drglenndoyle

The “frozen” “fawn.”

“You must have liked that relationship on some level, or else why didn’t you leave?” 

CPTSD survivors get versions of this question all the goddamn time. 

Survivors don’t stay in certain painful relationships— personal or professional— because we “like” them. 

We often stay because our fawn and freeze trauma responses have us rooted to the spot. 

Trauma responses are not “choices.” They are reflexive patterns that our nervous system has overrehearsed, because on some level we truly believe they allowed us to survive. 

“Fawn” has us agreeing with or seeming to go along with an abuser. 

“Freeze” has us doing just that— stopping any kind of motion, hoping to be not noticed or left alone. 

When we find ourselves in a painful relationship, the option of “just leave” may not even exist for us on a nervous system level. We may WANT to leave; we may even TRY to leave. 

But if our nervous system and “parts” truly don’t believe leaving is a safe or realistic option, they will simply short circuit that route— without a “decision” having been made by the front our brain at all. 

People like to point out that we could have protected ourselves far more effectively had we removed ourselves from an abusive or painful situation— but that assumes we even registered that option. 

Many survivors reading this have had the experience of “knowing” that we “should” get out of a situation— but literally not being able to execute an exit strategy, due to dissociation, depersonalization, derealization, and good old fashioned brain fog. 

(Those are the tools our nervous system and “parts” often use to keep us from doing things they have decided are too dangerous to follow through on.) 

Understand: acknowledging the “freeze” and “fawn” responses for what they are is not an “excuse.” 

Trauma responses provide EXPLANATIONS— not “excuses.” 

Every survivor reading this is quite aware that, if a pattern of trauma responding is leading us to behaviors that are inconsistent with our goals and values, it’s on us to change it. 

No trauma survivor reading this is looking for an “easy way out,” or an excuse to stay “stuck.” 

The reality is, we can’t realistically change the pattern of staying in personal or professional relationships longer than we should, if we’re unwilling to see and understand the “fawn” and “freeze” responses for what they are. 

There are was to decrease our vulnerability to “freeze” and “fawn”— and they all start with creating realistic safety inside our head and heart.

That means: no shaming or punishing ourselves for being vulnerable. 

No matter how much it frustrates us. No matter how embarrassing it is. 

Start with the premise that what you’re experiencing makes total sense— and actually thank your nervous system and “parts” for doing what they do to keep you safe. 

I know— radical idea, thanking your system for behaviors that are frustrating or counterintuitive. 

But if we want to see radical changes in our life, we need to do radically different things. 

If nothing changes, nothing changes. 

So: start out with validation. 

Help the “frozen” “fawn” within start to feel safe. 

That’s where you’ll start to see some movement. 

drglenndoyle

Don’t neglect work or finances in your trauma recovery blueprint.

CPTSD or DID can be hell on our ability to make a living and support ourselves. 

And that’s more than an inconvenience. 

Anything that compromises our ability to support ourselves the way CPSTD and DID do threaten our autonomy— and that’s no small thing for complex trauma survivors. 

Feeling dependent can be overwhelmingly triggering for us. 

We know first hand how dangerous it can be to not be able to escape a situation because we’re economically dependent. 

The three major triggers of all complex trauma survivors— feeling controlled, feeling trapped, and feeling “in trouble”— ALL come into play when we feel economically dependent on something or someone. 

Financial insecurity makes walking away from painful situations difficult or impossible— and that in turn triggers us into deeper and deeper levels of resistance or paralysis. 

It’s a vicious, vicious cycle. 

One of the things I get most frustrated with about trauma “treatment” is, it rarely addresses the problems our symptoms and struggles cause at work. 

Trauma “treatment” tends to focus on the struggles we experience with with self harm, suicidal ideation, and relationships— and, of course, those are important struggles that need to be understood and addressed. 

But figuring out to function at work and manage our money is its own super important thing that absolutely NEEDS to be addressed in any realistic trauma recovery blueprint. 

