Use Your Damn Skills

Many trauma survivors have been told we’re strong. And we are. 

The thing is, many people seem to think that acknowledging trauma survivors’ strength is all we need in order to feel and function better. 

They seem to think that because we’re so strong— so “resilient” (ugh, that word)— we don’t, or shouldn’t, need additional support to recover from what happened to us. 

Many people seem to think that because what traumatized us is entirely or mostly in the past, “the worst is over.” 

Those people haven’t suffered from complex trauma. 

It’s often— but not always— the case that our initial trauma is in the past. 

But what people don’t understand is that living with complex trauma s itself a traumatic stressor— one that itself meets every criteria of complex trauma (it occurs over time; it’s functionally inescapable; it entwines with all of our important relationships). 

Yes, complex trauma survivors are strong. But here’s the thing: we shouldn’t have had to be. 

And, going forward, we shouldn’t have to be as strong as we were back then just to build a life we don’t to end every day. 

You there, reading this, are strong. 

But I think your strength is meant for something more than just survival. 

I think your strength was meant for creation. 

I think your strength was meant for love. 

I think your strength was meant for supporting people and causes you care passionately about. 

I don’t think the destiny of anybody reading this is to just get by. 

Coping is really important— but I don’t believe it’s the end all, be all of trauma recovery. 

We are not doing this in order to cope. 

We have to cope in order to do the things we really want to do. The things we were meant to do. 

The things that our bullies and abusers tried to take away from us. 

Trauma has this way of dragging us away from the things we love. 

Not just the people we love— though it does that, too— but the interests and passions and journeys that make life meaningful. 

Trauma has this way of consuming us such that every single day becomes about trauma. 

I don’t think we were meant to live like that. 

I don’t think that’s an ideal use of your strength; or your creativity; or your life. 

There is a myth out there that committing to trauma recovery means you make surviving trauma your identity— but nothing could be farther from the truth. 

We commit to trauma recovery precisely because we DON’T want trauma reactions and symptoms to become our identity. 

In the best possible version of trauma recovery, we get so adept at using the skills, tools, and philosophies of trauma recovery that we can, paradoxically, kind of forget about them. They’re just second nature to us. 

When trauma recovery becomes the lens through which we live our lives, trauma ceases to be the centerpiece of our lives. 

When, then, is the centerpiece of our lives, if not trauma?

It’s whatever and whoever you want it to be. 

Your strength was not meant to bear suffering. 

Your strength was meant to create your unique life and legacy. 

That’s what I think, anyway. 

When you’re tempted to apologize for feeling a feeling: tap the brake. 

When you’re tempted to apologize for having a need: tap the brake. 

You are going to feel pressure from your trauma programming to apologize for all kinds of things. 

The truth is, your trauma programming doesn’t think you should exist, let alone have feelings or needs. 

Your trauma programming, if followed to its logical conclusion, will have you disappearing from the planet entirely. 

However, since you haven’t disappeared from the planet entirely, your trauma programming will flood you with feelings of guilt, blame, and shame for taking up space. 

Your trauma programming will try to tell you everything you experience our need is a burden on someone else. 

Your trauma programming will try to tell you nothing you feel, need, or have to say is important. 

Your trauma programming will try to tell you that there is something fundamentally wrong, something fundamentally flawed or gross or otherwise f*cked up, about everything that makes you, you— especially your feelings and needs. 

Thus, every time a feeling or need escapes our brain in the form of words, we very often feel this need to apologize. 

It can be hard for someone whose nervous system has not been crispy fried by traumatic stress, to understand why we’re apologizing for so many things. 

They don’t realize that many of the things we hear ourselves saying or asking for or otherwise expressing sound, to us, dramatic and stupid. 

They don’t understand that we very often feel like we’re about to be in trouble, we’re about to be yelled at, or we’re about to be mocked, for any utterance that escapes us. 

For many of us, expressing feelings or needs makes us feel insufferably vulnerable. 

We often apologize because part of us, at least, thinks we can limit our vulnerability if we communicate, via our apology, that we too are annoyed by and impatient with our own “stupid” feelings or “burdensome” needs. 

It’s a maneuver Trauma Brain often tries to trick us into: agreeing with, or getting on the same side of, our abusers, by trashing ourselves. 

