drglenndoyle

“Joy?” What the hell is that?

CPTSD survivors are often not great at the skill of feeling joy. 

No shame. Of COURSE we’re not good at it. 

Why would we be good at feeling joy, when for so long feeling anything remotely good felt like—or demonstrably was— a trap? 

We were conditioned to believe that feeling good left us vulnerable. 

We were conditioned to believe that feeling good was most likely “fake”— that to allow ourselves to feel good only made it harder when the good feeling went away. Or was ripped away, as it often was. 

We were conditioned to believe that we had no “right” to feel good— and we were “bad” if we “gave in” to the “temptation” of feeling good. 

Most of the time this conditioning operated outside of our awareness— that’s how conditioning works. 

But the end result was, our nervous system was not predisposed to feeling good. 

It wasn’t a skill we had a lot of practice with. 

Fast forward to today, to us working our trauma recovery: as we do things, day by day, to feel and function better, it’s very common to notice anxiety spiking alongside our progress. 

That anxiety is often an artifact of how we’ve been conditioned to respond to feeling good. 

The “it’s a trap!” energy can be strong. 

Sometimes that anxiety can get so intense that we actually sabotage ourselves, so we don’t actually have to “cope” with feeling good. 

Yes— all this might sound weird, even “crazy,” to a non-trauma survivor. 

They might read this and be like, “who DOESN’T want to feel good? Weirdos.” 

It’s one of the many paradoxes of CPTSD. 

It’s not that we don’t want to feel good. Of course we want to feel good. 

It’s that we’re not quite sure how to feel good without jumping out of our skin with anxiety.

Our relationship with pleasure is one of the many relationships we need to revisit and probably reshape as we work our trauma recovery. 

You, actually, have the right to feel good. 

You have the right to feel good without worrying intensely about someone coming along and stealing that feeling from you— or shaming you for feeling it in the first place. 

We get better at experiencing joy the more precise we get at it— and the more we meet our complicated relationship with pleasure with compassion, patience, and realism. 

You know— like we meet all our symptoms and struggles in trauma recovery. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

drglenndoyle

What “they” see is not the whole story of your CPTSD recovery.

What people see of our CPTSD recovery in public is only going to be a teeny, tiny percentage of the real story. 

The real story of trauma recovery happens in private. 

Private moments of doubt. 

Private moments of pain. 

Private moments of really, really wanting to hurt ourselves. 

Private moments of wanting to give up. 

Navigating those hard private moments, day after day and, especially, night after night— that’s what CPTSD recovery is really all about. 

The stuff other people see— us looking better, functioning better, showing up, engaging more— that stuff is all kind of gravy. 

For that matter, many of us survivors have lots of practice doing all that public stuff, even when we’re circling the drain. 

The truth is, nobody really knows how we’re leveraging our tools. 

How we’re talking to ourselves. 

How we’re using our mental focus. What we’re visualizing. The mental safe spaces we’ve created for ourselves, our “parts,” and our inner child. 

Nobody knows how we’re relating to our body and using our breathing to stay grounded and soothe ourselves. 

Only we know the full story. 

Only we know how hard we’re working. 

Only we know the real journey we’ve been on— and what point on that journey our current state represents. 

Don’t confuse what other people see with what’s really going on. 

They won’t see it all. 

They probably won’t see the most important aspects of our CPTSD recovery. 

But those milestones really, really f*cking matter. 

Whether or not I, personally, can see them,  I want you to know I understand how much work is happening beneath the surface. 

And I want you to know how overwhelmingly proud of you I am. 

That’s true whether or not I personally know you. 

Even if I don’t know you— I know you. 

We’re all in the same fight tonight. 

Keep on keeping on. 

Breathe; blink; focus— one minute at a time.  

drglenndoyle

Experiencing anger doesn’t make you an “angry person.” But denying and disowning it…

You’re going to hear it said that anger is just “sadness’s bodyguard”— but I don’t believe that. 

I believe that anger, while it frequently occurs alongside sadness, is its own thing— as real and valid and independent as any experience, emotional or otherwise. 

Remember that anger evolved for a reason. 

The cave-people who could get angry when other cave-people tried to encroach upon their territory and steal their mates and wooly mammoths and stuff, had a survival advantage over those cave-people who couldn’t. 

