Tag: healing

If we do not have a plan for today that is consistent with and supportive of our trauma recovery, someone else has a plan for us— that is most likely not consistent with or supportive of our trauma recovery. 

One of the biggest mistakes many survivors in recovery make is trying to vibe our way through the day without a plan. I’ve made this mistake way more times than I can count. 

Here’s what we need to understand about trauma: after years, it has become our default setting. If we leave ourselves on autopilot, we’re going to end up veering in the direction of trauma responses and trauma BS (Belief Systems). 

In order to stay on a recovery consistent course, as opposed to getting yanked toward relapse and trauma responses, we need to have a plan. Every day. 

Does this sound exhausting? Yes. To me it does, anyway. 

Is it entirely necessary to realistically keep our recovery on track? Absolutely. 

We don’t need to need to make our daily plan super detailed. We only need it to be as detailed as we need it to be to avoid going on autopilot. 

For my money, a good place to start with our daily recovery plan is with a SWOT analysis— a brief listing of our strengths and weaknesses today, and an overview of the opportunities and threats today presents. 

A SWOT analysis will help remind us of our strengths and keep us real about our vulnerabilities today— and it’ll also point us in the direction of where we need to go and what we need to be aware of to successfully work our recovery today. 

Trauma Brain is going to try to tell us that doing a SWOT analysis and sketching out a plan for the day is too much hassle. 

Trauma Brain might also try to tell us that “normal” people don’t need to go through all this to live a “normal” existence— and the fact that we apparently do need to do all this means we’re “broken” or “weird” or “weak.” 

The truth is, every human being, traumatized or not, would likely benefit from doing a daily SWOT analysis and sketching out a plan for the day. It’s not exclusive to trauma survivors— although the fact that we have a recovery to work means we have to be intentional and disciplined about doing these things that everybody would probably benefit from doing. 

I’ve said it before: I would not have chosen the experience of surviving abuse or neglect fo either me or you. It’s staggeringly unfair that ether you or I have to work a trauma recovery at all. It’s true: we shouldn’t even have to THINK about these things. 

That said, the fact that we do have to work a structured, intentional trauma recovery in order to stay safe and stable means that we have the opportunity to develop life skills and tools that many non-survivors never get around to learning— much to their detriment. 

The SWOT analysis is one way of approaching our daily plan and structure— but it’s not the only way. There are plenty of journaling exercises, mediations, visualizations, or other morning Recovery Supporting Rituals (RSR’s) that can get us pointed in the right direction. 

Whichever RSR’s you choose for your morning, however, I strongly recommend writing down your goals for the day. 

If we value a goal, we need to write it down. It’s not going to work to just let it rattle around in our head. 

If we value a goal, we need to track our progress and our incremental baby steps toward it. It’s not going to work to just go on vibes. 

Is all of the a hassle? It might look like it. It might feel like it. Trauma Brain most certainly wants us to feel and believe it is. 

But in my experience, adding just a little bit of structure to our day— and to our trauma recovery goals in general— is far far less hassle than letting our trauma programming autopilot run or ruin our lives. Which it will, if we don’t intentionally do something different. 

Easy does it. What realistically happens is, we start doing this stuff; it feels awkward and burdensome; we keep doing this stuff; we get used to doing this stuff; we get good at doing this stuff— and along the way we realize how important doing this stuff is to our safety and stability. 

This is not beyond you. 

Start small— but start. 

You need to know that realistic, sustainable trauma recovery doesn’t happen in one flash or breakthrough. 

It happens in increments. We notice it in increments. 

We don’t “recover,” and then suddenly stop experiencing trauma responses. I wish it was like that. 

What does happen is, we catch ourselves in the midst of having a trauma response, and we begin to remember tools we’ve developed to deal with them. 

Even then: the tools won’t work perfectly, and the trauma response won’t suddenly disappear— but what will happen is, the trauma response will resolve more quickly than it would have otherwise. 

This is how real world recovery works. Incrementally. 

