Use Your Damn Skills

This situation is what it is. 

Okay, I know. That sounds obvious. 

But you’d be surprised how often, in trauma and addiction recovery, survivors and addicts in recovery devote all kinds of energy to denying and disowning that this situation is what it is. 

That this situation is exactly what it is.

We don’t like that. We don’t want that. 

We very often believe that if we were to accept that this situation is exactly what it is, we’d somehow be making this situation worse. 

Believe me when I tell you: accepting a situation is exactly what it is will not make it worse— but refusing to accept this situation is exactly what it is will absolutely make it worse. 

I can’t say it often enough: acceptance is not “liking.” 

Acceptance is not “approving” of a situation. 

Saying “I accept this situation is exactly what it is” is not saying, “and there’s nothing I can do about it.” 

It’s true that there’s nothing we can do about the fact that we are where are, right here, right now— but this is just a starting point. 

How are we going to realistically get anywhere if we can’t even acknowledge our starting point? 

When I tell you everybody’s starting point in recovery sucks, I mean it— if it didn’t suck, we wouldn’t be in need of recovery. 

Our starting point— this situation, right here, right now—is very often gnarly. 

It very often includes consequences of decisions we’ve made, which can be really, really tough to accept. 

It also very often includes consequences of “decisions” we made, that weren’t, actually, free “choices”— but rather “decisions” that reflect the kind of pressure we were under and the lack of resources we were experiencing at the time. 

(None of that is an “excuse”— it’s an acknowledgment of reality.)

Why am I spending time writing about this? Because, in my experience, one of the most broadly destructive habits survivors and addicts in recovery— including myself— have is slipping into denial. 

And make no mistake: we live in a culture that absolutely supports denial. 

The internet is full of toxic positivity influences who want us to believe we can “manifest” our way into a better starting point. 

Don’t get me wrong: I agree with those influencers that attitude matters, and is often more or less under our control. 

But I am not a fan of straight up denying sh*t is as f*cked as it is, and we are feeling as sh*tty as we are, and our lack of tools and resources in this moment is exactly what it is. 

In recovery we have a concept called Rock Bottom. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. It’s exactly what it sounds like. 

Accepting that we are at Rock Bottom is entirely necessary in recovery— and one of the hardest things we’ll ever do. 

It’s scary. Rock Bottom can feel hopeless. In fact, Rock Bottom almost always feels hopeless, by definition. 

But we have another saying in recovery, too: that Rock Bottom can become the solid foundation on which we build a lasting recovery. 

That only happens if we accept we are where we are. That this situation, this starting point, is exactly what and where it is. 

There’s a reason why Step One in the Twelve Step tradition is the one focusing on acceptance: because without it, no recovery is possible, let alone realistic. 

This situation is what it is. We’re starting where we’re starting. We have exactly what we have to work with. 

And that’s enough. 

I promise you, that’s enough. 

Rock Bottom sucks— but accepting we’re there is actually the good news. 

Let’s get to building something that’s gonna last. 

When we need to cry, we need to cry. 

There’s nothing shameful about it. 

There’s nothing “weak” about it. 

And, believe me when I tell you, if you’re feeling the need to cry, you absolutely “have something to cry about.” 

Lots of us grew up with lots of explicit, negative messages about what crying means. 

We don’t like to cry, for a lot of reasons— chief among them that many of the things that make us cry are sad, upsetting, or otherwise overwhelming. 

But it’s more than that. 

Crying feels to a lot of us like an uncontrollable experience that we don’t understand very well— some kind of hate it. 

Trauma survivors in particular hate things happening to us or inside of us that we cannot control or understand. 

Many of us went for years feeling like we had to hide our emotions to be safe. 

Revealing our emotions often left us vulnerable to people who might use our emotional reactions to manipulate or mock us. 

So, we got really good at “masking,” hiding what we’re feeling or experiencing, often behind an unbothered poker face. 

But crying— crying has a way of cracking the ol’ poker face, doesn’t it? 

Crying is famously one of those physiological reactions that can betray our inner feelings— especially fear or pain— to people around us. 

