drglenndoyle

It’s not about trauma; it’s about life.

We will not recover from trauma by focusing exclusively on trauma. 

That’s a mistake made by some people who don’t understand trauma or recovery— you know, the “get over it” crowd. 

They think trauma survivors’ “problem” is that we focus too much on our trauma. 

 Because, you know, trauma survivors only have one problem, which can be solved by a one-time decision, right? 

I wish it were that simple. 

If we could “get over” our trauma with a one time decision, we would. 

But the reality is, CPTSD involves way more than coming to terms with what happened to us. 

One reason why trauma recovery is so hard is that it’s more complex than just “processing” our past. 

It involves us reshaping our beliefs and behaviors about our life right now. 

It frequently involves us building self care and life skills we didn’t have the safety or support to develop in years past. 

Realistic, sustainable trauma recovery very frequently asks us to change how we think about and mange our relationships— with people, with jobs, with institutions. 

One of the main reasons complex trauma is “complex” is that CPTSD ropes in so much more than the trauma. 

The trauma is the core wound, the starting point. 

But our shadow work extends far beyond that starting point. 

If we only focus our trauma recovery work on the past, we don’t address our eating issues. 

If we only focus our trauma recovery work on the past, we don’t address our money issues. 

If we only focus our trauma recovery work on the past, we don’t address our intimacy issues. 

If we only focus our trauma recovery work on the past, we don’t address our spirituality issues. 

I will die on the hill of, trauma recovery isn’t only, or even mostly, about what happened to us— it’s about developing a quality life worth living, while accounting for the injuries we sustained once upon a time. 

Processing our past is of limited use if we’re still enacting toxic patterns today. 

Processing our past won’t help us if we’re eating or spending ourselves into oblivion today. 

Processing our past can set the stage for developing greater emotional regulation— but many of our triggers for feeling overwhelmed and self-harmful are here and now, not in the past. 

It’s my experience that many trauma survivors (and many professionals who speak out about resolving PTSD) need to broaden our vocabulary and framework when it comes to recovery. 

Yes, processing trauma and detoxifying trauma memories can be enormously helpful. 

But those are only part of this larger, ongoing project called “trauma recovery”— which, itself, is only the gateway to the REAL project, which is called “life.” 

Breathe. Blink. Focus. 

drglenndoyle

Hey, you.

Hello, trauma survivor reading this thinking that everything is going wrong, you’re doing everything wrong, and everybody hates you. 

Nope, you’re not the first, last, or even the only trauma survivor thinking that. 

CPTSD tends to do that to us. 

Standard PTSD tends to be focused on what happened to us— whereas CPTSD is very often focused on who we are, what we deserve, what we can do, how our life is working out. 

The reason for that is, PTSD is usually the result of one, big, identifiable, outside-the-norm stressor. 

CPTSD, by contrast, is most often the result of pain, usually relationship-focused pain, accumulating over time— and often the events that make it accumulate are so familiar to us that we don’t even register them as “traumatic.” 

When we grow up abused or neglected, or if we’re the victim of coercive control over time in adult relationships, there is no one big traumatic stressor to fixate on— so CPTSD goes after us, personally. 

What this looks like in practice is us feeling like garbage about ourselves. 

It looks like us feeling like we’re in trouble all the time. 

It looks like us truly believing that everybody hates us— regardless of what they happen to be telling us or how they happen to be behaving toward us in the moment. 

Many people don’t understand that these feelings and experiences are actually symptoms of complex trauma. 

We think of “PTSD” as “war trauma”— and it doesn’t occur to us that years of being controlled, being manipulated, being subtly (or not so subtly denigrated), being financially or sexually exploited by people or institutions we trusted, all add up to significant traumatic stress. 

That is to say, CPTSD survivors often don’t think of ourselves as “trauma survivors.” 

We just think we suck. 

We just think we can’t do life. 

We just think we’re terrible at relationship partners. 

I can’t tell you how long I went believing that my “main” problem was social anxiety— and don’t get me wrong, I suffer from plenty of social anxiety— while not registering that the literal reason I was anxious around people was because I had been heavily bullied as far back as I could remember. 

