Tag: health

Ever not been your best self? Me too. 

Ever had your trauma symptoms contribute to you not being your best self? Me too. 

The fact that sometimes our trauma symptoms contribute to us not being our best self, doesn’t negate our responsibility in those situations. 

And, the fact that we’re responsible for our behavior doesn’t negate the fact that trauma can contribute to our vulnerability to certain moods and decisions. 

It’s complicated. 

Many of us walk around feeling guilty for even having trauma symptoms. 

Those aren’t, actually, our fault or “choice.” 

The choices we DO have often get obscured by our trauma symptoms— by how overwhelming they are, by how painful they are. 

Some of us made poor “choices” because we truly didn’t see any survivable alternatives. 

Some of us made certain choices because we did not have the safety or support to realistically choose otherwise. 

And some of us made certain choices because we were never taught how to make different choices. 

As a rule, I’m not a fan of shaming ourselves over our supposed “choices.” 

Whether we could have made different choices or not— we didn’t. And we can’t change the past. 

Shame is just not an effective behavior change lever, in my experience. Not for long, and not without destructive side effects, anyway. 

And but also, I am a big fan of identifying choices we do realistically have. 

We do have choices when it comes to self-acceptance. 

We do have choices when it comes to living consciously or going on autopilot. 

We do have choices when it comes to learning about our basic needs— predictability, novelty, significance, connection, growth, and contribution— and making teeny, tiny micro choices every day that move toward meeting our needs. 

We do have choices when it comes to acknowledging, validating, and communicating with our “parts,” including our dissociative self-states. 

We don’t have the choice to just not have CPTSD or DID. 

We don’t have the choice to forget or “stuff” our past experiences indefinitely. 

We don’t have the choice to just not do any of this “trauma recovery” stuff, and expect to be safe and stable. 

Sometimes we’re not our best self, and sometimes our trauma symptoms contribute to that. That’s reality. That describes everybody reading this, and definitely the person writing this. 

Realistic trauma recovery hinges on identifying and leaning into the choices we realistically have. 

(Notice Trauma Brain piping up right now, telling you you actually don’t have any meaningful choices? That’s Trauma Brain being predictable and tiresome— and a pretty good indication that you have more choices than Trauma Brain has let you believe over the years.)

Breathe; blink; focus. 

Realistic trauma recovery is ultimately about self-care. Radical self-care. 

And radical self-care requires radical acceptance— but that’s a different subject. 

What do I mean when I say self-care? I don’t mean it in the abstract way it’s often thrown around. 

I mean self-care in the literal sense: are we caring for ourselves? As in, are we meeting our needs? 

Trauma survivors often have a complicated relationship with our needs. 

We’ve often been conditioned to believe our needs don’t matter. 

We’ve been conditioned to believe even HAVING needs, let alone expressing them, makes us “too much.” A “burden.” “High maintenance.” 

I’m going to tell you the exact opposite: getting in touch with our needs and taking realistic steps toward meeting our needs is essential. Non-negotiable. 

What are our needs, beyond survival needs like nutrition and hydration and rest? 

Different theorists are going to have different answers to that question, but the framework I like the best posits six psychological needs that are shared by almost all humans: predictability, novelty, significance, connection, growth, and contribution. 

Most psychological needs I hear expressed by most people trace back to one or more of those. 

Predictability is a particularly important need for trauma survivors, insofar as our experiences have “taught” us that the world is unpredictable and uncontrollable— often in tragic, painful ways. 

But we also have a psychological need for novelty— to not have EVERY event of our life scripted out in advance, which would lead us to becoming bored and unmotivated. 

(In my experience, the tension between our needs for predictability and novelty often help explain our relationship and career choices— for better or worse.) 

Similarly, trauma survivors tend to have a conflicted relationship with our need for significance— to know we matter, that our existence and happiness is important— because we’ve been told over and over again by our bullies and abusers that we DON’T matter. 

The need for connection can also throw us survivors for a loop— I’m not sure we simultaneously crave and fear anything as intensely as connection on a daily basis. 

Growth can be a tricky need for trauma survivors, especially when we’ve gotten the sh*t kicked out of us by Trauma Brain to the tune of, “your life is over, don’t bother trying to learn anything new or develop any new skills.” 

Likewise, Trauma Brain can get us sideways with our need to contribute, insofar as it can convince us we don’t HAVE anything to meaningfully contribute to other people or the world. 

There’s no denying that we trauma survivors can have enormously tumultuous, complicated relationships with each of the six basic psychological needs— but we cannot let that stop us from taking each need seriously, and taking realistic steps to meet each need in some way. 

We do not recover from trauma by pretending certain of our basic psychological needs “don’t matter.” 

We don’t recover from trauma by deciding we’re just going to ignore needs that we feel weird or icky about. 

Radical self-care of the kind that heals trauma asks us to take our needs seriously. 

