drglenndoyle

Post traumatic self-esteem: an anti-bullsh*t operation.

One thing realistically raising our self-esteem is NOT about, is bullsh*t. 

Sometimes trauma survivors can get tripped up when trying to raise our self-esteem, because we think that we have to say or think nice things about ourselves that we don’t really mean. 

Raising our opinion of ourselves seems to us to be inauthentic, because we just don’t believe those nice things. 

The good news is, I can assure you, actually raising our self esteem, especially after we’ve experienced trauma, has absolutely zero to do with bullsh*tting ourselves. 

For that matter: not only does bullsh*tting ourselves NOT build self-esteem— it actually tanks our self-esteem further. 

Raising self-esteem doesn’t really have much of anything to do with gassing ourselves up. 

It’s true that sustainable trauma recovery does require us to quit using the tool of self-talk to beat the living sh*t out of ourselves— but that doesn’t mean we need to turn around and start saying things to or about ourselves that we don’t mean. 

Real self esteem is never, ever built on bullsh*t. 

What it is built on, is living consciously. Living responsibly. Living with integrity. 

None of that requires bullsh*t— in fact, quite the opposite. 

When we are bullsh*tting ourselves or other people, we are way afield of integrity and personal responsibility— and our self-esteem very often pays the price. 

I don’t know who sold us on this lie that self esteem was about approving of everything we do, or saying things to our about ourselves that we don’t really mean— but whoever it was didn’t know the first thing about self-esteem in the real world. 

To actually build or rebuild self-esteem after surviving trauma, focus on being present and making decisions that align with your values— not the preferences or desires of other people. 

We build real self-esteem when we quit blaming ourselves for sh*t we had no control over— and lying to ourselves about how we somehow caused our own abuse or neglect— and shift our focus to things we CAN influence (not “control”— key difference) now. 

We build real self esteem when we get OUT of the habit of checking out when triggers hit. 

We build real self esteem when we commit to radically accepting ourselves, just as we are— even as we work to change aspects of ourselves or our lives we don’t love. 

That’s what real self-esteem is about: living life on purpose, not on default. 

(If you’re interested, my thinking about self-esteem was heavily influenced by a psychologist named Nathaniel Branden, whose writing I can’t recommend highly enough). 

Yes, building self-esteem does require us to quit attacking, harming, or abusing ourselves like our bullies and abusers did. 

But it does not ask us to pretend to be or do anything that we’re not. 

We build self-esteem by getting MORE real, not by saying or doing things because we think we’re “supposed” to. 

drglenndoyle

Sacrificing self harm, so we don’t become the “sacrifice.”

Trauma recovery is going to ask us to do some hard things— no all of which have to do with confronting trauma memories & feelings. 

Some of the hardest things trauma recovery asks us to do, are the things it asks us to not do. 

For example: trauma recovery is going to ask us to not harm ourselves. 

That’s harder than it seems for a lot of survivors. 

For a lot of survivors, harming ourselves is what we’ve been trained to do. It’s what we’re used to doing. 

For some survivors, harming ourselves is the only way we’ve found— yet— to change how we feel. 

For many survivors, self-harm is what we’ve been conditioned to believe we “deserve.” 

Yet: trauma recovery is going to ask us to not do that. 

Why? Not because we’re “bad” for doing it. 

It’s because trauma recovery is fundamentally about reshaping our relationship with ourselves to be safe and sustainable— and it’s hard to build a safe, sustainable relationship with someone you’re harming. 

It’s also because, as we get deeper into trauma recovery, we start to understand that we’re still carrying around younger versions of who we once were — “parts” of us— in our head and heart, and it very frequently scares and hurts them if we harm ourselves, even as a self regulatory strategy. 

I know better than most that not harming ourselves is sometimes not so simple or easy, any more than giving up other addictions are simple or easy. 

Self harm can be a deeply ingrained behavior pattern that we’ve come to rely on. I’ve known people who have considered self harm their only “friend,” in exactly the way I once considered my substances and behaviors of addiction as “friendly” and familiar. 