Anger, evolutionarily speaking, gives us a rush of focus and energy to defend our territory. 

Anger is important. Anger is valid. Anger matters. 

It it sometimes the case that our anger in a specific situation is actually about a different situation, maybe from the past? Sure— but that doesn’t make it invalid. 

The worst thing we can do for and with our anger is to dismiss it as nothing more than the “bodyguard” of another feeling. 

Anger, properly understood and responsibly managed, can be one of our most important trauma recovery tools. 

Of course, denied, disowned, misunderstood, and mismanaged, our anger can be as destructive to us as our abusers’ anger was back then. 

That’s why it’s so important that we take time to understand, validate, and manage our anger— precisely so we DON’T become our abusers in how we react (instead of respond) to our anger. 

Sometimes I get sh*t for being pro-anger— but I don’t know what to tell you. Anger is as important and valid as anything else we can experience. 

Meeting our anger with denial or shame is psychologically and even physically harmful to us. 

I recommend meeting anger just like we meet anything and everything else in trauma recovery: with compassion, patience, realism, and respect. 

Experiencing anger doesn’t make you an “angry person.” 

But denying and disowning your anger probably will. 

drglenndoyle

You deserved to be loved, not used.

When we’ve been used, over & over again, by the people or institutions that were SUPPOSED to love and protect us, it changes us. 

It changes how we think about ourselves. 

It changes how we engage with the world. 

It changes how we understand our worth and role in life. 

This is how CPTSD develops: exposure to abuse and/or neglect that was prolonged, inescapable, and entwined with our relationships. 

Being used instead of loved is exactly this kind of trauma. 

We’re uniquely vulnerable to complex trauma as children, but in truth humans can develop CPTSD throughout the lifespan when we’re used instead of loved. 

It happens in families, it happens in churches, it happens in communities, it happens in political movements, it happens in cults. 

It happens whenever and whenever a person or institution that claims to have the best interest of someone in mind actually just uses them— for their body, for their money, for their vote, or whatever. 

Many of us don’t like to admit we were or are vulnerable to complex trauma. 

We’ll do backflips to explain how what we experienced, ether in the distant or recent past, wasn’t “really” traumatic— how, yeah, maybe we were used, but it really wasn’t a “big deal.” 

Psychologically, it’s always a big deal when humans are used instead of loved, particularly by people or institutions that claim to love them. 

We often try to deny this— because we don’t like to feel we “need” anything that the people or institutions that abused us “should” have offered us. 

We want to seem “tough.” 

But neither you or I are “tough” enough to not need love— or be be unaffected when love is replaced by exploitation. 

It’s a specific kind of betrayal. 

And the reality is, most CPTSD involves betrayal. 

Parents betraying their roles. 

Clergy betraying their vows. 

Churches betraying their missions. 

Political parties betraying their supposed purpose. 

There can be many paths to developing CPTSD, but those paths often converge at the point of human beings being used instead of loved. 

CPTSD recovery involves us beginning to see ourselves as human again— that is to say, worthy of love, worthy of belief, worthy of care, and worthy of protection. 

Affirming our humanity— our essential deservingness and our essential agency, in particular— is core to realistic, sustainable CPTSD recovery. 

You shouldn’t have been used. 

You should have been loved.

We still need and deserve that.

No toxic positivity bullsh*t— you and I still need and deserve to be loved instead of used.

drglenndoyle

All we can do, is what we can do.

All we can today, is what we can do today. 

We can’t go back and re-do yesterday. Or last year. Or ten or twenty years ago. 

Have you ever made decisions you’ve regretted? I have. 

Have you ever been your not-best self? Same. 

Are there things you’d do differently, all the way up to this last minute, if you had a time machine and could re-do them? There absolutely are, for me. 

But— we can’t. 

Our past was what it was. 

Our choices in the past were what they were. 

We have to accept that what has happened up until now, has happened. 

We don’t have to LIKE that fact— but we have to accept it, because it IS a fact. 

All we can do is the next right thing. The next thng that is aligned with our goals and values. The next authentic thing. 

My own Trauma Brain gets absolutely vicious with me about decisions I made in the past— about the person I was in the past. 

