drglenndoyle

We don’t “think” or “decide” our way out of CPTSD.

CPTSD is not the kind of thing that can just be “thought” or “decided” away. 

But the way our culture talks about “overcoming trauma,” you might think CPTSD is the kind of thing we can just “opt out of,” provided we have enough “courage.” 

So many survivors, day after day, are subjected to utter silliness from the the culture, the media, and even people in our lives, when the subject of trauma comes up. 

People who don’t understand CPTSD is a different animal from PTSD will confidently opine that “exposure” is the way to heal trauma. 

People whose only reference point for dissociation is movies in which Dissociative Identity Disorder is dramatized and distorted will confidently describe what DID supposedly looks like and how it woks. 

People who can’t distinguish between self harm or suicidal ideation and self harming or suicidal behavior will confidently discuss how to manage personal risk and safety. 

On, and on. Everybody who has access to the internet, or who otherwise has access to our ears, might seem to have opinions, sometimes strong ones, about how to manage or heal our CPTSD. 

Many times their suggestions boil down to, “have you tried NOT thinking or feeling that way?” 

Voice some version of this to a trauma survivor, and watch how our expression goes blank. 

Because we’ve heard that a lot. 

We’ve heard that healing CPTSD is a matter of “leaving the past in the past.” 

We’ve hard that healing CPTSD is a matter of “changing our thoughts.” 

We’ve heard that healing CPTSD is a matter of “forgiveness.” 

We’ve heard a lot of things— but what we don’t often hear is any kind of nuance or depth about how any of those “suggestions” is supposed to work in the real world. 

In my experience, real world CPTSD recovery has to take seriously the fact that our symptoms are not “choices”— they are the result of years of conditioning, programming, and coercion. 

Our nervous and endocrine systems CAN change— but only with a recovery blueprint that truly understands and respects our injury. 

I believe the bedrock skills of CPTSD recovery are self-talk, mental focus, and managing our physiology, especially our breathing— but HOW we leverage these tools is not obvious or easy. To try to reduce them to “leaving the past in the past” is ineffective— and insulting. 

Realistic, sustainable CPTSD recovery is going to ask us to tune out  much of the cultural noise around trauma and recovery. 

Realistic CPTSD recovery is going to ask us to check in with ourselves, a lot, and work our recovery day by day, hour by hour. 

Realistic CPTSD recovery is going to ask us to get very real about how little “control” we have over how we feel and function— and very real about how we can leverage the actual INFLUENCE we have over our feelings and choices today. 

Do not get discouraged or otherwise head f*cked by anybody’s breezy assertion that we can “think” or “decide” our way out of CPTSD. 

You’re not “crazy,” “stupid,” or “lazy”— CPTSD is a b*tch. 

Recovery starts by realistically understanding what we’re up against— conditioning— and how long term patterns actually change: one baby step, one day, one hour, one minute, one micro choice at a time. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

drglenndoyle

Notice.

Notice when you’re telling yourself a story about how their behavior, is your fault. 

Notice when you’re telling yourself a story about how you’re “only” suffering because you are “weak.” Or “stupid.” Or, or, or. 

Notice when you’re telling yourself a story about how you don’t “deserve” better than you’re experiencing now. 

Notice when you’re telling yourself a story about how you’re The Exception to the fact that human brains and nervous systems can change with experience and guidance and support. 

Notice when you’re telling yourself a story about how because certain things happened to you, you “must” be “destined” for pain and misery for the rest of your life. 

Notice when you’re telling yourself a story about how none of the recovery tools that work for other survivors, will work for you. 

Notice when you’re telling yourself a story about how you “should” be further along in you recovery by now. 

Notice when you’re telling yourself a story about how you “should” be fairer or kinder or give another chance to people or institutions that hurt you. 

Notice when you’re telling yourself a story about how recovery is too complicated for you to wrap your head around. 

Notice when you’re telling yourself a story about how you don’t have the “willpower” or patience or focus to meaningfully recover from trauma. 

