drglenndoyle

Validation: the least fluffy, non-bullsh*t concept in trauma recovery.

Validating our pain can be a really tough ask for CPTSD survivors. 

Pain sucks. Why on earth would we want to “validate” it? 

Many of us were actually taught to do the exact opposite: to INVALIDATE our pain at every opportunity. 

To tell ourselves our pain doesn’t count. 

To tell ourselves our pain is “crazy.” 

To call ourselves “weak,” among other things, for even experiencing pain. 

Over and over again, we were taught to communicate to ourselves that our pain should simply not exist— and maybe WE simply should not exist if we’re experiencing pain. 

We’ve often been invalidating our own pain for so long, invalidation as our default setting can feel very “right.” Very “natural.” 

Why would we want to challenge something that feels right or natural? 

Because the truth is, our pain IS valid. 

Our pain is NOT “crazy.” 

Our pain and symptoms actually make all kinds of sense, given what we’ve been through (and that’s true whether we happen to completely or coherently remember all we’ve been through or not). 

If we consistently communicate to ourselves that we “shouldn’t” be feeling or responding the way we are, that we are “crazy” or “weak” for doing so, not only are we lying to ourselves— but we’re doing our abusers’ and bullies’ dirty work for them, in our own head. 

The truth is that strong, smart people experience pain. 

There is nothing about the pain you or I are experiencing that actually means we’re “crazy” or “weak.” 

Our pain means we’re injured. Not “weak” or “crazy.” 

Why does how we talk to ourselves about or own pain matter? 

Because we are not particularly motivated to actually heal pain that we decide is “crazy” or otherwise invalid. 

Telling ourselves our pain doesn’t make sense and shouldn’t exist just leads us to try to “stuff” it, or ignore it, or maybe try to pressure or punish ourselves into not feeling it. 

I probably don’t have to tell you how well that works. 

Leading off with validation, though— telling ourselves ourselves the truth, that our pain represents an injury— gets us feeling and responding to our pain differently. 

Injuries and wounds very often heal, with the appropriate care and support. 

Validating our pain as an injury or a wound, rather than dismissing it as “crazy” or evidence of “weakness,” opens us up to realistic healing— and keeps us from needlessly, pointlessly beating ourselves up over being hurt in the first place. 

Validation is not some warm and fuzzy, pop psychology bullsh*t. 

It is a practical, essential tool in sustainable trauma recovery. 

Your pain is valid and you are valid. 

No matter how familiar or pervasive that “you suck” programming feels as you read this. 

drglenndoyle

You don’t have to hate yourself.

You don’t have to hate yourself. 

I know, that sounds obvious, right? 

Not to CPTSD survivors it’s not. 

We are very often conditioned to hate ourselves. 

And distrust ourselves. 

And hurt ourselves. 

When I say we are “conditioned,” what I mean is, we are not making a “choice.” 

We have been programmed. Trained. 

Most of us don’t even realize what’s happening inside our head and heart— all we know is, we f*cking hate ourselves. 

We wouldn’t hold anyone else to the standards we hold ourselves to. 

We wouldn’t talk to anyone else like we talk to ourselves in our own head. 

We wouldn’t punish anyone else for simply existing and breathing and taking up space, he way we punish ourselves. 

Why do we hate ourselves so much? 

Because the experiences that evoke CPTSD often leave us feeling like it was our fault. 

And, not for nothing, we’re often TOLD it was our fault. 

We walk away from those experiences believing we are unworthy. 

We walk away from those experiences feeling incompetent. 

Abuse, neglect, and coercive control— the experiences most often associated with CPTSD— often just shred our self-esteem beyond anything recognizable by non-survivors. 

Sexual abuse in childhood— the experience most often associated with DID— often leaves us feeling fundamentally “gross” and unlovable and complicit. 

We don’t “ask” for any of those feelings. None of those feelings has anything to do with reality. 

But all we know is, we arrive in adulthood just seething at ourselves.

Sometimes it’s so bad we can’t even look at ourselves in the mirror or stand to hear our voice on a recording. 

That’s where we are. It’s not where we “should” be; but it’s where many survivors reading this start. 

Changing that— learning to not hate ourselves— starts with just introducing the simple idea: it doesn’t have to be this way. 

We don’t hate ourselves because we “have” to. We hate ourselves because we’ve been trained to. 

We can unlearn what we once learned. 

Don’t get me wrong: it will take time. And patience. And persistence. And commitment. Just like every meaningful shift in realistic trauma recovery. 

