Tag: healing

Nobody dissociates for the hell of it. 

Nobody dissociates to be a pain in the ass to anybody else. (Believe me, dissociation is a much bigger pain in the ass to trauma survivors who dissociate than it is for anybody else— if we had the choice, we’d find a much less fraught way to annoy you.)

Nobody “chooses” dissociation as a coping tool. 

Dissociation is a reflex— and, like most reflexes, it exists to keep us away from pain or danger. 

Why would we dissociate to avoid pain or danger? 

Usually the reason is because we literally had no other way out of that pain or danger. 

Dissociation is escape for people who can’t physically escape. 

This is what so many people don’t understand— or maybe don’t want to understand— about dissociation: that not everybody can “just leave” a dangerous situation. 

Domestic violence victims very often cannot “just leave” a relationship on which they are economically dependent or in which children are a factor. 

Victims of spiritual abuse often can’t “just leave” a church or community that is their main or only source of social contact and support. 

Children cannot “just leave” a family in which they are being abused or neglected. 

Complex trauma survivors who do not know, in the moment, that they are experiencing complex trauma cannot “just leave,” because they don’t yet realize there is anything to escape. 

There are dozens of reasons why physical escape from pain or danger is simply not a realistic option for many. 

As a result, our nervous system “solves” this “no win” problem by inventing a “back door”— namely, dissociation. 

Sometimes that dissociation looks like just “checking out” or “floating away.” 

Other times, especially when we need to stay or appear highly “functional,” dissociation looks like a “part” of ourselves coming forward to do what needs to be done in the moment, while the rest of us “loses” the time that part is “out.” 

And still other times, dissociation looks like some aspect of our experience, such as our emotions or our memory of specific things, being made inaccessible to us, so we can “function” for a period of time without feeling the “weight” of what’s been dissociatively cordoned off. 

There’s no denying that dissociation is an ingenious strategy for “escaping” situations in which there is no practical or physical escape, at least in the short term. 

I strongly believe any realistic trauma recovery strategy needs to give dissociation and the “parts” of ourselves that have gotten us though tough moments their due. 

Any recovery “strategy” that shames us for dissociating (or shames any other symptom) is not realistic or sustainable. Actual trauma recovery never begins with shame and is never supported by shame. 

It is the case that, if we’re serious about taking back our life from complex trauma, we need to make ourselves less vulnerable to dissociation as a symptom— but that is not the same as shaming ourselves for it or making our “parts” disappear. 

We need to remember that if we’re reflexively dissociating, that means some part of us is in flashback or otherwise feeling panicked or threatened— and we need to look inside to understand what’s getting triggered and how we can be there for ourselves. 

It’s not that dissociation is “bad” or “wrong.” It’s a symptom, and symptoms, while often inconvenient or destructive, are not “bad” or “wrong.” 

It’s that we need to take seriously what dissociation is trying to tell us about what’s going on in our nervous and endocrine system right now— and we need to ask intelligent questions about what we need. 

This isn’t about “staying present” for its own sake. 

This is about committing to not ignoring or abandoning “parts” of ourselves stuck in “trauma time” inside. 

Making the inside of our head and heart is always worth the effort— and when and how we dissociate is going to show us where to start with that commitment. 

Validation really, really matters in trauma recovery. 

The core of our complex trauma wounds was invalidation. 

By abusing us, our abusers and bullies communicated that our humanity was invalid. 

By neglecting us, negligent caretakers communicated that our needs were invalid. 

There is a reason why trauma survivors resound so strongly to validation— because very often we are thirsty for it. 

Parched for it. 

In fact, some times we survivors are so thirsty for validation that something else happens to us: we settle for it. 

That might sound strange— what does it mean to “settle” for validation? 

What I mean is, there are going to be people who may, in fact, validate our experience or our pain, either meaningfully or superficially— and that will scratch an itch for us that we profoundly need scratched. 

But validation might be where their support basically ends. 

What many trauma survivors don’t sufficiently understand is that we do need validation— but we need that for starters. 

Validation of our wounds is not a recovery strategy. 