Don’t get me wrong: there will be times when we do experience breakthroughs, and we will take certain steps in our recovery that are significant— where we are aware that we’ve experienced significant movement or improvement. 

But most of the time, what we’re shooting for are .01% shifts in how we handle the reactivity of our traumatized nervous system— which can be, by definition, unpredictable. 

Why is it important to be clear about this, to remind ourselves of this daily, in our trauma recovery? 

Because, in my experience, trauma recovery is f*cking exhausting and discouraging. 

We suffer for so long— and, if you’re anything like me, while you’re suffering, you develop this fantasy of learning a skill or tool or having a breakthrough, and everything suddenly being different. 

Then, when we get into the sh*t, we’re reminded of how f*cking impossible this whole “recovery” thing can feel. 

That’s when we need to remember: this “recovery” thing is NOT dependent upon breakthroughs or miracles. 

If we can remember, when we’re in the sh*t, that all we’re shooting for is incremental improvement, handling this trauma response .01% better than the last one— that changes our approach to managing the trauma response in front of us. 

One of the toughest practical tasks in trauma recovery is managing our expectations— and dealing with the hopelessness that feeling so overwhelmed, so often, can lead to. 

Keeping in mind the .01% improvement paradigm is essential to managing expectations and combatting that hopelessness. 

Understand: I want more than .01% improvement for you. I want you constantly building and developing and refining your skillset. The goal is not to STOP at .01% improvement. 

Again: the practical reason I want you reminding yourself every single day of the .01% paradigm is because it is a focus-directing tool that keeps us in the game when we might otherwise be pressured to give up. 

.01% increments add up. In fact, they do more than add up: they multiply. They increase exponentially— if we can stay in the game.

Managing expectations and hopelessness is a threshold issue in trauma recovery. If we can’t manage these predictable vulnerabilities, it won’t matter what tools we develop— we will not be sufficiently motivated or focused to use them. 

It matters, a lot, how we think about and how we talk to ourselves about the pace and timing of our trauma recovery. Our self talk and mental focus are not abstract variables here. They come directly to bear on our daily functioning. 

Remind yourself of the .01% paradigm at least daily— and as often as needed during trauma responses. 

And then focus on the .01% movement that will make the most realistic difference for you, today. 

Let’s talk about Recovery Supporting Rituals (RSR’s). Because, for my money, RSR’s are the key to realistic, sustainable trauma recovery. 

The content I write on the internet has, broadly two purposes: to make hope accessible, and to make tools accessible to survivors working their trauma recovery. 

The goal of some of the material I write about is to communicate broad ideas and fundamentals of what  call Trauma Recovery Mindset (TRM), from which we can derive specific, individualized tools survivors hopefully find useful in recovery. 

Many of those tools turn into Recovery Supporting Rituals (RSR’s). 

What is a ritual? It’s a behavior that has structure, is broadly replicable across time and contexts, and which we choose to do over, and over, and over again. 

Every major religion, political party, or other entry that successfully changes the way humans believe, think, and act, has rituals. That’s not a coincidence— it’s because rituals work to change how humans believe, think, and act. 

Trauma recovery is about changing what we believe, what we think, and what we do. If our recovery doesn’t help us do all three, it’s not working. 

If you haven’t noticed, changing what we believe, how we think, and what we do, can be pretty f*cking challenging. If it was easy, I wouldn’t have a job (well, this job, anyway; I’d probably be playing piano in a bar for tips); and you likely wouldn’t be reading this. 

Changing beliefs, thoughts, and behaviors is challenging because we believe what we believe, think what we think, and do what we do because of conditioning. 

We’ve been conditioned, programmed, brainwashed into our current beliefs, thoughts, and behaviors. 

Here’s the thing: that conditioning is physical. Our past experiences, notably abuse, neglect, and other trauma, have resulted in literal, physical pathways in our nervous system.

Those pathways aren’t going to reroute themselves— but they can and will change in response to experience. Neuroscientists call this “neuroplasticity.” 

The catch is: those new experiences that will realistically reroute our neural pathways, resulting in changed beliefs, thoughts, and behaviors? They have to be consistent. They have to happen over and over and over again. 