Both PTSD and CPTSD can increase our vulnerability to suicidal thoughts— but in my experience, the suicidal ideation of CPTSD survivors tends to be very chronic and very personal, rather than focused on specific memories of a specific trauma, as in PTSD. 

That “I suck and everybody hates me” thing is very CPTSD-coded. As is the “fight” response flavored “…and I hate everybody right BACK” chaser; as is the “fawn” flavored chaser “…but I hope they don’t hate me for hating them!” 

Turns out there’s a reason they call it “complex” trauma. 

Anyway, survivor reading this who thinks everything is going wrong, you’re doing everything wrong, and everybody hates you: it’s not that straightforward. 

Yes, there may be things going wrong. Yes, you may be struggling with some things. Yes, people might have feelings about you. 

But it’s rarely as black and white as “EVERYTHING” sucks. 

That’s Trauma Brain, the internalized voices of your abusers and bullies, f*cking with you. 

I’m not saying you’re perfect. I’m not saying you’re delusional. 

I’m saying you’ve been programmed by complex trauma to sh*t on yourself because you feel like sh*t. And that’s not fair. 

It’s tough to feel like everything sucks and everyone hates you. And I’m realistic enough to know that a post on the internet from someone who doesn’t know you may not help all that much. 

Still, I need you to know: I’ve been where you are, and lots and lots (and lots) of other CPTSD survivors have been, too. 

It’s kind of unlikely we ALL suck the way our CPTSD has tried to convince us we do, don’t you think? 

Breathe. Blink. Focus. 

And meet what you’re feeling right now with compassion, patience, and realism. 

And for what it’s worth, I like you. 

(If people are allowed to DISLIKE you without even knowing you, then I’m allowed to like you without knowing you, too, wouldn’t you say?) 

drglenndoyle

Don’t beat yourself up. Just get back on track.

Don’t beat yourself up. Just get back on track. 

I know, that reaction “shouldn’t” have happened. 

Don’t beat yourself up. Just get back on track. 

I know, you “should” be “better” by now. 

Don’t beat yourself up. Just get back on track. 

I know, “other people had it worse.” 

Don’t beat yourself up. Just get back on track. 

I know, you hate having to even think about this “trauma” or “addiction” or “recovery” stuff. 

Don’t beat yourself up. Just get back on track. 

Trauma Brain, the internalized voices of your abusers and bullies, is going to try to get you to weaponize your “fight” response against yourself. 

It’s probably already tried, am I right? 

But that “fight” response is supposed to keep us safe— and attacking ourselves is the literal opposite of safety. 

Attacking ourselves teaches our nervous system we are not safe with ourselves. That we can’t count on ourselves to have our own back, be on our own side. 

When I say don’t beat yourself up, it’s not just because beating yourself up hurts. 

It’s because that pattern of beating yourself up is going to undermine everything else you try to do in trauma or addiction recovery. 

Plus, we need the energy we’d otherwise spend beatng ourselves up, for the project of getting back on track. 

I understand you’re frustrated. 

I understand you’ve been conditioned to believe you “deserve” punishment. 

I understand part of you is champing at the bit to punish yourself before someone or something comes along and punishes you at a time and in a way you don’t choose. 

It will be uncomfortable to push back against all that. No question.

But don’t beat yourself up. 

Just get back on track. 

Again, and again, and again, and again. 

drglenndoyle

Ah, ah, ah, ah, stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.

Listen to me: you do whatever it is you have to do to stay alive. 

F*ck their expectations. 

F*ck their judgments. 

What you have to do to stay alive may not be perfect and it may not be pretty. 

Other people may not understand, and you may have to distance yourself from some of those people, at least for awhile. 

But this isn’t the time for perfectionism. 

This isn’t the time for insisting or expecting that what you have to do to stay alive aligns perfectly with anyone’s idea of what is “acceptable.” 

Just this week I’ve heard multiple stories about what survivors leaned on to stay alive in difficult moments when their trauma was telling them there was no hope and they “had” to kill themselves. 

The stuff that keeps us alive might seem weird to anyone else. 

It might not have anything to do with what happened to us. 

The stuff we do to stay alive may not be part of our recovery indefinitely. I’ve done plenty of stuff for the sake of making it through a rough night, that I could not hold on to long term, because it would end up destroying me just as surely as suicide would. 

Don’t judge or overthink what keeps you alive. 