Work and finances have their unique triggers. 

The behaviors working and managing our finances require of us go beyond trauma treatment tropes like self-care and self-love. We’re not going to “care” or “love” ourselves into showing up on time, focusing on our tasks, and keeping track of our account balance. 

When designing your trauma recovery blueprint, get realistic and specific about what triggers and challenges crop up regarding work and managing your money. 

The good news is, the basic tools of trauma recovery— self talk, mental focus, and physiology— are all relevant to managing our symptoms, reactions, and needs around work, finances, and realistic economic independence. 

(That goes beyond trauma recovery, by the way: EVERYONE in history who has mastered their finances has used those tools of self talk, mental focus, and physiology to do so.)

I know, it’s triggering as hell, but we need to roll work and finances into our recovery blueprint. 

Turns out: we don’t suddenly become not-trauma-survivors when we clock in. 

drglenndoyle

CPTSD paralysis.

Something many CPTSD survivors experience is this feeling of paralysis. 

I don’t mean paralysis as in, a limb doesn’t work. Although that kind of thing happens as well. 

Rather, I’m talking about life paralysis. 

We get into this place where it feels difficult or impossible to take action. 

Oh, we might be able to go through the motions and “function” every day. 

But meaningful progress on important life goals grinds to a halt. 

Meaningful intellectual or spiritual development seems to grind to a halt. 

Deepening of our important relationships, both personal and professional, seems to grind to a halt. 

And when we’re asked to explain it, we often just…can’t. 

Why aren’t we moving forward? We don’t know. 

All we know is, we feel stuck. 

And it feels like it would take we-don’t-know-what kind of dynamite to get us moving again. 

Part of what’s often going on when we feel paralyzed like this is a “freeze” trauma response. 

Our nervous system has decided that it’s just safer to stay put, instead of risk moving forward with anything. 

After all, forward is unpredictable, and unpredictable is dangerous, right? 

That’s what our past has taught us, anyway. 

Another part of that “stuck” phenomenon is just sheer exhaustion. 

CPTSD tends to exhaust us in ways that go beyond the physical— CPTSD survivors often feel just bone weary on intellectual, emotional, and spiritual levels as well. 

Yet other thing that’s can be happening in that “paralyzed” state is different “parts” of us can’t get on the same page when it comes to priorities and goals. 

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to function with multiple people pulling you in diametrically opposite directions— but it’s something DID survivors have to cope with every day. 

There isn’t a one stop solution for this feeling of paralysis. It has multiple causes, so it needs multiple levels of support to move past. 

What I can tell you about it is, it’s not your fault. 

It’s not you being “lazy.” 

It’s not something you need to punish yourself for or try to pressure yourself out of. 

As with every trauma based reaction, we meet it with patience and compassion— and we ask it what it’s protecting and what it needs. 

I’ve said it before: realistic CPTSD recovery is entirely about our relationship with ourselves, notably our “parts” and our inner child. 

If we’re feeling paralyzed, they’re feeling paralyzed. 

We’re not going to shame or pressure ourselves, or them, into action. 

Try softer, not harder. 

drglenndoyle

I want your trauma recovery to have legs.

I want your trauma recovery to have legs. 

By that I mean, I want it to last. 

I want it to be realistic. 

I want it to be sustainable. 

That’s why I don’t talk about gimmicky bullsh*t on this page— because while I’m as attracted to gimmicky bullsh*t as anyone (many of you know I got into psychology because self-help books and resource literally saved my life), trauma recovery is too serious and too important to bullsh*t about. 

I’ve been told that to expand my social media reach, I should, like, name my trauma recovery approach something cool. 

But the truth is, I don’t have something new and different for you. 

I have what has worked for trauma survivors in recovery for millennia: tools and philosophies that revolve around self talk, mental focus, and physiology, especially breathing. 

