drglenndoyle

The “frozen” “fawn.”

“You must have liked that relationship on some level, or else why didn’t you leave?” 

CPTSD survivors get versions of this question all the goddamn time. 

Survivors don’t stay in certain painful relationships— personal or professional— because we “like” them. 

We often stay because our fawn and freeze trauma responses have us rooted to the spot. 

Trauma responses are not “choices.” They are reflexive patterns that our nervous system has overrehearsed, because on some level we truly believe they allowed us to survive. 

“Fawn” has us agreeing with or seeming to go along with an abuser. 

“Freeze” has us doing just that— stopping any kind of motion, hoping to be not noticed or left alone. 

When we find ourselves in a painful relationship, the option of “just leave” may not even exist for us on a nervous system level. We may WANT to leave; we may even TRY to leave. 

But if our nervous system and “parts” truly don’t believe leaving is a safe or realistic option, they will simply short circuit that route— without a “decision” having been made by the front our brain at all. 

People like to point out that we could have protected ourselves far more effectively had we removed ourselves from an abusive or painful situation— but that assumes we even registered that option. 

Many survivors reading this have had the experience of “knowing” that we “should” get out of a situation— but literally not being able to execute an exit strategy, due to dissociation, depersonalization, derealization, and good old fashioned brain fog. 

(Those are the tools our nervous system and “parts” often use to keep us from doing things they have decided are too dangerous to follow through on.) 

Understand: acknowledging the “freeze” and “fawn” responses for what they are is not an “excuse.” 

Trauma responses provide EXPLANATIONS— not “excuses.” 

Every survivor reading this is quite aware that, if a pattern of trauma responding is leading us to behaviors that are inconsistent with our goals and values, it’s on us to change it. 

No trauma survivor reading this is looking for an “easy way out,” or an excuse to stay “stuck.” 

The reality is, we can’t realistically change the pattern of staying in personal or professional relationships longer than we should, if we’re unwilling to see and understand the “fawn” and “freeze” responses for what they are. 

There are was to decrease our vulnerability to “freeze” and “fawn”— and they all start with creating realistic safety inside our head and heart.

That means: no shaming or punishing ourselves for being vulnerable. 

No matter how much it frustrates us. No matter how embarrassing it is. 

Start with the premise that what you’re experiencing makes total sense— and actually thank your nervous system and “parts” for doing what they do to keep you safe. 

I know— radical idea, thanking your system for behaviors that are frustrating or counterintuitive. 

But if we want to see radical changes in our life, we need to do radically different things. 

If nothing changes, nothing changes. 

So: start out with validation. 

Help the “frozen” “fawn” within start to feel safe. 

That’s where you’ll start to see some movement. 

drglenndoyle

Don’t neglect work or finances in your trauma recovery blueprint.

CPTSD or DID can be hell on our ability to make a living and support ourselves. 

And that’s more than an inconvenience. 

Anything that compromises our ability to support ourselves the way CPSTD and DID do threaten our autonomy— and that’s no small thing for complex trauma survivors. 

Feeling dependent can be overwhelmingly triggering for us. 

We know first hand how dangerous it can be to not be able to escape a situation because we’re economically dependent. 

The three major triggers of all complex trauma survivors— feeling controlled, feeling trapped, and feeling “in trouble”— ALL come into play when we feel economically dependent on something or someone. 

Financial insecurity makes walking away from painful situations difficult or impossible— and that in turn triggers us into deeper and deeper levels of resistance or paralysis. 

It’s a vicious, vicious cycle. 

One of the things I get most frustrated with about trauma “treatment” is, it rarely addresses the problems our symptoms and struggles cause at work. 

Trauma “treatment” tends to focus on the struggles we experience with with self harm, suicidal ideation, and relationships— and, of course, those are important struggles that need to be understood and addressed. 

But figuring out to function at work and manage our money is its own super important thing that absolutely NEEDS to be addressed in any realistic trauma recovery blueprint. 

Work and finances have their unique triggers. 

The behaviors working and managing our finances require of us go beyond trauma treatment tropes like self-care and self-love. We’re not going to “care” or “love” ourselves into showing up on time, focusing on our tasks, and keeping track of our account balance. 

When designing your trauma recovery blueprint, get realistic and specific about what triggers and challenges crop up regarding work and managing your money. 

The good news is, the basic tools of trauma recovery— self talk, mental focus, and physiology— are all relevant to managing our symptoms, reactions, and needs around work, finances, and realistic economic independence. 