Just do it. 

And know there is a worldwide community of trauma survivors who do not judge you, either for what you had to do to survive then, or what you have to do to stay alive tonight. 

No shame. No shade. 

Staying alive when you’re under immense pressure to not is the ultimate act of defiance against our trauma. 

And, yes, it can be exhausting. I absolutely understand that. 

And still I’m telling you: stay alive. 

If you’re reading this, consider that you stumbled across it for a reason. Stay alive. 

If you’re reading this, whether or not you have any idea who the hell I am or why you should listen to me: stay. Stay alive, find out, answer those questions. 

If you’re reading this, and you’re angry that I have the balls to ask you to stay without knowing what you’re dealing with, stay alive and express that anger. I’d rather have you pissed at me and telling me all about it than you not here.

I do not have the power to “make” anyone do or not do anything. I wish I did. But nobody does. 

What I can tell you, though, is there are modes and levels you haven’t unlocked yet, and that are unlock-able to you.

Don’t believe me? Stay alive and prove me wrong. 

Do whatever the hell you have to do. 

Breathe. Blink. Focus. 

Stay. 

drglenndoyle

Here’s to my “high maintenance” survivors.

Maybe you’re “higher maintenance” than the average person. I know I am. 

We don’t need to pretend we trauma survivors are a walk in the park all the time. I know I’m not. 

We tend to be highly sensitive. True. 

We tend to struggle with emotional regulation. Also true. 

Our relationship needs and triggers tend to be complicated. Oh boy, is that true. 

None of that makes either you or me less “worthy” of support, or understanding, or care. 

CPTSD is an injury. It’s not a mental illness (not that there’s anything wrong with mental illness, mental illness is not a choice). 

Sometimes our injuries compromise our functioning. 

You break a leg, you struggle to walk. 

Your eyes get injured, you struggle to see. 

And if your nervous and endocrine systems get injured— as they do in complex trauma— you struggle with emotional regulation and attachment. 

None of those symptoms are defects of character— even the ones that seem like personality characteristics. 

That’s not to say we like those symptoms. It’s not to say we don’t work to change or diminish or resolve those symptoms. We do. That’s what recovery is all about. 

But as we work our recovery, yes, we’re a little “higher maintenance” than people who don’t have our history, our pain, or our injuries. 

We trauma survivors have often been conditioned to feel shame because of our injuries and needs. But this isn’t a shame thing. Truly. 

Our injuries and needs don’t make us a “burden”— at least, not in the way Trauma Brain is trying to tell us we are. 

Yes, we may need more support or specific kinds of support to care for our injuries. But that’s true of everyone who has any kind of injury. 

I don’t love the fact that I’m injured. I’m sure you don’t love the fact that you’re injured. 

But we don’t have to love it. 


We do have to be realistic about it. 

And we have to be crystal clear about the fact that injuries do not define us— either our personalities, our worthiness, or our future. 

Trauma symptoms masquerade as personality characteristics— but they’re not. 

They can influence our personalty in the moment— just like an obviously physical injury might put someone in a bad mood.

But we are not our injuries. 

And our injuries do not make us “bad.” 

Yes, caring for our post traumatic injuries can be exhausting and frustrating and annoying. We can resent that task all we need to— that resentment is legit. 

Just know that shame is lying to you. Trauma Brain is lying to you. 

Lying is what trauma— and our bullies and abusers— do best. 

Breathe. Blink. Focus. 

Remember. 

drglenndoyle

Eh, maybe you ARE “in trouble.”

I don’t, actually, know if you’re “in trouble” with anyone right now. 

I do know that “in trouble” feeling is a CPTSD symptom. 

It may not be part of the official diagnostic criteria, but an overwhelming majority of CPTSD survivors with whom I’ve worked experience it. 

Our brain will jump through all kinds of hoops to convince us we’re “in trouble” (and also that people “hate” us, by the by). 

Even if we can’t think of anything we could possibly be “in trouble” for, Trauma Brain will close that loop by declaring we’re probably in even BIGGER trouble than we thought, and it’s going to be ESPECIALLY bad because it’ll catch us by surprise. 

(CPTSD survivors tend to be ambivalent as hell about surprises, if you didn’t know.) 

