drglenndoyle

Gratitude.

You’re going to meet people in this trauma recovery process who will try to convince you that “gratitude” is kind of a “cheat code” to recovery. 

I’ve never believed that. 

Especially on days like today, you’re going to hear a lot about gratitude. 

On days like today, the culture is not particularly sensitive to people whose life experiences, especially their family experiences, have been painful or complicated. 

You may or may not feel like you have a lot to be “thankful” for today— and that’s okay. 

Acknowledging how painful or complicated your life has been does not make you “ungrateful.” 

My father, a narcissistic addict, frequently weaponized the word “gratitude” against me. 

To this day my trauma conditioning comes at me, telling me that I am not sufficiently “grateful.” 

I’ll tell you right now that I am overwhelming grateful— but maybe not for the things the culture tells me I “should” be. 

I am grateful I survived— though I wasn’t always. 

Some days I was quite ambivalent about the fact that I was still alive. 

Today I am grateful for recovery— but that has nothing to do with my family of origin. 

I am overwhelmingly grateful for some of the books and music I stumbled across that saved my life. 

I am overwhelmingly grateful for the Siamese cat that overwhelmingly enhanced my life for thirteen years— and that her passing last April was as peaceful as I could have asked for. 

I am overwhelmingly grateful for a little orange kitten who has held my grieving heart as tenderly as I could ever hope for, and for the life saving songwriters who are his namesake. 

I am overwhelmingly grateful for the humans whose voices I am listening to as I am writing this. A writer and an artist and a dancer and an adventurer who allow me the privilege of being in their lives. 

I am grateful to be sober today. 

I am grateful I did not believe trauma’s lies about whether I deserve to live. 

I am grateful I can write. That I have this platform. That my words reach even one person, let alone as many as they do. 

Believe me, I’m plenty grateful. 

But I don’t tell anyone the “have” to be grateful— or anything else, for that matter. 

Gratitude might be a tool in your recovery— or it might not. You get to decide that. 

No one gets to tell you you “have’ to be grateful, or anything else, to “deserve” recovery. 

Your mileage will vary when it comes to how useful a tool gratitude is or isn’t in your recovery. 

Don’t get up in your head about it. Really. 

Today is a day in recovery. No more; no less. 

If you are reading this, I am grateful for you. 

Yes, you. Person reading this who thinks I’m not talking about you. 

I am. 

drglenndoyle

They don’t get it– and that doesn’t matter.

They’re going to tell you to “suck it up.” 

They don’t get it. 

They’re going to question whether it was actually “trauma.” 

They don’t get it. 

They’re going to roll their eyes at some things you express. 

They don’t get it. 

They’re going to be impatient with some things you need. 

They don’t get it. 

They’re going to tell you you need “tough love.” 

They don’t get it. 

They’re going to tell you “everyone has trauma.” 

They don’t get it. 

They’re going to tell you trauma is not an “excuse” for under functioning. 

They don’t get it. 

Not only do they not get it— they don’t realize that all that stupid sh*t they say to minimize or belittle, is all sh*t we’ve said to ourselves. 

If that sh*t worked, it would have worked by now. 

But it doesn’t, because it fundamentally misunderstands post traumatic and dissociative injuries. 

We who struggle with post traumatic an dissociative injuries, and who work our recovery one day at a time? We are not looking for “excuses.” 

We are seeking— creating, actually— workable ways of existing in the world, DESPITE what we’ve endured and what we are enduring. 

We don’t love our trauma any more than you love hearing about our trauma. 

And, for what it’s worth, our recovery isn’t actually about our trauma. 

Our recovery is about our values. 

Our hopes. 

Our personhood. 

Our recovery is about putting our trauma in its appropriate place in our life story— not minimized, not exaggerated. 

They don’t get it.

Why would they? 

Don’t attach your self-esteem to what they do or don’t get. 

Our recovery is not predicated on ANYONE getting it. 

Especially not anyone who leads with dumbass statements like “suck it up.”

drglenndoyle

“Functioning” does not equal “fine.”

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. 

drglenndoyle

How not to get hijacked by the “fawn” reflex.