Validation of our wounds is not the same as tools and ongoing support (though validation is, of course, an element of support). 

Having been in the space of publicly supporting trauma survivors in their recovery for almost ten years now, I’ve observed something: there are many social media personalities who will, in fact, validate our experience as trauma survivors. 

I’m glad we’re in an era where, even as the world continues to largely ignore and invalidate CPTSD survivors’ experiences, many survivors can turn to social media creators and communities for validation. 

However, I want all survivors to clearly understand that validation, as important a tool and experience as it is, isn’t meant to get us across the finish line of our recovery. 

I know of survivors who, even as they find validation-focused trauma recovery content helpful, get frustrated— usually with themselves— for not knowing what to do next. 

Unfortunately, a realistic trauma recovery blueprint needs to entail more than validating quotes. 

A realistic trauma recovery blueprint very much needs to involve more than various kinds of assurances that what happened to us, shouldn’t have happened to us— as true and validating and important as that is. 

Sustainable trauma recovery ultimately has to run on more than validation. 

Mind you: it’s difficult to generate trauma recovery content on the internet that both goes beyond validation, and also applies broadly enough to do numbers. I know, I’m faced with that task every day. 

That is: I understand why so many trauma-focused creators begin and end with validation. 

But what I want you, my audience, to understand is, you’re not supposed to collect all these quotes and suddenly, magically understand what the nuts and bolts of your individual trauma recovery is all about day to day. 

In my content, I do my best to balance validation with applicable knowledge, skills, tools, and philosophies that apply to most survivors, most of the time— but I know I don’t always get that balance perfect. 

The point is: don’t feel bad if all the validating, evocative trauma recovery content you consume online still leaves you with questions or struggles in designing your recovery.

CPTSD recovery is not easy. The nuts and bolts of CPTSD recovery are often counterintuitive. And every survivor’s recovery is highly individual— what worked and works for me may lead you into crisis. It’s anything but one size fits all. 

I believe it’s worth the trouble to continue generating trauma recovery content online, and, to be clear, I am so glad there are other content creators who also offer trauma survivors food for thought every day on the internet. 

Just remember: quotes and other nuggets of inspiration do not replace tools and strategies. 

And validation of our past experience, while crucial, is not the same as managing today or designing a future. 

Trauma recovery isn’t about the past— either “holding on” to it or “letting go” of it. 

Trauma recovery is about the present and the future. 

It’s about defining ourselves, including our personality and our choices, in terms we choose, consistently with values that resonate with us— not by what has happened to us or our reactions to it. 

Many people misunderstand trauma recovery, or even the term “trauma survivor.” 

They think that acknowledging trauma means we are “defining” ourselves by it. 

No one acknowledges their trauma to “define” themselves. 

We acknowledge it because we have to understand our wound if we’re going to realistically heal from it. 

Our trauma conditioning tells us the lie, over and over again, that we “must” feel and believe certain things about ourselves because we’ve been through trauma. 

It tells us we “have to” make all our decisions through a lens cracked by our past pain. 

Trauma recovery supports us in grasping the truth: we do not have to contextualize our personalty in terms of what has happened to us— but we do need to realistically understand and deal with the fact that what happened to us, hurt us. 

The core of trauma recovery is accepting reality and rebuilding our relationship with ourselves. 

The biggest obstacle to trauma recovery tends to be our normal human vulnerability to denial. 

Denying that we’re hurt robs us of the opportunity to heal. Denial is seductive— but destructive. 

Realistically recovering from trauma asks us to acknowledge our pain and develop skills, tools, and philosophies that support us in constructing our life— instead of buying into Trauma Brain’s lies about how we “can’t” do or be certain things because of our past. 

Most trauma survivors I’ve ever met would happily never think about the past again— and most survivors who successfully recover from trauma think about the past way less than you may think. 

Even processing trauma in therapy doesn’t mean we “fixate” on the past. 

In sustainable trauma recovery we only ever engage the past to the extent that it impacts our willingness and ability to function in the present. 

Trauma recovery doesn’t focus on the past because we cannot change the past. 