Oh, it’s a massive pain in the ass. 

And but also: it’s a pain in the ass that’s worth it. 

You deserve to be on your own side. To have your own back. 

You deserve the most realistic shot at meaningful trauma recovery possible. 

And that includes not waking up and f*cking hating yourself. 

Because you don’t have to. Nothing bad will happen if you don’t. 

I promise. 

drglenndoyle

Second acts. Third acts. Fourth acts. More acts.

Something I strongly believe in, to the very core of my being, is that life unfolds in second, third, and fourth “acts.” 

I remember being suicidal and in very active addiction at age 20— and being firmly convinced my life had run its course. 

At age TWENTY. 

I remember thinking, I’d had my chance at adulthood— and blew it. 

I’d had my chance at love— and blew it. 

I’d had my chance at a career— and blew it. 

Again: at age twenty. 

What I didn’t know then, and I do know now, is that I had only experience one, or maybe two by that point, of the “acts” of my life. 

I didn’t realize there were more. 

Not only were there more— but my second, third, and fourth “acts” would look ridiculously different from my first couple of acts. 

At age twenty, I had no vision of being a psychologist. 

At age twenty, I had no vision of writing things for public consumption. 

At age twenty, I had no vision of supporting trauma survivors and addicts like myself create realistic recovery blueprints and make recovery supporting choices one day at a time. 

Those things, which now powerfully define me, were not even on my radar screen. 

At age twenty, I wouldn’t even meet the person I would eventually marry for another twenty six YEARS. 

At age twenty, two cats who I would come to overwhelmingly love weren’t even close to being born yet. 

I’m telling you: we don’t know where we are on our recovery, or life, arc. Even now we don’t. 

You and even I have life “acts” ahead of us that we can’t even imagine. 

You know the Twelve Step slogan, “don’t quit before the miracle?” This is what I think that slogan means: don’t assume what you’re currently thinking, feeling or doing, will be what you’re thinking, feeling, or doing indefinitely. 

Don’t assume the identity you understand as “you” today, will be “you” tomorrow. 

I understand: it’s very, very hard for survivors who are suffering to believe there can be ANYTHING positive in front of us. The phenomenon psychologists call “learned helplessness”— where we give up expecting anything to change, because nothing has ever positively changed for us in the past— kicks our ass up and down the block. 

Trauma Brain is very convincing when it tells us we have assumed our final form in how we feel and function right now. 

But we haven’t. 

Neither you nor I have assumed our final form. 

We both have life acts ahead of us. 

And if there’s any one thing I believe about the rock bottom nature of reality, it’s this: what came before can absolutely not predict what will happen next. 

You and I can and will build lives so utterly foreign to our pasts, our bullies and our abusers, it is absurd. And we will do so not by magic, but by realistic, incremental, purposeful changes to how we talk to ourselves, focus, and use our physiology. 

Trauma recovery is not magic. It is philosophy and behavioral science, and works on principles we’ve known about for centuries. 

Recovery is for you, and you are for recovery. 

You have life acts to write and perform that you’ve barely glimpsed. 

Breathe. Blink. Focus. 

Don’t quit before the miracle. 

drglenndoyle

You are not being “punished.”

You’re not being “punished” for anything you did or anything you are. Really. 

I know: sometimes it can feel like that. 

And I know there are people reading this who vehemently disagree: they truly believe their pain IS “punishment” for something. Maybe just for existing. 

I promise: reality doesn’t work like that. 

It’s true that some people will try to control our behavior through threatened punishment. But that’s not what I’m talking about here. 

I’m talking about the fact that we can get it in our head that we “deserve” the pain we’re experiencing. 

Or that we “created” that pain. 

Or that we “allowed” that pain. 

Listen to me: you did not “deserve” to be traumatized, and you do not “deserve” to suffer now. 

The fact that Trauma Brain is insisting otherwise is an artifact of your conditioning— not reality. 

Why are we so vulnerable to that idea, that we’re being “punished” for something we did or something we are? 

Sometimes it’s because we were literally told that. 

We might have been directly told that by our bullies and abusers— but we might have also been indirectly “told” that by a culture that loves its fantasies of “nothing bad can happen to people who don’t ‘deserve’ it.” 

Our culture LOVES that particular fantasy. 

The idea that terrible things can happen to people who don’t “deserve” it, that bad things can happen to good people, leaves us feeling INCREDIBLY vulnerable. We hate it. 