Many trauma survivors, every day, are vulnerable to interactions with people who will, purposefully or not, hijack our focus. 

We’ve all experienced this— entering into a conversation or other interaction with someone, and suddenly feeling yanked away from who we are and what we’re all about. 

This can happen when somebody’s vibe or behavior triggers us; or it can happen when the content of the conversation or interaction is distressing or distracting to us; or it can happen for reasons we may not be able to identify in the moment. 

All we know is: we don’t feel like ourselves when we’re interacting with this person— and, often, we don’t like how we feel. 

Sometimes this “hijacking” happens unpredictably— that is, we find ourselves quite unexpectedly off our game when we engage with a person. 

Other times, however, we know from past experience with a person that they’re highly likely going to trigger us, or that interacting with them is likely to evoke feelings and responses in us that we do not love (or 100% choose, for that matter). 

There’s no shame to any of this, by the way. It happens to everyone. 

I DEFINITELY have interactions with people that yank me quite away from who I am and what I’m all about. 

I DEFINITELY find myself responding in ways I don’t love to dynamics I didn’t anticipate in certain conversations or interactions. 

Very often what’s happening to us in these moments is a form of flashback and/or dissociation. Somebody’s vibe or behavior has triggered us, because it’s punched a “replay” button installed in us from the past. 

We may not fully realize that’s what’s happening, because we think of flashbacks as fully immersive sensory experiences, or dissociation as “switching” between “parts”— but the truth is, both flashbacks and dissociation occur along a spectrum, and many survivors hang out in the mild-to-moderate range of that spectrum every day without being aware of it. 

It’s real important, when we can, that we prepare ourselves for conversations or interactions that are highly likely to trigger us. 

Remember that managing trauma responses always involves a combination of three basic tools: self-talk, mental focus, and physiology. 

When we know we’re headed into a potentially triggering conversation or interaction, we can leverage all three of those tools in order to minimize the chances we’ll get “hijacked.” 

We can remind ourselves, via our self-talk, of who we are, what we’re all about, what our goal is in the interaction, and what to pay attention to. 

We can use our mental focus to reinforce our identity, our own vibe, and our interactional goal with this person, so we don’t get caught up in their personalty or their goals. 

We can utilize our breathing and physiology to stay grounded and somatically present in thee conversation, instead of letting the anxiety or other emotions of the moment jack up our sympathetic nervous system and make it harder for us to be ourselves. 

The reason I feel it’s important that you know about these kinds of vulnerabilities and these kinds of tools is, these are exactly the kinds of things I wish someone had told me as a teenager. 

I remember, vividly, feeling at the complete mercy of every situation I was in— especially social situations. 

I felt like my identity as basically malleable, depending on who I was interacting with and what they wanted from me— and it was hell on my self-esteem. 

Taking a few minutes to utilize our recovery tools to affirm our identity, our values, and our goals for the interaction can help us stay grounded in and focused on who we are and what we need. 

That is: it can help us manage our vulnerability to the “fawn” response— and give us valuable experience in wrangling flashbacks and dissociation that aren’t obvious or overwhelming. 

It’s never the wrong call to leverage self-talk, mental focus, and physiology to remind ourselves who we are and what we’re all about. 

And it’s never the wrong time to do whatever we need to do to not accidentally lose ourselves in someone else’s vibe. 

drglenndoyle

The quality of our recovery is the quality of our relationship with ourselves.

The quality of our trauma recovery is the quality of our relationship and communication with ourselves. 

If we’re struggling with recovery, it’s almost always because that relationship and communication has broken down somehow. 

We’ve lost touch with ourselves. 

We’re not checking in. 

We’re not listening. 

We’re not open to whatever our body and our parts are trying to tell us. 

There can be lots of reasons why our relationship and communication with ourselves can get blocked, and many of them aren’t our fault. It’s almost never the case that we struggle with recovery because we’re “not trying hard enough.” 

Usually, we’ve gotten scared or overwhelmed. 

We’ve gotten distracted by all the noise. All the chaos— inside and out. 