The thing is: apologies never work to limit our vulnerability. They don’t. They might soothe our anxiety— for a minute— but if we’re vulnerable in the presence of somebody, an apology isn’t going to make us less so. 

What constant apologies DO do, however, is shred our self esteem. 

Constantly apologizing communicates to our inner child that we are bad, and we need to apologize. 

Constantly apologizing reinforces the belief that so many survivors struggle with: that we are burdensome, and we need to compensate for that burden. 

Don’t get me wrong: many trauma survivors, myself included, are, in point of fact, an acquired taste. No, we’re not for everybody. 

But that’s not the same thing as “every feeling or need we experience is necessarily a burden we need to apologize for.” 

Catching yourself when you’re tempted to apologize for a feeling or need is a habit worth getting into. 

Communicating to yourself in those moments that, actually, you have nothing to apologize for, is also a habit worth getting into. 

You’ve had decades of programming that have entrenched the idea that your feelings and needs are stupid and embarrassing. That programming probably isn’t going to dramatically shift overnight. 

But it will shift if, every time it rears its head, you meaningfully, consistently, compassionately talk back to it. 

Scratch the record. 

It’s okay to outgrow things. 

It’s okay to outgrow relationships; it’s okay to outgrow jobs; it’s okay to outgrow an identity.

It doesn’t mean those relationships; those jobs; or that identity didn’t serve you well in the past. 

It doesn’t mean we’re rejecting those relationships, jobs, or identities with negative feelings or extreme prejudice. 

It means what it means: we grow. We change. Our needs change. Our abilities change. 

As we work our recovery, we tend to outgrow a lot of things— and many survivors tend to have complicated feelings about that. 

It’s okay to have complicated feelings about outgrowing things as we recover. Many of us aren’t used to positive growth in any sense— nor are we used to releasing old attachments with gratitude and certainty. 

Many of us have had the exact opposite experience: every relationship that we end, has ended involuntarily or with acrimony. 

To quote a common recovery poster: “everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it.” 

Something we learn in recovery is that it doesn’t have to be that way. 

We can let ourselves outgrow things. We don’t have to judge it. We don’t have to resist it. 

We can have whatever feelings we have about outgrowing things— sadness, or excitement, or a combination thereof. 

When we outgrow something, when it’s time to move on, parts of us might freak out a little. 

There might be a part of us that truly believes that if we outgrow this thing, we’ll never have another thing like it. 

Right now I’m grappling with giving up something that I know I’ve probably outgrown, but which has been a source of security for me at a time when I really needed it. 

And, I’m having all the feelings that go along with all of it: guilt, insecurity— but also excitement. 

This is what happens when we work our recovery: we get the chance to feel certain things, without judgment, without pressure to feel the “right” thing, without shame for feeling the “wrong” things. 

I’ll spoil the suspense: you’re going to outgrow a lot of things. It doesn’t matter how old you are, or where you are in life. Human beings that continue to live and breathe, outgrow things. 

And that’s okay. 

It’s not disloyal to outgrow a thing. 

Human beings were kind of designed to outgrow things. That’s the only reason why new things are created— from new songs, to new professional roles, to new psychotherapy practices, to new relationships, to new people. 

The feelings of anxiety and guilt you have about outgrowing things— hold them gently. They’re not there to make your life difficult. They’re there because you have precious few role models when it comes to realizing attachments with compassion and gratitude. 

When we’re growing up in traumagenic environments, compassion and gratitude aren’t things we see a lot of to emulate. 

If you’ve outgrown something, you’ve outgrown it. 

No need to leave claw marks on it. 

Not anymore. 

We have to take care of ourselves, even when we’re tired. 

Even when we’re angry. 

Even when we’re angry at ourselves. 

Even when we don’t like ourselves. 

In fact— it’s kind of especially important we take care of ourselves when we’re angry at ourselves or when we don’t like ourselves. 

Here’s the thing: many of us grew up believing that our worth and safety are conditional. 

We grew up believing we had to “earn” worthiness and safety. 

We grew up believing we had to “earn” the “right” to care. 

This is especially true if we grew up neglected, emotionally or otherwise. 

When we’re neglected by the people who should love us, who should nurture us, who should protect us, we don’t process that as a “them” issue. We almost always understand it as an “us” issue. 

