Because you’re “functioning” at a “high” level, doesn’t mean you’e not injured.
It doesn’t mean you’re not hurting.
It doesn’t mean what happened “wasn’t that bad.”
And it doesn’t mean you “don’t need” resources or support.
Many trauma survivors “learn” how to “function”— even when we feel overwhelmingly non-functional.
We learn this as a survival strategy.
We learn it as a distraction strategy.
We learn it as a way to convince other or ourselves that we are valuable or worthy, especially when we don’t feel particularly valuable or worthy.
Sometimes we don’t even understand how we’re “functioning,” given that we feel so sh*tty— enter the magic of dissociation.
Very often either we or someone else will hold out our level of “functioning” as “evidence” that we’re not REALLY all that injured.
They’ll hold out our academic or professional achievements, and and of raise their eyebrows. “Are you really all that hurt? Was it really all that bad?”
Yes, we are; and yes, it was.
No survivor’s academic or professional resume’ tells the whole story of their past or their pain.
And nobody looking at our story from the outside knows the true cost of those accomplishments.
Trauma survivors are real good at learning how to “present” well.
It’s a skillset we mastered in oder to minimize anyone’s awareness of our vulnerability— including ours.
If you learned to “function” at a high level, and if that “functioning” has come with rewards, I’m glad for you— you deserve credit for everything you’ve achieved.
But don’t let the fact of your success mess your head up about whether you were “really” hurt, or whether you “really” need or deserve help.
Achievements and “functionality” don’t tell the whole story.
Just ask the literal hundreds of PhD’s, medical doctors, scientists, executives, attorneys, and leaders who have walked through my door in the last decade.
There are lots of reasons people overtly “succeed” in our culture.
But “success” does not mean anything about what we did or didn’t experience growing up— or what we are or aren’t experiencing now.
And it absolutely doesn’t mean anything about what we do or don’t need or deserve now.
If there was a dramatic, one time “letting go” technique that let us “let go” of the past once and for all, believe me, I would tell you all about it.
I very much wish there was one.
I very much wish “letting go of the past” was as easy as all those people who tell us to “let go of the past” seem to think it is.
But— it’s not.
People who tell us to “let go of the past” don’t actually understand the injury of complex trauma.
It’s not us who won’t “let go of the past.”
It’s the past that won’t let go of us.
No survivor is out there right now voluntarily ruminating on the past.
No trauma survivor is out there right now cheerfully cataloguing ways they’re going to “let” their past interfere with their attachments and relationships now.
No survivor is out there right now gleefully anticipating how they’re going to “let” their past make them anxious, tense, and inexplicably angry around their superiors at work.
That is: no survivor “hangs on” to the past.
Those who have survived complex trauma find ourselves impacted by the past— and in trauma recovery, we intentionally set out to learn how we were impacted, and crafting daly habits of self-talk and mental focus to negate that impact.
People don’t understand: complex trauma, by definition, unfolds over time.
That means that complex traumatic stressors had hundreds of opportunities to make a dent in our nervous system. Hundreds of opportunities to condition and program us, over years.
That conditioning doesn’t just disappear with a one time “decision” to “let go of the past.”
Trauma recovery is about daily reconditioning and reprogramming— first and foremost, of our beliefs about and behavior toward ourselves.
That’s a day by day by day task. Not a dramatic, one time thing.
That’s why I keep saying: recovery is a lifestyle, not a goal.
Recovery IS the overall tool we use to realistically craft a quality life.
Don’t look for or hope for or bank on the dramatic “letting go” moment where you can leave all this behind.
Instead, focus on the minute by minute micro choices, especially in how you talk to yourself; focus your attention (the sliver of attention you can influence, anyway); and utilize your physiology, especially your breathing.
We let go of the past in increments— and those increments look like teeny, tiny changes in behavior.
You are going to run into a bunch of stuff in this CPTSD recovery journey that won’t seem to make a lot of sense.
You’re going to run into memories that don’t seem to fit in with the rest of your life story.
You’re going to run into feelings that seem wildly disproportionate to anything you’re thinking or anything that’s happening to you right now.
You’re going to run into reflexive relationship behaviors that leave personal and professional bonds you value in tatters.
You’re going to find yourself twisted up in knots over self-care behaviors, even down to bathing and brushing your teeth, that other people seem to take for granted— and you’re going to have no earthly idea why.
One of the frustrating things about struggling with complex trauma is, so much of what we’re dealing with is just outside of our conscious awareness.
The conditioning that is ruining our life is mostly implicit— that is, we don’t wake up every morning and “decide” we’re going to think, feel, and do things that kick our own ass.
Trauma responses are not “choices.”
The very nature of conditioning is that it grooms us to think, feel, and do things without thinking, without choosing, and often in opposition to what we actually want or value.
