives tend to be few and far between. 

Those momentary moments of comfort and pleasure we get from our substance of choice? Those might be the main, or maybe even the only, sources of comfort or pleasure we get in our lives that day. 

Consequently, we get attached to those pleasurable moments. 

Giving them up is not an easy ask. 

What to some people seem like relatively small or simple sacrifices become, to an addict, quite significant sacrifices. 

We can, in fact, make those sacrifices for the sake of overcoming our addictions…but making those sacrifices requires the development of strategies and skills that help us deal with the loss of that pleasure and comfort. 

It may sound simple. But it’s not easy. 

Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. 

In order to be emotionally healthy in other respects requires sacrifice as well. 

For example, in order to guard against depression, we must often take responsibility for reality checking the distortions in our thinking. (The therapeutic technique of cognitive behavioral therapy is built around this.) 

As a rule, however, reality checking our thinking doesn’t come natural to most of us. 

It’s a hassle. It’s work. It requires us to push back against the natural flow of our internal dialogue.

Challenging the inertia of our internal dialogue requires a certain amount of sacrifice. We must sacrifice convenience and comfort for the sake of keeping ourselves on an even emotional keel. 

We can make the sacrifice, certainly…but again, there is a cost associated with it. 

At a certain point, most of us can’t hep but stop and wonder if all the sacrifices associated with behavioral and emotional health are worth it. 

Is “living healthfully” worth all the hassle, the inconvenience, the surrender of those moments of euphoria and comfort that come with using our drug of choice? 

Yes. Yes it is. 

IF you take the long term point of view. 

And taking the long-term point of view requires— yes, say it with me— making certain sacrifices. Namely, sacrificing the seductive allure of the short-term point of view. 

Thinking long-term requires a certain amount of maturity that is serious pain in the neck to cultivate. 

It’s easy to cater to the short-term. 

It’s more convenient to think short-term. After all, if we think short-term, all we have to cope with is the very near future. It’s less daunting than thinking long-term. It’s less anxiety-provoking. 

Giving up short-term thinking is a sacrifice. 

A sacrifice that is worth making, certainly…but no meaningful sacrifice comes easily. 

The good news about all of that? You can, in fact, do it. 

If you are reading these words, you have the basic tools to do everything I’m describing. 

If you made it this far in this blog, you have the intelligence and endurance to do it. 

I believe in you. 

Do you? 

 

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So often, we’re so tempted to revisit the past…and we do so in ways that chip away at our ability to function in the present.

Our brains have the imaginative capacity to envision other times and other places, and very often we use that capability to revisit times and places that we’ve been and experienced. 

Sometimes, we do this to revisit pleasant or positively meaningful times and places from our past. We remember people, places, and things that make us feel good, and reconnect us to values goals that matter. 

Other times, however, we’re drawn back to people, places, and things that can only have a negative, demotivating, anxiety-producing impact. We use our imaginative capabilities to induce feelings of regret, sadness, and pain. 

It would seem to make sense to limit our exposure to these memories— memories that do little but make us feel terrible. But for some reason, we find ourselves going back there, again and again— and feeling those terrible feelings, again and again. 

For some people, it doesn’t even feel like a choice. It feels as if they are pulled back to bad feelings and moments in their lives quite involuntarily…and they fervently wish they could stop their brains from revisiting those times, places, and people. 

Why does our brain yank us back there, when we KNOW all that exists back there is pain? 

Why does our brain yank us back there, when we KNOW that the past has little or nothing to do with the present moment we’re trying to savor, or the future we’re trying to create? 

There are a variety of neuropsychological reasons why our brains tend to use the capacity to visualize and imagine in ways that cause us pain, but the good news is: we can, in fact, take charge of our focus and limit the extent to which our minds’ eye goes to the past. 

We can take control over what we see on the movie screens of our minds. 

If, that is, we are willing to give up the fantasy of somehow changing the past. 