The ancient Greek and Roman philosophers knew these tools. 

The heroes of the Old and New Testament knew these tools. 

Mental health icons from Freud to Albert Ellis knew these tools. 

The tools of realistic trauma recovery— self talk, mental focus, and physiology— are not new. Literally EVERY effective trauma recovery technique revolves around them. 

Including EMDR. 

Including Internal Family Systems. 

Including Somatic Experiencing. 

Including every variant of cognitive behavioral therapy you can name, from CBT to DBT to ACT to schema therapy. 

Why bother saying this? Because it’s real easy to get discouraged out here as we’re working our recovery. 

It’s real easy to get up in our head about how all these therapy modalities sound cool and all— but what if they’re just, like, hypothetical constructs? 

After all, we don’t do trauma recovery in the therapy room— we overwhelmingly do the work of trauma recovery out here on our own. Very often in the middle of long, dark, cold nights. 

What if all this cool sounding therapy stuff doesn’t stick with us when we leave our therapy appointment? 

Or— even scarier— what if we can’t afford therapy in the first place? 

Or what if our history of interpersonal trauma makes a therapy relationship just not something we can do right now? What then? 

The reason I’m writing this post is to tell you, with absolute certainty, that you’re not screwed. 

The essential tools of trauma recovery— self talk, mental focus, and physiology— are available to you, just as they’ve been available to every trauma survivor in history. 

The fact that you’re working your trauma recovery puts you squarely in the lineage of all those warriors and poets and monks and healers— trauma survivors throughout history. 

You don’t have to buy into complex, sophisticated theories. You don’t have to scrounge up unrealistic amounts for therapy (although therapy is absolutely a useful tool for many survivors who are in the position of being able to access it). 

I want your recovery to be more than hypothetical. 

I want it to be real. 

I want it to go slow— because slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. 

I want your trauma recovery to have legs. 

drglenndoyle

“They” will try.

“They” will try to influence you. All day. 

They don’t actually want you to recover from CPTSD or DID. Hell, some of them don’t even believe in CPTSD or DID. 

They don’t especially care what you actually need to recover from your trauma. 

What they do want, is for you to behave in ways they find understandable, predictable, and controllable. 

That’s not being negative; that’s reality. 

What most people want from you is predictability and controllability. And they want your motives and choices to make sense to them. 

Anything else threatens or inconveniences them. 

That’s not to say “they” are necessary ill-intentioned. Some of “them” actually think they’re helping— they think all this “trauma” stuff is bullsh*t, and it’s keeping you from “letting go” or “moving on.” 

They’re going to think what they’re going to think. 

It’s not your job to educate them. 

It IS your job to work your recovery, regardless of what they think or how they try to influence you. 

The fact is, your recovery will ask things of you that they won’t understand. 

It’ll ask things of you that won’t make you particularly predictable to them— that is, you won’t be behaving like the version of you that they knew before. 

And recovery will definitely ask things of you that will make you difficult to control. 

“They” won’t love it. 

They’ll try to pressure and shame you into abandoning your recovery. 

“Why can’t you just be normal?” 

“Why can’t you just let it go?” 

“Why are you always talking about ‘recovery?’” 

Yes, they’ll try all of that— and what they’re really trying is to force you back into that box you were in pre-recovery. 

It’s going to be up to you, every day, to not let them get in your head. 

“Their” skepticism about trauma and recovery might mirror your own skepticism— that is, Trauma Brain’s insistence that you’re just a “drama queen” and none of this actually all that big a deal. 

Even if what they say has teeth or resonates with you— it’s on you to stay on target. 

You’re not working your recovery to please or impress them. 

You’re doing this to save your life. 

You’re doing this to protect your goals. 

You’re doing this to actually live you values. 

So “they” will try to influence you. 

You keep your recovery tools, recovery mission statement, and recovery blueprint handy. 

You stay true to yourself and your needs. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

drglenndoyle

When trauma responses get us off track.