And here’s the thing: every now and then someone, knowing about this CPTSD symptom, feeling “in trouble” all the time, will try to comfort us by telling us we’re NOT in trouble. 

But how would they know? 

That’s not just my Trauma Brain talking: I mean it literally, how the hell would they know? 

I’ve been in plenty of trouble in my lifetime. 

One of the reasons why my brain finds it so easy to convince me that I’m CONSTANTLY in trouble is because, growing up, I constantly WAS in trouble. 

Whether I “deserved” to be in trouble all those times, especially growing up, is a different question— and, honestly, not a very relevant one. 

If my father decided I was in trouble, I was in trouble. Whether I “deserved” it wasn’t a question he asked. 

Later, as an adult, I created plenty of personal and professional situations that caused other adults to be irritated or angry with me. 

I’ve lost jobs, I’ve ruined relationships. And it would be absurd for me to assert I didn’t RICHLY deserve at least SOME of those painful experiences. 

My point is, it may not be particularly helpful to tell a trauma survivor who has the “in trouble” thing activated that they’re NOT “in trouble”— because maybe they are, with someone, somewhere. 

So: I have no idea if you’re “in trouble” or not. 

Here’s what I DO know about that “in trouble” feeling: we’re going to feel it, jacked up to 11, whether or not it’s reality based. 

And Trauma Brain, the internalized voices of our bullies and abusers, is going to use that feeling to make the case that we “have” to dissociate, hurt ourselves, maybe even kill ourselves, certainly hate ourselves. 

THAT’S the bullsh*t part of this “in trouble” thing. 

Even if we ARE “in trouble,” self-hate doesn’t lead anywhere we “deserve” to go. 

When I WAS in trouble with other adults, it was real easy to use those feelings (and the reality that someone really WAS mad at me) to justify substance relapse and self-harm. 

That’s what we have to manage. 

The “in trouble” feeling does get less intense as we work our recovery, build our self-esteem, and strengthen our interpersonal effectiveness skills. It really won’t be like this forever. 

But in the meantime, know that even if you are “in trouble,” with someone, somewhere, that feeling probably doesn’t mean what Trauma Brain is trying to convince you it means. 

You STILL deserve support. 

You STILL deserve empathy. 

You STILL deserve to have your own back and be on your own side. 

Your worth does not change, even when you feel or are “in trouble.” 

Understand that feeling as the trauma response it is— and remember trauma responses are neither choices, nor character defects. 

Breathe. Blink. Focus. 

drglenndoyle

Trauma Brain has some BS it would like you to smell.

No one can tell you what’s going to happen next. 

That includes Trauma Brain, the internalized voices of your abusers and bullies, camped out inside your head right now, telling you everything is going to be horrible and you’re going to fail. 

Look, maybe everything is going to be horrible. Maybe you are going to fail. 

But maybe not. 

Trauma recovery is not about guaranteeing anything. I wish working your trauma recovery could “guarantee” anything— but it won’t. 

Here’s what I do know: working our trauma recovery, with awareness and commitment, gives us our best shot at a life we don’t hate. 

It gives us our best shot of being in a position to experience things we like. 

It gives us our best shot at meeting our needs. 

But it doesn’t “guarantee” any of that. 

Watch what Trauma Brain does with what I just told you: Trauma Brain very likely is whispering in your ear right now, telling you that if working your trauma recovery doesn’t “guarantee” anything, then it’s not worth bothering with. 

After all, paying attention to your self talk, your mental focus, your physiology— it’s all hard. It’s all a hassle. 

Of course, what Trauma Brain is conveniently neglecting to tell you is, NOT working your recovery— just letting your trauma programming run on autopilot— is also hard. It’s also a hassle. 

And, importantly, letting your trauma conditioning run on autopilot is hard and a hassle in a way that you did not choose. It was chosen for you, by the behavior of your abusers and bullies. 

The “hard” and hassle involved in trauma recovery orients you toward what YOU want and what YOU value. That’s not true of the “hard” and hassle of trauma programming. 

Your mileage may vary, but if both options are hard and a hassle, I’ll go with the “hard” and hassle that gives me some options for actually living a life I like. 

Here’s the other thing about trauma recovery: while it may be hard and a hassle, the component skills are things we’re all doing all the time anyway. 