If we admit that we can never have a better past. 

If we are ready, truly ready, to let the past go…which is often harder than it sounds. 

Why is it hard to let the past go? It is, after all, past. It’s not like we can change it, no matter how hard we try. 

Part of us knows that very well. We are not dumb or childish. We know that no matter how many times we replay the past, the ending will always be the same. The past is not a Choose Your Own Adventure book. 

But there’s another part of us— usually a younger part— that really thinks, really believes, that if we replay the past enough, maybe we can alter the details. It’s the same child-like part of us that watches, say, the movie “Titanic” with baited breath, hoping that maybe THIS time the characters make different decisions to avoid the ship’s inevitable fate. 

To truly accept that the past is the past— to truly accept that there is no changing the past, no matter how hard we want to or how hard we try— represents a loss. 

To radically accept the past is the past is to let ourselves in for some serious mourning. 

Accepting that the past is the past means we must grieve for the “us” we might have been, once upon a time, with different choices. 

To accept that the past is the past means mourning for the sense of possibility that we once had about what subsequent years may have held for us. 

To accept the past is the past means accepting that things might not have gone the way we would have preferred things go. 

To accept the past is the past means allowing ourselves to feel what we feel about it— sad, angry, amazed— while at the same time accepting that there is nothing to do about those feelings but to FEEL them. 

We have a really, really hard time FEELING feelings. We always want to DO something about those feelings. 

Accepting the past is the past doesn’t allow us the opportunity to DO anything about it. We have to see what we see, now what we know…and accept what IS. 

That’s a tall order, emotionally. 

Denial is a powerful human psychological defense. 

No wonder we have difficultly accepting the past…and no wonder our brains keep drawing us back to it. 

When your brain draws you back to the past…don’t panic. Let it draw you back…but keep enough presence of mind to remind yourself that what you are viewing isn’t live. It’s a recording. 

Let yourself feel what you need to feel. 

Let yourself cry. 

Let yourself be angry. 

And let yourself return to the present, knowing that it is the present and the future— not the past— the holds the key to your destiny. 

Letting the past go is not easy or simple.

But it’s worth it. 

 

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The bad news is, not all our dreams are achievable. 

The good news is, that doesn’t mean our dreams are worthless. 

When we’re growing up, many of us are told that we can do or be anything we want. Our future potential is presented to us as unlimited. We can be astronauts, presidents, movie stars, or anything else we want to be, or so we’re told. 

As we grow, we begin to realize that our potential may have been oversold. 

Not many of us are going to be world leaders. 

Not many of us are going to be high-level athletes. 

Not many of us will walk on the moon. 

When we grow up and realize that we’ve been oversold on our potential to do and be things that statistically very few human beings are even capable of doing and being, the temptation is to throw our expectations and attitudes into complete reverse: we think that if we can’t do or be exactly what we dreamt about, that dreams and fantasies and aspirations are basically worthless at best, and recipes for bitter disappointment at worst. 

I don’t believe that’s the case. I think that’s sending the baby out the window with the bathwater. 

Why do we have dreams, aspirations, and fantasies in the first place? 

When I was a kid, I had two big professional dreams: to be a political leader (specifically, president of the United States); and to be a rock star (specifically, of the skill and success of Billy Joel). 

Comparably few people grow up to be political leaders and/or rock stars. In addition, 41-year-old me knows a few things that 12-year-old me didn’t: I would probably hate being either president or a rock star. 

Even so: what did those fantasies and aspirations say about me? That I vowed life as necessarily incomplete if I didn’t get to deliver an inaugural address, or bring a stadium to its feet to cheer my virtuosic piano playing? 

No. 

Those fantasies and aspirations of mine spoke to something more basic: I wanted to have an impact. 

I wanted to give people hope on the one hand; and I wanted to give people the tools to change how they feel on the other hand. 