CPTSD and DID often nudge us toward doing things that aren’t consistent with our goals or values. There’s no need to deny it. 

It doesn’t mean we’re not committed. It doesn’t mean we’re “stupid” or “bad.” 

It means we’re not ourselves when we’re triggered— and that’s not an excuse. That’s an explanation. 

When the “fight” trauma response kicks in, we’re more aggressive than we otherwise might be. 

When the “flight” trauma response kicks in, we might bolt situations that we would otherwise be able to handle. 

When the “freeze” or “fawn” trauma responses kick in, we might appear to consent to things that we are actually not okay with. 

None of these are “choices.” They are nervous system reflexes. 

And the reality is, we’re going to be vulnerable to those nervous system reflexes, even as we work to heal our trauma injuries. 

But, there’s no denying— trauma responses can f*ck our sh*t up. 

They can get in the way of our goals. They can compromise our values. 

They can get in our head about whether we’re realistically capable of working toward or achieving our goals. 

The truth is, experiencing trauma responses that make us behave in self sabotaging ways isn’t the end of the world— IF we’re realistic and compassionate about what’s actually happening. 

That is to say: we need to know a trauma response when we see it. 

And we have to understand that just because we did something in a triggered moment that may seem to f*ck up a goal we’ve been working toward, that doesn’t mean we’re screwed with that goal. 

It’s a setback. A bump in the road that can be corrected for— if we don’t panic and/or go down the rabbit hole of self-punishment. 

Something I think about a lot in my addiction recovery is the trap that relapse is for all addicts: once we give in to our addiction a little, Addict Brain will kick in and tell us that, as long as we’ve f*cked up, we might as well go all in— which leads to a much longer, much harder relapse than we needed to experience. 

Setbacks in trauma recovery are very similar, insofar as we have a choice about how to think of setbacks: a bump in the road that we can recover from once we catch our breath and realize what happened— or an infection point that “has” to lead us down a spiral of self hate, shame, and self punishment. 

So you had a trauma response, and did something inconsistent with your recovery and goals. So what. It happens.

It’s happened to everyone reading this— and it’s damn sure happened to the person writing this. 

Don’t panic and don’t punish. 

Just get grounded; extend compassion and support to the “part” of  you that got triggered; and figure out what the very next teeny, tiny micro choice needs to be that’ll get you back on track. 

This is how we realistically deal with trauma responses and setbacks. 

This is how we protect our recovery from Trauma Brain trying to get us to throw it in the garbage. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

drglenndoyle

“Fine.”

CPTSD survivors get real good at looking “fine.” 

“Okay.” “Unbothered.” 

There’s this myth that if trauma survivors were REALLY all that injured, we’d be non-functional— but if you’re reading this, you likely know what kind of bullsh*t that is. 

There are badly injured, badly hurting trauma survivors reading this right now who are extremely functional, as far as the world is concerned. 

There are survivors reading this who have advanced degrees. 

There are survivors reading this who have achieved all kinds of success, promotions, earned ranks, been recognized in, their professional careers. 

And these are the same survivors who have contemplated ending their lives, because they’re hurting so bad on the inside. 

You truly can’t tell a CPTSD survivor by looking at us. 

And you DEFINITELY can’t tell someone who has DID by what’s happening on the outside. 

Of course we get good at hiding our pain— we had to hide it for years, didn’t we? 

It was dangerous to acknowledge our pain. Made us more vulnerable. 

Acknowledging our pain opened us up to mockery. 

Acknowledging our pain gave other people the chance to misunderstand— or not even try to understand— what was really going on with us. 

Why would we acknowledge and express or pain when the cost was so high? 

Add to that, many of us learned that if we DIDN’T express our pain— or anything negative ever, really— we were rewarded. 

We were praised for being “mature.” 

We didn’t know it at the time, but when they called us “mature,” what they really meant was “low maintenance.” 