(That goes beyond trauma recovery, by the way: EVERYONE in history who has mastered their finances has used those tools of self talk, mental focus, and physiology to do so.)

I know, it’s triggering as hell, but we need to roll work and finances into our recovery blueprint. 

Turns out: we don’t suddenly become not-trauma-survivors when we clock in. 

drglenndoyle

“Do they like me? Do they? DO THEY??”

One of the most frustrating symptoms of CPTSD for many survivors is, we often cannot stop obsessing about what others are thinking about us and whether they approve of us. 

It’s so frustrating because, intellectually, we may understand that what anybody else is thinking about us doesn’t matter. 

But our nervous system didn’t seem to get that memo. 

We still get anxiety spikes when we think someone doesn’t like us. 

That spike can almost become panic if we think someone doesn’t approve of us. 

It may not particularly matter who that person is, either. They could be a complete rando. 


But when we get a whiff of someone not liking us or disapproving of us? It can consume us. 

What’s important to understand about this symptom is, it’s not a “choice.” 

It’s not even necessarily that we value what that other person thinks or feels about us. 

What’s happening is a nervous system reflex associated with the “fawn” trauma response. 

Many CPTSD survivors grew up in situations where we had to closely monitor the moods, reactions, and needs of the adults around us. 

We had to pay attention to the nuances of what those adults thoughts, particularly about us, because we learned from experience that if we DIDN’T pay attention, that could come back on us in painful ways. 

Many survivors reading this grew up having to manage the adults around them in order to stay safe. 

After years of that, our nervous system gets into a groove. It strongly associates safety with monitoring whether others seem to like or dislike, approve or disapprove, of them. 

When we’re kids, we don’t have the luxury of gauging who is and isn’t a threat— because EVERY adult is a threat to a kid if they want to be. 

Fast forward to adulthood: we’re still walking around with a nervous system that prioritizes safety over connection— and that is still vigilantly monitoring the expressions, body language, and energy of everyone they encounter for potential threat cues. 

This symptom goes beyond just anxiety and people pleasing. 

It’s a deeply wired, heavily conditioned, nervous system deep pattern. 

It’s not our fault, it’s not a “choice,” and it’s not “crazy.” 

We CAN rewire that pattern— but not by trying to shame or pressure ourselves to just “quit it.” 

We can remind ourselves all day that it “doesn’t matter” if others like or approve of us— but that will only make us feel stupid for still having this reaction. 

What we actually NEED to do is create safety inside. 

We NEED to find ways to support our “parts” and inner child in feeling safe— even IF others dislike or disapprove of us. 

We do that by developing a relationship with ourselves that we can trust, using the tools of self talk, mental focus, and physiology. 

Our relationship with ourselves develops— or deteriorates— based on how we talk to ourselves, what we choose to focus on, and how we use our body, particularly our breathing. 

Creating safety inside or head and heart isn’t easy, when we grew up with so much UN-safety. NONE of this is easy— and kicking the “fawn” habit can be particularly hard for survivors of abuse and neglect specifically. 

But it can be done. 

You are not the one CPTSD survivor in the history of CPTSD survivors whose brain won’t change. 

I promise. 

drglenndoyle

I want your trauma recovery to have legs.

I want your trauma recovery to have legs. 

By that I mean, I want it to last. 

I want it to be realistic. 

I want it to be sustainable. 

That’s why I don’t talk about gimmicky bullsh*t on this page— because while I’m as attracted to gimmicky bullsh*t as anyone (many of you know I got into psychology because self-help books and resource literally saved my life), trauma recovery is too serious and too important to bullsh*t about. 

I’ve been told that to expand my social media reach, I should, like, name my trauma recovery approach something cool. 

But the truth is, I don’t have something new and different for you. 

I have what has worked for trauma survivors in recovery for millennia: tools and philosophies that revolve around self talk, mental focus, and physiology, especially breathing. 

The ancient Greek and Roman philosophers knew these tools. 

The heroes of the Old and New Testament knew these tools. 

Mental health icons from Freud to Albert Ellis knew these tools. 

The tools of realistic trauma recovery— self talk, mental focus, and physiology— are not new. Literally EVERY effective trauma recovery technique revolves around them. 

Including EMDR. 

Including Internal Family Systems. 

Including Somatic Experiencing. 

Including every variant of cognitive behavioral therapy you can name, from CBT to DBT to ACT to schema therapy. 

Why bother saying this? Because it’s real easy to get discouraged out here as we’re working our recovery. 

It’s real easy to get up in our head about how all these therapy modalities sound cool and all— but what if they’re just, like, hypothetical constructs? 