Notice when you’re telling yourself a story about how you “can’t” let on to anyone, under any circumstances, how much you’re struggling.

Notice when you’re telling ourself a story about how the “memory holes” in your past “must” mean that there’s nothing there. 

Notice when you’re telling yourself a story about how what happened to you wasn’t “bad enough” to result in your current symptoms and struggles. 

Just notice. 

Notice, and remind yourself: this is BS. Belief Systems. 

They’re Belief Systems so common to trauma survivors that I can list example after example just now, and know that it will resonate with most of the survivors reading my page. 

None of those are true. 

Some of them start out with kernels of truth, but Trauma Brain— what I call the internalized voices of our bullies and abusers, that play in our head on repeat for years— effortfully, very effectively, warps them into self-defeating assertions that we buy hook, line, and sinker. 

Why do we swallow Trauma Brain BS? Not because we’re “stupid.” 


Because we’ve been brainwashed. Conditioned. Programmed. 

Realistic trauma recovery is about scratching the record. Waking up. 

Seeing the stories for what they are. 

And creating new stories for ourselves that are more reflective of reality and more relevant to who we are and what we’re all about. 

drglenndoyle

CPTSD, self trust, and conditioning.

CPTSD is going to have you not trusting yourself. 

CPTSD is going to have you telling yourself stories about how you’re struggling because you’re “lazy” or “stupid”— and minimizing the obstacles that have been thrown in your path. 

Remember what CPTSD is: in contrast to PTSD, which revolves largely (but not only) around intrusive memories and reactions to our trauma itself, CPTSD is largely (but not only ) about what happened to us has conditioned us to believe about ourselves and the world. 

Most of the time our CPTSD conditioning hones in on how much we suck. 

We can often trace that conditioning back to messages we received— sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly— growing up. 

Many CPTSD survivors describe being told that the main or only reason people struggle or suffer is because they are “weak.” 

Many CPTSD survivors remember parents and other adults in their world who convinced them to accept “no excuses” for struggling— who conditioned them to believe that everything was their fault, and everything was their responsibility. 

That BS (Belief System— but also the other kind of “BS”)— “everything is my fault, and everything is my responsibility— is maybe the most common mindset to be found among CPTSD survivors. 

Even if we back up and try to look at it “objectively,” we have Trauma Brain, what I call the internalized voices of our bullies and abusers, “helpfully” telling us that it doesn’t matter what we would tell anybody else in our situation: we are CLEARLY at fault for our own pain. 

Moving past that “everything and everything” BS, as I call it, is a core task of trauma recovery. 

And maybe a little surprisingly, it begins with confronting fear. 

Fear of what it would mean for us to stop believing everything was our fault, and everything is our responsibility. 

Fear of what others might think or say if we gave ourselves a break, cut ourselves a little slack. 

Fear of what those adults who taught us to think that way would think if they knew we were letting go of what they tried so hard to drill into our head. 

My point is: it’s not a one time decision to “let go” of CPTSD BS. 

We don’t believe those things for the hell of it. They were conditioned into us. Change is going to require reconditioning ourselves. Rewiring ourselves. Reformatting our hard drive. 

That is to say, it’s a process. 

And, like most processes that ask us to reconsider things we’ve thought, felt, believed, or done for a long time, it’s going to take time and feel awkward or painful at points. 

That’s why we keep repeating “one day at a time” over and over again in recovery— and why I frequently take that down to one hour or one minute at a time. 

Or, even more simply: breathe, blink, focus. 

You can learn to trust yourself again— or, maybe, for the first time. 

CPTSD isn’t going to make it easy. 

But then again, if you’re reading this, you’re probably used to doing hard things. 

You’re up to this. 

drglenndoyle

Don’t take CPTSD’s lies at face value.

Spoiler: your trauma conditioning will find every possible way to label every halfway positive thought you ever have about yourself as bullsh*t. 