Trauma recovery focuses on what we can change. What we do have influence over. Where we actually have wiggle room— not on things that will never change, no matter how much we focus on them. 

We cannot change the past. 

We CAN change our relationship with the past— which is what trauma recovery is all about. 

We CAN change how we talk to ourselves, what we think about ourselves, what we believe about ourselves and how we manage trauma responses that are rooted in the past. 

We CAN influence— not “control,” but influence— what we feel and do today. 

Fixating on the past or our abusers is worshiping the problem. Nobody who is in serious, successful trauma recovery believes in or does that. 

Don’t get up in your head about what the world does or doesn’t understand about trauma or trauma recovery. 

Don’t even get up in your head about the word “trauma.” Use or don’t use it. It actually doesn’t matter. 

What does matter is that you’re clear and consistent about what trauma recovery is all about: protecting and nurturing your safety, stability, and functioning. Here, now, and going forward. 

It’s not that the past “doesn’t matter.” 

It’s that the past doesn’t matter as much as or in the way that Trauma Brain is trying to convince you it does. 

Breathe; blink; focus; and do the next right thing. 

Many trauma survivors are drowning in emotional flashbacks every day, but don’t fully realize it. 

We think of “flashbacks” as immersive sensory experiences that rip us from the fabric of the here-and-now— and sometimes that’s exactly what they are. 

Sometimes flashbacks do hijack our senses, and we’re suddenly back there, back then, in what we’re seeing, hearing, smelling, even tasting. 

But not all flashbacks are sensory flashbacks. 

Emotional flashbacks are similar to sensory flashbacks in that they do convincingly yank us away from the here-and-now— but they don’t utilize our senses to do it. 

Emotional flashbacks hijack us psychologically and emotionally. 

Instead of seeing, hearing, and otherwise experiencing the past through our senses, we’re suddenly thinking and feeling like we did back there, back then. 

For most of us, that means thinking and feeling like children. 

It often means feeling small. 

Confused. 

Overwhelmed. 

Afraid. 

We generally associate sensory flashbacks with “classic” or “simple” PTSD. In popular culture, they are depicted as violent “attacks” of imagery from specific traumatic events from the past. 

People who have survived all sorts of trauma can experience sensory flashbacks, but they’re most commonly associated with physical or sexual violence. 

Emotional flashbacks, by contrast, can be harder to identify as flashbacks— and less obvious in how they “attack.”

I’ve come to understand emotional flashbacks as central to, and pervasive in, complex trauma and dissociative disorders. 

Many complex trauma survivors spend much of the day immersed in the thoughts and feelings of helplessness, confusion, or fear that characterize emotional flashbacks. 

For survivors who dissociate, emotional flashbacks are overwhelmingly among the most frequent triggers of “parts” stepping forward in unplanned or unpredictable ways. 

Emotional flashbacks are manageable, and they don’t necessarily represent “backsliding” in our recovery— but they can be enormously disruptive to our ability to function, sometimes even more so than sensory flashbacks. 

It can be super difficult to identify an emotional flashback when it’s happening. 

Many survivors think that the feelings of helplessness, confusion, or fear they experience in emotional flashbacks are a result of their lack of skills or progress in trauma recovery— but that’s just not true. 

Survivors who are very successful working their recovery can experience emotional flashbacks. 

Survivors who have made a lot of progress in recovery can experience emotional flashbacks. 

Very often, emotional flashbacks occur while a survivor is working the second stage of complex trauma recovery, in which we process trauma— which makes perfect sense. It’d be weird to engage with trauma memories in a therapy session, and NOT then be vulnerable to a trauma “hangover” in everyday life. 

Ultimately, managing emotional flashbacks comes down to realizing when they’re happening, and then approaching them with patience and compassion— just like every other trauma response. 

The “parts” of us that are active in emotional flashback need us. 

What they don’t need us is shaming, ignoring, or trying to punish ourselves for having what is a very common complex trauma symptom. 

A good place to start is breathe, blink, focus. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

Breathe. 

Blink. 

Focus. 

That’s it.