Acknowledging or expressing pain would have ruined all that. 

So we got good at compartmentalizing. 

Keeping our pain over here— maybe isolated to one “part” of us, who was tasked with holding it— while another part came forward and took care of business. 

I interact daily with CPTSD and DID survivors who earned advanced degrees while literally planning to kill themselves. 

So, no. You can’t tell a survivor by our accomplishments or our external “functionality.” 

We’re good at pulling off “okay.” “Fine.” 

We’re good at changing the subject. 

We’re good at stashing our pain in places inside that, we figure, can hold it forever. 

Turns out, though: those places can’t hold our pain forever. 

And those “parts” that have so supported our “functionality?” They get tired. And not infrequently resentful. 

Which is why we choose trauma recovery now. 

Because functioning on the outside while suffering on the inside truly sucks— and we’re over it. 

Right? 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

drglenndoyle

CPTSD and humor.

There are lots of things CPTSD tries to take away from us— notably humor and laughter. 

Our CPTSD conditioning often makes it complicated to laugh. 

Sometimes when we survivors laugh, we get the thought in our head: if our trauma was ACTUALLY legitimate, ACTUALLY “trauma,” how on earth could we possibly smile or laugh? 

That can often snowball into: “I must not be REALLY traumatized. I must just be making it up. Faking it. Exaggerating. Otherwise, how could I POSSIBLY smile or laugh?” 

Sound familiar? 

It goes had in hand with that gaslighting bullsh*t our abusers and bullies pulled on us to weasel out of taking accountability for their behavior. 

“Was it REALLY that bad? Or are you just being dramatic?” 

“Was it REALLY that bad? Or are you just attention seeking?” 

“If it was REALLY that bad, how can you possibly joke or laugh about it? Faker.” 

On, and on, and on. You know how Trauma Brain is. 

The thing is: it is not only entirely normal for trauma survivors to be able to joke and laugh about our experiences— sometimes humor is one of our most important survival tools. 

When trauma survivors joke about our experiences, we’re not denying or disowning how serious or painful they were. 

We’re actually joking about them BECAUSE they were so serious and painful. 

Humor gives us a tool to process and engage with those painful experiences in a way that doesn’t have us drowning in sadness or horror. 

Humor gives us a way to markedly change our physiology as we engage with those traumatic experiences— it’s well documented that laugher can “goose” the production of endorphins, serotonin, and dopamine, “feel good” chemicals in the body. 

Humor can give us a way to engage with our pain while kind of stepping outside of our memory  of it all— because jokes, by definition, require us to see ourselves as a character in a little story, at last for a second. 

All of which is to say: it’s perfectly okay to joke and laugh, even amidst the sh*t show of having survived trauma. 

It doesn’t mean you weren’t “really” hurt. It doesn’t mean you’re “over” that hurt now. 

All it means is that your nervous system has found a tool to cope and create a little snatch of “feel good”— which, when we’re in pain or a suicidal crisis, can be literally life saving. 

Here’s the catch, though: when we use humor to cope with or process CPTSD, we don’t want to fall into the trap of turning that tool against ourselves. 

Humor is like any tool. It’s like a hammer. A hammer can help build a house— in fact, it’s pretty difficult to build a house WITHOUT a hammer— but it can also mash our fingers if we use it carelessly. 

So— use humor as a CPTSD recovery tool, if it resonates with you. 

Just be mindful that Trauma Brain doesn’t hijack that ver useful tool and turn it against you. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

drglenndoyle

CPTSD and DID are injuries. Not judgments.

CPTSD is going to try to convince you your struggles and symptoms mean there’s something fundamentally “wrong” with you, personally— but you need to know that’s not true. 

CPTSD is an injury. We didn’t ask for it. We couldn’t avoid it. 

Neither CPTSD nor DID reduce to something being fundamentally “wrong” with us as people. 