But self harm is something we just cannot take with us into recovery. Not if we want it to be realistic, not if we want it to be sustainable. 

Trust me, I know what Trauma Brain is saying to you right now. 

“He just doesn’t get it.” 

“He’s just saying that because it’s what therapists are supposed to say.” 

“He doesn’t know you, maybe you’re the exception, the one survivor who can recover while hiding your self harm. F*ck that guy.” 

(Believe me: you’re not going to be the one survivor who figures out how to drag their self harm habit into recovery. You’re not The Exception, any more than I am.)

Trauma recovery is about thinking, believing, feeing, and doing unfamiliar stuff— and also giving up some stuff that is familiar, but which communicates to our “parts” and inner child that we are “deserving” of pain. 

Ultimately, self harm imitates our bullies and abusers. 

And we’re done with that noise. 

We need to sacrifice self harm— so our recovery does not become the sacrifice. 

drglenndoyle

Nope. Not “stupid.”

That thing you think or feel, that you keep telling yourself is “stupid?” Is not stupid. 

There is nothing you can think or feel that is “stupid.” 

What we think and feel is just what we think and feel. No more; no less; no shame. 

Why do we hurl those labels at ourselves? “Stupid?” “Childish?” “Pointless?” 

Mostly because we’ve had those labels hurled at us. Sometimes over a long period of time; sometimes by people who claimed to “love” us.

We’re doing what we saw modeled. 

It’s true that we can, and often do, think and feel things that get in the way of our goals. 

Sometimes we think and feel things that make us feel not so great. 

Even those things aren’t “stupid.” Or “childish” or “pointless,” for that matter. 

If we’re serious about trauma recovery, we’re going to have to get out of the habit of mocking or dismissing or disparaging what we think and feel. 

Even when we don’t understand it. Even when we don’t love it. 

Here’s the thing: we don’t think or feel the things we think or feel on accident. 

They all make sense. 

They’re all tied to something important. 

Even the ones that seem “stupid” or “childish” or “pointless”— they’re important. They’re hooked into “parts” of us that are important. 

I don’t love everything I think or feel. There’s actually a lot that I think and feel that seems to work against my goals, that gets me behaving in ways that almost sabotage myself. 

It took a long time to get out of the habit of attacking myself when that happened. 

Our nervous system, our “parts,” our inner child— they’re not trying to sabotage us with the thought and feelings they throw our way. 

They’re just experiencing what they’re experiencing. They didn’t ask for those thoughts or feelings any more than we did. 

Meet thoughts and feelings you don’t love with acceptance and patience and realism. 

For that matter, meet the “parts” of yourself you don’t understand or love with acceptance and patience and realism. 

I’ve said it before: the quality of our trauma recovery is the quality of our relationship with ourselves. 

And good relationships are not built by hating on the things the person we’re trying to have a relationship with thinks or feels. 

drglenndoyle

Don’t contort yourself. It’s not worth it.

Harming ourselves to conform to someone else’s expectations is never worth it. 

It never supports the safety we think it will. Not really. 

Contorting to fit someone else’s image of us does not make them like us. Not really, not authentically. 

It may make them temporarily like the role we’re playing for a minute— but if that role isn’t sustainable, we’re setting ourselves up for a bigger problem than we had. 

If you think people don’t like when you don’t conform to their expectations, wait till you see what they do when we signal that we’re one thing they like…then we revert to something they don’t like or understand. 

Roleplaying to try to get them to like us is just not worth it. 

It trashes our self-esteem, and for what? 

It communicates to our “parts” and inner child that we’re not acceptable or lovable as we are, and for what? 

I understand: of course we WANT “them” to like us. Hell, we want everyone to like us. Part of us really believes that if we can just figure that equation out, just push the right buttons in everybody around us to get them to like us, maybe, maybe, we’ll feel safe and secure. 

But we won’t. 