So we, as a culture, invent this fantasy of somehow having “caused” or “allowed” our own pain, mostly as a way to feel less powerless. 

After all: if there actually IS rhyme or reason to this pain, if it’s our “fault,” then we’re kind of in “control” of it in a way, aren’t we? 

CPTSD survivors are particularly vulnerable to this line of bullsh*t, specifically because we hate, we hate, we HATE feeling powerless. 

We’d rather feel guilty than powerless. 

Realistic recovery asks us to give that fantasy up— which is harder than it sounds. 

Realistic recovery asks us to give up the idea that “everything happens for a reason.” 

Realistic recovery asks us to give up the idea hat we could have somehow avoided or controlled the trauma we experienced. 

Realistic recovery asks us to give up the idea that we’re being “punished.” 

Understand: we have been deeply, deeply programmed and conditioned to believe these things. Giving them up is not a one time decision. 

Rather: giving up those self-blaming ideas and fantasies is a process. 

It’s a process of notching when our old programming is activated— and intentionally, consistently scrambling it. Talking back to it. Swapping in new beliefs and self talk for the old. 

It’s a massive pain in the ass. 

And: it’s worth it. 

It’s worth it to liberate ourselves from the vicious fallacy that this is all our fault. 

No one reading this “deservers” to suffer for anything that happened TO them, or for what they didn’t know or couldn’t do in the past. 

You deserve recovery. 

You deserve support. 

You deserve to live. 

Breathe; blink; focus; and do the next recovery supporting thing. 

drglenndoyle

Trauma responses and self-sabotage.

Why do CPTSD survivors seem to self sabotage? 

Is it a deep, unconscious desire for self-harm or self-destruction? 

Eh, sometimes self-sabotage can be driven by an unconscious— or even a conscious— desire to burn ourselves…but, in my experience, that’s not what’s usually going on. 

Usually self-sabotage in CPTSD survivors is a combination of trauma responses we don’t immediately recognize as trauma responses. 

People think “fight,” “flight,” “freeze,” “fawn,” “flop,” and “f*ck” are all “obvious” behaviors that are easy to clock— but in my experience they’re often more subtle than we might realize. 

What are we doing when we self-sabotage? We’re behaving in ways that seem to undermine our values and goals, without a clear reason why or an obvious payoff. 

Sometimes that looks like not doing something we need to do to follow through on our goals. You know, like we’re “frozen.” 

Sometimes that looks like actively retreating or running away from or goals. You know, like we’re “fleeing” something associated with them. 

Sometimes self-sabotage looks like subverting our goals to someone else’s needs or expectations. You know, like we’re “fawning” to that person. 

And sometimes self-sabotage looks like just giving up on our goals in exhaustion. You know, like, just “flop.” 

Everybody reading this knows that the reactivity CPTSD conditions in our nervous system is not great for goal achievement— but we often misunderstand what’s actually happening. 

Yes, we might have mixed or negative feelings or believes about whether we “deserve’ to achieve or goals or not— but on an even more basic level, it’s often the case that we’re responding to triggers, and our nervous system is throwing up trauma responses to try to feel a little safer. 

What that means is, we don’t have to figure out or solve all our deep, unconscious self worth issues in order to significantly cut down on self sabotage. 

What we do need to do is get more nuanced about what trauma responses look like— and more specific about what we need to do when they come for us. 

Trauma responses are not “choices,” and we’re certainly not going to “willpower” our way through them to get back on track with our goals. 

To effectively manage self-sabotage patterns that are rooted in trauma responses, we need to check in with ourselves, notably our “parts” and inner child, and ask some good Recovery Supporting Questions (RSQ’s) inside. 

“What’s going on?” 

“What are you feeling?” 

“What do you need?” 

“How can I help?” 

Remember: the quality of our trauma recovery is the quality of the relationship we nurture with ourselves. 

Asking gentle, validating RSQ’s of our “parts” and inner child will engage our parasympathetic nervous system— our “rest and digest” apparatus— and begin to defuse the trauma responses that have us undercutting our own goals and values. 

When you seem to self sabotage and it seems to make no goddamn sense, get curious about what might be getting triggered right now and what trauma response patterns might, even subtly, be informing your “crazy” decisions. 

“Crazy” behavior in CPTSD often starts to make all kinds of sense when you ask RSQ’s about triggers and safety.

Breathe; blink; focus. 

drglenndoyle

CPTSD almost always involves relationship f*ckery.

Betrayal is almost always a part of the CPTSD wound. 