Trauma Brain, what I call the internalized voices of our bullies and abusers that we play on repeat for years and years, has absolutely no interest in what’s actually true. 

But it’s very good at telling us we suck. 

Trauma Brain is so skilled, so gifted, at telling us we suck, that it will find new and creative ways to inform us we suck, almost daily. 

There isn’t a positive or gentle thought about ourself we can think, without CPTSD stepping in and telling us how none of that “positive” stuff is true— but every negative thing we think about ourself is “obviously” the “real” truth. 

You need to know that has nothing to do with reality. 

You need to know that has everything to do with conditioning. 

I talk a lot about how trauma conditions us— what it conditions us to think, to believe, to feel, and to do. I do this because I believe conditioning is at the heart of our CPTSD wounds. 

I don’t believe CPTSD is entirely about what happened to us. I believe it’s about what the things that happened to us, did to our nervous system going forward. 

People think CPTSD is about “the past.” It’s not. It’s about what’s going on in our nervous system, inside our head and our heart, right here, right now. 

It’s about how all that conditioning makes it hard to live life. To hold down a job. To manage relationships. To manage money. To manage feelings. 

Nobody reading this is “stuck in the past.” Not the way people think we are, anyway. 

We are stuck in patterns of thinking, believing, feeling, and behaving that were powerfully shaped by the past— and that sh*t doesn’t change overnight. It doesn’t change with a one time decision. 

That’s what I wish people understood. 

That’s what I need you to understand. 

Trauma Brain is going to try to tell you you can’t do anything right— but that has nothing to do with whether you can or can’t do anything right. 

Trauma Brain is going to try to tell you you can’t make a relationship work— but that has nothing to do with whether you can or can’t make a relationship work. 

Trauma Brain is going to tell you there is no hope for you. But that has nothing— nothing— to do with whether there actually is hope for you. 

Trauma Brain is an unreliable narrator. 

Remember that. 

No matter how convincing or vivid or familiar CPTSD’s lies are, they are still lies. 

Lying to us about us is what trauma does best. 

Don’t take CPTSD’s lies at face value. 

drglenndoyle

Talk to your (past) self.

A trauma recovery tool I get a lot of mileage out of is having conversations, almost every day, with my past self. 

That past version of myself that I still carry around in my head and my heart. 

For a long time I didn’t realize I was still carrying him around with me. 

I didn’t realize his pain was impacting how I feel and function every day. 

I thought I’d left him, the “me” whose main experience of existence was aloneness and defensiveness, behind. After all, I was no longer that age; I no longer lived there; I no longer had contact with many of the people who hurt me. 

But, as it turns out, we never quite leave the past versions of ourselves behind. 

They’re still here, with us, here and now. 

Our choice is not whether to leave the past version of us in the past. 

Our choice is how we interact with that version of ourselves, here and now. 

We can try to ignore that past version of ourselves, but if we do that, a huge chunk of our feelings and motivations are going to remain mysterious— and inaccessible— to us. 

The backbone of realistic CPTSD recovery is our relationship with ourselves. 

The damage CPTSD inflicts is on that relationship. 

CPTSD tricks and bullies us into relating to ourselves, especially our past self, with condescension and aggression. 

CPTSD tricks and bullies us into hating and blaming our past self for our own pain. 

The past version of ourselves is with us day in, day out— and we need to choose how, not if, we’re going to relate to them. How we’re going to talk to them. 

Don’t get me wrong: there are plenty of things past-me did that I don’t love. There were plenty of cringey moments. Plenty of unkind moments. Plenty of not-courageous moments. Plenty of moments where past-me lacked integrity and purpose. 

Doesn’t matter. Not anymore. 

Relating to my past self with compassion, patience, and realism has been, is, a game changer. 

Doing so explicitly in my journal gives me an opportunity not only to shape my relationship with myself, but to review how my relationship with myself has evolved since I chose recovery. 

Not every tool is for everybody. 

