drglenndoyle

Nope: it wasn’t about you.

When I say “it’s not about you,” I’m not asking you to make an “excuse.” 

I’m not asking anyone to deny or disown their role in anything they genuinely had a role in. 

I’m not saying we’re powerless over every situation we find ourselves in. 

But when I say “it wasn’t about you” in reference to how you were treated by your parents or caretakers growing up, that’s literally what I mean: that wasn’t about you. 

We cannot “make” our parents or caretakers do their jobs. 

We cannot “make” someone abuse us. 

We cannot “make” someone neglect us. 

I don’t care if you were the most difficult kid in the world to parent: it was your parents’ responsibility to figure that sh*t out. 

It was emphatically NOT your responsibility to be an “easy” kid for them to raise. 

It was NOT your responsibility to be THEIR parent or caretaker. 

It was NOT your responsibility to figure out how to “make” them love or care or you. 

Some people read stuff like this and say, “Well, that’s OBVIOUS. Why are you saying OBVIOUS things that EVERYBODY knows?” 

Because, believe it or not, there are complex trauma survivors out there who really haven’t internalized this. 

They truly think it was their fault that they weren’t cared for. 

They truly think they were unloved because they were, or are, essentially “unlovable.” 

They truly think the problem was that they were a “difficult” kid to raise, and their parents, who were “just doing their best,” shouldn’t have to bear the blame for the sh*t show that was their childhood. 

If you follow my work, you know I’m not big on “blame.” 

I feel “blame” paradigms unduly center abusers and bullies, instead of the recovery work of survivors. 

But over and over again I encounter survivors blaming themselves, often harshly, for how they were treated growing up. 

I’m not saying kids need “perfect” childhoods. 

I’m not saying parents need to be “perfect.” 

I’m not saying that poor parenting is the only cause of CPTSD. (In fact, I think childhood bullying gets vastly UNDER-discussed in CPTSD spaces in contrast to bad parenting.) 

What I want everyone to understand, though, is that, no matter how you feel about your parents or caretakers, no matter what their situation or challenges were, no matter what they have or haven’t taken responsibility for or apologized for since, it was not on you to accommodate them growing up. 

It was not on you to be their therapist. 

It was certainly not on you to be any kind of “partner” to your parents in any kind of adult sense. 

I don’t care how smart you were. 

I don’t care if you were an “old soul.” 

That sh*t was not on you. Shouldn’t have been on you. 

Adults who turn to children to get needs met that should be meet by other adults, harm children. 

You are not the exception. 

And it wasn’t about you. 

But— letting that go can be a b*tch. 

Give it the time it needs. 

drglenndoyle

Getting our poop in a group.

The people you think have their sh*t together, don’t feel like they have their sh*t together. 

Trauma Brain— the internalized voices of our bullies and abusers— is particularly good at telling us we don’t have our sh*t together. 

This is true whether or not we especially have our sh*t together. 

I guarantee, you could be the most advanced, most accomplished get-sh*t-done champion of the world, and Trauma Brain would list 1,473,992 reasons why you don’t have your sh*t together— and why you should feel like garbage about it. 

The reality is, we’re all actually at various stages of having our sh*t together. 

Some of us very much have our sh*t together in some areas our lives— but our sh*t goes wildly off the rails in other areas. 

The areas in which we do or don’t have our sh*t together tend to mirror our trauma wounds. 

For example, many trauma survivors tend to be enormously emotionally intelligent— but many of us struggle to make relationships work.

That’s not “evidence” that that emotional intelligence is illusory— it’s probably evidence that there may be a complex trauma wound there. 

Similarly, many trauma survivors are incredibly “book smart”— but many of us seem to struggle with making decisions and anticipating consequences. 

That’s not “evidence” that we’re “stupid”— it’s probably evidence that CPTSD may be f*cking with our executive functioning. 

There are dozens and dozens of examples like this: trauma survivors who are smart and strong, and who have our sh*t together in some life domains, inexplicably struggling to have our sh*t together and “adult” in other domains. 

The world around us often likes to explain that disparity in terms of our “maturity” or “motivation” or “character.” 

But what’s actually going on is, the “holes” in our functioning are pointing to where our wounds are. No more; no less. 

CPTSD’s ability to make us feel like we don’t have our sh*t together, and Trauma Brian’s skill and enthusiasm for being the living snot out of us for it, is one of the hardest things for many trauma survivors to handle. 

We can handle being wounded, though we don’t love it. 

But we really, really hate feeling incompetent. 

(This is especially true if we were “parentified” kids in our family, and our identity was formed around having our sh*t together at an earlier age than we actually should have had our sh*t together.)

When you experience that shame and frustration at not having your sh*t together, remember that you’re probably doing better than you think you are— and you’re certainly doing better than Trauma Brain is letting you believe. 