I’d dare say that, in the life that I actually went on to lead— as opposed to the life I fantasized about leading— I’ve found ways to do both of those things that are arguably more effective than if I’d actually become a politician or a rock star. 

Our dreams speak to what’s important to us. 

Our dreams point the way to what’s vital to us. 

Far from being worthless, our fantasies and dreams tell us things about what we need to actually do and achieve in the real world in order to feel satisfied and fulfilled. 

In that respect, our childhood dreams and fantasies can still be useful to us, even as adults. 

What do your childhood goals, dreams, and fantasies say about who you are and what you need? 

Think back to what you wanted to be when you grew up. Maybe you actually got a chance to do some or all of that; maybe you didn’t. 

But take a look at what those goals, dreams, and fantasies actually SAY about you as a person. 

Why did you want to be those things? 

What values do those aspirations imply? 

What needs are important to you, based on what you imagined as a child? 

And, even more importantly: going forward in your life, are there ways you can manage to use those childhood dreams as a compass, pointing you to what’s fundamentally important to your happiness and fulfillment? 

Even if impractical or logistically impossible, our dreams and fantasies are vitally important. 

They are a blueprint to who we are, psychologically and emotionally and spiritually. 

Consult that blueprint. Don’t crumple it and throw it away just because that specific building probably won’t get built. 

I’m ridiculously glad I’m neither president nor a rock star. 

If I was, you wouldn’t be reading these words. 

Dreams matter. 

 

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The last thing most of us need is a lecture about the stuff we’re doing wrong. 

Which is what makes it so frustrating that lectures about what we’re doing wrong are what the world seems to consistently want to give us…even people and organizations the mission of which is to support us and help us improve our lives. 

For some reason, people and organizations seem to think they’re doing us a favor by pointing out what we’re doing wrong. As if we’re not acutely aware of what we’re doing that’s kicking our own butts. 

This even permeates the self-help and personal empowerment community. It seems I see multiple posts or videos a week basically devoted to exposing the flaws, skill deficits, and misconceptions of the very audience who is watching and reading and otherwise consuming this material. 

Trust me: most of the time, we know our weaknesses. We don’t need someone pointing them out to us. 

What’s more, we don’t particularly need somebody— “expert” or otherwise— talking down to us, as if what we really just needed was a stern lecture to straighten up and fly right. 

I try to take a different approach to therapy, coaching and personal empowerment. I like to start with what someone is doing RIGHT. 

I like to start with what’s WORKING in someone’s current approach. 

I like to start with what HAS worked in the past. 

There is nobody— I mean it, nobody— so far down the rabbit hole that NOTHING in their current approach to the world is working well. 

Hell, if somebody is SURVIVING at all…that means they’re doing SOMETHING right. 

I like to start there. In my view, there’s a huge difference between identifying and building strengths on the one hand, versus obsessing about and shaming weaknesses on the other. 

In psychotherapy, this approach is called the “solution focused” approach. As the name implies, it focuses far more on identifying and enacting constructive solutions rather than zeroing in on problems and weaknesses. 

Why is it important to focus on building and problem solving, as opposed to highlighting weaknesses and problems themselves? 

Because what we focus on tends to expand, at least in our minds. 

If we are reminded every single day of our shortcomings, we will become hyper aware of the ways in which we don’t measure up to either a real or imagined standard. 

If we are reminded every single day of the ways in which our lives are not working, we will becoming conditioned to identify MORE ways in which our lives are not working. 

If we are reminded every single day of the ways in which we have failed and floundered, those failings and floundering will seem more real or important than our other attributes and experiences…even though they only constitute a subset of who we are and what we’ve been through. 

What you focus on becomes more important in your mind’s eye. 

By your focus, you are telling your brain and body what is most important. 

By your focus, you are essentially giving your brain and body a command to produce and emphasize more of “this.” 