After all, we don’t do trauma recovery in the therapy room— we overwhelmingly do the work of trauma recovery out here on our own. Very often in the middle of long, dark, cold nights. 

What if all this cool sounding therapy stuff doesn’t stick with us when we leave our therapy appointment? 

Or— even scarier— what if we can’t afford therapy in the first place? 

Or what if our history of interpersonal trauma makes a therapy relationship just not something we can do right now? What then? 

The reason I’m writing this post is to tell you, with absolute certainty, that you’re not screwed. 

The essential tools of trauma recovery— self talk, mental focus, and physiology— are available to you, just as they’ve been available to every trauma survivor in history. 

The fact that you’re working your trauma recovery puts you squarely in the lineage of all those warriors and poets and monks and healers— trauma survivors throughout history. 

You don’t have to buy into complex, sophisticated theories. You don’t have to scrounge up unrealistic amounts for therapy (although therapy is absolutely a useful tool for many survivors who are in the position of being able to access it). 

I want your recovery to be more than hypothetical. 

I want it to be real. 

I want it to go slow— because slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. 

I want your trauma recovery to have legs. 

drglenndoyle

When trauma responses get us off track.

CPTSD and DID often nudge us toward doing things that aren’t consistent with our goals or values. There’s no need to deny it. 

It doesn’t mean we’re not committed. It doesn’t mean we’re “stupid” or “bad.” 

It means we’re not ourselves when we’re triggered— and that’s not an excuse. That’s an explanation. 

When the “fight” trauma response kicks in, we’re more aggressive than we otherwise might be. 

When the “flight” trauma response kicks in, we might bolt situations that we would otherwise be able to handle. 

When the “freeze” or “fawn” trauma responses kick in, we might appear to consent to things that we are actually not okay with. 

None of these are “choices.” They are nervous system reflexes. 

And the reality is, we’re going to be vulnerable to those nervous system reflexes, even as we work to heal our trauma injuries. 

But, there’s no denying— trauma responses can f*ck our sh*t up. 

They can get in the way of our goals. They can compromise our values. 

They can get in our head about whether we’re realistically capable of working toward or achieving our goals. 

The truth is, experiencing trauma responses that make us behave in self sabotaging ways isn’t the end of the world— IF we’re realistic and compassionate about what’s actually happening. 

That is to say: we need to know a trauma response when we see it. 

And we have to understand that just because we did something in a triggered moment that may seem to f*ck up a goal we’ve been working toward, that doesn’t mean we’re screwed with that goal. 

It’s a setback. A bump in the road that can be corrected for— if we don’t panic and/or go down the rabbit hole of self-punishment. 

Something I think about a lot in my addiction recovery is the trap that relapse is for all addicts: once we give in to our addiction a little, Addict Brain will kick in and tell us that, as long as we’ve f*cked up, we might as well go all in— which leads to a much longer, much harder relapse than we needed to experience. 

Setbacks in trauma recovery are very similar, insofar as we have a choice about how to think of setbacks: a bump in the road that we can recover from once we catch our breath and realize what happened— or an infection point that “has” to lead us down a spiral of self hate, shame, and self punishment. 

So you had a trauma response, and did something inconsistent with your recovery and goals. So what. It happens.

It’s happened to everyone reading this— and it’s damn sure happened to the person writing this. 

Don’t panic and don’t punish. 

Just get grounded; extend compassion and support to the “part” of  you that got triggered; and figure out what the very next teeny, tiny micro choice needs to be that’ll get you back on track. 

This is how we realistically deal with trauma responses and setbacks. 

This is how we protect our recovery from Trauma Brain trying to get us to throw it in the garbage. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

drglenndoyle

“Fine.”

CPTSD survivors get real good at looking “fine.” 

“Okay.” “Unbothered.” 

There’s this myth that if trauma survivors were REALLY all that injured, we’d be non-functional— but if you’re reading this, you likely know what kind of bullsh*t that is. 

There are badly injured, badly hurting trauma survivors reading this right now who are extremely functional, as far as the world is concerned. 

There are survivors reading this who have advanced degrees. 

There are survivors reading this who have achieved all kinds of success, promotions, earned ranks, been recognized in, their professional careers. 

And these are the same survivors who have contemplated ending their lives, because they’re hurting so bad on the inside. 

You truly can’t tell a CPTSD survivor by looking at us. 

And you DEFINITELY can’t tell someone who has DID by what’s happening on the outside. 

Of course we get good at hiding our pain— we had to hide it for years, didn’t we? 