I recommend writing them down— predictability, novelty, significance, connection, growth, and contribution— and keeping them handy. Check in on them every now and then, and ask how your life patterns are or aren’t serving them. 

We can’t escape our needs. 

And, as it turns out, we don’t need to. 

Regardless of the bullsh*t Trauma Brain is whispering in your ear right now. 

Ever wonder why coercive controllers love to shame rest and recreation? 

It’s because rest and recreation make us less easy to control. 

Rest and recreation literally make us smarter. 

Rest and recreation make us more creative— and thus more dangerous to them. 

There’s a reason why every cult documentary includes the part where the “guru” tells their followers to sleep less. 

And there’s a reason why every grind culture wannabe “guru” tells their audience that sleep is a waste of otherwise “productive” time.” 

(Remember James Arthur Ray telling his “Spiritual Warriors,” three of whom would die by the end of the retreat, that while they could sleep while they were doing the event, he “wouldn’t recommend it?”) 

Trauma survivors are conditioned to have all sorts of negative feelings about rest. 

Not only have we been programmed to believe rest is for the “weak” or “lazy,” many of us are very aware of how vulnerable sleep or relaxation can make us. 

Some of us were primarily abused at night, literally woken from our sleep by our abusers. 

Many of us experience hyper vigilance and intrusive thoughts that make even trying to sleep or rest pure torture. 

When it comes to recreation, things we do for no other reason than we enjoy them and they make us feel good, many of us were conditioned to believe we do not “deserve” the opportunity to either enjoy things OR feel good. 

Some of us were heavily conditioned to believe that recreation was a waste of time— that it necessarily distracts us from being “productive.” 

If you read my material, you know how I feel about that: the things that we like, the things that inspire us, the things that tickle us, the things that make us feel good in any way, shape or form— I feel these things are integral to our recovery. 

They wake up our brain. They soothe our nervous system. They reconnect us to our authentic self. 

Resting and seeking out opportunities for recreation goes entirely against a LOT of our conditioning. Many of us have been programmed to be profoundly skeptical of and uncomfortable with either rest or recreation. 

A very common attitude I see in trauma survivors is that rest and recreation are “nice,” but optional. They truly believe that the “work” of trauma recovery is done primarily in therapy sessions, “processing trauma.” 

Let me tell you what I believe: trauma processing is “nice,” but the REAL work of trauma recovery is day to day self care. 

That means rest and recreation. 

Pro tip: anything that our abusers and bullies shame as much as they shame rest and recreation is probably a POWERFUL recovery tool. 

Get curious about why you were so heavily conditioned to eschew rest and recreation. 

And reframe them from “nice” but optional, to non-negotiables we absolutely have to figure out if we’re serious about trauma recovery. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

You’re not struggling, with either trauma or trauma recovery, “for no reason.” 

This sh*t is hard. And complicated. And sneaky. 

How is CPTSD “sneaky?” Because it masquerades as other things. 

Often complex trauma masquerades as “personality.” 

Sometimes it masquerades as aspects of neurodivergence (that can intersect with aspects of very real neurodivergence). 

Sometimes CPTSD can masquerade as organic cognitive dysfunction (which, again, can intersect with very real organic cognitive dysfunction or brain injury). 

But the sneakiest thing of all about CPTSD is how it will pretend it has nothing to do with what we went through. 

Many of the signs and symptoms of complex trauma don’t superficially point to what happened to us. 

CPTSD is different from PTSD, insofar as many PTSD symptoms directly link back to the “main” trauma, in the form of explicit flashbacks and other intrusive memories. 

But with CPTSD, the symptoms mainly point back to us. 

To our beliefs about ourselves. 

To our reflexes in our relationships. 

To our emotional regulation in situations that don’t seem to have anything to do with our trauma. 

To our reasons to triggers that don’t seem to “make any sense” in the context of our trauma. 

This is what makes complex trauma “complex”— the fact that CPTSD struggles can engulf so much more of our life and functioning that “should” be affected. 

(One of the things this means, by the way, is that realistic RECOVERY from CPTSD has to involve more than just “processing the trauma”— it often involves rehabbing our whole life and identity.)

When we’re up against something as sneaky as CPTSD, we can’t afford to minimize. 

We can’t get up in our head about “okay, but was it really ‘TRAUMA,’ though? Am I really ‘eligible” for these terms and tools?” 

Don’t overthink it. If you’re reading this, I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt: you’re “eligible” to be a member of the trauma recovery community. 

(And, even if you really don’t think you are, I’m willing to give you a pass— stick around anyway. Everybody also reading these words really wants you to recover from WHATEVER pain you’re trying to manage and heal, “traumatic” or not.)

CPTSD is sneaky, and realistic CPTSD recovery requires daily, hourly vigilance and skill. 

You’re not wrong or “weak” to be frustrated with it, exhausted by it, over it. Big same, some days. 

Acknowledge that, validate that, allow all that to exist. 

And then: do the next recovery supporting thing. 

Breathe; blink; focus.