So— it makes a lot of sense that many trauma survivors absolutely hate that feeling that we’re in danger of breaking into tears. 

For some of us, getting tearful represents a “failure”— a failure to maintain the illusion that what’s happening to or around us, isn’t affecting us. 

Some of us decided that we weren’t going to cry, ever, because we weren’t going to give our bullies or abusers the satisfaction. 

Make no mistake: crying isn’t some sort of “failure’ or capitulation to our bullies or abusers. 

Keeping ourselves from crying isn’t particularly “sticking” it to our bullies or abusers. Believe me when I tell you, they couldn’t care less whether we conquer our urge to cry or not. 

Your mileage may vary on whether crying is or isn’t a particular problem for you. No one, including me, can tell you whether it is or isn’t the “right” thing to do to cry. 

What I can tell you, though, is that it’s real important to our trauma and/or addiction recovery that we not shut our “parts” or inner child down in our attempts to avoid crying.

It’s real important we not shame or mock ourselves for wanting to cry. 

It’s real important we not reinforce our bullies’ or abusers’ narrative that we “don’t have anything to cry about.” 

(Many of us remember, with chilling clarity, the declaration, “Stop it, or I’ll give you something to cry about.”) 

It’s real important, in sum, that we meet our need to cry the same way we meet any and all of our emotional and physical reactions in recovery: with compassion, with patience, with radical acceptance. 

I know. Crying is very often no fun. (Yes, I know, there are such things as tears of joy and tears of laughter— but you know that’s not what I’m talking about in this blog.)

But the essence of recovery is meeting our “no fun” moments with compassion, patience, and acceptance. 

Even if we don’t feel like it. 

Especially then, actually. 

When we talk about “emotional regulation,” we’re not talking about tamping down our feelings so we barely feel anything. 

I don’t know about you, but I’m a particularly emotional person— and I’ve come to understand that’s a feature, not a glitch. 

I wouldn’t be who I am, without my highly sensitive nature— and I’ve come to believe that my ability to help and support people, as imperfect as that ability may be, is due to that highly sensitive nature. 

Does it cause me pain? Sure, sometimes. Does it cause me inconvenience? Sure, maybe more than sometimes. 

But what we need to understand when we talk about emotional regulation is that it’s not about making us “less emotional.” 

Our emotions represent important facets of who we are and what we’re all about. 

Attempts to deny or disown our emotions necessarily end up being attempts to deny and disown who we are— and that’s literally the opposite of what we’re trying to do here in trauma and addiction recovery. 

What emotional regulation actually is, is understanding our emotions and being on good enough terms with them that we don’t experience them as overwhelming, threatening, or “bad.” 

Just like the essence of trauma and addiction recovery is forging a new, honest, compassionate, communicative, cooperative relationship with our self, the essence of emotional regulation is getting on speaking terms with our emotional self. 

That’s not easy, when we’ve been shamed or punished for being “sensitive” or “emotional” growing up— which an overwhelming number of people are, whether or not they grew up in environments most of us would call “abusive” or “neglectful.” 

We live in a culture that celebrates and glamorizes emotionality on the one hand— but then turns around and demonizes and shames it on the other. 

Almost all of our catchiest pop music is about emotion— yet when we hear about the tumultuous love life of our favorite pop star, many of us roll our eyes at the “drama.” 

Yeah. We got lots of mixed signals about emotions from the very beginning, don’t we? 

Most of the great art and literature we’re ever exposed to is about dissecting and experiencing emotions— yet when we have reactions to that art and literature, we often feel silly. 

I’ll be the first to admit, I cry at movies. I cry at some songs. And, if you’re like me, and you do that too, you probably experienced what I experienced for a long time: a pervasive feeling that we need to shut that reaction down. That crying at popular art was a mark of immaturity, or lack of self-control. 

My ass, it is. 

Learning to regulate our emotions most often boils down to the three tools that, as far as I’m concerned, make up the nuts and bolts of trauma recovery: self talk, visualization and focus, and breathing and body language. 

How our nervous and endocrine systems understand and process emotions depends on how we use and integrate those three tools. 