Because deep down we’ll know: that’s built on an illusion. An inauthentic, unsustainable illusion. 

Roleplaying to try to get them to like us actually increases our anxiety. 

It’s actually worse when it works for a minute. Then the stakes of the facade are even HIGHER. Then we have something to lose. 

F*ck all of this. 

You are working a trauma recovery that prioritizes authenticity and sustainability. You do not have the time or the bandwidth to play some role, to pretend to be someone, to contort yourself to fit into someone else’s “box.” 

You are valuable and lovable just as you are. 

Maybe not everybody can appreciate your value— which is true of anything of value, by the way, there are people who don’t appreciate its worth— but that does not mean their lack of appreciation means anything real. 

Don’t contort yourself. 

Don’t twist yourself into a pretzel trying to be “their” ideal anything. 

The only way to build a realistic, sustainable trauma recovery is by being you. 

That’s a harder truth than many people appreciate, but this is how it works. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

drglenndoyle

So they didn’t love us. And?

Something many CPTSD survivors have to come to terms with is, we were not loved by the people who were supposed to love us. 

That’s a hard f*cking pill to swallow. 

You’ll notice how many people want to deny and disown that fact. 

There will be people who want to make excuses and rationalize all day. 

They simply cannot process the fact that they weren’t loved. 

To me, it doesn’t even matter why we weren’t loved. I don’t especially care what “their” limitations or motivations may or may not have been. The result is the same. 

Harsh? Eh, maybe. But I don’t particularly care. 

We get all up in our head about what that fact means. 

We weren’t loved by the people who should have loved us, and our brain wants to make some kind of meaning out of that. Because that’s what brains do: they make meaning. 

It wants to tell us a story about why we weren’t loved— and very often that story focuses on how much we supposedly suck, how supposedly “unlovable” we are. 

You need to know: that story is BS— which stands for “Belief Systems.” 

Also bullsh*t. 

You and I weren’t loved. The people who should have loved us may have felt what they thought was “love” toward us— but they did not operationalize that “love” into behaviors that registered with our nervous system the way they needed to. 

And that is not our fault. 

That was not the result of us being inadequate or unloveable. 

That was not “evidence” of anything other than the fact that we weren’t loved. 

It was what it was. It is what it is. 

It doesn’t mean we can’t build a life. 

It doesn’t mean we can’t love and be loved now— although that’s probably going to be complicated, given what we didn’t experience and didn’t see modeled. 

The story your brain is telling you about why you weren’t loved is fake news. It’s what cognitive therapists call “mind reading”— that is, not so educated guesses, usually rooted in a cognitive distortion called “emotional reasoning” (i.e., “it MUST be true because it FEELS true”). 

To realistically recover from trauma or addiction, you and I have to get seriously unattached to the stores our brain makes up about the “why.” 

We may never know why we weren’t loved. 

And that doesn’t change anything. 

And it doesn’t, actually, matter. 

You are valid and valuable whether or not you were loved by the people who happen to share your name and/or DNA. 

Honestly, your parentage is maybe the least interesting thing about you.

Remember. Remember. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

drglenndoyle

Don’t overthink the “self love” thing.

Don’t overthink the “self love” thing. 

“Self love” is such a loaded term for CPTSD survivors. 

We were very frequently conditioned to hate ourselves— and self love feels virtually impossible. 

We get told a lot that we “have to learn to love ourselves” before we can love someone else (which, by the way, is bullsh*t— or, at the very last, nowhere near that simple). 

All the emphasis on “self love” can make trauma survivors feel hopeless and defective, given our frequent struggles to even like ourselves, let alone love ourselves. 

It’s true that how we feel about ourselves matters to our trauma recovery. 

After all, trauma recovery asks us to expend enormous effort caring for ourselves— and why would we do that, if we don’t even like ourselves? 

Feeling negatively about ourselves, feeling worthless, and feeling hopeless often feed suicidal ideation (though suicidal ideation is also nowhere near that simple most of the time). 