The reason why I keep using the term “Trauma Brain” is to drive home the fact that what can look to others like “choices” are not, actually, being “chosen” by us— they’re conditioned responses installed by the abuse and neglect of our bullies and abusers, often years or decades ago.
Our conditioned trauma responses may very often sen “crazy” to us.
So many survivors have the experience of thinking, feeling, and doing things that seem to have absolutely nothing to do with what we actually want or value— and having absolutely no idea why.
That’s how conditioning works. Trauma Brain is coercive, by definition— even if we seem to be “doing it to ourselves” in the absence of any obvious external threat.
When we’re caught in cycles of thinking, feeling, and doing things that we don’t understand and seem to be ruining our life, it’s temping to get frustrated with or aggressive toward ourselves.
Again and again and again I’ve met survivors who berate themselves for their symptoms or their choices— which doesn’t seem to have any affect on what they think, feel, or do.
I’m going to ask you, no matter how frustrated you are with yourself, to try to reel that in.
I’m going to ask you to not call yourself “crazy.”
I’m going to ask you to not try to shame or punish yourself out of these thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that, I know, I understand, don’t seem to have anything to do with who you actually are or what you actually want for your life.
The core of trauma recovery is rebuilding— or maybe just building for the fist time— a safe, supportive relationship with ourselves.
That means, no matter how incomprehensible our thoughts, feelings, or choices are, we don’t flip over into shame or self-punishment.
If we want our nervous system, our endocrine system, our “parts,” our subconscious mind, and our inner child to work with us, instead of against us, we need to make the inside of our head and heart a safe place for ourselves.
That is: we can’t have our own body and mind living in fear or expectation of an attack from the inside out.
“Self trust” and “self love” may seem like kind of fluffy, abstract terms, but in my book, they are fundamental to CPTSD recovery— and they are only created when we engage with our own thoughts, feelings, and behavior with compassion, acceptance, and patience. Even— especially— when we don’t like our own thoughts, feelings, or behavior.
Yes, you’re going to run into plenty on this recovery journey you won’t quite understand, that will confuse you, annoy you, exasperate you.
I’m going to ask you to do something hard with all of that— something your abusers and bullies would NEVER do.
I’m going to ask you to accept it.
Not like it, not love it, not give up on changing it— but accept it. Radically accept it all.
What’s more: I’m going to ask you to validate it. Validate where those “crazy” thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are coming from, anyway— the pain and survival needs that gave birth to this thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
If you really want those thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to start working with you instead of against you, if you really want to understand and transform them— begin by accepting and validating them.
Our trauma conditioning is real good at screeching at us that we’ve “failed.”
Trauma Brain, what I call the internalized voices of our bullies and abusers, seems to find an endless variety of ways to inform us that we are a “failure.”
Trauma Brain tells us we “fail” at relationships.
Trauma Brain tells us we “fail” at managing our finances.
Trauma Brain tells us we “fail” at managing our emotional reactions.
Trauma Brain tells us we “fail” to make good choices.
And on, and on, and on.
To spoil the suspense: Trauma Brain will never tell us we’re good at something, or that we did something better than we expected to, or that our success at something was kind of a mixed bag.
Through the magic of the cognitive distortions of black and white thinking, emotional reasoning, and mental filter, Trauma Brail will stay remarkably on message: that we are a “failure.”
Here’s the thing: it is the case that trauma survivors experience tend to experience challenges and struggles with…well, everything Trauma Brain flatly declares us to have “failed” at.
But you need to know that struggling is not the same as “failing.”
Everybody who has ever succeeded or gotten better at dong a thing, has struggled with it.
The fist step to actually being good at doing a thing is, well, sucking at it.
One of Trauma Brain’s insidious tricks is trying to tell us that we’ve “failed” at something we’re struggling with— because the fact of our struggle seems to give its argument a germ of credibility.
After all, most of us trauma survivors are VERY aware of the things at which we struggle.
And if we weren’t aware, Trauma Brain is “helpfully” right there reminding us— often repeating not only the words of our bullies and abusers, but also amplifying the feedback we get from others around us who don’t understand why we can’t just get our sh*t together.
An important step in our trauma recovery is gaining clarity about what’s actually happening when we supposedly “fail” at something that we imagine “most” adults don’t struggle with at all: we’re not, actually, “failing.”
We are doing the thing as best we can, with the tools we have.
We’ll get better at doing the thing the more tools we develop— and we develop new tools as we make it safe inside our head and heart to work on those tools without judgment or shame.
Understanding this was a game change for my own recovery.
It also felt like a risk.
My father was an abusive, addicted narcissist who had created enormous wealth and material success in his life— and he, among others, strongly conditioned in me an abhorrence of “making excuses.”
If I explained to my father the difference between “failing” and “struggling,” I am positive he would mock me for “making excuses.”