But talking to myself, especially my wounded past self, in written form is a tool I almost always find effective. 

It doesn’t solve all my problems— because no one tool solves all our problems. Solving all our problems is not what trauma recovery tools and strategies are for. 

But it makes many of my challenges more handle-able.

drglenndoyle

The body keeps the…well, you know.

CPTSD tends to be hell on our relationship with our body. 

Many CPTSD survivors even struggle to accurately imagine what their body looks like. 

Core to CPTSD is shame that seems to settle into every nook and cranny of every cell— and that can result in us feeling disconnected to or repulsed by our body, sometimes out of nowhere. 

There are lots of reasons why CPTSD scrambles our relationship with our physical body, bt one of the main reasons is, in order to survive complex trauma at all we had to psychologically distance ourselves from ourselves. 

CPTSD develops when traumatic stress is prolonged, functionally inescapable, and entwined in our relationships— meaning there is no actual, real world fleeing from the pain. 

So our nervous system has to invent ways we can escape, sort of— and consequently we end up floating out of or mentally rejecting our body. 

As with all CPTSD reactions, disconnection from or disgust with our body started out as a defense mechanism— a way for us to stay safe. Safer, anyway. 

But, as with all CPTSD reactions, the ultimate damage is in how our psychological defenses wormed their way into our belief systems and self-concept. 

For many CPTSD survivors, an added factor is chronic pain or complicated medical conditions. 

For some survivors it can feel as if their body, in addition to being something they hate or profoundly disidentify with, is literally trying to kill them. 

I’ve never met a CPTSD survivor who did not have at least a somewhat fraught relationship with their physical body. 

For many of us it ultimately leads back to blaming ourselves for what we endured— including subsequent trauma responses that are painful, confusing, and difficult to change. 

You need to know your body isn’t your enemy. 

You need to know that CPTSD is doing what CPTSD does— trying to turn you against yourself (and lying to you to get this to happen). 

You need to know there is nothing inherently shameful about your body— and there’s nothing that can happen or has happened to your body that YOU should be ashamed of. 

The backbone of realistic, sustainable trauma recovery is repairing our relationship with ourselves— and that includes our physical body. 

Your physical body, no matter what it looks like, no matter how it feels, does not deserve to be hated or punished. 

It deserves to be nurtured, soothed, and respected. 

Just like the rest of your person. 

drglenndoyle

How to handle it when Trauma Brain makes you feel “crazy.”

You are going to run into a bunch of stuff in this CPTSD recovery journey that won’t seem to make a lot of sense. 

You’re going to run into memories that don’t seem to fit in with the rest of your life story. 

You’re going to run into feelings that seem wildly disproportionate to anything you’re thinking or anything that’s happening to you right now. 

You’re going to run into reflexive relationship behaviors that leave personal and professional bonds you value in tatters. 

You’re going to find yourself twisted up in knots over self-care behaviors, even down to bathing and brushing your teeth, that other people seem to take for granted— and you’re going to have no earthly idea why. 

One of the frustrating things about struggling with complex trauma is, so much of what we’re dealing with is just outside of our conscious awareness. 

The conditioning that is ruining our life is mostly implicit— that is, we don’t wake up every morning and “decide” we’re going to think, feel, and do things that kick our own ass. 


Trauma responses are not “choices.” 

The very nature of conditioning is that it grooms us to think, feel, and do things without thinking, without choosing, and often in opposition to what we actually want or value. 

The reason why I keep using the term “Trauma Brain” is to drive home the fact that what can look to others like “choices” are not, actually, being “chosen” by us— they’re conditioned responses installed by the abuse and neglect of our bullies and abusers, often years or decades ago. 

Our conditioned trauma responses may very often sen “crazy” to us. 

So many survivors have the experience of thinking, feeling, and doing things that seem to have absolutely nothing to do with what we actually want or value— and having absolutely no idea why. 

