drglenndoyle

CPTSD and reasons to live.

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. 

drglenndoyle

No, you’re not “too old” to recover from CPTSD.

Some of the most meaningful trauma recovery work we will ever do occurs in our later acts. 

One of Trauma Brain’s most persistent, pernicious lies is that we’re “too old” to meaningfully recover. 

This lie often goes hand in hand with the lie that there’s something “shameful” about struggling with trauma reactions and symptoms after a certain age. 

This is particularly the case when our trauma originates in our childhood— “that was so long ago, how are you not over it by now?”— but it’s also true when we’ve been traumatized as adults, for example by domestic violence or coercive spiritual control. 

Our culture just loves this beliefs that adults “shouldn’t” be vulnerable to traumatic stress— and that if we are, it represents some kind of “immaturity” or “weakness” on our part. 

Traumatic stress responses are injuries. 

Very infrequently do serious injuries heal on their own, with just the passage of time— especially when we’re doing things that tend to make them worse. 

Trying to deny, disown, or ignore trauma wounds, we’re functionally trying to walk on broken limbs. 

Yes, we might be able to limp along, and we might even be able to dissociate the pain of doing so to a greater or lesser degree— but in the end, it can only make the injury itself worse. 

What many people fail to understand about CPTSD in particular is that the experience of living with complex trauma reactions, is itself a trauma. 

Part of what makes complex trauma “complex” is the fact that it rarely stems from one time incidents— something that happened, but is definitively “over” now. 

And even if the “main” part of the trauma happened in the past, the experience of CPTSD symptoms tend to be so dysregulating, so life-disrupting, that living with them creates its own level of complex trauma. 

Complex trauma, by definition, unfolds over time, entwines with our important relationships, and is functionally inescapable. 

The experience of CPTSD, just like the experience of chronic medical illness or chronic pain, very much ticks all the “boxes” of complex trauma. 

So: why on earth should we assume that CPTSD, which itself imposes a daily experience of complex trauma, would get better with time, or as we age? 

Why on earth would we assume adults are less vulnerable to CPTSD than children, regardless of when the original trauma occurred? 

Some people will answer that question by explaining that adults have more resources, development, experience, and physical size than children, and are thus better able to cope with CPTSD— and that might be true for many people, but “coping” is not the same as “resolving.”

Adults are human— and humans are vulnerable to traumatic stress, regardless of when they are exposed to it. 

Adults who are exposed to complex traumatic stress are often at an even greater risk of developing CPTSD, insofar as they often feel cultural pressure to hide and minimize their experience rather than seeking support. 

All of which is to say: most of the life changing CPTSD recovery work I do is with adults in their 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, and even 70’s. No joke. 

It’s with adults who have decided that they’re not “too old” to work a trauma recovery— but they ARE “too old” to let another day go by with the voices of their bullies and abusers in their head, calling the shots. 

The culture will absolutely try to shame you to of seeking support fo CPTSD, and it will often collaborate with your Trauma Brain to do it. “You’re too old” is one of its most successful tools, because it hooks right up with the cultural shame we already feel about aging. 

Don’t lose the forest for the trees with all this. 

If you are reading this, you are at exactly the right age to recover from trauma. 

Starting today, if today is when you’re starting. 

drglenndoyle

Our symptoms are not our identity.

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. 

You are what you choose to do next. 

Easy dos it. Breathe; blink; focus. 

drglenndoyle

Trauma recovery is not about “the past.”

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. 

drglenndoyle

What are emotional flashbacks?

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

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

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

But not all flashbacks are sensory flashbacks. 

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

Emotional flashbacks hijack us psychologically and emotionally. 

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

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

It often means feeling small. 

Confused. 

Overwhelmed. 

Afraid. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Breathe; blink; focus. 

Breathe. 

Blink. 

Focus. 

That’s it. 

drglenndoyle

The lies trauma and addiction tell us.

Trauma and addiction make us vulnerable to believing lies. 

What kind of lies? Lies about ourselves, mostly. 

Trauma makes it very easy to believe that we are worthless. 

That we are powerless. 

That we are helpless. Hopeless. 

Addiction makes it very easy to believe that we have few, or no, options. 

Addiction makes it very easy to believe we “have” to do certain things or consume certain things, in response to certain thoughts or feeling states. 

People talk about trauma as if it’s something that happened “in the past”— but many trauma survivors don’t experience it that way. 

Yes, trauma is something that happened in the past, or it might also be happening in the present— but the trauma responses we struggle with are a reflection of how what happened to us wormed its way into our beliefs and reflexes. 

People talk about addiction as if it’s this “character flaw”— but, in my view, this isn’t a particularly accurate or useful way to think about it. 