But it’s real important we not try to use those tools to completely shut down our emotional core. 

We need that emotional core. 

One of the reason we need to regulate it is BECAUSE we need it. 

We NEED access to those emotions, because those emotions are who we are and what we’re all about. 

If we try to deny and disown our emotions in the name of “emotional regulation,” those emotions don’t just go away— very often they get split off into “parts” of us, where they remain until the burden of keeping those emotions out of consciousness becomes too great. 

That’s when “the body starts keeping the score,” to coin a phrase. 

If we don’t want the body keeping the score— which we don’t— we need to be on good terms with our emotions. Speaking terms. Compassionate, understanding terms. Cooperative terms. 

We start that process by listening to how we talk to and about our feelings; paying attention to what we visualize and focus on when we’re experiencing feelings; and paying to where and how our feelings intersect with and are shaped by our body language and breathing. 

Lots of us survivors make emotional regulation and lot harder than it needs to be— and that’s not our fault, given how we were conditioned to think about and respond to strong feeling states. 

But it doesn’t have to be that way. 

None of this has to be that way. 

We can start repairing our relationship with our emotional core and body today.

Maybe start with breathing. 

Blinking. 

Maybe focusing inward— with compassion and patience. 

Try it out for a few minutes after you’re done reading this. It’s free, you’ve got nothing to lose. 

Bullying, in childhood and adulthood, is one of the most common complex traumatic stressors humans endure. 

Complex trauma is trauma that endures over time; that is functionally inescapable; and that entwines around our important relationships. Bullying very often checks all three of these boxes. 

Childhood bullying in particular can leave deep wounds, insofar as children are usually schooled within the same cohort year after year. If a kid is identified as a target for bullying, they’re very often bullied year, after year, after year. 

Children who become frequent targets of bullying often become isolated at school, insofar as other children don’t want to also become targets of bullying by associating with them. 

Children most often don’t get a choice whether to continue attending school with their cohort, making the situation functionally inescapable. 

Adults frequently assure children that, if they’re being bullied, they can reach out to teachers or other adults for help— but adults cannot supervise children 100% of the time at school, and reaching out for help can actually make bullying worse for kids when adults aren’t around. 

In addition, kids who are being bullied at school often aren’t getting a lot of support at home, either— they may be reluctant to tell their parents what is going on, and even if they do, parents are limited in what they can do to support their child at school. 

As a result, bullying is very often a traumatic stressor that a kid endures functionally alone— very often for years. 

Our culture often sends mixed signals about how seriously it takes childhood bullying. 

On the one hand, anti-bullying campaigns are an easy way for educators and other adults to virtue signal about how seriously they take kids’ health and happiness. 

On the other hand, how many times have we been told versions of “kids will be kids?” 

Or “everybody gets a little bullied, it builds character?” 

Or “that was so long ago, people should be able to get over common things that happen in childhood?” 

That last one— “it happened so long ago”— has always really, really annoyed me. 

If we sustain an injury a long time ago, but the injury never gets appropriate treatment, then all the time that’s passed since is actually a reason the injury HASN’T healed— or has gotten worse. If you walk around for years on a broken leg that was never appropriately set and rested at the time it was broken, it’ll get worse, not better, with time. 

Anyway: it is my belief that many people are walking around with complex post traumatic symptomatology that began or was exacerbated by childhood bullying— but they very often do not have the support or resources to recognize what’s happening or what they can do about it. 

Our culture has an absolutely toxic relationship with the concept of bullying. 

Plenty of people pay lip service to bullying being “bad”— but then they get all coy and philosophical about what behavior actually constitutes “bullying.” 

It’s my experience that if we have to ask whether a behavior is “actually” bullying or not, almost always, it is— and almost always, someone is trying to play the “devil’s advocate,” because, well, they kind of like bullying. 

And although the patterns of bullying are very often laid down in childhood, bullying of adults by other adults can also be a complex traumatic stressor— one which many adults are loath to address, because we have this belief that “bullying,” like ADHD, isn’t a problem that persists beyond childhood. 

My ass, it doesn’t. 