We’re always talking to ourselves. We’re always mentally focusing on something. We’re always breathing and using our physiology in some way. 

Trauma recovery doesn’t ask us to invent new tools out of whole cloth. 

It asks us to adjust the way we’re doing things we do all day, every day we’re alive. 

Is it really any skin off our nose to adjust how we talk to ourselves? It costs us nothing. 

It costs us nothing to adjust how we direct our mental focus or “spotlight.” 

It costs us nothing to breathe and use our physiology intentionally, as opposed to letting it all run on autopilot. 

None of that is to say these things are EASY— but they’re free. And there is no downside to experimenting with them. 

Talking to ourselves, leveraging our mental focus, and utilizing our physiology in recovery supportive ways are all unfamiliar, and it might feel awkward or cringe or even dangerous to shift how we manage these things. That’s absolutely true. 

But don’t let Trauma Brain tell you that recovery is going to ask us to invent or learn entirely new skills that are overwhelming. 

When I tell you you can recover from trauma, I’m not just spouting inspirational bullsh*t. 

What I mean when I say that is that trauma injures us in specific ways— and there are specific tools that tend to help humans recovery from those injuries which are not outside of the behavioral repertoire of anybody reading this. 

I know, I can hear Trauma Brain now. It’s working overtime to invent reasons why trauma recovery might be be possible for some people, but not for you. 

That’s what it does. 

What a bunch of BS (Belief Systems). 

Breathe. Blink. Focus. 

And lock in on the next recovery supporting micro decision. No more, no less. 

drglenndoyle

It’s your gentleness vs. the sh*t show.

For many CPTSD survivors, it took a lot of pain and chaos to make us as gentle and mindful as we are. 

We’ve seen, we’ve experienced, the sh*t show. 

We have no desire to visit the sh*t show on anybody else. 

Sometimes, though, that “fight” response makes us seem a little combative. 

Sometimes that “flee” response makes us seem like we don’t like people. (And, of course, sometimes we don’t like people— and there’s nothing wrong with that.) 

Sometimes that “freeze” response can make us feel like we’re holding back or holding out on people. 

That is to say: sometimes trauma responses are going to make us feel or seem like people we aren’t. 

And yet, we still want to be gentle with the world, with other people, especially with animals. 

The vast majority of the CPTSD survivors I’ve ever met have wanted nothing more than to heal the world. 

We’ve decided the sh*t show stops with us. Which is why we go through the hassle of working a recovery. 

We don’t want to be like our abusers. 

Our abusers could not fathom doing the amount of kind of work we do in trauma recovery. 

I don’t care who your abusers were, whether they were people or institutions— they were gross.

The sh*t show actually belongs to them, even though we’re the ones who pay the price for their chaos. 

It’s actually a f*cking miracle we’re as gentle as we are. 

If you’re reading this, you’re doing something your abusers could not fathom. You’re reading, studying, taking in material to improve your life, to make things different. 

Remember that. 

Even when it feels like it’s an uphill battle, if when it feels like it’s not working, even when it feels hopeless and pointless— you’re committed to, and working to definitively, end, the sh*t show. 

I admire and love your gentleness. 

It’s not a weakness, it’s a superpower. 

And I’m not just saying that as a bullsh*t therapist trope— I mean I want and need more people like you in the world to push back the sh*t show. 

Breathe. Blink. Focus. 

drglenndoyle

Psst. “Gaslighting yourself” is not a thing.

Yes, you and I might run patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving that have been conditioned by our past experiences. That’s how conditioning works. 

It doesn’t mean we’re “doing it to ourselves.” 

I understand what people mean when they implore us to “stop gaslighting ourselves”— but I’ve never been comfortable with that language. 

We don’t “gaslight ourselves.” 

Gaslighting is an abuse tactic. 

In using the term “gaslighting ourselves,” we’re shifting blame from those who abused us— those who really did gaslight us— to us. 

Us being vulnerable to an abuser’s gaslighting is not us “gaslighting ourselves”— even if we’re still vulnerable to it or suffering from it years after that abusers is out of our life. 

Some people assume that if an abuser is gone— maybe even dead— then the gaslighting is gone, too. 

I wish that was the case. 

