drglenndoyle

If nothing changes, nothing changes.

Our nervous system doesn’t do ultimatums. 

Trying to command it to do or not do something is a setup to feel frustrated and overwhelmed. 

Trying to shame it into doing or not doing something is a setup to feel like garbage. 

Our bullies and abusers very frequently tried to control our behavior via shame— so it’s real important we not fall into that trap when we’re trying to shift how we feel and behave in recovery. 

As a rule, if our bullies and abusers did it to us, it’s real important we do the opposite as we work our trauma recovery. 

What hurt us will not be what heals us. 

Many of us have been taught that pressure is an effective way to change behavior. 

The reality is, the more we pressure ourselves, the more tense we’ll feel. 

The more inadequate we’ll feel. 

The more like saying “f*ck it” we’ll feel. 

I feel strongly about keeping us as far away from the “f*ck it’s” as possible— so pressure as a behavior shaping strategy is out. 

Besides, ultimatums only work if we’re willing to walk away from a situation if the ultimatum isn’t respected— and what are we going to do, “walk away” from our nervous system? 

No, we’re not. We can’t. Even the “magic” of dissociation only gives the illusion of walking away, not the reality. 

We live in and with our nervous system. 

The quality of our recovery is going to be the quality of our relationship with said nervous system— and our “parts,” and our inner child, an our endocrine system. 

The quality of our trauma recovery is really the quality of our relationship with ourselves— and many of us have been conditioned to either abuse that relationship or take it for granted. 

It’s not our fault. Whether we developed CPTSD through childhood experiences or experiences in adulthood, we’ve likely never been taught how to relate to ourselves in realistic, respecrful, communicative ways. 

I don’t think anybody reading this wants to relate to themselves like a bully or an abuser. I just think that’s what we’re taught, what we saw modeled. 

And it’s what we need to change. 

It’s what CPTSD recovery is all about changing, actually. 

One of the biggest differences between PTSD and CPTSD is that PTSD symptoms tend to focus on what happened, whereas CPTSD patterns tend to focus on what we’ve come to believe, think, and feel about ourselves and other people as a result of what happened. 

That means realistic CPTSD recovery, by definition, has to get past the level of our reactions, to the level of our beliefs. 

We only do that by relating to ourselves in consistently safe, patient, self-compassionate, and realistic ways. 

Don’t try to pull out ultimatums on your nervous system. 

When you notice yourself trying to pull out ultimatums on your nervous system, press pause. Breathe. Blink. 

And focus in on communicating and collaborating with your nervous system, instead of trying to command it. 

Easy does it. This is a new skill and you’re becoming a new person. Give it time. 

drglenndoyle

Self talk, mental focus, and physiology. Every day.

It is not my impression that trauma survivors are especially interested in “shortcuts.” 

Trauma survivors are many things, but “afraid of hard work” is typically not one of those things. 

For that matter, we survivors tend to be allergic to most shortcuts. We’d feel guilty if we allowed ourselves to take them. 

No, instead of taking shortcuts, most trauma survivors actually crate more work for ourselves with our standards and our insistence on “earning” every little inch of progress we ever make at anything (and even then, we often STILL don’t feel like we “deserve” it). 

All of which is just as well, because there is no shortcut to trauma recovery. 

The trauma recovery tools— self talk, mental focus, and physiology— ARE the “shortcut” to feeling and functioning better, insofar as they are the only tools that actually work. 

Any and every effective trauma recovery tool reduces down to self talk, mental focus, and physiology— which, by the way, is not to disparate any technique or system. 

Tools like EMDR and EFT and the entire alphabet soup of therapies, including CBT, DBT, and ACT, are all ways to leverage self talk, mental focus, and physiology— all helpful ways to leverage the basics, as far as I’m concerned. 

The reason I keep repeating that trauma recovery comes back to self talk, mental focus, and physiology, is to give survivors something concrete to grab on to when they’re not quite sure where to start. 

Yes, there are dozens of ways to leverage those three tools, but everything is going to keep coming back to whether we’re using those tools in recovery supportive or recovery destroying ways. 

Having identified the basics of trauma recovery, we also have to acknowledge that leveraging self talk, mental focus, and physiology isn’t “easy”— specifically because those are the things that trauma conditioning hijacks, year after year, until we’re stuck in patterns that make us miserable and endanger our safety. 

CPTSD gets us using self-talk to kick the sh*t out of ourselves. 

CPTSD gets us using mental focus to visualize and mentally engage with things and people that make us feel like garbage. 

CPTSD gets us breathing shallow and physically “armoring up.” 

If we’re serious about trauma recovery, we truly need to address each leg of the “stool”— self talk, mental focus, and physiology. 

