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. 

drglenndoyle

Trauma recovery is a multitude of little choices. Dammit.

The bitch of trauma recovery is, we have to it ourselves. 

No one’s going to do it for us. 

No one can do it TO us. 

We actually have to make choices and endure discomfort to realistically recover from trauma— which, I don’t know about you, pisses me the hell off. 

After all, we’re only IN this position because we’re ALREADY enduring a rather HIGH level of discomfort. 

For that matter, we’ve been conditioned to believe that it’s often our fault that we’re suffering— which, we understand in recovery, is just BS (Belief Systems— but also, you know bullsh*t), but many survivors still struggle with feelings of shame and self-blame about our symptoms. 

To me, it f*cking rankles to be told that the key to recovery is making choices. 

The truth is, the choices we have to make in order to realistically recover from trauma are choices that cut against and scramble our trauma conditioning. 

We have to become aware of how exactly CPTSD is f*cking with us, and we have to consciously, purposefully, consistently make choices that scratch that old record. 

Before someone says it in the comments, let me: “easier said than done.” 

OF COURSE it’s “easier said than done.” Literally everything is “easier said than done.” 

This is especially true when we’re talking about conditioning. 

Conditioning, programming, brainwashing— the way these all work is by making it easy, almost effortless, to think, feel, and act in certain ways. 

Trauma conditioning, for example, makes beating the sh*t out of ourselves feel “normal,” “natural.” 

Trauma conditioning makes talking sh*t to ourselves and kicking our own ass seem like the easiest, most effortless thing in the world. 

Pushing AGAINST trauma conditioning, in how we talk to ourselves, how we direct our mental focus, and how we use our physiology? That seems hard, exhausting, and pointless. 

This is exactly how CPTSD traps and tortures us. It makes the old sh*t seem effortless, if painful— and the stuff we need to do to recover, hard. 

There is no doubt: doing trauma recovery sh*t IS hard. Especially at first, and especially when we’re triggered. 

 I will never lie to you and tell you ANY of this is supposed to be easy. 

But the realistic way we rewire, recondition, reshape our nervous system, is by noticing when we’re on CPTSD autopilot, and consciously CHOOSE to do something different. 

We’re just not going to recover on autopilot. 

I know. It sucks exactly as much as it sucks. 

Anybody who tells you trauma recovery is without suck, especially when it comes to making new, uncomfortable choices, is selling something. 

Selling something that smells, methinks. 

drglenndoyle

Pain sucks.

You’re not wrong or crazy to try to escape pain. 

Trying to escape pain does not make you “weak” or “cowardly.” 

The vast majority of us try to escape pain whenever practical. Of course we do. 

You can let yourself off the hook for trying to escape pain. It’s okay. It’s normal. 

Why am I bothering to say this? Because you’re going to get a lot of sh*t for trying to escape pain from various sources.

You’re going to get Trauma Brain, the internalized voices of our bullies and abusers, calling us “weak.” 

You might even get therapists telling you that trying to avoid pain will only ever create more pain. 

It’s true that making avoidance our go-to reflex is going to create more problems than it solves in the long term— but the way these conversations are often framed can leave trauma survivors feeling shamed and child like for trying to escape pain. 

It’s not true that “trying to avoid pain only ever creates more pain.” 

There’s a huge difference between pain that can be productively faced, processed, integrated, and transformed— and pain that just sucks. 

CPTSD is full of the pain that just sucks. 

Not all pain is meaningful. Not all pain leads to growth. 

Some people in our culture absolutely fetishize pain as an “opportunity for growth.” 

Your milage may vary, but I’ve never “grown” as the result of having a headache. 

Trauma survivors often have a complicated relationship with pain. 

Some of us get conditioned to believe we “deserve” it. 

Some of us get convinced we’ll never be able to avoid or reduce our pain, so we stop trying. 

Some of us develop an oddly codependent relationship with pain, and come to believe we can’t function or exist without it. 

Here’s the thing: you don’t have to apologize or feel shame for wanting less pain in your life, or doing what you can to escape pain. 

Nobody is handing out medals for enduring pain without flinching. 

Nobody expects you to love pain or embrace all pain as a “growth opportunity.” 

CPTSD survivors have to approach pain with gentleness and compassion and patience— like we approach all our struggles and symptoms in recovery— but it’s real important we not get in our head about what pain does or doesn’t “mean.” 

In my experience, most pain doesn’t actually have an existential “meaning.” 

You’re not “weak” for experiencing pain. 

You’re not “childish” or “whiny” for wanting less pain in your life. 

You are not under no obligation to cheerfully endure pain just to prove you can take it. 

Nobody is questioning your resilience or toughness. Nobody who matters, anyway. 

Pain sucks. 

And it’s okay to to just stay that flat out. 

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.