No, you’re not doing perfectly. No, you don’t have your sh*t together in every way.

But you’re certainly not the train wreck CPTSD is trying to convince you you are. 

You’re like all of us: a work in progress, with strengths, weaknesses, wounds, and possibilities. 

Do not fall into the trap of trying to punish or shame yourself for those areas in which you don’t have your sh*t together. 

After all: even if you don’t have your sh*t together in certain ways, GIVING yourself sh*t isn’t the strategy for changing that. That just gives you MORE sh*t to try to manage, and if you’re already mismanaging your sh*t, where does that leave you? 

I’d like to take this opportunity to welcome new readers to the Dr. Glenn Patrick Doyle Facebook community, where trauma recovery meets colorful metaphors. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

drglenndoyle

Conditional value isn’t “love.”

People who only value you as long as you’re playing along with their narrative, don’t value you. 

They value your function— as “evidence” that their story is true. 

This happens all the time in abusive or neglectful families. 

The minute you stop playing along with their story, their attitude and energy toward you changes. 

These are often the same families that claim “family should come first” or “family is everything.” 

If “family should come first,” then why is their positive attention contingent upon you affirming them as “good parents?” 

If “family is everything,” then why do they blame and shame the family “scapegoat” over and over again instead of taking responsibly for their limitations? 

Their own behavior proves their words are empty. 

Here’s the thing: we don’t need “perfect” parents. 

No one reading this is hurting because our parents weren’t “perfect.” 

No one reading this is “mad” because our parents weren’t “perfect.” 

What we needed were parents who were trying. 

What we needed were parents who were attuned— or, at least, doing their best to attune to us. 

CPTSD and DID do not result from “imperfect parents” or childhood pain that “everybody” experiences. When you hear someone say some version of “everyone has childhood trauma,” they are wrong.

It’s not easy to know we weren’t, or aren’t, valued by the people who were supposed to love and protect us the most. 

And it’s very easy to assume, to believe, that it was somehow our fault. 

It wasn’t. 

It wasn’t on us to “make” them love us. To be “lovable” enough for them to do what parents are actually supposed to do. 

It wasn’t your fault. 

And it’s still not. 

So they only value us conditionally, instrumentally. So what. 

What they do or don’t value, what they can or can’t do emotionally, has zero to do with us. Less than zero. 

I wish I didn’t have to say any of this, and I wish none of it applied to you or me. 

But here we are. 

And we have the option of creating a life going forward that has nothing to do with them. 

Breathe. Blink. Focus. 

It’s a long walk back to Eden. Don’t sweat the small stuff. 

drglenndoyle

No contact, no shade.

No one goes “no contact” for the hell of it. 

I’ve never met a survivor who went “no contact” with family “impulsively.” 

The vast majority of survivors know perfectly well how profound a step going “no contact” is. 

We are not oblivious or callous. We know what a big deal it is. 

Which is what makes it so frustrating when people insist on reminding us what a big step going “no contact” is— and suggesting that we take time to think about it. 

Believe me: few humans think about anything as often or as deeply as trauma survivors who are considering going “no contact” with family members or others with whom they have established relationships. 

If someone is going “no contact,” that is not evidence that they are letting their emotions get the bette of them. 

To the contrary: it’s usually evidence that a relationship has become intolerable. 

Many people cannot imagine the level of pain or unsafety that would make going “no contact” a viable option for them— so they assume such a level must not exist. 

They then assume that if someone else has set a “no contact” limit, that person must be mistaken or exaggerating. 

Trauma survivors, as a group, are not prone to exaggeration. 

And almost always, when someone is thinking about going “no contact,” they’ve already tolerated a painful, unsafe relationship for for longer than they should have.

That is to say: they are not “mistaken.” 

Nobody gets to decide for you what appropriate boundaries in any given relationship “should” look like. 

Nobody but you knows what it’s like to be you in a relationship. 

Nobody but you knows what being in a particular relationship does to your safety and stability. 

Nobody but you knows the specific challenges engaging with particular people evoke for your nervous system. 

That is to say: nobody else’s opinion on how you “should” handle particular relationships is valid— and that doesn’t change even when somebody has very strong feelings about the subject. 

If you need to set a strong limit in a relationship that is putting your recovery at risk, you get to do that. 

You don’t have to explain. 

You don’t have to justify. 

You don’t have to defend. 

You can choose to do any or all of these— but you don’t HAVE to. 

Going “no contact” with family members or others who compromise your safety, stability, or recovery isn’t “breaking up a family.” 

Their behavior did that. Their choices did that. Your self-protective, recovery supporting response did not. 

Nobody goes “no contact” for the hell of it. 

And nobody should be made to feel the incredibly difficult, culturally stigmatized step of going “no contact” is impulsive, immature, or a bigger problem than an abuser’s behavior.