We also need to push back against Trauma Brain, the internalized voices of our bullies and abusers, telling us the effort we invest in trauma recovery isn’t “pointless.” 

Yes, all of this sucks. No, we shouldn’t “have” to do any of this. 

What we SHOULD have had was a life free of abuse, neglect, coercion, and other trauma. 

You and I shouldn’t “have” to think about trauma OR recovery, ever. 

But that’s not the life we had— and the work in front of us is the work in front of us, even if we didn’t ask for it. Even if we deserve something better and different in our life. 

The fact that we DO deserve something better and different in our life is why we do this, actually. 

Don’t overthink this and don’t lean into despair. Both of those will create more work than necessary on this trauma recovery journey— and neither you nor I need MORE work than is already on our plate. 

When in doubt, check the basics: what am I saying to myself? Where is my mental “spotlight?” How am I using my breathing and my body? 

If we can think to ask those Recovery Supporting Questions (RSQ’s), they’ll almost always yield useful, actionable answers— even if we’re new to recovery. 

drglenndoyle

Trauma identity and recovery identity.

To me, an unexpected challenge of trauma recovery is keeping our recovery identity top of mind. 

Most of us have been conditioned, sometimes for years, in what can be called our “trauma identity. 

We’ve been sold a bill of goods— about who we are, what we “deserve,” what we’re capable of. 

We’ve been conditioned in a whole set of beliefs about ourselves that aren’t grounded in reality— they’re based on what our bullies and abusers told us and made us feel about ourselves. 

We end up with this smorgasbord of beliefs and habits that aren’t really us— but which we are very attached to and entwined with. Our “trauma identity.” 

It’s one of the reasons so many survivors kind of confuse our symptoms with our “personality”— we’ve been basically brainwashed by our abusers and our experiences to believe that’s who and what we are. 

If we want to realistically recover, we’re going to need to give our nervous system an alternative, a recovery identity, to shoot for and flesh out.

Our recovery identity is everything about our life that we’re trying to create. 

It’s how we want to feel. 

It’s how we want to think. 

It’s the habits we want to cultivate. 

It’s even how we want to look. 

Think of our recovery identity as our roadmap— what we’re trying to make of our lives in trauma recovery. 

Defining a recovery identity, and keeping that “roadmap” handy, really matters, because otherwise we fall prey to the “pink elephant” problem. 

You know the “pink elephant” problem, right? Try this: DON’T think about a pink elephant. Come on, I said DON’T. Think about ANYTHING other than a pink elephant. 

Hard, right? That’s because our brains are not designed to NOT think about things. 

If we go around thinking about our “trauma identity” and telling ourselves DON’T think about those things, DON’T do those things, come on I said DON’T, no really DON’T…guess what our nervous system is going stay fixated on? 

That’s right: our “trauma identity.” 

It’s not enough to just define what we DON’T want. Most of us have been thinking non-stop about what we DON’T want for years. 

What we need is a template for what we DO want. What we value. What we’re trying to create. 

I’m a big believer in defining our recovery identity so specifically that we could crate a list of the characteristics we’re trying to cultivate in recovery— and I’m a big believer in checking that list often, to remind ourselves of what we’re doing here. 

It’s a big risk in trauma recovery, losing sight of what we’re doing here. 

The project can be so exhausting, so frustrating, so annoying, that if we don’t have a clear vision of why we’re doing this, we can lose momentum, develop the “f*ck it’s” real fast. 

So: define your recovery identity. Keep a running list of all of the the characteristics of the recovered version of “you.” 

Remember that your recovery identity isn’t a “perfect version of you— that doesn’t exist. 

It’s the version of you that prioritizes consistency, integrity, self-compassion, and personal responsibility. 

It’s the version of you that works every day to communicate with and take care of your “parts.” 

It’s the version of you that refuses to kick the sh*t out of yourself for setbacks or mistakes. 

Those are some starter examples— but you’re going to come up with a lot more. 

Make that list and keep it handy. Remember that the process of trauma recovery is about reconditioning our thoughts, beliefs, and habits, in patterns WE choose and that serve US. 

Think of your recovery identity not just as a goal, but a tool for shaping your self-talk, mental focus, and physiology. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

And remember who you’re becoming. 

drglenndoyle

Trauma recovery is all about authenticity & autonomy.

I cannot overstate the importance of authenticity and autonomy to trauma recovery. 

So, so, so many trauma survivors get up in our head about whether or not what we’re being asked to do feels real or true— or whether we’re being coerced. 

We come by that anxiety honestly. 

Whether we developed CPTSD as a result of childhood abuse or neglect, or as the result of coercive control or exploitation or harm in adulthood, we know what it’s like to be controlled, manipulated, forced. 

We know what it’s like to have someone else trying to supplant what we want and need. 