I recommend anyone in recovery from complex trauma to look at situations in their life when they’ve been subjected to bullying behavior. Don’t ignore it or minimize it just because the culture sends mixed signals about it. 

We may not love the fact that we were vulnerable to or impacted by bullying— but trauma recovery is about getting real and honest about what hurt us and how it hurt us.

We don’t have time for denial in this “recovery” thing. We have a life to get back to. 

There is no shame in being afraid. 

Are you kidding me? With some of the things you and I and most of the people reading this blog have been through? 

Those are definitely things worth being afraid of. 

When we’re young, and we’re exposed to events and relationships that are far, far outside the realm of what our young body and brain were designed to handle— that’s scary. 

When we grow up being betrayed, abandoned, mocked, or otherwise abused or neglected by the people who were supposed to take care of us— that’s scary. 

When we’re subjected to years of spiritual, social, or sexual coercion by a high control church or community— either as a child or as an adult— that’s scary. 

Nobody is in trauma recovery for anything that isn’t scary. 

Fear is a normal, adaptive human experience. There is nothing shameful about it. 

So why do we so often feel so much shame around fear? 

For many of us, we’ve been flooded with toxic messages about what fear means. 

Our culture celebrates “bravery”— which gets misrepresented as a lack of fear. 

I’ve always found it weird that we think “lack of fear” is some sort of amazing virtue. After all, if someone isn’t actually afraid of something, why then is it special that they faced that thing? 

I’ve always felt it was far more worthy of celebration if someone is afraid of something— maybe very afraid— and they do the thing anyway.

That, to me, is real bravery. 

Put another way— there can be no true courage without fear. 

Fear doesn’t, actually, represent any kind of weakness. 

To the contrary, fear often reflects a neuropsychological record of, and reflexive behavioral reaction to, things that have actually happened to us. 

That is to say: we don’t get afraid out of nowhere. 

Handling fear represents a very specific kind of intelligence— which trauma survivors often have in abundance. 

We may FEEL afraid a lot of the time, and that may be frustrating to us— but it’s my observation that we trauma survivors are absolute champions at Doing The Thing Afraid. 

The fact that we’ve been shamed for our fear doesn’t actually represent anything about us. It represents what shaming usually represents: somebody needed something to give us sh*t about, and they chose fear. 

There is a myth about trauma survivors that we are “controlled” by fear. 

With respect: bullsh*t, we’re “controlled” by fear. 

Feeling fear, even a lot of fear on a regular basis, is not the same as being “controlled” by it. 

It’s my experience that trauma survivors, as a rule, will do triple backflips through flaming hoops to avoid being “controlled” by anything— including fear. 

For many of us, if we feel afraid of something, we process that as a challenge: it means we absolutely MUST do the thing, now. 

So much of trauma recovery is about untangling our feelings, reactions, and needs from the shame that was conditioned into us by our family, church, or culture. 

Fear represents survival intelligence, not weakness. 

And the people most afraid of being “controlled” by fear are usually the ones least likely to let ANYTHING control them. 

To me, one of the hardest aspects of trauma and addiction recovery is that, if we’re going to do it at all, we have to do it “even if.’ 

Even if it’s complicated. 

Even if it’s hard. 

Even if our old programming is telling us we can’t do it or don’t deserve it. 

Even if it’s confusing. 

Even if we think we shouldn’t “have” to. I agree: no one reading this should have to think about any of this. We shouldn’t have to do recovery, because we shouldn’t have to think about trauma or addiction in the first place. 

But we do— and we do. 

If we’re going to do recovery, we have to do it even if the Bad Thing happens. 

Even if our cat gets cancer. 

Even if it’ll cost us our social circle. 

Even if life didn’t go the way we thought it would. 

Even if we can’t imagine how life could possibly get better from here. 

If we’re going to do recovery at all, we have to do it even if we’re bored with it. 

Even if we’re sick of it. 

Even if we lose faith in it. 

Even if we have moments, or days, when we lose the ability to care what happens to us or anyone else. 

If we’re going to do trauma or addiction recovery at all, we have to do it even if we didn’t think we’d live this long. 