It was dangerous to acknowledge our pain. Made us more vulnerable. 

Acknowledging our pain opened us up to mockery. 

Acknowledging our pain gave other people the chance to misunderstand— or not even try to understand— what was really going on with us. 

Why would we acknowledge and express or pain when the cost was so high? 

Add to that, many of us learned that if we DIDN’T express our pain— or anything negative ever, really— we were rewarded. 

We were praised for being “mature.” 

We didn’t know it at the time, but when they called us “mature,” what they really meant was “low maintenance.” 

Acknowledging or expressing pain would have ruined all that. 

So we got good at compartmentalizing. 

Keeping our pain over here— maybe isolated to one “part” of us, who was tasked with holding it— while another part came forward and took care of business. 

I interact daily with CPTSD and DID survivors who earned advanced degrees while literally planning to kill themselves. 

So, no. You can’t tell a survivor by our accomplishments or our external “functionality.” 

We’re good at pulling off “okay.” “Fine.” 

We’re good at changing the subject. 

We’re good at stashing our pain in places inside that, we figure, can hold it forever. 

Turns out, though: those places can’t hold our pain forever. 

And those “parts” that have so supported our “functionality?” They get tired. And not infrequently resentful. 

Which is why we choose trauma recovery now. 

Because functioning on the outside while suffering on the inside truly sucks— and we’re over it. 

Right? 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

drglenndoyle

They will misunderstand and dislike us. Whatcha gonna do.

One of the hardest parts of CPTSD recovery is letting others dislike or misunderstand us. 

That might sound odd— why would anybody dislike or misunderstand us for working our CPTSD recovery? 

But it happens. 

CPTSD and DID are injuries that many people don’t understand— and many people fear. 

The culture often views CPTSD and, especially, DID as “mental illnesses,” similar to bipolar disorder or schizophrenia— and there’s nothing wrong with having bipolar or schizophrenia, but CPTSD and DID are in a different category. 

CPTSD and DID are injuries, not mental illnesses. 

(Again, to affirm: there’s nothing shameful about mental illnesses— it’s just that precision in our thinking about the differences between illnesses and injuries matters to designing a recovery blueprint.) 

That, I think, is what bothers people about CPTSD and DID— they can happen to people whose brain chemistry or genetic makeup is not predisposed to them. 

That is to say: they can happen to anyone subjected to certain kinds of traumatic stress. 

This scares people. 

People don’t like thinking about this. 

So— they develop negative reactions to people who remind them of their— of every humans’— vulnerability to trauma. 

This, then comes off as dislike or distaste— that is fueled by fundamental misunderstanding. 

It’s not fair that people will get a whiff of our trauma history, and decide to put distance between us and them. 

But many, many survivors have had that experience. 

There are CPTSD and DID survivors right now, reading this, wondering why certain people out there seem to dislike or be wary of them, seemingly without reason. 

Of course, our trauma conditioning will happily step in and furnish an answer to that question: according to Trauma Brain, it’s because we’re “bad” or “gross” or whatever— and people can sense it. 

That’s not what’s going on. 

What IS going on is, many, many people out there are woefully uneducated about what complex trauma and dissociation are. 

They fear it because they don’t understand it, and they don’t want to understand it because they fear it. 

And the thing about all that is: we’re not going to change them. Not all at once, anyway, and not overnight. 

We trauma survivors can do what we can to educate and normalize and de-pathologize CPTSD, DID, and other trauma-based struggles— but we also have to accept that our first responsibility is to our recovery, not their education. 

That is: we have to drop the rope. 

We don’t have to love the fact that the culture often misunderstands and shames and isolates survivors of complex trauma. 

But we do have to let it be a “them” issue— at least, when the alternative is taking time away from our recovery to try to change their minds. 


Breathe; blink; focus. 

drglenndoyle

Feelings are not “the problem.”

Our feelings are not “the problem” in CPTSD.

Our feelings might be scary; or confusing; or overwhelming— but they are not the problem. 

The problem is what we have been taught to believe about our feelings. 

The problem is what we have been taught to do about our feelings. 

The problem is how we’ve been taught to deny, disown, belittle, or ignore our feelings. 

We do not have to love everything we feel. I certainly don’t love everything I feel. 

But we do have to accept what we feel— that is, we have to accept that what we’re feeling in this moment, is what we’re feeling in this moment. 

Even if our goal is to change our feelings, we have to start by accepting what we’re feeling now. 

Many of our feelings follow patterns that were laid down years ago. 

We do not ask for our feelings. 