That’s how conditioning works. Trauma Brain is coercive, by definition— even if we seem to be “doing it to ourselves” in the absence of any obvious external threat. 

When we’re caught in cycles of thinking, feeling, and doing things that we don’t understand and seem to be ruining our life, it’s temping to get frustrated with or aggressive toward ourselves. 

Again and again and again I’ve met survivors who berate themselves for their symptoms or their choices— which doesn’t seem to have any affect on what they think, feel, or do. 

I’m going to ask you, no matter how frustrated you are with yourself, to try to reel that in. 

I’m going to ask you to not call yourself “crazy.” 

I’m going to ask you to not try to shame or punish yourself out of these thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that, I know, I understand, don’t seem to have anything to do with who you actually are or what you actually want for your life. 

The core of trauma recovery is rebuilding— or maybe just building for the fist time— a safe, supportive relationship with ourselves. 

That means, no matter how incomprehensible our thoughts, feelings, or choices are, we don’t flip over into shame or self-punishment. 

If we want our nervous system, our endocrine system, our “parts,” our subconscious mind, and our inner child to work with us, instead of against us, we need to make the inside of our head and heart a safe place for ourselves. 

That is: we can’t have our own body and mind living in fear or expectation of an attack from the inside out. 

“Self trust” and “self love” may seem like kind of fluffy, abstract terms, but in my book, they are fundamental to CPTSD recovery— and they are only created when we engage with our own thoughts, feelings, and behavior with compassion, acceptance, and patience. Even— especially— when we don’t like our own thoughts, feelings, or behavior. 

Yes, you’re going to run into plenty on this recovery journey you won’t quite understand, that will confuse you, annoy you, exasperate you. 

I’m going to ask you to do something hard with all of that— something your abusers and bullies would NEVER do. 

I’m going to ask you to accept it. 

Not like it, not love it, not give up on changing it— but accept it. Radically accept it all. 

What’s more: I’m going to ask you to validate it. Validate where those “crazy” thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are coming from, anyway— the pain and survival needs that gave birth to this thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. 

If you really want those thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to start working with you instead of against you, if you really want to understand and transform them— begin by accepting and validating them. 

Just try it on. See how it feels. 

Drop the rope, as we say in Twelve Step recovery. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

drglenndoyle

CPTSD and reasons to live.

I am never going to tell anyone their reason for living isn’t “good enough.” 

If it keeps you alive for even one more day, it’s “good enough” for today. 

We trauma survivors have a rough habit of judging, often harshly, our reasons for living (in fairness, we trauma survivors have a rough habit of judging, harshly, pretty much everything about ourselves)— but, truly, any reason for living is better than no reason for living. 

I very often work with survivors who tell me their reason for living today is someone else, usually a person or a pet— and that’s great. I have no problem with that. 

I do, however, encourage survivors to work on expanding their “reasons for living” list. 

Many people have many different reasons for living, but for the vast majority of the people in the world who continue to want to exist, their reasons include experiences that are meaningful and pleasurable to them— and their confidence that they can create or access those experiences on the regular. 

Trauma survivors, however, tend to struggle with this. 

Our painful experiences have convinced us that we cannot, or at the very least will not, create or access experiences that are pleasurable or meaningful. 

Oh, sure, sometimes we’ll have an experience that is okay, or even great— but those positive experiences often come at a complicated emotional cost for us. 

The moment we become aware we are experiencing something pleasurable or meaningful, we start to feel anxious. 

Part of us often gets activated that is thoroughly convinced that that this pleasurable or meaningful experience is about to be yanked away from us— and we’ll somehow be in trouble for daring to feel good for a minute. 

One of the bedrock beliefs that trauma cultivates in us is that good experiences don’t last. 

I hear variants of this every day. “Nothing gold can stay.” “Everybody leaves.” “Don’t get happy.” 

When we survivors happen to experience pleasure or meaning in our life, we tend to immediately anticipate losing it— while at the same time telling ourselves a story about how we never really “deserved” that moment of meaning or pleasure in the first place. 