This is why we want to ritualize them. 

We want to give those new experiences structure. We want those new experiences, which we’re counting on to literally, physically reshape our nervous system, to be realistically accessible in different settings, and to be reliably replicable day after day after day. 

We need them to become rituals. 

Many of us have experience with rituals that do NOT support our recovery. Most of the rituals we’re used to were designed by someone else, for the purpose of us believing, thinking, and doing what THEY want us to believe, think, and do. 

What makes a Recovery Supporting Ritual “recovery supporting” is the fact that we design them, for the purpose of believing, thinking, and doing things that will nudge us closer to feeling and functioning differently. 

The RSR’s you design to support your recovery may not look like he RSR’s that support my recovery. Your RSR’s are going to be cued to the beliefs, thoughts, and behaviors that you’re trying to develop in your specific trauma recovery. 

But what all RSR’s have in common is that they are purposeful; they are realistic; they are replicable across settings and contexts; and they are adjustable in response to changes we experience in our symptoms and recovery needs. 

The success of our trauma recovery is, in my experience, strongly tied to our RSR’s. 

It’s not what we do every now and then or when we feel like it that will determine the realism or sustainability of our trauma recovery. 

It’s what we do purposefully and consistently. 

Our rituals. 

If trauma recovery is brainwashing ourselves in opposition to our trauma brainwashing, Recovery Supporting Rituals are the nuts and bolts of how we do it. 

The most important moment in our trauma recovery is this moment. 

The most important decision in our trauma recovery is the very next teeny, tiny micro decision. 

Why? Because this moment and this next decision is where we have leverage. 

We have zero leverage “back there, back then.” Any moment “back there, back then” is gone forever. 

We can lose days, weeks, months, years, spinning in retreat about decisions we did or didn’t make “back there, back then.” 

Sometimes looking back on past decisions can be helpful. With a little perspective, we can make distinctions that are useful going forward. We can understand what we were feeling and what we needed in ways that weren’t possible at the time. 

But it’s real easy to get stuck looking backward. 

Some— not all, but some— of trauma recovery is about understanding what happened to us and how it affected us. 

Some— not all, but some— of trauma recovery can involve looking back and piecing together memories or timelines from or past. 

But that work, which we call “trauma processing,” isn’t what moves us forward. 

There’s only so much mileage we’re ever going to get from looking backward. 

No matter how thoroughly we understand or come to terms with what happened to us “back there, back then,” we STILL have to intelligently manage this moment and this next decision in order to move our recovery forward. 

Your mileage may vary— but I find this enormously encouraging. 

It means that, even if I didn’t manage my last moment all that well, or even if I regret the last decision I made, I have a fresh opportunity with this moment, and this next decision. 

It means that my trauma recovery will never, can never, be defined by any moment or decision in the past— by any moment or decision that I no longer have any say over. 

The critics and skeptics of trauma informed and trauma focused work truly don’t understand trauma recovery if they think that trauma work focuses or fixates on the past. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

Authentic trauma recovery is informed by the past and realistically accounts for our past wounds— but it emphatically, unambiguously focuses on the present and the future. 

No survivor works their trauma recovery because we have any delusion about having a better past. 

We work our recovery to salvage and shape our future. 

Make no mistake: focusing on the present and future can be hard for trauma survivors. The present often sucks. The future seems hopeless. Focusing on this moment or this next decision can seem pointless or overwhelming. 

But, as it turns out, a lot of this “recovery” thing involves pushing forward with things that can feel pointless or overwhelming in the moment— but which are recovery supporting in our overall arc. 

Don’t get up in your head about having “wasted” a past moment. 

Don’t beat yourself up for having made a not-great decision. 

Learn what you can from both of them— but remember: no past moment or past decision can define or derail your recovery. 

The most important moment in your trauma recovery is this moment. 

The most crucial decision in your recovery is this next teeny, tiny micro decision. 

This moment and this next decision are opportunities to turn it all around— or to build upon what you’ve already created. 