Yes, addiction has to do with our decisions and values— what may be said to define our “character”— but the addiction cravings and patterns we struggle with are a reflection of how the experience of addiction has wormed its way into our beliefs and reflexes. 

I’m sometimes asked why I so often discuss trauma and addiction in many of the same terms— and the answer is not just, “because I struggle with both.” 

The real reason is, I have never, ever, seen a case of complex trauma that has not also had significant symptomatology of addiction— and I have really never, ever seen a case of addiction that has not been fundamentally rooted in trauma. 

Trauma and addiction conditioning are entwined with each other. They mirror and feed and enable and support each other— especially when it comes to the lies both tell us about ourselves. 

The truth is, almost none of whet trauma or addiction condition us to believe about ourselves is true— but it all feels very, very true. 

Trauma and addiction make us very vulnerable to what cognitive therapists call “emotional reasoning”— the belief that if something FEELS very true, it “must” be true. 

Most of us hear that and are like, I mean, of course it’s not true that something “must” be true just because it FEELS true— but when it comes to things trauma and addiction whisper into our ear? We are complete suckers for it. 

We often can’t even imagine challenging the sh*t trauma and addiction tell us, in our own head, all day— because, well, it just FEELS true. 

Emotional reasoning. It’s sneaky, and it’s sticky. 

The reason why neither trauma nor addiction recovery is simple or straightforward is because it’s more than just “don’t do that.” 

Trauma and addiction beliefs are constantly gnawing at our self-esteem, our relationships, our motivation, and even our physical health. If we could just “choose” to “opt out” of them, we would— but that’s not how beliefs change. 

Beliefs only change when they are consistently, effortfully challenged and reality checked. 

Beliefs change when we construct and reinforce an alternative set of beliefs— in this case, recovery beliefs— to swap out for them. 

Beliefs change when we finally wrap out head around ideas like “acceptance” and “surrender” as tools of change— not staying stuck. 

Make no mistake: trauma and addiction are some of the most panful things that human beings experience— and recovery from trauma and addiction is one of the hardest projects many humans ever attempt. 

(Ask me how I know.) 

And but also: meaningful, sustainable recovery from both trauma and addiction is absolutely possible— if we prioritize recognizing and effectively challenging the lies our conditioning tells us every day to keep us hating and harming ourselves. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

drglenndoyle

You are not alone in this.

There’s no denying it— trauma and addiction recovery can be incredibly lonely. 

They’re not lonely because we somehow don’t “deserve” support— we do deserve support. 

They’re not lonely because we are unlovable or unlikeable— although Trauma Brain will definitely try to tell us exactly that. 

No, trauma and addiction recovery tend to be lonely because trauma and addiction tend to be lonely. 

It’s ironic— the experiences of both trauma and addiction are incredibly common. More unbelievably common than many people reading this would even believe. 

And yet, both trauma and addiction are extremely private, individual experiences— no two trauma survivors or addicts have exactly the same experience, the same wounds, the same needs.

Trauma and addiction are, by definition, painful— and no two humans carry quite the same pain. 

Consequently, no two survivors or addicts require the same recovery resources. There is no “one size fits all” approach to trauma or addiction recovery. 

(This is one of the main reasons I do not offer super specific advice or recovery programs on my social media— because for the hundreds of thousands of survivors reading my content, every single one needs and deserves an individualized path that I could not mass produce if I wanted to.)

This means we’re functionally doing recovery on our own— even if we do happen to have the support of a therapist, sponsor, or community behind us. 

Trauma and addiction recovery are among the most private— and, subsequently, most lonely— things we’ll ever attempt. 

And make no mistake: that loneliness can get to us. 

There are times when we’re going to feel as if we’re the only survivor or addict on the planet carrying the pain we’re carrying or working the recovery we’re working— and, in a sense, that’s true. 

No one IS carrying our specific pain, or called to work our specific recovery. 

That can be lonely. 

But it does not mean we’re alone. 

No one knows our specific pain, and no one is working exactly the recovery we need to work to stay safe and stable— but there are literally millions who feel just as alone and just as overwhelmed as we do, in any given moment. 

Throughout history, there have been hundreds of millions— literally!— of survivors and addicts who have also believed they, too, were all alone in their pain and in their struggle. 

Trauma Brain and the Addiction Beast have this way of convincing us that we are the first, last, or only person in the history of the universe to struggle with this loneliness— but it just isn’t true. 

History is full of survivors and addicts who have worked successful recoveries. 

Trauma survivors and addicts in recovery have been figuring out how to take back their lives, survive and thrive, long before there was a mental health field. 

I predict that trauma survivors and addicts in recovery will be figuring out how to take back their lives, survive, and thrive, long after the mental health field is no longer a thing, too. 

Even if you are lonely in this fight— you are not alone. 