Understand, there is no guarantee that focusing on solutions will, in fact, produce solutions. There are plenty of problems and challenges that are complex and vexing, and it’s not as if solving those problems and overcoming those challenges are easy. (If they were easy, they wouldn’t be problems and challenges in the first place.) 

Focusing on strengths and solutions isn’t a guarantee— but it is a way to influence the odds. 

I like the odds of finding a solution if we are FOCUSED on strengths and solutions a lot more than if we are focused on problems and obstacles. 

All we can do is influence the odds that we will overcome a challenge. 

All we can do, by definition, is what we can do. We have exactly the strengths and resources and advantages that we have. 

If we have any chance of maximizing and using those strengths and resources and advantages, we need to condition our mind to recognize, embrace, and emphasize them. 

Focus on where you want to go. Focus on where you want to be. Focus on what you want. 

Focus matters. 

And chances are you’re a lot stronger and more resourceful than you’ve been led to believe. 

 

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Something we need to remember every day is that “basic skills” aren’t considered “basic” because they are easy, simple, or unimportant. 

“Basic skills” are “basic” because they are fundamental. They are skills we need to use every single day. They are the building blocks for any of the more advanced work we want to do in therapy or recovery. 

Effective treatment for trauma— and most other conditions, really— involves there stages: basic skill building and tool-gathering; processing; and life reintegration. Of these, the most important— and often the most difficult and prolonged— stage is the first one: basic skill building and tool gathering. 

Many people in therapy get frustrated when they discover that there is so much emphasis on stage one work. 

They figure they’ve come to therapy to process traumatic memories and shake free of the hold trauma has had over them. It’s a drag to think you’re going to get into treatment to immediately break free of the chains of post traumatic symptomatology, and then be presented with a bunch of work on coping skills and strategies that only seem peripherally related to the trauma processing work you thought you were there to do. 

The thing is: no processing of any kind can occur if you don’t first develop the skills and tools required to handle the feelings and sensations that processing work is inevitably going to stir up. 

Processing work— both trauma processing and any other kind of emotional processing, such as grief work— necessarily entails digging into memories and meanings that are difficult to handle. Sometimes those memories and feelings are so difficult to handle that they’ve been cut off almost entirely from our conscious, present mind, a psychological defense called dissociation. 

If you want to dig into memories, meanings, and feelings that are so difficult, so painful, so threatening that the brain (and sometimes even the body) has found it necessary to dissociate from them, you’re going to need to go in with some skills and tools. 

If you don’t go in with the requisite skills and tools, your brain will literally shut down. You won’t be present enough to do the work. You could go through the motions, but the motions won’t have any meaning or power. 

Without sufficient stage one work— and without continually revisiting the skills and tools developed in stage one work— you’ll be basically sleepwalking through treatment. 

And you’ll have pretty much the same therapeutic results as someone who is sleepwalking through treatment. 

Basic skills and tools are your shields and weapons of choice when you head into battle. And as any successful warrior will tell you: you want to pick those weapons and shields carefully…and know how to use them them very well BEFORE you set foot on the battlefield. 

(I know, I know, I’ve written about how I’m not so much a fan of the “warrior” and “war” metaphors when it comes to describing the therapy and recovery processes, but this time I think it’s more or less applicable. Cut me some slack, here.)

Why do so many people get so frustrated with basic skills? 

It happens all the time with all sorts of patients and clients. They want to recover, but they want to leap right to the processing stage, skipping over what they view to be the drudgery of stage one work. 

(I believe this is one of the reasons why trauma processing therapies such as EMDR and EFT have become so popular in recent decades— they speak directly to processing trauma, instead of developing the on-the-ground strategies and skills necessary to deal with symptoms.)

People don’t like to think of their treatment as a drawn out process in which they’ll have to continually cope with painful symptoms. 

People don’t like to think about recovery as the kind of project where they have to develop psychoemotional “fitness” in order to survive and thrive. 

It’s not their fault. It’s not that anybody is being lazy. 