When people ask me to define “emotional abuse,” my most common answer involves some variant of the phrase, “head games.” 

Emotional abuse is an abuser f*cking with our head— and it can be notoriously difficult to hold abusers accountable for emotional abuse, specifically because of the “we’re doing it to ourselves” myth. 

That’s why I can’t let it go with “stop gaslighting yourself.” I see it repeated on social media, and every time I do, I want to remind survivors: you are NOT “doing this to yourself.” 

Running old patterns is NOT a “choice.” It’s how conditioning works, how programming works, how learned helplessness works, how CPTSD works. 

Saying “stop gaslighting yourself” implies it’s a “choice” you can just “stop.” 

This is more than semantics. Words mean things, and survivors have had tropes like “gaslighting yourself” used against us forever. 

We can’t just “stop” a program or pattern we’ve been running, especially one that includes gaslighting and other emotional abuse. 

What we can do is work to understand what it is and realize when it’s happening. 

What we can do is work to identify and de-shame our triggers. 

What we can do is develop an understanding of how Trauma Brain, the internalized voices of our abusers and bullies, keeps their gaslighting and other head games quite active inside us, sometimes years after our abusers aren’t around anymore. 

I understand “stop gaslighting yourself” is a cute, catchy social media trope. 

But I think we have to be incredibly mindful of the language we use to describe our pain and our needs in trauma recovery— especially when it’s around an issue that so easily devolves into cultural skepticism and victim blaming as gaslighting. 

Stop demanding you simply “stop” behaviors you’ve been conditioned into over years. 

Remind yourself that patterns take time to unwind and unwire. 

Repeat to yourself, “grace over guilt,” every time you run into that pattern. 

A good place to start with unraveling patterns is breathe; blink; and focus on the new pattern you’re trying to condition. 

Patience and realism, all the way home. 

drglenndoyle

Your sensitivity is not a flaw. It’s a world changer.

You need to know that your sensitivity is not a flaw. 

I know, it can feel like it. It can feel like your sensitivity makes you vulnerable. 

And there are definitely people who will try to take advantage of how sensitive you are. 

But that doesn’t mean your sensitivity is a flaw, or even necessarily a weakness. 

Let’s be real: there are people who will try to take advantage of ANY quality we happen to have a lot of. 

And ANY quality that hooks into who we are and what we’re all about, including but not limited to our sensitivity, is potentially exploitable. 

So many trauma survivors walk around feeling like a raw nerve— and we so often feel ashamed of that. 

It doesn’t help that we have an entire culture around us glorifying “toughness” and portraying emotional non-reactivity as the essence of heroism. 

Let me tell you, real heroes are plenty sensitive and plenty emotional. 

I happen to think the way our culture glorifies emotional non-reactivity is kind of an exercise in wish fulfillment: we humans desperately wish we weren’t so sensitive or emotional, so we invent heroes who are defined by their ability to “suck it up.” 

The reality is, the world desperately NEEDS people who are sensitive and empathic. 

We don’t WANT an entire culture created by people who are out of touch with their feelings and intuition. That world would be a cold, hard place. 

CPTSD tries really hard to convince us we’re “damaged goods.” 

So many of us really, truly believe there is something fundamentally “wrong” with us— beyond the post traumatic injuries we’ve sustained and the CPTSD patterns we involuntarily run. 

An injury is not the same as a “flaw” or a “weakness.” 

The strongest, toughest athletes in the world get injured. 

The best designed bridges and buildings on the planet get damaged by earthquakes and storms. 

It is likely you, like me, are more sensitive than most. Things hit us harder. We have harder time compartmentalizing and moving on than many (which is why many survivors develop the psychological defense of dissociation— it seems to do the heavy lifting of compartmentalization for us, though relying on it in this way eventually creates more problems than it solves). 

That doesn’t mean we’re “immature,” “weak,” or any of the other dozen things Trauma Brain tries to call us. 

It definitely doesn’t mean our job is to somehow banish our sensitivity. 

We very much NEED our sensitivity. 

We also need to develop tools and philosophies that support us in managing that sensitivity so it doesn’t overwhelm us. 

Your sensitivity is not a flaw. 

It’s one of the best things about you. 

People like us are going to change the world in ways people not in touch with their sensitivity cannot. 

I truly believe that.