But insisting we jump right to “self love” from self-distrust and self-hate is almost always a leap too far, too fast for most trauma survivors. 

Where I find we get most hung up is the fact that we simply cannot imagine feeling love toward ourselves. 

And insisting that we FEEL something we don’t feel now is a recipe for shame and frustration— because you just can’t force a feeling. 

So: maybe don’t start with insisting that you feel, or “have” to feel, anything, including self love. 

The thing about “love” is, it’s not just a feeling. It’s also a verb. 

Yes, the verb “to love” often accompanies the feeling of “love”— but in the context of trauma recovery, it’s useful to remember that we are often called upon to do things that are inconsistent with how we feel. 

Recovery asks us to stay alive when we don’t feel like staying alive. 

Recovery asks us to try when we don’t feel like trying. 

And, to be sure: realistic, sustainable trauma recovery asks us to love ourselves, behaviorally, when we don’t feel particularly loving toward anyone. 

Put another way: we don’t ned to feel loving toward ourselves, to behave lovingly toward ourselves. 

Instead of asking the question, “how can I FEEL loving toward myself?”, maybe start out with the question, “if I DID love myself, how would I behave toward myself right now?”

Most of us can spitball a few examples of loving behavior if we think about it. 

And most of those examples of loving behavior don’t necessarily break the bank. 

First and foremost among “loving” behaviors might be, we absolutely refuse to talk to ourselves like our bullies and abusers did. 

A “loving” behavior toward ourselves might be feeding ourselves adequately and appropriately. 

A self “loving” behavior might be refusing to shame or punish ourselves for being human. 

Mind you: we don’t need to FEEL loving toward ourselves to DO any of those. 

We might have to DO those things “under protest”— but, realistically, we’re doing so many things “under protest” in the wake of trauma, we might as well do things that can actually nudge our recovery forward. 

When I say “don’t overthink the self love thing,” what I mean is, don’t imagine  you have to figure out how to FEEL something you don’t yet FEEL. 

Start with loving behaviors— and keep it simple. 

Something we know about self esteem is, it tends to developing as we behave toward ourselves with care and respect— that is to say, DOING the loving stuff tends to lead to FEELING loving toward ourselves over time. 

Yes, it takes patience. Yes, you may not be in the mood for it. 

So just think baby steps. 

Ask the Recovery Supporting Question (RSQ), “if I DID love myself, what’s the smallest possible thing I could do to demonstrate or communicate that?” 

Think a thing so small, that it’d almost be harder to NOT do it. 

Start there. 

That’s how nervous system change actually, realistically happens— by starting small and not overthinking it. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

drglenndoyle

You do not need to “fix” yourself for anybody’s “love.”

You do not need to “fix” yourself for anybody else. 

Nobody’s love— in any healthy version of “love”— is dependent upon you “fixing” yourself. 

Don’t get me wrong, I understand why we trauma survivors think we need to “fix” ourselves to be “lovable.” 

It’s because we were conditioned to believe this toxic story about what “love” is and means. 

CPTSD survivors were very often “loved”— that is, given attention and afforded relative “safety”— when we were doing the “right things.” 

You know— basically behaving as the big people in our environment preferred. 

When we weren’t doing those things, we very often didn’t get that attention and relative “safety”— again, what we had come to understand as “love.” 

So, we developed this hard wired connection in our nervous system: we have to DO and BE very specific things in order to be “loved” and “lovable.” 

Now: it turns out all of that is bullsh*t. 

But it’s bullsh*t that gets reinforced, over and over again, in our culture. 

If you haven’t noticed, we are a culture absolutely OBSESSED with “earning” “love.” 

We are also a culture that deeply conflates love with attraction and stimulation, which doesn’t help. 

All of this makes it very easy for us trauma survivors to believe that our “only” shot at being “loved” is to “fix ourselves”— that is, conquer our symptoms and struggles, ideally through sheer “willpower,” ideally immediately. 