It’s just that, if you’re given a choice between an approach that says, okay, you need to get in shape over a longer period of time, learn how to use exercise equipment, eat right, endure some pain and discomfort and probably experience some setbacks on the one hand…or an approach that says, you know what, how about we just zap those memories and feelings right now, don’t worry so much about all that “exercise” and “diet” and “conditioning” stuff on the other hand…which would you choose? 

Unfortunately, I’m here to tell you: there are no shortcuts. 

I’m here to tell you: getting emotionally fit isn’t that different from getting physically fit. 

Even with breakthroughs in research and technology, there remain no substitutes for the tools of time and discipline and consistency. 

The need for stage one work isn’t going anywhere. 

Fundamentals will remain fundamental. 

I strongly encourage my patients and clients to embrace the grind of stage one work— for the more we embrace the grind now, the faster and easier stages two and three are going to go. 

Conditioning work pays off…even if it’s a drag in the moment. 

 

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Grieving isn’t fun, and it’s not supposed to be fun. 

However, it’s not necessarily supposed to be torture, either. 

Grieving is a form of what we call “emotional processing.” We hear that word, “processing,” a lot in psychology, especially regarding the treatment of trauma. “Processing” traumatic memories is something that is considered an important part of recovery from trauma— even though it’s often ambiguous what “processing” is supposed to mean in this context. 

All processing is, is coming to terms with what an event means. 

Traumatic events are traumatic because they disrupt what are called our “systems of meaning” or “schemas”— basically our ideas or beliefs about how the world works and how we are to function in the world. What makes an event “traumatic” is when it is so negatively impactful that it shatters our sense of what the hell the world is about and what the hell our role in the world is. 

When traumatic events happen, they make us question how we can possibly move forward, because we don’t have any real sense of what anything means anymore or what we’re all about anymore. 

Losses are traumatic events in the sense that they, too, disrupt our systems of meaning. When we get used to the presence of a person or situation in our life, and suddenly that person or situation is gone, it’s possible for our worlds to kind of shatter— everything we thought we knew about how the world worked and what we’re supposed to do on a daily basis can go out the window in one fell swoop. 

Thus, we need to process. We need to figure out what things mean now. We need to figure out how the world works going forward. We need to figure out what our place in the world is now. 

Neither traumatic memories nor painful losses will leave us alone UNTIL we process the memories and feelings associated with them. Unprocessed memories and feelings will continue to be walls we run into, again and again, as we try to move forward with our lives. 

Run into a wall enough times, and you’ll begin to believe you can’t move forward with your life. 

Many people avoid processing work, including grieving, because they think it’s going to be too hard. They think it’s going to feel bad, so bad they can’t take it. They figure that as painful as avoiding this work is, it’ll be even MORE painful to confront it. 

The thing about processing work is, while it doesn’t necessarily feel good…it can feel satisfying. 

It can finally make you feel RIGHT with the world after a trauma or a loss. 

It’s not just torture— any more than any process associated with growing up or moving forward is torture. 

It’s worth the risk. 

What happens after we process feelings and memories associated with a trauma or a loss? Does the world become a completely different, more pleasant place to be? Are all the symptoms and problems associated with that trauma or loss suddenly gone. 

Nope. 

One of the myths of trauma treatment in particular is, once you’ve processed a traumatic event and the thoughts, feelings, and memories that go with it, you’ll never need to deal with post traumatic symptoms again. That’s not true. 

It’s true that those post traumatic symptoms have usually cropped up as a way for your body and brain to handle the feelings and memories that have resulted from a trauma…but processing those feelings and memories don’t magically take away those symptoms. 

Rather, those symptoms go away gradually as you learn— and, more importantly, consistently USE— coping tools and skills. (In well-structured trauma work, these skills are learned as part of “stage one work,” before any processing of trauma is even on the table.)

Processing is important— but it’s not the only part of therapy that matters. 