Almost always there is an element of “this person/institution/community should have taken care of me…but didn’t.” 

Many people understand that CPTSD results from trauma that was prolonged and inescapable— but, in addition to those, CPTSD almost always involves relationship f*ckery. 

Betrayal. 

Someone who should have been there…not being there. 

Someone who should have listened…not listening. 

Someone who should have put our needs ahead of theirs…choosing themselves over us. 

Trauma spiked with betrayal hits differently. 

It’s not just painful— it’s disillusioning. 

It makes us question our worth. 

It makes us question the very existence of “love.” 

(I guarantee there are survivors reading this, who are nodding their heads.) 

It’s one thing to be hurt. 

It’s something else to be hurt by someone who was supposed to have your back. 

And it’s something else as well to be hurt by someone who claimed— maybe STILL claims— to “love” you. 

Betrayal takes trauma from painful to mind f*ck. 

That’s why exposure therapy will never be enough to heal CPTSD. 

The damage wasn’t just done by a thing that happened that hurt us, that we need to “get over” being afraid of. 

The damage in CPTSD was done to our beliefs and our sense of self. 

The damage was done to our feeling of emotional and relational safety in the world— not just our sense of physical safety. 

We don’t heal hose wounds by “exposure.” 

We heal those wounds by being there for our “parts” and inner child the way we needed our parents and clergy and others to be there for us once upon a time. 

The thing that makes CPTSD particularly complicated is, we need to be for ourselves what we never saw, what we never experienced. 

We need to nurture a relationship with our own nervous system that is unlike anything we actually experienced: we need to create safety inside our head and heart. 

Tall order. 

And also, doable— if we’re willing to risk extending compassion and patience toward ourselves, one day, one hour, one minute at a time. 

To me, the backbone of realistic CPTSD recovery really is the relationship we reestablish— or maybe establish for the first time— with ourselves. 

Without that relationship, none of the tools or skills will do any good. 

We need to be on our own side in this project. 

That’s what begins healing the betrayal wound almost all of us bear. 

drglenndoyle

About that “emotional regulation” thing.

Reality check: sustainable trauma recovery does not require us to have our emotions perfectly regulated at all times. 

For all the talk about emotional regulation and dysregulation that gets thrown around in trauma treatment and recovery, you’d think the project is entirely about keeping our sh*t together emotionally. 

But the truth is, people who very much have their sh*t together when it comes to trauma recovery, can easily lose their sh*t at the right (or wrong) trigger. 

NOBODY reading this is perfectly emotionally regulated— and the person writing this is DEFINITELY not perfect when it comes to his emotional regulation. 

Realistically, we’re all going to have ebbs and flows when it comes to our emotional regulation. 

Some survivors are even under the misconception that “emotional regulation” means an utter LACK of emotional experience or expressiveness.

What we’re actually going for when we talk about emotional regulation is, we don’t want whatever we’re feeling to hijack us and drag us away from what matters in our life. 

It’s true that trauma survivors tend to be particularly sensitive overall— but many survivors actually have a whole lot of practice coping with and containing our strong feelings. 

Our problems with emotional regulation are often less about emotions themselves, and more about our attention span and skillset when it comes to functioning THROUGH strong emotions. 

Speaking for myself, I love powerful, passionate feelings. 

I think they’re the “juice” of life. I believe the only reason we do anything in life is to experience certain feelings that we like and value. 

Personally, I don’t WANT to be perfectly or robotically “regulated” emotionally. 

But I also don’t want those “juicy” emotions that I experience to bludgeon me and drag me off course when it comes to my values and goals. 

THAT is what emotional regulation in trauma recovery is actually all about: finding realistic ways to stay present and focused on our projects, no matter what we’re feeling in the moment. 

The way we do that is getting clear about how our patterns of self talk, mental focus, and physiology either do or don’t support us in functioning through strong feelings and reactions. 

There is no “magic bullet” to emotional regulation. EVERY effective emotional regulation philosophy or tool, from Dialectical Behavior Therapy to EFT tapping to Neurolinguistic Programming to mindfulness to contemplative prayer, leverages those thee basic tools: self talk, mental focus, and physiology. 

It takes patience and experimentation to figure out how specifically to use those tools inside your head and body to realistically manage what you’re feeling and stay On Purpose. 

But emotional regulation is a skill we can learn. 

We should have been safe and supported enough to learn it when we were kids— but that ship has sailed. 

No shame; not our fault. 

And also not something we’re going to let ourselves be held prisoner by for one more minute. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

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.