You are part of a tradition and siblinghood of survivors and addicts in recovery that reaches across the globe, back into history, and far into the future. 

You are one of us. 

Your pain and your recovery needs are unquestionably unique— but you are one of us. 

And it’s because you’re one of us that I can confidently say: you can do this. No matter what Trauma Brain or the Addiction Beast are telling you at this second: you can do this. 

Yes, recovery is a lonely project. 

But you are never alone. 

drglenndoyle

Grieve– and work your recovery.

The three basic tools that get us through every day in trauma and addiction recovery— self-talk, mental focus and visualization, and physiology and breathing— become especially important when we’re carrying grief in addition to our trauma or addiction struggles. 

When we’re hit with grief, it’s tempting to forget everything we know— including our recovery tools. 

When we’re grieving, the very last thing we want to think about is self-talk; or our mental focus; or our physiology and breathing. 

But we need to. 

Those are the building blocks of our recovery— and they’re more important than ever when we’re grieving. 

Make no mistake: grief is a delicate, dangerous time for survivors and addicts in recovery. 

Grief is the kind of thing that is going to try to convince us we “shouldn’t have to” focus on our trauma or addiction recovery— after all, we have other things to think about. 

Grief tries to tell us that we have “more important things” to think about than self-talk, mental focus, and physiology and breathing. That thinking about all that stuff might be all well and good on a “normal” day— but today we have way more pressing things to think about. 

Grief is consuming. 

And because it is consuming, the temptation is to let it consume the recovery work we’ve done to this point. 

It’s real important we not let it. 

Whoever or whatever we’re grieving would not want us to lose our recovery because of our grief over them. 

The good news is, every tool we’ve developed to support our trauma or addiction recovery— specifically self-talk, mental focus, and breathing and physiology— will also support us in managing and working through our grief. 

Self talk matters as much when we’re grieving as it does when we’re managing trauma responses. We cannot be in the business of telling ourselves our grief “doesn’t matter” or is “stupid” or disproportionate— any more than we can be in the business of telling ourselves our trauma “doesn’t count” or we should “just get over it” or “isn’t really trauma.” 

Mental focus matters as much when we’re grieving as it does when we’re managing trauma responses. Like trauma, grief tries to hijack our focus from who we are, what we’re all about, and how we can care for ourselves in realistic ways here and now— and it’s real important we not play along. 

Intentional breathing and use of our physical body matters as much when we’re grieving as when we’re managing trauma responses. Grief is a physically exhausting phenomenon, and if we are not caring fo our physical body, when we are breathing shallowly and quickly, when we are “armoring” 24 hours a day, we are no more in the position to manage or process grief than we are to manage and process trauma. 

Self-talk, mental focus, and physiology and breathing will not, on their own, dissipate grief, any more than they will dissipate trauma or banish addiction cravings and patterns. 

But it is virtually impossible to manage or resolve grief, trauma, or addiction, without paying attention to those basics. 

Do not get fooled into thinking that seasons of grief are when you get a “hall pass” to not use the basic recovery tools of self-talk, mental focus, and breathing and physiology. 

I understand— your whole nervous system wants you to do nothing but focus on this pain and emptiness you’re feeling. 

Believe me, I understand. 

But remember: you did not come this far, just to come this far. 

Your person or pet who left, would not want their memory to be associated with you stepping backward in your trauma or addiction recovery. 

Honor their memory by doing what you need to do to bolster your recovery work. 

Honor their memory by remembering the basics. 

Even if you’re crying so hard you can’t see the computer screen as you write. 

drglenndoyle

Does “validation” actually matter in trauma recovery?

Does “validation” actually matter in trauma recovery? 

After all, isn’t “validation” just some kind of touchy feely, but not terribly substantial or important, thing? 

It’s true that a lot of people kind of roll their eyes at the idea of “validation.” 

To hear them talk, the only people to whom “validation” matters are “snowflakes” whose feelings are “fragile.” 

I’ve literally had mental health professionals come at me on social media, declaring “validation” to be a “meaningless” concept. 

So— why are trauma informed and trauma focused therapists always going on about the importance of “validation?” 

The short answer to “does validation actually matter in trauma recovery?” is, yes. It matters a lot. 

To understand why, you need to understand how complex trauma wounds us. 

Trauma generally, and complex trauma in particular, isn’t actually about what happened to us. 

What happened to us is important, but terribly painful things happen to lots of people who don’t develop post traumatic or dissociative disorders. 

PTSD and CPTSD aren’t about the events that happen to us— they’re about how those events impact us in the absence of support and safety. 

Nobody reading this could “choose” to be impacted by their differently or less than they were. We don’t choose the environment we grow up in, or the people around us— thus we do not “choose” our vulnerability to trauma. 