If you’re reading this, you have the opportunity to live a recovery consistent moment and make a recovery supporting decision— right here, right now. 

And I, personally, believe you’re gonna do it. 

(Even if you don’t— there’s another moment and another choice point coming right up.)

Are you doing your best? Then you’re doing enough. Really. 

Your trauma conditioning, however, is likely giving you sh*t— telling you, over and over again, that you’re “not doing enough.” 

Not doing “good enough.” 

Not doing whatever you’re doing “fast enough.” 

Your trauma conditioning is likely trying to keep you from acknowledging your wins or any kind of progress, because it’s not “enough.” 

All of which is just the appetizer for your trauma conditioning’s real message, its take home message: that you, yourself, aren’t “enough.” 

Not good enough, Not smart enough. Not attractive enough. Not tough enough. 

Over and over again, Trauma Brain is gonna tell us how we’re inadequate. 

Trauma Brain is real good at coming up with lists of ways we’re “obviously,” “clearly” inadequate. 

It’s real important we remember that, no matter how persuasive Trauma Brain can be, it’s definitely not “objective.” 

Trauma Brain always has an agenda: to make us feel like garbage, usually by exhaustively listing all the ways we’re falling short in all the domains we care about. 

Remember what Trauma Brain is: it’s the internalized voices of our bullies and abusers. We heard them so often growing up— and, not infrequently, our bullies and abusers were some of the most important, most relatively powerful people in our lives. 

It would have been impossible to NOT have internalized those voices. 

Those voices, of our bullies and abusers, can be loud, they can be persuasive, they can be cutting, they can be overwhelming. 

But it’s real important to remember what they are not: they are NOT the voices of reality. 

All Trauma Brain knows how to do is criticize. 

All Trauma Brain knows how to do is mock. 

Trauma Brain does not have any kind of objective take on whether we are “trying hard enough,” or whether we, as human beings existing in the world, are fundamentally “enough.” Trauma Brain is always going to say “nah” to those questions. 

But here’s the thing: you are. 

You are doing enough. 

You are trying hard enough. 

And you are, fundamentally, enough. 

Do you still have things to learn? Sure. So do I. 

Do you still have trauma recovery tools to develop? Sure. So do I. 

But neither you nor I can get sucked into this thing where we deride what we’re doing now as “not enough.” 

If you are trying, that’s all that matters. 

Yes, it might be a sh*t show at the moment. But if you’re trying, you’re doing it right. 

Yes, you might be exhausted. But if you’re trying, you’re doing enough. 

Yes, recovery might be frustrating and confusing and counterintuitive. But that’s a recovery thing, not a “you” thing. 

I believe you when you say you are trying. 

All I need you to do is try. 

All I need you to do, is your best. 

I promise you: if you work your recovery and commit to being kind to yourself no matter what, amazing things will happen. Things you can’t even imagine right now. Things Trauma Brain wants you to believe aren’t possible. 

All of this pays off. 

All of this all work out. 

Just do your best. 

That’s enough. 

Really. 

One of the big reasons I struggled with both trauma and addiction recovery for so long was, I absolutely hated feeling controlled— much like the vast majority of trauma survivors out there. 

Feeling controlled, or coerced, or otherwise “made” to do something, is a very common, very serious trigger for many survivors. 

For some of us, the reason for this is pretty straightforward: we’ve had experiences in our past where we were forced to do things that were painful or we didn’t want to do. 

Many abuse survivors have experience with pathological narcissists in our lives— so we know first hand what it’s like for every interaction with someone to be overtly or subtly coercive or manipulative. 

For other survivors, our aversion to feeling controlled or forced has to do with the fact that we feel the overwhelming need to BE in control of a situation— because that’s the only way we can enforce our perfectionistic standards on ourselves. 

That happens when you grow up conditioned to believe you and you performance need to be “perfect” to avoid punishment or shame. 

For still other survivors, feeling controlled triggers a whole constellation of feelings and reactions connected to our conviction that awful, painful things are always just around the corner. 