We are not struggling with CPTSD or any of its symptoms— dissociation, depression, anxiety, self harm urges, suicidal ideation— because we are “weak” or “bad.” 

CPTSD and DID occur when the human psyche is subjected to specific kinds of pressure without support or escape. It’s just like what happens to a tendon or a bone when it’s subjected to certain kinds of pressure— they break. 

That’s not a design flaw with the tendon or bone— of COURSE they break when subjected to certain kinds of pressure. 

And the fact that CPTSD or DID develops when our nervous and endocrine systems are subjected to certain kids of pressure is exactly the same— it’s not due to a flaw or weakness in us. 

It’s just what happens. 

It’s tempting to get up in our head about why we developed CPTSD in response to our experience, whereas others didn’t— but what I can tell you, definitively, is that that difference has absolutely nothing to do with “character” or any other measure of “goodnesss” or “toughness.” 

We did not ask for this. 

Our vulnerability to trauma responses does NOT have a moral component. 

And we do not heal injuries by returning again and again to our insistence that we “shouldn’t” be injured. 

So we’re injured. We can’t deny or ignore our way out of it. 

We CAN care for our injury as best we know how— in the case of CPTSD, leveraging the tools of self forgiveness, self talk, mental focus, and physiology, especially our breathing. 

Yeah, I said self forgiveness. Not because we need “forgiveness” for things that happened TO us. 

But sometimes it helps to use that language with ourselves, to the tune of: “I forgive myself for being vulnerable to injury. 

I forgive myself for being human. 

I forgive myself for needing care. 

I forgive myself for every symptom and reaction today— even the ones that frustrate the hell out of me.” 

Neither CPTSD nor DID means YOU are “wrong,” or “bad,” or “weak.” 

They are injuries. Wounds. 

Care for them as such, with compassion and patience and realism. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

drglenndoyle

Why recovery supporting self talk is hard.

When we fist start paying attention to our self-talk in trauma recovery, it can be kind of shocking. 

We can be really f*cking mean to ourselves. 

We can be really f*cking mean to ourselves, without intending or trying to. 

Very few trauma survivors wake up in the morning and say to ourselves, “I’m going to beat the sh*t out of myself today.” 

Most of the time, that’s just how things work out— because we, like most of humanity, navigate most of our days on autopilot. 

We let our old programming run how we talk to and behave toward ourselves— and guess how our old programming has us talking to and behaving toward ourselves? 

Most of the time our old programming has us talking to and behaving toward ourselves like our bullies and abusers did. 

Mind you: this isn’t because we WANT to be like our bullies and abusers. 

Most of the survivors reading this would actually do ANYTHING and EVERYTHING to NOT be like our bullies and abusers. 

But many of us learned how to relate to ourselves through the example our bullies and abusers set. 

We internalized it. Unwittingly “downloaded” it into our nervous system. 

That’s why it’s so easy to be so hard on ourselves: we have lots of practice at it. 

We experienced it for so long, it kind of sunk in. Became part of our operating system. 

Then kicking the sh*t out of ourselves became so second nature, we stopped noticing when we were doing it. 

Years and years of that sh*t— is it any wonder that our “parts” and inner child don’t feel safe?

That conditioning is also why it’s so hard to STOP kicking the sh*t out of ourselves— because when we start intentionally trying to talk and relate to ourselves with compassion and kindness, it feels…weird. Wrong. Awkward. 

What that feeling ACTUALLY  is is, “unfamiliar.” 

CPTSD recovery is going to ask us, over and over again, to scramble old patters. Scratch old records. 

That starts with our self-talk. 

It’s real important we get OUT of the habit of talking to ourselves like our bullies and abusers did— even (especially!) if we’re deep in that habit. 

Yeah. Easier said than done. 

But real important to do, if we want our trauma recovery to be realistic and sustainable. 

Easy does it. Breathe; blink; focus. 

Just start by paying attention to your inner monologue.