We understand it as an “us” issue— and we often internalize the belief that we need to pay for it. We need to be punished for it. And/or we need to make it “right.” 

We grow up believing we have to “earn” things that we don’t, actually, have to “earn.” 

Like love. 

Like attention. 

Like safety. 

Like care. 

Then, if we don’t get love, or attention, or safety, or care, we assume it’s because we didn’t “earn” it. 

We didn’t crack the code. We didn’t figure it out. We weren’t worthy of it. 

We continue to process it as an “us” issue. We personalize the hell out of it. And over time, all of this becomes a core part of our trauma conditioning— the internalized voices of our bullies and abusers that I refer to as “Trauma Brain.” 

In trauma recovery, our job is to overwrite that old programming. Scratching that old record. Reversing that old conditioning. 

We do this by caring for ourselves— even when Trauma Brain tells us we don’t “deserve” care. 

We do this by showing ourselves patience— even when Trauma Brain tells us we don’t “deserve” patience. 

We do this by showing ourselves love— even when Trauma Brain insists that we couldn’t possibly be worthy of love. 

The thing about Trauma Brian is, it doesn’t actually have an argument for why we don’t “deserve” those things. All it has is what we call “emotional reasoning”— the fact that we must not BE lovable, for example, because we don’t FEEL lovable. 

I’m here to tell you: that’s garbage reasoning. 

How we FEEL does not represent the fundamental truth of what we deserve. Most often it reflects our conditioning. Our programming. What we had told to us, again, and again, and again. 

It’s BS. Belief Systems. Nothing less— but nothing more. 

Be nice to yourself, even when you don’t feel you deserve it. 

It’s when we feel least lovable that we MOST need self-love— because it’s in those moments that we have the opportunity to REALLY challenge and scramble our old conditioning. 

We don’t really have the option to not feel our feelings. 

We can try. And many trauma survivors do try to not feel our feelings. 

We have all sorts of ways to try to not feel our feelings. Some ways we choose; some ways our nervous system chooses for us. 

Why wouldn’t we want to feel our feelings? 

Many of us experience such extreme emotional dysrgulation, that feeling anything is like feeling everything. I mean all the feelings, all at once. And that can be overwhelming. 

Some of us were programmed to believe feeling anything was “weak.” Or “wrong.” Or “gross.” 

Many of us are worried that if we let ourselves feel things, we’ll lose our tightly held grip on our behavior. That the only thing keeping us from acting out is the distance we’re keeping on our feelings. 

In sum: we’ve been conditioned to believe that feelings are intolerable, darkly untamable and unpredictable things. Things that are not safe. Things that are not okay. 

What BS (Belief Systems— but the other kind of BS, too). 

The truth is, anything would feel overwhelming and dark if we thought about it and avoided it the same way we think about and avoid feelings. 

Many trauma survivors have been led to believe that we just can’t tolerate this “feeling” stuff. 

The thing is, though: we can. 

It takes skill, and it takes practice, and it takes a willingness to not judge ourselves harshly when we struggle with it— but experiencing and managing our feelings is absolutely a skill we can learn and get better at. 

What’s more: we really NEED our feelings— and we really NEED to feel our feelings. 

I’m not saying we need to fell all our feelings at once, turned up to 11. I don’t think I’d enjoy that, anyway. 

I am saying that it’s hard to live an authentic life while at the same time waging a war on our feelings. 

Our feelings reflect our needs, our priorities, our values, and our experiences. 

They are not random neural and/or hormonal events. Our feelings have purpose and meaning; rhyme and reason. 

Because we cannot always hear that rhyme or decipher that reason in a given moment doesn’t mean it’s not there. 

Getting on good terms with our emotional life is part and parcel of the larger project we face in trauma recovery: getting on good terms with ourselves, period. 

We cannot recover from trauma, or anything sense, while simultaneously fighting and shaming ourselves.

If we’re going to have our own back, like we need to in trauma recovery, we have to meet our feelings like we meet every other part of our body, mind, or soul in recovery: with patience, with acceptance, with love. 

Yeah, I said it: love. 

You are not going to like everything you feel. I don’t like everything I feel. We don’t have to like or approve of every feeling that we experience. 