Feeling controlled plugs right into our sense of helplessness and hopelessness that we can possibly avoid or mitigate the awful, painful things that are surely coming— and that can lead us to panic or despair. 

For most of us, it’s a combination of all of these things. 

Trauma survivors’ struggles with feeling controlled comes out in a number of ways— some of them pretty overt, others kind of subtle. 

I can personally attest that trauma survivors’ control issues often come out in workplace settings, where we’re expected to follow directions and defer to our bosses and supervisors. 

It’s not that we don’t understand this is a reasonable expectation in the workplace— it’s that required, enforced submission triggers the hell out of us, even IF it’s a “reasonable expectation.” 

I personally am the poster child for subtle, often self-sabotaging rebellion in the workplace as a reaction to feeling controlled. 

Another very common way trauma survivors’ control issues play out is in relationships. 

We know that relationships come with “rules,” either explicit or implicit— but even if we really like a relationship or a relationship partner, we can often struggle to conform our behavior to the “rules” of even the best relationship. 

(This can lead to heartache and the assumption that we don’t value the relationship— when the truth is, our errant behavior had everything to do with an instinctive aversion to feeling trapped or controlled, and virtually nothing to do with our partner.)

Another huge way some trauma survivors’ control issues play out is in our vulnerability to addiction. 

We just do not do well with being told we “can’t” have a substance or engage in a behavior— even if that substance or behavior is observably destroying our life. 

What’s important for you to know is that struggling with feeling controlled, coerced, or trapped is a symptom of trauma. It’s not you being “difficult.” It’s not you being “irrational.” It’s not you being “immature.” 

Yes, we are responsible for our behaviors— but we can only be truly accountable for them if we understand the role trauma trauma responses, notably “fight” and “flight,” play when it comes to our relationship with control. 

If we understand our behaviors, and meet them with compassion, patience, and realism, we give ourselves the best shot at influencing how we feel and what we do in ways that are consistent with our goals and values. 

It was a game changer when I, personally, realized: recovery is not about “submitting” to anyone else’s control or expectation. 

Both trauma and addiction recovery are actually about setting boundaries with ourselves— which, as it turns out? Is the only way we become truly free. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

I wish trauma processing was as simple as, we deal with something, and we never have to deal with it again. 

But the truth is, in trauma recovery we often find ourselves returning to the same memory or the same circumstance from our past, again and again. 

It’s not that we never “get over” certain things. 

It’s that, as we come to terms with what happened to us and how it impacted us, we often uncover layers of feeling and meaning that we were previously not aware of— but which were affecting us nonetheless. 

Something we trauma survivors know every well is that, often, the most hurtful aspects of certain events aren’t the most obvious aspects. 

Often, we haven’t really had the safety or stability to really dive into what something meant to us or how it affected us— and we’re surprised, as we start to really get into it, exactly how and why we were hurt or harmed by it. 

It’s hard to “get over” something when we don’t fully appreciate how it hurt us. 

It’s hard to “move on” from an event the meaning of which we haven’t truly digested. 

Very often our nervous system has been in such a state of dysrgulaton for so long, that it’s been basically impossible to really explore certain feelings or memories— we’ve been left with virtually no choice but to avoid or dissociate them in order to stay sort of functional. 

My experience of trauma processing is that it usually happens in waves. 

That first wave will hit, and it’ll be powerful, and we’ll think, man, that was hard— but at least it’s over. 

Then, we do a little bit of work shoring up our safety and stability. We regain our balance— just in time for the next wave to hit. 

The next wave that hits isn’t quite like that first wave;  may be as powerful (or more powerful, or maybe less powerful), but it hits different. 

That’s because our recovery work has equipped us to recognize and work through different aspects of the trauma we’re processing— aspects that we couldn’t process in the first “wave.”

Then, once again, we regain our balance. We back off; we reinforce our safety and stability; we allow things to settle in our nervous system. 

Then the next wave hits— with still different things to process than either of the previous two waves. 

Lather, rinse, repeat. 

Understand: with each “wave” of trauma processing we do on a particular event or circumstance, it’s not that we’re retreading the same ground. In fact, far from it. 