It’s real easy to get into a spiral about how I “deserve” to be punished for it all— and how I don’t “deserve” the opportunity to feel good or better here, now, in the present. 

Sound familiar? 

Here’s the thing: punishing myself now does not erase what happened then. 

It doesn’t erase any of the things that happened to me, and it doesn’t erase any of the not-so-great decisions I made. 

The me-of-back-then was doing the best he could with the tools he had— and while I wish he had different tools and more support than he did, that doesn’t change how things actually happened. 

All we can do is what we can do, now. 

All we can do is get really clear about who we are and what we want out of our life, day by day, now. 

All we can do is make the next decision in front of us in as goals-and-values aligned way as we can, with the tools and support we have, now. 

I was not perfect in the past, and I am not perfect now. There’s a very good chance I won’t be perfect tomorrow, either. 

But that doesn’t mean I, or anybody else shouldering regret about the past, deserve open ended punishment going forward. 

That doesn’t help anyone. That doesn’t make anything “right.”

I will never feel good about some past decisions or some past versions of myself.

But I don’t have to feel good about them, to extend myself grace. 

All we can do is what we can do. 

We create our future one day, one minute, one decision at a time. 

Real accountability is not self punishment; it is changed behavior. 

Everybody reading this could stand to extend themselves a little more grace— and to focus on making amends, if they need to, by doing the next right thing. Not agonizing over their last not-great choice.

drglenndoyle

Why naming our emotions can be a useful trauma recovery tool.

Naming our emotions can be a powerful, underused CPTSD recovery tool. 

Naming our emotions as we experience them helps pry us out from feeling overwhelmed by them, immersed in them. 

It shifts us, at least a little, to an observer of our emotions, not just who experiences them. 

Naming our emotions communicates to our nervous system and “parts” that our emotions are important, and worth identifying. That we respect and value them enough to be specific. 

Naming emotions can help reduce their intensity. There’s a difference between feeling “sadness” or “fear,” for example, and “AHHHHHHHHHHHHH.” 

Naming our emotions enlists the left hemisphere of the brain. Anything that gets us using words when we’re overwhelmed hooks into that left hemisphere— which is the “coolant” to the “nuclear reactor” that is our overheated right cerebral hemisphere. 

(This is one reason talking in therapy or to a friend when we’re emotional often calms us down— using words and giving structure to what we’re experiencing taps into that “cooling” left hemisphere, instead of leaving us stranded with a right hemisphere that is melting down.)

Naming our emotions gives us a chance to actually devise a realistic strategy for processing and responding to them. Sadness requires a different strategy than fear, requires a different strategy than anger. 

What we’re experiencing matters when it comes to realistic strategy and tool selection. 

Naming our emotions can be a step toward validating them— and validation needs to be worked into any and every effective CPTSD recovery tool and strategy. 

Naming our emotions might take practice and patience, especially if we’ve been conditioned to deny and disown our emotional life— as most CPTSD survivors have been. 

So— don’t pressure yourself. 

Maybe even start with an emotion chart or wheel. Think of getting to know your emotional world like learning a language— you might need some vocabulary “flash cards” at first. 

But people learn languages. 

Just like survivors can get good at naming our emotions. 

It’s a straightforward, free recovery tool that we have nothing to lose, and potentially a lot to gain, by trying. 

drglenndoyle

The food struggle is real.

There is zero shame in struggling with food. There are lots of reasons why CPTSD survivors struggle with it. 

But the world can be real judgmental about our struggles with food— and we can be real judgmental of ourselves when it comes to our struggles with food. 

Food is connected to all sorts of touchy, triggery stuff for us. 

It’s connected to literal survival. 

It’s connected to body image. 

It’s connected to comfort. 

It’s connected to pleasure. 

It’s connected to shame. 

Dissociation can make food and eating even more complicated. It’s hard to manage a literal survival behavior that requires presence and consistency when you’re unpredictably in and out of the present time, place, and person. 

We need to meet our struggles with food and eating just like we meet any other trauma symptom or struggle— with realism, patience, and compassion. 

You need to know you don’t have to figure out the eating thing today. Or figure it out perfectly. Or figure it out to anyone else’s satisfaction. 

Eating is one of those things where we often don’t like to even admit we’re struggling, because it’s a “normal” behavior that “normal” people “shouldn’t” struggle with or freak out about. 