But we do have to accept our feelings. 

We do have to love our feelings, in the sense that we accept and care for them, even (especially!) when we don’t like them. 

If we keep trying, and trying, and trying to not feel our feelings, to deny and disown our emotional life, our feeling don’t go away. 

They will be acknowledged, and they will be expressed— as symptoms. 

Speaking for myself, I’ve had enough of that sh*t. 

How about you? 

You did not “choose” your trauma. 

You did not choose to be abused. You did not choose to be neglected, physically or emotionally. 

You did not choose how your trauma impacted you. 

And you do not choose the symptoms and struggles you experience today. 

You’re going to run into plenty of people who will feed you some version of “you chose that” and/or “you’re choosing this”— but it just ain’t so. 

If we truly could “choose” what happens to us and/or how it impacts us, don’t you think we would choose something very, very different? 

We absolutely would. Every time. 

Yet, the “you chose that” myth refuses to die. 

It mostly refuses to die because our culture has a highly conflicted relationship with control. 

We love control. We kind of worship control. 

Who do we consider to be awesome in our culture? Those people who can “control” themselves. 

We worship physical fitness in our culture, largely because we associate fit bodies with “control” and “self discipline.” We assume people who are fit are able to “control” their appetite and their behavior in specific ways. 

We worship wealth and celebrity, at least partly because we assume millionaires and celebrities experience a degree of control over their lives that most of us don’t.

Conversely, we absolutely scorn people we perceive to lack “control.” 

We scorn poverty, at least partly because we assume poor people must lack agency and control, over themselves and their destiny. 

Every time we brand someone a “loser,” what we’re really saying is that they lack control. 

We scorn addicts, because we assume they must lack control over their cravings. 

We are f*cking obsessed with control here. 

We’re so obsessed with it that we fantasize that we have control over things we couldn’t possibly have control over— such as how we were treated and related to when we were young or otherwise vulnerable. 

We hate— absolutely hate, hate hate hate— the very idea that things could happen to us and impact us that we have zero control over. 

Of course, everybody reading this blog knows the truth about that. Things happen to us and impact us all the time, that we have literally zero control over. 

But the culture doesn’t like that. The culture doesn’t accept that. The culture is in deep, deep denial about that. 

The culture FEARS the basic lack of controllability of the human experience. 

So they project that fear and hate toward survivors of trauma. 

Hence, the victim blaming that saturates our culture at every. F*cking. Turn. 

You need to know: none of this is about you. 

This is entirely about “them,” and their refusal to see what they see and know what they know. 

You are not “choosing” your symptoms and struggles. You ARE choosing to understand them, manage them, and recover from them. 

You did not choose what happened to you once upon a time. You ARE choosing to develop skills, tools, and philosophies that decrease your vulnerability NOW. 

Do not get up in your head about all these f*cked up messages the culture floods us with, about control and “choice.” 

You look for the little pockets of choice and influence you DO have, in your everyday experience. 

Look for the wiggle room. 

That’s where your agency is. That’s where your recovery is planted and grows. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

Eh, sometimes we’re not our best selves. It happens. 

Sometimes a “fight” trauma response gets the better of us. 

Sometimes we lash out, recreating an old relationship pattern. 

Sometimes we lash out because we feel our feelings were not heard or invalidated by someone we really want to hear and validate us. 

Sometimes we lash out because the constant stress of managing all of this sh*t in our body and mind has us exhausted, and we just ran perilously low on bandwidth. 

It happens. We’re human. Humans lash out sometimes. 

Sometimes, when our central nervous system gets stuck in a “fight” trauma response as its default, we lash out more than sometimes. 

It happens. It doesn’t feel great, to anyone involved, but  it happens. 

I don’t believe trauma responses let us off the hook for our behavior, especially toward other people. That’s what I’ve never understood about those “personal responsibility” fetishists who are always harassing trauma advocates— there is nothing, in philosophy or practice, in the trauma informed movement that is anything but extremely pro “personal responsibility.” 

I do, however, think we have to look at all our behavior in context. And that means seeing triggers and trauma responses for what they are. 

We are responsible for our behavior— but we also have choices when it comes to interpreting our behavior. 

