Tag: healing

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. 

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. 

“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. 

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.