F*ck that. This is CPTSD recovery. We left “normal” a few turns back, if you haven’t noticed. 

Navigate the food thing on meal, one snack, one crumb, at a time. 

Know you’re definitely not the first or the last CPTSD survivor to struggle with food or eating.

Know that it gets easier the more we accept that we’re going to struggle with it— and the more we forgive ourselves for struggling with it. 

Know that you deserve to eat, and to even enjoy eating. 

And know that if you don’t right now believe you deserve to eat or enjoy eating, it’s okay. No shame. 

Know that nobody’s mad at you and you’re not in trouble for struggling with eating. 

It’s just something we’re working on, something we’re figuring out. 

No more, no less. 

Easy does it. Breathe; blink; focus. 

drglenndoyle

CPTSD and DID do not exist for the hell of it.

You need to know you didn’t develop these CPTSD patterns or DID patterns for the hell of it. 

That’s what CPTSD and DID are: patterns. Conditioned patterns of attention, experience, and reflexive behavior. 

CPTSD and DID are NOT “incurable diseases.” 

CPTSD and DID are NOT who you are or your “personality.” 

CPTSD and DID are NOT “choices.” 

They are patterns that have been conditioned in you, likely for years or even decades— meaning you may not even remember a time when those patterns didn’t define your life experience. 

Patterns that have been conditioned, can be unconditioned and reconditioned. 

That doesn’t mean it’s “easy.” That means it’s possible— with consistency and commitment and support and strategy. 

The patterns of thinking, believing, feeling, and behaving that add up to CPTSD and DID developed for reasons— most often, to keep us safe on some level. 

What many people don’t understand is, the overwhelming majority of trauma “symptoms” have their roots in self-protection. 

What WE need to understand is that giving up those “symptoms”— up to and including self-harm and suicidal ideation— is probably going to feel UNSAFE on some level, especially at first. 

We do not develop CPTSD or DID to be “difficult.” 

Nobody reading this “chose” CPTSD or DID. (Given the actual “choice,” literally everyone who struggles with either would absolutely choose differently 10 times out of 10.)

The most painful, frustrating trauma “symptoms” we experience are purposeful. 

And if we’re going to realistically reduce our vulnerability to them, we need to understand and respect what they’re all about. 

We have to give them their due. 

All of this is part of a larger project of steadfastly refusing to hate or reject “parts” of ourselves or our experience. 

For as ashamed or confused as we are by aspects of what we’re experiencing, realistic recovery is going to ask us to deal with our “parts” and our experiences with respect, patience, and openness. 

CPTSD and DID do not exist, either in general or in us, “for no reason.” 

And if we’re going to ask our nervous system to run new, different unfamiliar patterns, instead of the patterns we’ve been running for years, we’d better be prepared to demonstrate that we understand what a significant “ask” that is. 

drglenndoyle

CPTSD is overwhelming. No need to deny it.

CPTSD can be overwhelming. No need to deny it. No need to minimize it. 

The fact that we can meaningfully recover from CPTSD and create a life worth living doesn’t take away from the fact that trauma absolutely sucks— nor is it to say that it’s our fault if we haven’t yet recovered. 

People so want to to think about CPTSD and the suffering it causes in black and white terms— but it’s just not that simple. 

Many of us feel ashamed for feeling overwhelmed by CPTSD. We blame ourselves for “letting” it get the better of us, especially if we grew up believing we had to be “tough.” 

The problem with that whole mindset is that it’s not just that CPTSD “feels” overwhelming— CPTSD IS overwhelming. Literally. It overwhelms our capacity to cope and function. 

That’s not our fault— but Trauma Brain, the internalized voices of our bullies and abusers, will try to tell us it is. 

Many of us feel ashamed for not having gotten our lives back on track yet, especially if we were raised to believe that feeling or functioning poorly is both our fault and our responsibility. 

The problem with THAT whole mindset is that we can’t “get our lives back on track” until we have the tools and support to do so— and we’re actually READY to do so. 

We’re not ready for trauma recovery until we are. 

And there’s no forcing it if we’re not yet at that point. 

The temptation to deny and disown how overwhelming CPTSD is can be very strong in survivors, especially if we’ve been shamed and punished for struggling in the past. 