Trauma Brain— which is what I call the sum of all the trauma conditioning and brainwashing we’ve endured over the years, the collective voices of our bullies and abusers we’ve internalized— is going to try to tell us that we lash out because we’re “bad.” 

It’s going to try to tell us that we lash out because we’re “too much.” 

It’s going to try to tell us that we lash out because we are “immature.” 

It’s kind of ironic that the one explanation Trauma Brain will NOT offer as contributing to our lashing out is, actually, trauma. 

Anyway, you need to know that lashing out doesn’t mean you suck. It doesn’t mean you’re “immature.” It doesn’t mean you’re “too much” for the other humans. 

All it means is that a trauma response got the better of you for a sec. No more; no less. 

If it happens repeatedly, it means that your nervous system’s stuck in a default “fight” mode— which is worth paying attention to as a recovery issue, but it is NOT a judgment about who you are as a person. 

The truth is, most trauma survivors I know would really, really love to connect to people in non-toxic ways. 

The overwhelming majority of trauma survivors I’ve ever worked with would sell their kidney for the tools necessary to relate and be close to the other humans WITHOUT lashing out or melting down. 

Relating to the other humans involves interpersonal and emotional regulation skills most of us survivors weren’t taught growing up. If you grew up like me, you were bullied and shunned, and your emotional management “skills”— such as they were— developed without much healthy guidance or modeling from the adults around you. 

It happens. Them’s the breaks. Not your fault; not my fault. 

Interpersonal effectiveness and emotional regulation are absolutely skills that we can learn— but before we’re even at that point, we need to commit to not judging or punishing ourselves for struggling with it now. 

That’s the deal we have to make in trauma recovery generally: no judgment and no punishment. 

Even if we do sh*t we don’t love in trauma recovery— and let me tell you, I have ABSOLUTELY done sh*t I haven’t loved in trauma recovery— we have to meet our struggles and not-great decisions with patience and compassion. 

We have to give ourselves the benefit of the doubt. 

If we wanna break the pattern, we have to avoid that reflex to kick the sh*t out of ourselves— because I can assure you, people who are busy kicking the sh*t out themselves are actually MORE likely to lash out and push people away, not less. 

If we want to relate more constructively to people, that’s great— but we absolutely have to start with ourselves. 

That means being cool to you. 

Even when you’re kind of a dick. 

Especially when you’re kind of a dick. 

Being a dick to yourself when you’ve been a dick only reinforces Dick Culture within. And that’s not recovery behavior. 

One of the things that makes trauma recovery hard is, sometimes the name of the game is listening to our body— and other times, the name of the game is doing certain things for ourselves even though our body isn’t interested. 

Many trauma survivors have gotten used to ignoring our body. 

From early one, we’re conditioned to believe that our basic bodily reactions and urges are “bad.” 

We’re conditioned to believe that our hunger doesn’t matter. 

We’re conditioned to believe that our anxiety and fear responses, which manifest in bodily symptoms, are “weak” or otherwise disgusting. 

We’re conditioned to believe that rest is “lazy”— and that falling asleep would actually leave us unacceptably vulnerable. 

I know I sound like a broken record when I say this, but trauma recovery is functionally about reconditioning our nervous systems in ways WE choose— overwriting what growing up with trauma “taught” us. Or, more accurately, programmed in us. 

That is to say: learning to listen to our body— and heed what our body is trying to tell us. 

Learning to listen to our body when it says it’s uncomfortable or unsafe around a certain person. 

Learning to listen to our body when it says it’s exhausted and cannot “push through.” 

Learning to listen to our body when it says that its gender or sexuality may not necessarily match what the world sees. 

So, yes— there is very much an extent to which trauma recovery is all about listening to and respecting what our body is telling us. 

But it’s not that straightforward at all times, is it? 

(Of course it isn’t. It never is, in trauma recovery.) 

Just like there are times where we’ve been conditioned to ignore our body, there are also times when we’ve come to believe that we absolutely “have” to heed the signals our body is sending us— even when we know those signals are interfering with our ability to function. 

For example, it’s very common for trauma survivors to not be hungry at all— but we still have to eat. 

(In fact, in my experience, most survivors need to eat far more than we typically do, and definitely more than our appetite will “feel” like eating.)

It’s very common for survivors to not feel sleepy at all, or to feel very anxious at the very thought of closing our eyes— but we still need to rest, and find some way of getting rest that at least approximates deep sleep. 