The other two stages of therapy— building coping tools, skills, and resources on the one hand; and constructing a life worth living going forward on the other— are equally important. 

This is why no therapist is ever going to ask you to come in and just “dump” all your trauma or loss in the first few sessions. 

Good therapy focuses first on building tools and skills to help you deal with what trauma processing is going to stir up (and the symptoms the trauma itself probably already HAS stirred up)— and then it focuses on where you go from here, so you have a compelling “why” fueling your efforts as you process the trauma. 

Don’t avoid emotional processing, whether it’s in the form of grieving or processing trauma material. 

That stuff’s not going away. 

Neglecting it won’t help. 

Pretending it doesn’t exist won’t help. 

Wishing it would just go away won’t help. 

But what will help is approaching it with respect, caution, and intelligence, with the professional and personal support necessary to reinforce the fact that you’re not alone. 

It’s not easy. 

But it’s so, so worth it. 

 

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It’s not enough to figure out how to get our symptoms under control. 

We also have to develop a life that’s worth living once our symptoms ARE under control. 

I know, I know. It’s kind of overwhelming to just have the project of controlling our symptoms on our plate. To think about anything more than just getting a flashback to end or body memories to stop or depression to abate kid of blows our mind…let alone to think about the project of creating a life of meaning and hope. 

The thing is: in order to do something, we need a compelling “why.” 

In order to do something hard, we need a PARTICULARLY compelling “why.” 

I’ve worked with a lot of suicidal people. And by far the most frustrating part of that work happens when you get baited into a discussion of why should they bother preserving a life that they perceive at that moment to be filled with heartache, disappointment, and pain? 

I realized early on doing that work that it wasn’t enough just to teach people how to control symptomatology. 

There needs to be a life on the other side of that controlled symptomatology that’s worth jumping back into. 

I, personally, got into psychology because, as a very depressed teenager, I got interested in self-help books. Self-help philosophies spoke to me at that time— and they still do— because they don’t just concern themselves with containing painful symptoms. Self-help, from its roots in the “positive thinking” and “self-actualization” movements, has always been about creating a life you love. 

I don’t consider a therapy plan complete unless it includes a path from where somebody is in their life, to a place where they want to be. 

Therapy must be more about the alleviation of misery. 

Therapy and personal growth must necessarily be about creating something more fun, more pleasurable, and more meaningful than someone was experiencing before. 

Pleasure and fun and meaning are not luxuries. They are necessities. 

They are literally lifesavers. 

If you’ve been reading me for any length of time you know that nary a week goes by when I don’t go on and on about values and goals. Some people ask me about why this is— after all, what do values and goals have to do with how you contain a flashback or stop nightmares in their tracks? 

Values and goals provide the “why.” 

Values and goals provide the fuel we need on what can be a pretty exhausting journey out of misery. 

Using skills and tools to manage symptomatology is often not easy. It’s often exhausting and frustrating and inconvenient. Using coping strategies often require us to step out of our comfort zones and push at the limits of our physical and emotional energy. 

We’re not going to embark upon that project unless we have a powerful “why.” 

Why would we bother inviting such hassle into our lives if we don’t have something on the other side of that that we’re actually excited about? 

Treatment for trauma disorders incorporates three stages. In stage one, basic coping skills and tools are taught and developed, that help manage symptomatology as the other two stages progress. in stage two, painful and traumatic memories are processed and scrambled, so they lose their power to derail our functioning. And in stage three, we come to terms with how our suffering has damaged our lives, and create a new routine going forward— we get on with our lives. 

I think, as patients hack away at stages one and two, stage three needs to always be on our minds. It’s the getting on with our lives that can and will provide the motivation we need to develop the stage one skills and use those skills as we do the scary, tiring work of stage two. 

Sometimes, creating a compelling future requires us to play “what if.” 

It requires us to fantasize a little, to imagine a little. 