Even if we lose our biggest supporters. 

Even if we lose our safest people. 

Even if we’re in danger of losing the cat who has literally saved our live with her furry little existence more times than anyone will ever know. 

If we’re going to do recovery at all, w have to do it even if we feel lost. 

Even if we feel alone. 

Even if we are alone. 

Our commitment to recovery can’t be conditional. It can’t depend on whether we feel like working our recovery today or not. Because I guarantee you, when some of our “even if’s” come into play, we are absolutely not going to want to work our recovery. 

We’re going to want to get high. 

We’re going to want to hurt ourselves. 

We’re going to not want to be here, or anywhere, anymore. 

Those “even if’s” are how Trauma Brain and Addict Brain get their hooks into us. 

There is exactly one way to effectively deal with Trauma Brain and Addict Brain: affirm that you are committed to recovery even if. 

Even if the sky falls. 

Even if heaven and hell decide that they both are satisfied, and illuminate the “no” on their “vacancy” signs. 

Yeah. Even then. 

Affirm to yourself: I am in this to win it. I am not dabbling.

I am committed to my safety and my stability. I am committed to my inner child. I am committed to my recovery. 

Even if. 

What does “working our recovery” mean? 

For starters: it means being on our own side. Having our own back. 

Which is a taller order than it seems, when we’ve been conditioned by abuse and neglect to hate and abandon ourselves. 

Our trauma conditioning wants us to hurt and abandon ourselves. Often it’s playing a long game that it ultimately wants to end in us killing ourselves. 

Working our recovery means being utterly realistic about that, and having no patience for it. 

Working our recovery means talking to ourselves like a supportive coach— not like a drill sergeant. 

Working our recovery definitely means interrupting old patterns of talking to ourselves like our abusers did once upon a time— which, let’s face it, many of us are very much in the habit of doing. 

Working our recovery means journaling. Yes, every day. Yes, whether we feel like we have anything to write about or not. 

Working our recovery means setting goals. Yes, every day. Yes, whether we feel particularly motivated or not. 

If we waited for motivation, we would never work our recovery— because, especially in early recovery, we’re typically anything BUT motivated. 

Working our recovery means checking in with ourselves. With our mood, with our energy level, with our level of triggered activation. 

Working our recovery means taking time every day— often multiple times a day— to remember and remind ourselves who we are and what we’re all about. 

Working our recovery means focusing on our circle of influence— especially when we’re freaked out about everything simmering in our circle of concern. 

The thing about working our recovery is, it’s hard. It goes against every scrap of conditioning and programming we’ve ever been subjected to. There’s a reason why working our recovery feels “unnatural”— because we’ve been brainwashed to believe it’s pointless, that it doesn’t matter, that it might even get us into trouble. 

Working our recovery is not a simple “choice.” It is a series of daily and hourly choices that are not easy for survivors. 

See, this is why I’ve never understood anyone who claims that identifying as a trauma survivor in recovery is somehow an “excuse” or “the easy way.” There’s NOTHING easy about working our recovery. 

Working our recovery takes courage. 

Working our recovery takes patience. 

Working our recovery takes a willingness to suspend our disbelief and judgment, especially in times when we feel overwhelmed or hopeless. 

Working our recovery means using skills and tools— all of which are imperfect— instead of diving into the self-harmful “coping” patterns of the past. 

That one might be the hardest. Giving up our old patterns, especially our old addictions, is an absolute b*tch. It’s where most survivors who don’t stick with recovery, drop out of recovery. 

Working our recovery means having a zero tolerance policy for self abuse or self neglect. 

Working our recovery means getting up every day and proactively choosing recovery. 

It’s not for the faint of heart. 

Recovery is not for anyone who is just trying to please someone else. 

Recovery is not for anyone interested in making excuses or rationalizations for Trauma Brian’s BS (Belief Systems— but also the other kind of BS). 

Working our recovery is the hard road. But it’s the better road. The right road. 

It’s the road that leads out of how you are feeling and functioning right now. 

Recovery is the most difficult ting I’ve ever done in my life— and I can’t recommend it enough.