I always assumed my dad was a wealthy man, because of his material success— but now I understand that he wasn’t particularly wealthy. Not really.
He was just a guy with money.
People who create real success, real wealth, understand the difference between “struggling” and “failing.”
Yes, accepting that difference may feel like a risk, because Trauma Brain— who, in my case, often speaks in the voice of my father— will tell you you’re being a “loser” and setting yourself up for even more “failure” by “letting yourself off the hook.”
But distinguishing between struggling and failing— properly understanding struggle as a necessary point in the developmental curve of building a skill— is not “letting yourself of the hook.”
It’s not making excuses.
It’s getting real about how skills are learned, tools are developed, recovery is shaped, and a successful life— even beyond trauma recovery— is built.
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.
Spoiler: you are going to run into plenty of people out there who want to do nothing but criticize.
You’re going to run into plenty of people who will have nothing constructive to contribute to your trauma recovery journey.
You’re going to run into plenty of people who can and will do nothing but project their own conflicts and history onto everything you say or do.
Not “maybe.” It will happen.
I wish everybody we meet would be understanding and supportive of our trauma recovery journey— but they won’t.
I wish everyone who felt the need to insert their voice into our trauma recovery efforts used that voice to be supportive or, at the very least, raise questions in constructive ways— but they won’t.
What’s actually going to happen is, some people we meet along the way will be negative.
Not “negative” in the sense that “everything that isn’t blindly, over the top enthusiastic is ‘negative;’” but negative in the sense of, they will find something in literally everything to criticize.
Don’t get me wrong: everybody is entitled to their own attitude and their own energy. Neither you nor I get to tell them how to conduct their life or respond to what they’re experiencing today.
And we definitely don’t need the people in our life to be unwaveringly, unrealistically, or toxically “positive.” Toxic positivity, in fact, can be a b*tch of a trigger for many trauma survivors.
This isn’t even about “negative” versus “positive” people, per se.
This is about who we choose to let into our circle and let into our head in trauma recovery.
Trauma recovery is the hardest thing most of us will ever do in our lifetime.
Most of us will feel overwhelmed by what trauma recovery asks of us at multiple points in our journey.
Many of us will struggle with feelings of hopelessness and helplessness along the way— the voice of Trauma Brain telling us we can’t do this, and we shouldn’t even bother trying.
While we don’t need toxically positive people in our life to help balance out Trauma Brain’s BS (Belief Systems), we do need to limit, to the extent we’re able, our exposure to people whose reflexive negativity reinforces Trauma Brain’s propaganda about everything we “can’t” do.
We need to realize that many people’s pessimism about whether trauma recovery is possible or realistic for us is rooted in their own pain and past experiences, and has little or nothing to do with us.
I believe, strongly, in having people in our life and inner circle who will be real with us and tell us the truth.
But part of being real and truth telling is being real and telling the truth about what we CAN do and what IS possible for us— not just the rough stuff.
The further I get into my own recovery, the less patience I have for people who are only here to complain and blame and shame.
Most of us trauma survivors have had enough complaining, blaming, and shaming from the people who hurt us and the people who enabled them.
We need people around us now who will support us in undoing the bleak, toxic conditioning that was programmed into us over years.
It would be great if everyone we met fit that description.
Unfortunately, they won’t.
Remember: that has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with them.
Mental focus, along with self-talk and physiology, is one of the core components of every trauma recovery tool that works.
To the extent that you can today— even if it’s just a little— leverage your mental focus in ways that realistically support your recovery. Whether or not the people around you understand or care what you’re doing or what you need.
I am never going to tell anyone their reason for living isn’t “good enough.”
If it keeps you alive for even one more day, it’s “good enough” for today.
We trauma survivors have a rough habit of judging, often harshly, our reasons for living (in fairness, we trauma survivors have a rough habit of judging, harshly, pretty much everything about ourselves)— but, truly, any reason for living is better than no reason for living.
I very often work with survivors who tell me their reason for living today is someone else, usually a person or a pet— and that’s great. I have no problem with that.
I do, however, encourage survivors to work on expanding their “reasons for living” list.
Many people have many different reasons for living, but for the vast majority of the people in the world who continue to want to exist, their reasons include experiences that are meaningful and pleasurable to them— and their confidence that they can create or access those experiences on the regular.
Trauma survivors, however, tend to struggle with this.
Our painful experiences have convinced us that we cannot, or at the very least will not, create or access experiences that are pleasurable or meaningful.
Oh, sure, sometimes we’ll have an experience that is okay, or even great— but those positive experiences often come at a complicated emotional cost for us.
The moment we become aware we are experiencing something pleasurable or meaningful, we start to feel anxious.
Part of us often gets activated that is thoroughly convinced that that this pleasurable or meaningful experience is about to be yanked away from us— and we’ll somehow be in trouble for daring to feel good for a minute.