There is a cognitive distortion called the “mental filter” that Trauma Brain is very good at leveraging against us, that will have us believing that any positive experience we have is basically an accident— that while we are responsible for every bad thing that happens to us, the “good” stuff comes and goes unreliably and completely independent of our own efforts. 

I know. What a bunch of BS (Belief Systems). But that’s what CPTSD does to us. 

If we’re going to consistently manage our suicidal ideation, we need to realistically chip away at Trauma Brain’s insistence that it is “pointless” to try to create or experience meaning and pleasure in our life. 

Yes, many pleasurable or meaningful experiences are, in fact transitory— but it doesn’t follow that the are not worth creating, pursuing, or enjoying. 

When we start to understand how CPTSD mangles our beliefs about ourselves, other people, the wold, and the future, we begin to see that we’ve been conned out of creating reasons to live that don’t depend entirely on other people or our pets. 

Again: I have zero problem with living for others or our pets. As I say: any reason to live is better than no reason to live. No shame and no shade. 


But as we continue to work our trauma recovery, we’re going to come up against our beliefs about the possibility of meaning and pleasure in our life again and again— and sooner or later we’re going to have to confront Trauma Brain’s lies about our ability to create a life worth living. 

You have as much ability to create and experience pleasure and meaning as anyone who has ever existed. No matter what has happened to you, and no matter what your life has been like until now. 

You might be new to developing the skillset that supports you in creating a life worth living— but the good news is, you’re right here, right now, reading this. 

That means it’s not too late. 

That means there is a life of pleasure and meaning out there for you. 

That means there are skills and tools that will work for you. 

Your reasons to live will not always be a short list. Just keep woking your recovery. 

drglenndoyle

No, you’re not “too old” to recover from CPTSD.

Some of the most meaningful trauma recovery work we will ever do occurs in our later acts. 

One of Trauma Brain’s most persistent, pernicious lies is that we’re “too old” to meaningfully recover. 

This lie often goes hand in hand with the lie that there’s something “shameful” about struggling with trauma reactions and symptoms after a certain age. 

This is particularly the case when our trauma originates in our childhood— “that was so long ago, how are you not over it by now?”— but it’s also true when we’ve been traumatized as adults, for example by domestic violence or coercive spiritual control. 

Our culture just loves this beliefs that adults “shouldn’t” be vulnerable to traumatic stress— and that if we are, it represents some kind of “immaturity” or “weakness” on our part. 

Traumatic stress responses are injuries. 

Very infrequently do serious injuries heal on their own, with just the passage of time— especially when we’re doing things that tend to make them worse. 

Trying to deny, disown, or ignore trauma wounds, we’re functionally trying to walk on broken limbs. 

Yes, we might be able to limp along, and we might even be able to dissociate the pain of doing so to a greater or lesser degree— but in the end, it can only make the injury itself worse. 

What many people fail to understand about CPTSD in particular is that the experience of living with complex trauma reactions, is itself a trauma. 

Part of what makes complex trauma “complex” is the fact that it rarely stems from one time incidents— something that happened, but is definitively “over” now. 

And even if the “main” part of the trauma happened in the past, the experience of CPTSD symptoms tend to be so dysregulating, so life-disrupting, that living with them creates its own level of complex trauma. 

Complex trauma, by definition, unfolds over time, entwines with our important relationships, and is functionally inescapable. 

The experience of CPTSD, just like the experience of chronic medical illness or chronic pain, very much ticks all the “boxes” of complex trauma. 

So: why on earth should we assume that CPTSD, which itself imposes a daily experience of complex trauma, would get better with time, or as we age? 

Why on earth would we assume adults are less vulnerable to CPTSD than children, regardless of when the original trauma occurred? 

Some people will answer that question by explaining that adults have more resources, development, experience, and physical size than children, and are thus better able to cope with CPTSD— and that might be true for many people, but “coping” is not the same as “resolving.”