We came to understand “fixing” ourselves as the ultimate expression of our “love” for someone else— the ultimate “glow up” that might “make” somebody love us. 

I wish love and life and healing were all that straightforward. 

But they’re not. 

Nobody worth loving is going to make you “fixing” your CPTSD a precondition of their own love. 

Nobody who understands CPTSD will assume or assert that “fixing” your CPTSD has anything whatsoever to do with “willpower.” 

And love, real love, has nothing to do with superficial extensions of attention or feelings of stimulation. (Not that there’s anything wrong with attention or stimulation— but they’re not love.)

Why does any of this matter to your trauma recovery? Because if we think we’re working a recovery to “fix” ourselves, particularly for someone else, we’re starting from the wrong place. 

I’m not one to tell someone what language they can or can’t use in their own recovery— but I’ll tell you that every time I’ve seen a survivor start out from a place of “I need to ‘accomplish’ recovery to ‘earn’ love,” it hasn’t gone well. 

Trauma recovery is a long term project, a lifestyle. It’s not a series of “hacks” that become obsolete once we’re reached a level of “fixed” we find acceptable. 

And if we play along with this idea we have in our head, of “love” as something we can or have to “earn” (even by improving ourselves), we’re reinforcing a road map that has only led to pain in the past and can only lead to pain in the future. 

You are working a realistic recovery with the expectation of realistic change. 

This is not an exercise in “fixing” anything. This is about rebuilding your body, mind, and soul for the next several decades. 

drglenndoyle

Why are trauma survivors so hard on ourselves?

Why is it so hard for trauma survivors to give ourselves a break? 

Why is our first instinct always, always, always to beat the sh*t out of ourselves? 

It’s not because we love it. 

It’s usually because we’ve been CONDITIONED to do it— and to be afraid of what would happen if we didn’t do it. 

Our self-aggression very often happens so instinctively, so reflexively, that we don’t even know we’re doing it much of the time. 

Many of my patients tell me they don’t even realize how hard they’re being on themselves until I have them track their self talk for a day, or even a couple hours. 

But even after we realize how hard we’re being on ourselves, we get anxious when we think of NOT being so mean to ourselves. 

We get to thinking that we “need” to be hard on ourselves— or else we won’t be “motivated.” 

We get to thinking not being so hard on ourselves will result in us getting “soft.” 

We get to thinking we “have” to be so hard on ourselves, because “self-compassion” is this touchy feely concept that isn’t REALLY important— that “real” adults talk to themselves harshly. 

“That’s just the way it is,” we tell ourselves. 

We might even tell ourselves that OTHER people might “deserve” more compassionate treatment— but not us. 

We deserve the “tough love,” maybe minus the love. 

That’s what our conditioning tells us. And most CPTSD survivors have been conditioned, over and over, year after year, to talk to ourselves in very specific, very harsh ways. 

If we stay on autopilot, we don’t stand a chance against that conditioning. That programming. 

The good news is, we don’t have to stay on autopilot. 

The bad news, or mixed news, anyway, is that going off autopilot is a b*tch. 

It’s tiring. It’s annoying. It’s a distraction from the other sh*t we have to do in our life, like work, raising kids, and caring for pets. 

Our brain will keep trying to drag us back to our old conditioning, our old programming, because that’s the pattern it knows. That’s the pattern that is etched into our nervous system. That’s the path of least resistance. 

Working our recovery means turning away from that familiar path of least resistance. 

That’s why I say trauma recovery requires courage and determination and focus that most non-survivors can’t even fathom. 

We can change our habitual self talk, as surely as we can unlearn any old way of being and learn any new way of being. Humans unlearn and learn new patterns every day, every year. 

Once upon a time it was the most natural, normal pattern to go to the bathroom in our diapers. In order to learn to use the actual toilet, we had to change everything that was “natural” to us once upon a time through repeated practice. 

Changing our brain in trauma recovery is no different. 

We’re just a little older now, and saddled with more BS— Belief Systems— than we were then. 

drglenndoyle

Love was never something you should have had to “earn.”