It’s supremely ironic that many survivors who have learned to ignore or deny our bodily needs in so many ways, suddenly believe we can’t possibly defy our body signals when it comes to not feeling we can or should eat or rest. 

That’s why I say: it’s not as simple as “learning to listen to our body.” The truth is, trauma is going to have myriad, sometimes paradoxical, effects on our body and its signals. 

Here’s what I know: we’re not going to work a realistic, sustainable trauma recovery if we’re starving ourselves and not resting. It’s just not going to work. 

I know, all of us trauma survivors love to fantasize that we are The Exception, and I’m sure Trauma Brain is whispering in your ear right now that “you need to eat and rest”  might be advice that applies to everyone else…but it doesn’t apply to you.

I assure you: it does apply to you. 

Here’s something else I know: we’re not going to realistically, sustainably recover from trauma if we’re ignoring and denigrating our body’s signals, especially when it comes to our intuition about people or situations. 

We need to both pay attention to our body signals— and also commit to routines around rest and nutrition that ensure we are not running on empty. 

I know. I wish all this were simpler, too. I wish there was a black and white, one size fits all recommendation I could make to you about whether and how to pay attention to your body in trauma recovery. 

But that’s not how recovery works. Because that’s not how the world works, and that’s not how human beings work. 

Neither you nor I are the exception. 

Because you FEEL “in trouble” doesn’t actually mean you are, in fact, in trouble. 

But feeling “in trouble” is a major trigger to many adult survivors of abuse and neglect. 

That “in trouble” feeling, for a lot of us, preceded some bad sh*t going down once upon a time. 

That “in trouble” feeling was used to control us. 

Sometimes that “in trouble” feeling was used to punish us. 

When we grew up experiencing abuse or neglect, we tend to be super sensitive to the quality and stability of our attachment to others, notably our caretakers and teachers. You know, the adults in our world that dictated what happened in our world. 

When we were in trouble, either real or imagined, it indicated to us that our attachment to our caretakers and teachers may have been tenuous— and our nervous systems were conditioned to overreact to that tenuous attachment. 

Growing up abused or neglected meant that we were already on thin ice with getting our basic needs met. 

We instinctively know that we couldn’t really afford any more strikes against getting our basic needs met. 

So, in response to feeling “in trouble,” we often lapsed into the “fawn” trauma response: saying or doing anything to please and appease the powerful others around us— whether or not we actually believed or felt it. 

The essence of complex trauma is that we don’t have the support or safety to grow out of “childish” behaviors that kept us safe once upon a time— so we carry versions of those behaviors into adulthood in the form of painful, frustrating, confusing symptoms. 

Hence, why so many of us still, as adults, get wildly triggered by that “in trouble” feeling. 

Many of us get intensely frustrated and heavily discouraged by how much feeling “in trouble” f*cks with us. We HATE it. 

We tell ourselves that we’re adults— why on earth should we be so upset by feeling “in trouble?” What the hell does feeling “in trouble” as an adult mean, anyway? 

For a lot of us, that “in trouble” is kind of a catch all feeling for “we’re not doing it right.” 

We get that “in trouble” feeling not only when we feel or fear we’ve displeased someone— but also when we’ve encountered a situation we think we “should” be able to handle, but, for whatever reason, we struggle to deal with.

I personally feel “in trouble” when I encounter a situation in which I’m not quite sure what to do, where to go, or how the logistics work. 

I feel “in trouble” when I feel incompetent or confused. It’s as if there’s a part of me waiting for an adult— maybe a parent— to show up and berate me for not knowing how to human, or at least how to adult. 

You need to know that “in trouble” feeling doesn’t, actually, mean you’ve done anything wrong. 

It doesn’t, actually, mean you “deserve” to be ridiculed or punished. 

It doesn’t, actually, mean you’re ABOUT to be ridiculed or punished. 

Mind you: we can have perfectly reasonable standards and expectations for ourselves, and hold ourselves to those standards and expectations. I’m not saying there are no circumstances under which it’s quite understandable to be disappointed or upset with ourselves.

But there’s a big difference between feeling disappointed or upset with ourselves, and feeling overwhelmingly anxious, sad, and even a little angry, because we’re “in trouble.” 