One of the bedrock beliefs that trauma cultivates in us is that good experiences don’t last.
I hear variants of this every day. “Nothing gold can stay.” “Everybody leaves.” “Don’t get happy.”
When we survivors happen to experience pleasure or meaning in our life, we tend to immediately anticipate losing it— while at the same time telling ourselves a story about how we never really “deserved” that moment of meaning or pleasure in the first place.
There is a cognitive distortion called the “mental filter” that Trauma Brain is very good at leveraging against us, that will have us believing that any positive experience we have is basically an accident— that while we are responsible for every bad thing that happens to us, the “good” stuff comes and goes unreliably and completely independent of our own efforts.
I know. What a bunch of BS (Belief Systems). But that’s what CPTSD does to us.
If we’re going to consistently manage our suicidal ideation, we need to realistically chip away at Trauma Brain’s insistence that it is “pointless” to try to create or experience meaning and pleasure in our life.
Yes, many pleasurable or meaningful experiences are, in fact transitory— but it doesn’t follow that the are not worth creating, pursuing, or enjoying.
When we start to understand how CPTSD mangles our beliefs about ourselves, other people, the wold, and the future, we begin to see that we’ve been conned out of creating reasons to live that don’t depend entirely on other people or our pets.
Again: I have zero problem with living for others or our pets. As I say: any reason to live is better than no reason to live. No shame and no shade.
But as we continue to work our trauma recovery, we’re going to come up against our beliefs about the possibility of meaning and pleasure in our life again and again— and sooner or later we’re going to have to confront Trauma Brain’s lies about our ability to create a life worth living.
You have as much ability to create and experience pleasure and meaning as anyone who has ever existed. No matter what has happened to you, and no matter what your life has been like until now.
You might be new to developing the skillset that supports you in creating a life worth living— but the good news is, you’re right here, right now, reading this.
That means it’s not too late.
That means there is a life of pleasure and meaning out there for you.
That means there are skills and tools that will work for you.
Your reasons to live will not always be a short list. Just keep woking your recovery.
CPTSD has this way of convincing us that our wounds are our identity.
They’re not.
Our symptoms often masquerade as who we “really” are, and sometimes we’re sufficiently confused or exhausted by them to buy in to it.
Our symptoms are not the “real” us.
They are our real wounds.
They are the scars we bear from having survived situations and relationships humans are not built to survive.
But we don’t “choose” our symptoms.
Our symptoms have nothing to do with our preferences, values, or goals— so they cannot, by definition, be our identity.
Our post traumatic wounds, up to and including dissociation, do not define our personality. They hijack it.
Yes, they hijack our personality again and again, in relationship after relationship— but that still does not mean they somehow “become” our personality.
Often we spent so much bandwidth managing our symptoms for so long, that we have trouble remembering who we really are and what we’re all about.
We can’t remember a time when we made a choice simply because we liked something or something resonated with us beyond our trauma struggles.
We can’t imagine what it might be like to live a day, let alone a life, centered around what we want, what we like, what gives us pleasure, what creates meaning for us.
CPTSD doesn’t just hijack our personality at times— it often hijacks our life.
And yet: we are not our CPTSD. Or DID. Or BPD. Or any other diagnosis that we happen to meet criteria for today.
For my money, a huge, under-discussed focus of trauma recovery is rediscovering and rebuilding ourselves.
For many survivors it’s not even about “rebuilding,” insofar as we don’t have a “before” the trauma to “rebuild” or even “remember.”
For many survivors “rebuilding” ourselves actually means “building” our sense of self from scratch. Discovering who we are for the first time— without CPTSD calling the shots.
That process often starts out with a fairly simple question: “Who would you be, if you didn’t have to spend all day managing trauma symptoms?”
The truth is, many survivors have been convinced by CPTSD that they don’t get any meaningful say in who they are or what their life looks like.
When we get into recovery, and realize that we do, actually, have more agency than we ever thought we did in choosing our personality and crafting our life experience, we often don’t have any idea wha the hell to do next— and we often feel unworthy of the opportunity.
After all, who am I, to “choose” anything about my life?
Won’t I just f*ck it up?
Don’t I “have” to choose a life that everyone else will approve of, and that meets everybody else’s needs and priorities?
No, you will not f*ck it up.
You’re going to have all the struggles every human has in designing a life, and you’ll definitely have moments where you’re not your best self. Ask me how I know.
But you won’t f*ck it up.
And no, you don’t have to choose a life that suits ANYBODY but you.
I know, I know. That goes against every scrap of programming that’s been pumped into your brain and seared into your nervous system for years.
But maybe that’s the good news.
After all, a life consistent with your old programming— you have that right now. How’s that working out for you?
Your struggles are not your identity. You are not your symptoms.
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.
Use Your Damn Skills 