It’s not our fault that we came to believe we had to “earn” love. 

We should have been loved in such a way that we truly believe we deserve it. 

But— what happened, happened. 

Our brain loves to make what happened about us— but the truth is, we couldn’t have done our parents’ jobs for them if we’d wanted to. 

It wasn’t our job to teach ourselves about love. 

It wasn’t our job to teach ourselves we are worthy. 

We don’t know what any of that is or means when we’re kids. 

All we know is what we feel— and we believe what we feel. 

Neither you nor I were abused or neglected because we were “unworthy” or “unlovable.” 

There was nothing we did, or could have done, to “deserve” what happened to us. 

It’s pretty f*cked up, how many people com through childhood believing we have to “earn” love— but believing that we somehow effortlessly “caused” our abuse or neglect. 

Nether you nor I “caused” or “allowed” our pain. 

Recovery means accepting that— which is harder than it sounds. 

Accepting that we got enormously unlucky is very, very unsatisfying. 

But— that’s what happened. 

We didn’t choose our parents, and we didn’t choose the environment we grew up in. 

And because of our conditioning, many of our choices since them weren’t exactly “free,” either. 

None of this is easy to wrap our head around. 

But that’s okay. It doesn’t all need to happen today. Acceptance is a process, more than a “choice.” 

Today just start with: it was not on you to “earn” love. 

It’s not your fault that you still feel you have to “earn” love. 

Tell your “parts” and your inner child that they are lovable and loved (even if you don’t quite feel that self-love yet). 

We can’t change the past, or how the past shaped our nervous system up to this point. 

We can change our nervous system going forward— with what we say to ourselves, how we direct our mental focus, and how we leverage our breathing and physiology, today. 

So: breathe; blink; and focus. 

Repeat as needed. 

drglenndoyle

Trauma recovery is caring for the “you” of yester-year.

A useful frame for my own trauma recovery has been, this is me showing up for the me of yesteryear. 

The me of my childhood, teenage, and even young adults years, who felt that nobody understood him. 

Who felt that nobody liked him or was on his side. 

My trauma recovery is about showing the me of the past, who I still carry around in my head and heart, that he did, in fact, deserve patience. And support. And acceptance. 

Mind you, I’m quite aware that the me of the past had a lot going on inside his own head and heart. 

I know that once upon a time I threw up plenty of barriers to people who might have been able to relate to me and understand me and support me. 

I’m not saying it was all their fault. 

But I now understand that the me of back then was injured in such a way that he didn’t know how to function without those barriers. 

It wasn’t his fault, any more than it was the fault of the people around him. It was just the nature of my injury at the time. 

I can’t go back in time and be there for that lonely young man. 

I can’t go back in time and extend to him the patience and compassion that he was not shown by some of the people who should have shown it to him. 

Time doesn’t work like that. (Believe me, I’ve researched it.) 

All I can do, now, is care for myself and communicate with those past versions of me with care and understanding. 

The truth is, the past version of both me and you carry wisdom for us. 

Those past versions of us hold memories and experiences that can inform and support and enrich our life now. 

They don’t just carry painful memories— though they may carry plenty of those— but they’re inside us holding the building blocks of who we are today. 

Those past versions of us still need us. 

I’ve always said, over and over again, that for my money the very backbone of trauma recovery is repairing and nurturing our relationship with ourselves. 

Our relationship with ourselves is ultimately what complex trauma in particular damages. 

If we’re going to repair and develop that relationship, we need to make peace with the kid— and teen, and younger adult— we once were. 

That doesn’t happen by accident. 

You and I should have had patience and support and compassion and acceptance once upon a time. It is not our fault that we didn’t get it (no matter how many barriers we may thrown up back then). 

It sucks. 

But we get to decide, every day, whether we’re going to deepen those wounds, or try to heal them. 

That is to say: whether we’re going to stay on autopilot, or work our trauma recovery. 

Easy does it. We can do this. Yes, we can.