After all, we’re not supposed to “let” anyone see our weaknesses, are we? 

We’re not supposed to “let” anyone know we’re struggling or hurting. 

We hear terms like “self compassion” and “validation,” and part of us might assume it’s a trick— a trap to get us to cop to vulnerability, only then to be mocked or taken advantage of. 

No, it’s not easy to admit how overwhelming CPTSD can be, let alone how overwhelmed we feel trying to manage it. 

Recovery is going to ask us to consider the fact that maybe we’re NOT overwhelmed by CPTSD because we’re “weak.” 

Maybe we’re overwhelmed by it because it is overwhelming. 

Maybe feeling overwhelmed is not a character flaw— maybe it’s something that human beings experience when our resources are exhausted, or when we’re pitted against stressors that we were not designed to face. 

Bones get broken when they are subjected to pressure that they were not designed to withstand. Brains are no different. 

When we turn toward recovery, and realize there are realistic things we CAN do to feel and function differently, the temptation is often to blame ourselves for not doing those things earlier, or more consistently, or not having figured out those things on our own. 

The realty is, CPTSD recovery asks us to forgive ourselves— over, and over, and over again. 

Forgive ourselves for what? For not getting into recovery earlier. For not knowing what the hell recovery— or trauma, for that matter— was before we did. 

For not being ready until we were. 

For trying to white knuckle our way through experiences that were never going to be managed in the long term by “white knuckling.” 

Yes, CPTSD can be overwhelming. 

But neither you nor I owe anyone an apology for being overwhelmed. 

Nor do we owe anyone an apology for when or how we discovered recovery. 

We’re here now. 

That, and the next decision we make, is what matters. 

drglenndoyle

Realistic self-talk in CPTSD recovery.

We’re not going to get anywhere in trauma recovery with superficial, feel good bullsh*t self talk. 

It’s true that trauma survivors are in the position of having to drastically overhaul our self talk to make trauma recovery work— because most of us were conditioned to beat the sh*t out of ourselves in our own head. 

Our old, familiar self talk isn’t going to work if our goal is to feel and function differently. 

But— as we experiment with new self talk, we need to be realistic about what will and won’t work for us. 

Our new self talk is going to feel a little bullsh*tty, at least at first. 

That dose’t mean it IS bullsh*t— it means it’s unfamiliar. No more; no less.

We have LOTS of experience with self talk that minimizes and belittles our feelings and needs— so self talk that actually respects and values our experiences and needs is going to feel unnatural in the first place. 

Trauma Brain is probably going to give you sh*t for trying out self talk that feels “fake.” Expect that. It’s what Trauma Brain does. 

So our new self talk is going to feel awkward enough just by virtue of the fact that it’s new— which makes it particularly important that, as we develop our new self talk “voice,” that we not try to go the route of superficial feel good bullsh*t. 

It’s real important we create a new style of self-talk that acknowledges the sh*t, instead of avoiding or minimizing it. 

It’s real important we create a style of self talk that cannot be confused or conflated with “toxic positivity.” 

It’s real important our new self talk be unflinchingly realistic about what we’re up against— and that it holds us accountable in compassionate, supportive ways. 

One of the biggest mistakes many CPTSD survivors make in trying to craft our new self-talk “voice” is not paying attention to what we do and don’t, will and won’t, find credible to listen to. 

If we try to talk to ourselves in touchy-feely language that tries to pretend the sharp edges of recovery don’t exist, we’re not gong to believe or trust it. 

I will be the first to admit that developing a self talk “voice” that supports us but avoids the toxic negativity and distortion of our old Trauma Bran programming is not easy. It requires that we pay a LOT of attention to what we’re saying to ourselves, and how we’re saying it. 

I wouldn’t ask you to do this if I didn’t deeply believe it was a nonnegotiable, front line trauma recovery task. 

We are simply not recovering from CPTSD while continuing to talk to ourselves like our bullies and abusers talked to us. 

And we’re definitely not recovering from CPTSD if the only alternative to that toxic self talk we can manage is happy talk nonsense. 

Be real with your new self talk— AND compassionate, AND patient, AND validating. 

I promise you: there is absolutely no contradiction between realism and self-compassion. None.