Feeling “in trouble” does not mean you’re about to be punished or abandoned. 

Especially now, since  you’re working your trauma recovery— and you’ve made the commitment to not punish OR abandon yourself simply for being human. 

(You, uh, have made that commitment to yourself in trauma recovery, haven’t you? Good, I thought you had.)

Meet that “in trouble” feeling, and your nervous system reaction to it, with compassion and patience today. 

That kid you once were, who you still carry around in your head and your heart, is waiting to be abandoned or punished. That kid is pretty sure they know what feeling “in trouble” means— and it’s nothing good. 

Prove to that kid you once were inside your head and heart that you can be trusted.

Prove to them they are accepted and loved. 

Prove to them that feelings, while intense and scary sometimes, are not facts. 

You don’t have to be thrilled with every decision you’ve ever made. I’m not. 

You don’t have to always like the person you are, or you have been. I don’t. 

No trauma survivor is perfect, because no human being is perfect. We all have things we wish we would have done differently. Decisions we really whiffed on. 

Speaking for myself, I struggle with memories of times when I treated people poorly. To use a not-so-clinical term, I could be a real asshole at times. 

(The fact that I’m using the past tense isn’t to say that I can’t be an asshole now— it’s to connote that the times I’m thinking of were in the past. I assure you, I, along with every human being who continues to live, continue to have the capacity to be an asshole.) 

I look back on times when I have not treated people in my life well, and, sure, I can see how my trauma and addiction issues have influenced my behavior— but that doesn’t excuse my behavior. 

There’s a reason why the Twelve Step recovery traction, for all its shortcomings, famously includes steps that involve taking a moral inventory of our behavior and making amends: because no matter how much we may have been suffering or struggling at any given time, we still are quite capable of making very human mistakes and missteps, especial when it comes to relating to the fellow humans. 

Trauma Brain will try to convince us that we ARE our mistakes and missteps— that we’re nothing BUT an asshole. 

That’s not true. 

Trauma Brain will sometimes do this jiujitsu move where it tries to convince us that because we know we’ve behaved poorly at times, it’s also probably the case that we’re to blame for the abuse, neglect, or other trauma we endured. 

That is also not true. 

A recovery program that does not include accounting for our less-than-ideal moments as humans is incomplete. Most everybody reading this has had moments when our pain has contributed to us not being our best self. 

But a recovery program that reduces us to those moments when we failed to be our best self is also incomplete. Because we’re more than those moments we wish we could take back. 

There’s this myth that trauma survivors use what happened to us as an “excuse” to behave badly— but if you have any significant contact with survivors, you know that’s absolutely not the case. 

The truth is, it’s most often the opposite: trauma survivors tend to take on way too much personal responsibly when it comes to our mistakes, and fail to account for how our pain or symptoms were impairing our judgment or bandwidth. 

If we’re going to take realistic responsibility for anything in our lives, we need to be crystal clear on what we could and couldn’t do in the moment. 

Did I have the capacity to treat the people in my life better than I did? I think so— but I also know that my trauma and addiction issues compromise my decision making and emotional availability at times. That’s not an excuse— that’s just reality. 

The truth is, we can both take responsibility for our choices, AND acknowledge the role trauma and other pain play in our poor choices. 

We can have compassion for the people we hurt— AND for ourselves. 

The reality is, to this day, I’m not entirely clear why I treated some people the way I did. I hate that I treated certain people the way I did. I permanently damaged friendships and relationships with people I very much value, as well as behaved poorly toward people I didn’t even know all that well. That happened. That was real. 

I have to live with that. Behavior has consequences, and we choose the consequence when we choose the behavior. 

But I can also acknowledge that I was exactly as vulnerable and/or compromised as I was. That, too, is real. And that, too, should be part of the story I tell myself about who I am. 

What we’re really talking about here is self-forgiveness. 

Contrary to what you may believe, self-forgiveness is not a “get out of jail free” card when it comes to past mistakes. 

But it is a “you don’t have to hate yourself forever” card.

It’s a card we have to learn to play in trauma recovery— because we’re not going to recover while actively hating ourselves. 

Easy does it. None of this is simple or easy. 

You just breathe; blink; focus— and do the next right thing.