It requires us to put aside our hopelessness for just a minute, and take suicide or otherwise quitting off the table for a period of time. 

Yes, imagining a life worth living can seem overwhelming at first. It can stir up regrets and it can invite anger about how our life has gone so perilously off the rails. 

But if you can— just for a bit— turn your attention to what that life worth living might look like…the game changes. 

You’re no longer fighting to preserve a life that only holds pain. 

Your fighting to begin a new life— one that you, not your trauma or your symptoms or your past— is in control of. 

Take that risk. 

 

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Bad memories have the hold they do on us because they’re entwined with our limbic system. 

They contain information that our brains consider vital to the fight-or-flight response. Our brains pay more attention to some memories than others, because they (our brains) figure that if we’re to avoid danger, we need to pay attention to the stuff encoded in those memories. 

Normally, memories fade. No matter how hard we try to hold on to most memories, they become hazy over time. The details get fuzzy. 

The reason why certain memories don’t fade is because our brains are trying to keep us safe. Our brains figure that if we forget the details of those memories— if we let them become hazy, like normal memories tend to become— then we might also forget the warning signals that those memories have stored up in them. 

As with all post traumatic symptoms, memory symptoms are just our brains trying to do us a solid. They’re trying to keep us safe, to protect us. 

They think if we keep those memories at the top of mind— if we don’t let them fade— then we can have all that valuable information about what situations are dangerous and should be avoided right at our fingertips. 

The problem is, our brains aren’t great at discriminating the parts of a memory that are and aren’t valuable for that purpose. 

In trying to keep us safe by keeping those traumatic memories easily accessible, our brains try to keep EVERY LITTLE DETAIL as vivid as possible. 

Then, in a further attempt to be helpful, our brains make us hypervigilant to the sensory details of those memories, which is why these sensory cues become “triggers” to flashbacks. 

All a flashback is, is an intense, immersive memory that usually gets triggered by something in the environment that our brain associates with a threat. It’s as if our brain detects something it associates with a bad memory, and tries to get your attention to the tune of, “HEY, REMEMBER THAT BAD THING? IF YOU DON’T HERE’S AN IMMERSIVE, BLOW BY BLOW ACCOUNT OF THAT THING! REMEMBER?!?” 

One of the goals of therapy is to put bad and traumatic memories back into the ballpark of normal memories— where they can be allowed to fade and get hazy. 

This can be done…but first of all we need to convince our brains that they no longer need to hang on to those memories. We have to develop confidence that we have the skills and tools to function safely in the here and now. We have to become certain that we can, and will, recognize threats and act appropriately— not overreact or underreact. 

In other words, we have to learn to use our damn skills. 

The skill most important to getting out of flashback is called grounding. 

All grounding means is to reestablish firm contact with the present moment. The present time, our present surroundings, our present context. 

One of the reasons why flashbacks are so terrifying is because they are immersive. Since traumatic memories don’t fade like non-traumatic memories, when we reexperience those memories, they’re much more vivid than normal memories. It’s not uncommon for people to lose touch with where and when they are when they’re in the grip of a flashback— in that moment, they truly think they’re “back there, back then” when the danger was very real and present. 

Grounding skills are any skills that allow you to reestablish touch with the present moment. 

Grounding is about giving yourself assurance and evidence that you are in the here-and-now, not the there-and-then. 

Open your eyes. (If you close your eyes during a flashback, you’re just providing a blank movie screen on which the memory can play.)

Look around. 

Identify three objects you see. 

Identify three colors you see. 

Ask yourself what the date and time is— and in the process of doing so, ask yourself how you would KNOW what the date and time is. 

Orient yourself. 

It seems like a simple set of skills, and it is. The reason it’s not easy to remember grounding skills in the moment is because your fight/flight/freeze system has been activated, and you’re typically in a panic. The point of getting grounded is to rein that panic reaction in by convincing your brain that you are not, currently, in the kind of danger that you were back then. 