What we’re doing when we process our trauma in layers is getting closer and closer to the fundamental truths of how and why it f*cked us up to begin with. 

Many people who have never experienced trauma think it only f*cks with us on the level of “some things really suck.” 

It’s true that some things really suck— but no survivor I’ve ever met has been struggling just because of that fact. 

Processing trauma isn’t about coming to terms with the fact that “some things really suck.” We all know that. I don’t know a trauma survivor who hasn’t been deeply aware and accepting of this fact. 

Processing trauma is about understanding and coming to terms with how those things that really suck, have affected us in profoundly personal ways. 

It’s about coming to terms specifically with the significant losses that those “really sucky” things have burdened us with. 

We can’t do that all at once. 

We can only do it in waves. 

But the good news about that is, waves come and go. It’s not just that we “can’t” do all of this processing at once; it’s that we don’t HAVE to. 

Waves, by definition, are rhythmic. They give us the chance to regain our footing and catch ou breath before we have to deal with the next one. 

Realistic, intelligent trauma processing is best conceptualized as happening in waves. 

And successfully navigating trauma processing is all about making hat rhythm work for us, rather than against us. 

The quality of our trauma recovery is the quality of our recovery supporting rituals (RSR’s). 

Rituals are things we do every day, usually in some structured way. 

Our trauma recovery is not going to succeed or fail based on what we do every now and then. 

Truth is, we can have some pretty rough days in trauma recovery, and still be on an upward trajectory. 

But it’s also the case that interspersing the occasional recovery supporting behavior into a regular behavioral “diet” of recovery interfering behaviors won’t amount to much. 

If we’re serious and realistic about trauma recovery, we need recovery rituals. 

Your specific trauma recovery rituals are going to be unique to you. The things I do every day may or may not support you in your recovery. 

A big task of trauma recovery is getting curious and specific about about what habits of thought, focus, and behavior actually support our recovery, and turning these into rituals. 

Remember: in trauma recovery, the name of the game is rewiring our nervous system. 

We’ve been conditioned to think, feel, believe, and do certain things that, right now, are inconsistent with our recovery. 

If we we want to think, feel, believe, and do things that will support our recovery, we’re going to be up against the power of conditioning. The power of programming. 

Our nervous system isn’t going to like that we’re trying to change those particular neural pathways. Our nervous system never likes when we try to rewire conditioned neural pathways. 

Our nervous system would prefer we leave it the hell alone, to function the way it’s been conditioned to function, thank you very much. 

Interrupting old neural pathways that make make us vulnerable to trauma responses, and rerouting those neural pathways to very different places entails making making changes in the physical architecture, the physical structure, of our nervous system. 

We don’t do that by doing a different thing once or twice. 

We do that by doing a different thing over, and over, and over again. 

The whole process is similar to what happens when we strength train in the gym. At first, the whole process hurts. 

Our body would very much prefer we let it continue on not lifting those heavy weights, thank you very much. 

Strength training is painful because we are literally changing the physical structure of our body, and bodies resist being changed like that. 

The only way it’s going to work is to make going to the gym and lifting those weights a habit. A ritual. 

No one who ever built significant strength in their body did so by strength training every once in awhile, or when they felt like it. 

Similarly, no one who ever realistically, sustainably recovered from trauma did so by work their recovery every once in awhile, or when they felt like it. 

I know. I hate all this, too. 

I would much rather just go with the flow, and let my mood dictate my behavior. 

Many of us who grew up coerced or controlled get resentful when we’re told we “have to” do anything. 

Here’s the thing: none of us has to do, well, anything. 

We are completely free to keep living the way we’ve been living. 

But we are also free to decide that the cost of not working our recovery has gotten way too high. 

We’re free to choose the pain and hassle of recovery— of mental and spiritual “strength training”— over the pain and hassle of trauma responses and symptoms. 

If you care about it, ritualize it. 

If it works, ritualize it. 

If it’s essential to your trauma recovery, ritualize it. 

Rituals are how realistic trauma recovery is constructed.