What we call trauma responses are reflections and expressions of how we were wounded by what happened to us— and how those wounds deepened in the absence of support. 

What did the “absence of support” look like? 

First and foremost, it almost always looks like invalidation. 

It almost always looks like somebody refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy or the enormity of an event’s impact. 

It almost always looks like someone either silently assuming or— more frequently— explicitly telling us twe “shouldn’t” be hurt like we are or responding like we are. 

That’s like somebody showing up in the emergency room with a visibly broken limb— and getting a lecture on how the fall or accident we were in “shouldn’t” have been enough to break our leg. 

Whether a broken limb needs care— whether it needs a cast, and rest, and pain medication— is not a function of anyone’s opinion about the event that produced the broken limb.

Yet, that’s how some people approach trauma— by reflexively invalidating it. 

By judging it. 

By declaring it “illegitimate,” if it doesn’t fit their definition of “trauma.”

Validation matters because we cannot and will not do what we need to do to recover from trauma, if we cannot or will not accept the extent of our injury. 

Validation matters because trauma recovery, in the end, is us refusing to do to ourselves what our bullies and abusers did to us for years— namely, deny, disown, belittle, or ignore our pain. 

Validation matters because, for many people reading this, the words “your feelings are valid, and I believe you about your experience” were never, ever said to them growing up. 

We are not going to realistically recover from trauma if we cannot validate that our pain is beyond our ability to just “power through.” 

We are not going to realistically recover from trauma if we cannot validate that our pain is not a function of our moral “goodness” or “badness.” 

We are not going to realistically recover from trauma if we cannot validate that we are as deserving of safety, stability, recovery, and forgiveness as any human being who has ever existed. 

So, yes. Validation matters. And it is not some abstract, warm-and-fuzzy, or “meaningless” term. 

Validation is an essential trauma recovery tool. 

Trying to recover without it is like trying to build a house without a hammer. 

drglenndoyle

Recovery, choices, and “choices.”

You did not “choose” trauma. 

You do not “choose” trauma responses. 

It’s true that we have plenty of choices to make as part of trauma recovery— but for us to realistically make the choices we can, we have to be clear about the choices we didn’t and don’t have. 

So often trauma survivors are made to feel responsible for our trauma and for our reactions. 

We are often told stories about how others have “chosen” to “get over” their trauma. 

We are told we should “choose” to “let go of the past.” 

I promise: if “letting go of the past” was a one time choice any or all of us could make, I would post step by step instructions on how to do so. 

But it’s not that easy or simple. 

“Letting go of the past” entails dozens of choice points every day, most of which involve confronting our old self talk, our conditioned mental focus, and our ingrained physiology and breathing patterns. 

We did not “choose”  our conditioning. 

We do not “choose” to behave consistently with our programming— that’s what “programming” is, actually. Patterns that we reflexively play out, independent of thought or consent. 

The actual “choices” we have in trauma recovery involve what we do AFTER we’re hit with a symptom, memory, or trauma response. 

We did not “choose” to be trauma survivors— but we can choose to be trauma survivors working our recovery. 

Shame about our supposed “choices” is a brick wall that many survivors hit, numerous times, in our recovery. 

Our culture is obsessed with accountability— but what passes as “accountability” in our culture often lacks meaning or depth. 

It’s easy to say to someone they should be “accountable” for their choices and life experience. 

But when we scratch the surface of what many people seem to mean when they use the word “accountability,” it turns out they mean “take the blame for literally everything you think, feel, do, and experience”— which is both impossible and unnecessary (and, not for nothing, probably not something those people do in their own lives). 

Things happen to us that we did not plan for, that we did not expect, that we did not want. 

Even if, superficially, it seems we contributed to those things occurring, that doesn’t mean we “created” them or “asked” for them or “caused” them. 

(This is especially true when we were kids— but it remains true throughout adulthood as well.)

Our real choice is what we do once we realize we’re grappling with a symptom, memory, or trauma response. 

Do we do what our trauma conditioning wants us to do— lay down and get our ass kicked? 

Do we do the other thing our trauma conditioning wants us to do— blame and shame ourselves for struggling? 

Or do we meet our symptom, memory, or trauma response with compassion, patience, and realism— as we’re learning to do, day by day, in recovery? 

Do we accept this situation for what it is, not demand it be different, not blame or shame ourselves for struggling with it— and get on to leveraging our self-talk, mental focus, and physiology in order to effectively manage it? 

Do we check in with our “parts,” our inner child, our values, and our recovery goals, to make sure the next micro decision we make is consistent with the recovery we’re designing? 

Trauma is not a choice. 

Recovery is. 

A choice you are up to making— one teeny, tiny, recovery consistent baby step at a time. 

Breathe; blink; focus.