Every intervention for treating trauma has its roots in convincing our brains that we’re safe in the present moment. 

It is unreasonable to expect your brain to give up post traumatic symptoms unless you can make a convincing case that you are, in fact, safe in the present moment. 

The good news is, you can regain control of your life from flashbacks. 

If you work with your brain, not against it. 

 

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I choose to believe every problem has a solution. 

I’m not saying YOU should believe it. I’m not even saying it’s right. 

I’m saying that’s something I CHOOSE to believe, because it’s a belief that helps empower me day to day. It makes more options available to me. It helps manage my mood. 

Our beliefs can do that— they can impact everything from how hard we’re willing and able to work, to how long we’ll persist in something, to what resources we’re willing to access. 

Because I’ve chosen to believe that every problem has a solution, it means I’m often willing to try many approaches and access many resources before I even think about giving up. 

And when I do think about “giving up,” it’s rarely in terms of “this is hopeless, I’m just not going to try anymore.” It’s usually in terms of, “I’m not getting anywhere with my current energy level and tools; I’m going to beat a tactical retreat here, press the reset button, and maybe attack this from a different perspective later.” 

It may or may not be true that every problem has a solution— but that’s hardly the point. 

If I went into challenges thinking “look, there are just some problems without solutions,” my brain would be predisposed toward looking for proof that the problem in front of me was one of those unsolvable problems. 

My brain would be wired to overlook potential solutions, because our brains always want to confirm what they already believe. 

I know for a fact that my belief that every problem has a solution has led me to work harder to solve problems that I otherwise would have probably given up on. 

I also know that my belief that every problem has a solution has led me to access more and different resources than I would have otherwise in the quest to find solutions to particularly difficult problems. 

Whether it is objectively true that every problem has a solution isn’t the point. I can’t actually prove that every problem has a solution; nor can anyone else prove that there are problems that don’t have solutions. The best anyone can ever do is maybe prove that a particular problem doesn’t seem solvable with the resources we currently have available…which is very different from saying, “this problem can’t be solved.” 

Our beliefs are important because they frame the discussion and direct our focus. 

Do your beliefs work for you, or against you? 

Some people raise objections to this idea, because they point out that they just can’t arbitrarily change beliefs because some beliefs might happen to be more productive. 

My response to this is, then fake it. 

Act is if you believe something differently, just for a moment. Try it out. 

For example: if you don’t happen to believe every problem has a solution…what would it be like if you just PRETENDED you believed that for a minute? 

You don’t have to completely buy in. 

You just have to BEHAVE— for a minute— as if you do buy in. 

In this example, if you behaved AS IF you believe every problem has a solution…chances are you’d work longer and harder to solve certain problems you might otherwise have given up on. 

Where’s the downside to that? 

If you act AS IF certain things were true, even if you don’t believe them to be…you actually don’t lose much of anything. 

If you don’t truly believe you can stay sober, but you act AS IF you believe you can stay sober…what have you lost? Chances are this “fake” belief will only lead you to staying sober longer than you otherwise would. (People who don’t believe they can stay sober are, all too often, just waiting for the stressor or opportunity to use that’s going to lead them back down the rabbit hole.) 

If you don’t truly believe you can recover from PTSD, but you act AS IF you can recover from PTSD…what have you lost? You’ll go to therapy and do the therapy assignments. (People who don’t believe they can truly recover have little incentive to go to therapy or do the assignments…because why bother, if they don’t believe they can succeed?) 

It’s easier to play “act as if” with some believes than others, certainly. I’m not saying that every belief is easy or simple to just “try on.” 

But take a look at your worldview. Do you have beliefs that are disabling to your level of motivation? 

Try chucking them to the curb…just in theory. Just act as if. 

Try out a different set of lenses. 

See how the world looks. 

See what you’re willing to do. 

See what you might have missed. 

You have nothing to lose. 

 

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