When we are overwhelmed, it’s hard to relate to ourselves with compassion and patience— and it’s especially hard when for years we’ve been conditioned by trauma to dislike and distrust ourselves.

During times of fear or overwhelm, we tend to regress. 

We fall back into our default patterns of relating and communicating to ourselves. 

That’s one of the main reasons why, when we’re badly triggered, we can feel like we’re back at Square One: we’re aware of having regressed. 

It can FEEL like we’ve lost all our progress— but we haven’t. 

It can FEEL like all the tools and skills we’ve ever developed have abandoned us— but they haven’t. 

When we’re scared and overwhelmed, it can take a minute to remember that recovery is about how we relate and communicate to ourselves. 

Sometimes it takes even longer to remember, because we feel embarrassed or ashamed that we’re struggling. 

Fear, overwhelm, embarrassment, shame, dissociation— they all make it hard to get back on track with relating and communicating with ourselves in recovery supporting ways. 

But we can get back on track. 

We can plug back in to our experiences and our needs with compassion and patience. 

We can start reaching out and listening to our parts again. 

We can remember and remind ourselves who we are, and what we’re all about. 

The trick is staying out of shame and self-blame. 

Not assuming that because we’re struggling, we’ve lost the fight. 

Not telling ourselves a story, over and over again, about how we suck, how we’re hopeless, how we can’t recover, how it’s not worth even trying. 

Trauma robs us of many choices— but there are some choices we do have, even in moments of fear and overwhelm. 

The most important of those choices is how we relate and communicate to ourselves. 

The quality of our recovery is the quality of that relationship and that communication. 

And it’s never too late— never the wrong moment— to pay attention to it with acceptance and love. 

drglenndoyle

Don’t believe what they told you.

You are not stupid. And the most important people in your life shouldn’t have made you feel that way. 

How do I know that you’re not stupid? After all, I probably don’t know most of the people reading this.

Yeah, I may not know you personally. But let me tell you what I do know. 

I do know that many survivors of complex trauma come through our experiences believing we are “stupid”— very often because we were told this, fairly directly, by important people in our lives. 

What we need to understand is that, very often, those people didn’t tell or insinuate to us that we’re stupid because of anything having to do with our actual intelligence. 

They did it because making us feel stupid was an excellent way to make us feel unworthy, and to get us to distrust our judgment.

And making us feel unworthy and untrustworthy to ourselves came in very handy when trying to demoralize and control us. 

Most of what our abusers and bullies told us, about us, was designed to demoralize and control us. 

Many of us came through childhood believing things about ourselves and applying standards t ourselves we would’t dream of foisting on to anyone else. 

The fact, is, I don’t necessarily know you’re smarter than average— again, I don’t personally know most of the people reading this blog— but I do know that many complex trauma survivors arrive in adulthood erroneously believing they suck. 

It’s not just that being told we’re stupid is panful. 

It’s that being told and treated like we’re stupid by the people who should have had our back, who should have been in our corner, who, by rights, should have been our biggest cheerleaders, inflicts a very specific wound on survivors. 

Abuse and neglect are always harmful— but when we’re talking about long term consequences, who was inflicting the abuse or neglect upon us really matters. 

If just anybody calls us stupid, we may or may not be particularly reactive to it. 

But if the people who “should” have our back consistently treat us like we’re stupid, what are we supposed to conclude about our actual intelligence or capabilities? 

We don’t form a positive, realistic self-concept out of nowhere. 

We first develop self-esteem by modeling the “esteem” in which others in our life seem to hold us, most notably by their words and behavior. 

So many people don’t understand: complex trauma is not just about the impact of painful events— it’s also about the opportunities we missed to form a stable, positive sense of ourselves. 

Many people don’t get that it’s not necessarily trauma itself that makes us hate and doubt ourselves— it’s the fact that having to cope with trauma after trauma in our early years leaves precious little time or bandwidth to discover and develop who we are. 

A main reason complex trauma is so devastating is that it interrupts developmental tasks that are really, really important to us as we’re growing and learning about ourselves and the world. 