Adults are human— and humans are vulnerable to traumatic stress, regardless of when they are exposed to it. 

Adults who are exposed to complex traumatic stress are often at an even greater risk of developing CPTSD, insofar as they often feel cultural pressure to hide and minimize their experience rather than seeking support. 

All of which is to say: most of the life changing CPTSD recovery work I do is with adults in their 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, and even 70’s. No joke. 

It’s with adults who have decided that they’re not “too old” to work a trauma recovery— but they ARE “too old” to let another day go by with the voices of their bullies and abusers in their head, calling the shots. 

The culture will absolutely try to shame you to of seeking support fo CPTSD, and it will often collaborate with your Trauma Brain to do it. “You’re too old” is one of its most successful tools, because it hooks right up with the cultural shame we already feel about aging. 

Don’t lose the forest for the trees with all this. 

If you are reading this, you are at exactly the right age to recover from trauma. 

Starting today, if today is when you’re starting. 

drglenndoyle

Our symptoms are not our identity.

CPTSD has this way of convincing us that our wounds are our identity. 

They’re not. 

Our symptoms often masquerade as who we “really” are, and sometimes we’re sufficiently confused or exhausted by them to buy in to it. 

Our symptoms are not the “real” us. 

They are our real wounds. 

They are the scars we bear from having survived situations and relationships humans are not built to survive. 

But we don’t “choose” our symptoms. 

Our symptoms have nothing to do with our preferences, values, or goals— so they cannot, by definition, be our identity. 

Our post traumatic wounds, up to and including dissociation, do not define our personality. They hijack it. 

Yes, they hijack our personality again and again, in relationship after relationship— but that still does not mean they somehow “become” our personality. 

Often we spent so much bandwidth managing our symptoms for so long, that we have trouble remembering who we really are and what we’re all about. 

We can’t remember a time when we made a choice simply because we liked something or something resonated with us beyond our trauma struggles. 

We can’t imagine what it might be like to live a day, let alone a life, centered around what we want, what we like, what gives us pleasure, what creates meaning for us. 

CPTSD doesn’t just hijack our personality at times— it often hijacks our life. 

And yet: we are not our CPTSD. Or DID. Or BPD. Or any other diagnosis that we happen to meet criteria for today. 

For my money, a huge, under-discussed focus of trauma recovery is rediscovering and rebuilding ourselves. 

For many survivors it’s not even about “rebuilding,” insofar as we don’t have a “before” the trauma to “rebuild” or even “remember.” 

For many survivors “rebuilding” ourselves actually means “building” our sense of self from scratch. Discovering who we are for the first time— without CPTSD calling the shots. 

That process often starts out with a fairly simple question: “Who would you be, if you didn’t have to spend all day managing trauma symptoms?” 

The truth is, many survivors have been convinced by CPTSD that they don’t get any meaningful say in who they are or what their life looks like. 

When we get into recovery, and realize that we do, actually, have more agency than we ever thought we did in choosing our personality and crafting our life experience, we often don’t have any idea wha the hell to do next— and we often feel unworthy of the opportunity. 

After all, who am I, to “choose” anything about my life? 

Won’t I just f*ck it up? 

Don’t I “have” to choose a life that everyone else will approve of, and that meets everybody else’s needs and priorities? 

No, you will not f*ck it up. 

You’re going to have all the struggles every human has in designing a life, and you’ll definitely have moments where you’re not your best self. Ask me how I know. 

But you won’t f*ck it up. 

And no, you don’t have to choose a life that suits ANYBODY but you. 

I know, I know. That goes against every scrap of programming that’s been pumped into your brain and seared into your nervous system for years. 

But maybe that’s the good news. 

After all, a life consistent with your old programming— you have that right now. How’s that working out for you? 

Your struggles are not your identity. You are not your symptoms. 

You are what you choose to do next. 

Easy dos it. Breathe; blink; focus.