We know what it’s like to have someone trying to download their template of who we are, or who we “should” be, into our brain, without our consent. 

Feeling controlled can really evoke that “freeze” trauma response in particular. 

Our nervous system senses that someone is trying to make us do something, and it just shuts the f*ck down. 

This happens especially when we feel we can’t realistically “fight” the influence of whomever is trying to control us, and the option to “flee” doesn’t seem to be available. ‘

So: we freeze up. Everything stops. We “resist” “their” control by resisting everything, even motion itself. 

Procrastination is a behavior often rooted in the “freeze” trauma response, that gets triggered ins response to feeing controlled. 

We can’t resist, we can’t run away— but our nervous system will be damned if it’s going to just go along with the coercion. 

So it seizes up— and time slips away, often to the point where we miss both deadlines and opportunities. All to avoid feeling controlled. 

If we don’t want our aversion to feeling controlled and our “freeze” response grinding our recovery to a halt, we have to, have to, HAVE to ground our recovery tools and goals in our authenticity. 

Our trauma recovery blueprint has to look and feel like it was specifically designed for us— not thought up by some “expert” in trauma who could cook up the same plan for any survivor, sight unseen. 

This is one reason why, for all the trauma focused content I write and post on the internet, I don’t write out super specific templates for individuals’ trauma recovery— because not only would those not work, but they would trigger many survivors’ fears of being controlled.

You have, and have had, enough people trying to control you your entire life. You don’t need some rando on the internet pretending he can design an authentic trauma recovery plan for you from afar. 

I know I sound like a broken record with this, but the quality of our trauma recovery truly is the quality of our relationship with ourselves. That’s what CPTSD breaks; that’s what we have to fix. 

The tools, skills, and philosophies that will fix my relationship with myself won’t necessarily work for you— and what resonates with your authentic self may not do anything for me. 

Realistic trauma recovery truly is not about you “having” to do anything that is not authentic to you (beyond challenging beliefs and habits that Trauma Brain has convinced you are “natural,” but which are really trauma programming trying to keep you miserable). 

Actual trauma recovery is about you feeling more like yourself than maybe you ever have— in a positive sense. 

“Recovery” that does not emphasize authenticity and autonomy is not real recovery. 

It’s a recipe for eventually feeling trapped, controlled, and “in trouble”— that is for getting triggered and setting yourself up for saying “f*ck it.” 

drglenndoyle

Trauma recovery and reclamation.

Part— but not all— of trauma recovery is reclamation. 

Our abusers and bullies, whether the were people, churches, organizations, governments, or whatever— took things from us. 

Sometimes they took language from us. 

Sometimes they took activities from us. 

Sometimes they took whole chunks of our identity. 

What I mean when I say they “took things from us” is, after we’ve been through trauma, there tend to be things that we don’t want to think about, get near, engage with, or identity with, because they remind us of our abusers or abuse. 

Sometimes it’s something as simple as a word. 

Sometimes it’s an activity that we might otherwise find fun or meaningful. 

Sometimes it’s music. 

Sometimes it’s an identification with a family or tribe of some sort. 

The list of things trauma takes from us includes big and little things— and rarely a day goes by when we are not cognizant of trauma having taken something away from us. 

There are multiple moving part to trauma recovery, but I believe an important part is reclaiming what we choose to take back. 

I believe it really maters that we feel realistically able to claim and own and engage with things that are pleasurable or meaningful to us— even (especially!) after the’ve been “tainted” by our abusers. 

It’s true that many survivors in recovery define ourselves by what we aren’t— namely, we are not our abusers. 

Most survivors work really hard to be better people, better parents, better morally and spiritually and emotionally than the people who hurt us. 

Who we AREN’T tends to be such a huge part of our trauma recovery identity, that sometimes we can lose perspective on the fact that there may be things that we’re rejecting that actually have nothing to do with our abusers per se— and which we might actually value. 

I just don’t believe in letting abusers and bullies limit who we can be and what we can do.

Most of us have spent far too long tiptoeing through life like navigating a minefield— and make no mistake, emotionally and psychologically, that’s absolutely what many of us have been doing. 

Maybe reclamation for you looks like choosing to use words in a particular way that is authentic to you, but which got corrupted by an abuses’s habits of expression. 

(Welcome to why I so often use profanity in my writing.) 

Maybe reclamation for you looks like exploring or practicing a spatial path that an abuser poisoned for you once upon a time. 

Maybe reclamation for you looks like getting reacquainted with music that actually moves you, but which got associated with pain for you once upon a time. 

I’ve said it before: trauma recovery is a search and rescue operation. 

Think of reclamation as one of the most important ways we reestablish who we are and what we’re all about— and one of the most important ways we keep from being controlled by our abusers and bullies every day.