We’re not born feeling “worthy” (or “unworthy,” for that matter); we need to be taught whether we have worth, whether we “deserve” good things, whether we are capable of learning and growing and succeeding. 

When, growing up, we lack that assurance— or, worse, when we grow up around adults who communicate how “stupid” or “dramatic” or otherwise unworthy we are— that’s what we internalize. 

Then we struggle to connect how we’re feeling to any specific “trauma”— because it’s had to comprehend that the “trauma” that so harmed us was just our everyday lives and everyday relationships. 

You are not “stupid.” 

The fact that you were made to feel “stupid” says much more about the people and institutions you grew up in and around than it does about you. 

Part of your recovery work is accepting the fact that they were wrong about you. 

And, as odd as it may seem, the guy with the blog on the internet who may not even know you, is actually right about you. 

drglenndoyle

Because we feel guilty doesn’t mean a decision was bad.

I’ll spoil the suspense: we’re going to feel guilty about a lot of things. 

This isn’t necessarily because we have anything to feel particularly guilty about. 

This is because enduring trauma has the impact of making us feel that everything is our fault— and everything is our responsibility. 

I’ve worked with trauma survivors who have literally described feeling guilty for the weather. No joke— more than a few. 

Many trauma survivors are conditioned to feel particular guilt about decisions we make— especially decisions we make in regards to self-protection and self-care. 

Many of us grew up conditioned to believe we deserved nether protection NOR care— and we sure as hell had absolutely no right to extend OURSELVES protection or care. 

Many of us were conditioned to believe that boundaries were “mean”— or that the need to set limits with someone simply meant that we weren’t “tough enough.” 

We have the physical, emotional, and behavioral responses we do because of what we believe things mean— and if we believe that we have no right to set boundaries or otherwise take care of ourselves, we’re going to be reluctant, maybe even unable, to take vital steps toward self-protection and self-care. 

It’s not our fault. We didn’t choose the attitudes and beliefs that were conditioned in us. That conditioning is a symptom of what we’ve been through— and the rule in trauma recovery is, we do not shame or push ourselves for symptoms. 

Our abusers and bullies “installed” certain patterns of thinking, feeling, and reacting in us— and guilt very often was their tool of choice to do so. 

So many of the decisions we have to make in trauma recovery are so hard in the first place— but that layer of guilt makes those decisions exponentially harder. 

Guilt makes us fear exposure and punishment. 

Guilt makes us believe that we must have done something contrary to our values, or the values of society at large— that we’re a “bad” person. Otherwise why would we be feeling guilty, hmm? 

We are going to feel guilt about a lot of really important, really necessary decisions and boundaries— but it’s real important we clearly understand: feeling guilt about a decision does not mean it is a bad decision. 

Very often what it actually means is that we’ve run afoul of our trauma conditioning, and old guardrails are kicking in. 

A specific example of what I’m talking about often happens when survivors have chosen to cut off contact, temporary or permanently, with abusive people or institutions (such as a church or community). 

In my experience, very few people take the decision to go “no contact” lightly— and, even if we’re quite sure that we need to do it in order to bolster our safety or stability, we still feel guilty and anxious about it. 

You need to know a few things about those feelings. For starters, you need to know those feelings are normal— it’d be weird to NOT feel guilty and anxious when you’re setting firm boundaries, such as “no contact,” with people or institutions that have been in your life for years. 

You also need to know that those feelings of guilt and anxiety don’t mean you’ve made a bad or unnecessary decision. 

Because a decision is hard doesn’t mean it’s wrong. 

Reinforcing and living our trauma recovery very often means sticking with decisions we know we had to make— but we hated making, and we hate sticking to. 

It takes courage. 

It takes toughness. 

Fortunately, trauma survivors are literally the most courageous, toughest subset of human beings I have ever met. 

This— sticking with our Recovery Supporting Decisions (RSD’s) even when it’s hard, even when Trauma Brain is trying to f*ck with us, even when every scrap of old conditioning is making us feel like sh*t about it— is where the rubber meets the road in recovery. 

You are up to this moment. 

You are up to this task. 

I guarantee it.