Our feelings represent a complex interplay of things we perceive, things we believe, and things that are happening inside our nervous and endocrine systems. 

But our feelings do NOT make us a “good” or a “bad” person. 

Struggling to manage out feelings does NOT make us a “weak” or “immature” person. 

Struggling to understand our feelings does not make us an “immature” person. 

Why bother saying any of this at all? 

Because CPTSD survivors are often sold a bill of goods about what our feelings “mean.” 

CPTSD survivors often have the experience of other people misunderstanding or shaming us when we try to express our feelings. 

CPTSD survivors often have so much trouble regulating how we feel— which is also not our fault— that we get into the habit of dissociating our feelings instead of listening to them. 

Realistically recovering from CPTSD is going to ask us to take our feelings seriously. 

Realistically recovering from CPTSD is going to ask us to engage with and relate to or feelings in ways that the culture sometimes does not understand or endorse. 

The culture, if you haven’t noticed, is big on “f*ck your feelings” right now. 

Turns out: that f*ck your feelings attitude which some people are so big on glorifying, sis an excellent way to wind up dysrgulated and overwhelmed. 

Our feelings are not the problem. They never were. 

Our trauma was the problem. 

The things we “learned” from our trauma was the problem. 

And the solution, if we want CPTSD recovery to stick, is not to double down on the disdain for our feelings espoused by the culture or our abusers. 

Our feelings are valid. 

Our feelings are valuable. 

Our feelings are not harmful. 

And our feelings are realistically manageable— if we commit to accepting them first. 

drglenndoyle

CPTSD and humor.

There are lots of things CPTSD tries to take away from us— notably humor and laughter. 

Our CPTSD conditioning often makes it complicated to laugh. 

Sometimes when we survivors laugh, we get the thought in our head: if our trauma was ACTUALLY legitimate, ACTUALLY “trauma,” how on earth could we possibly smile or laugh? 

That can often snowball into: “I must not be REALLY traumatized. I must just be making it up. Faking it. Exaggerating. Otherwise, how could I POSSIBLY smile or laugh?” 

Sound familiar? 

It goes had in hand with that gaslighting bullsh*t our abusers and bullies pulled on us to weasel out of taking accountability for their behavior. 

“Was it REALLY that bad? Or are you just being dramatic?” 

“Was it REALLY that bad? Or are you just attention seeking?” 

“If it was REALLY that bad, how can you possibly joke or laugh about it? Faker.” 

On, and on, and on. You know how Trauma Brain is. 

The thing is: it is not only entirely normal for trauma survivors to be able to joke and laugh about our experiences— sometimes humor is one of our most important survival tools. 

When trauma survivors joke about our experiences, we’re not denying or disowning how serious or painful they were. 

We’re actually joking about them BECAUSE they were so serious and painful. 

Humor gives us a tool to process and engage with those painful experiences in a way that doesn’t have us drowning in sadness or horror. 

Humor gives us a way to markedly change our physiology as we engage with those traumatic experiences— it’s well documented that laugher can “goose” the production of endorphins, serotonin, and dopamine, “feel good” chemicals in the body. 

Humor can give us a way to engage with our pain while kind of stepping outside of our memory  of it all— because jokes, by definition, require us to see ourselves as a character in a little story, at last for a second. 

All of which is to say: it’s perfectly okay to joke and laugh, even amidst the sh*t show of having survived trauma. 

It doesn’t mean you weren’t “really” hurt. It doesn’t mean you’re “over” that hurt now. 

All it means is that your nervous system has found a tool to cope and create a little snatch of “feel good”— which, when we’re in pain or a suicidal crisis, can be literally life saving. 

Here’s the catch, though: when we use humor to cope with or process CPTSD, we don’t want to fall into the trap of turning that tool against ourselves. 

Humor is like any tool. It’s like a hammer. A hammer can help build a house— in fact, it’s pretty difficult to build a house WITHOUT a hammer— but it can also mash our fingers if we use it carelessly. 

So— use humor as a CPTSD recovery tool, if it resonates with you. 

Just be mindful that Trauma Brain doesn’t hijack that ver useful tool and turn it against you. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

drglenndoyle

How the mental filter and emotional reasoning distortions tag team trauma survivors.

Our trauma programming often pulls this maneuver where it tells us that the things we do right or well are “random”— but the things we struggle with represent the “real” us.

You know this move? 

Trauma survivors often struggle with the distortion cognitive therapists call the “mental filter,” meaning we tell ourselves that all the bad stuff about us “counts,” but the good stuff “doesn’t count.” 

It’s as if we go out of the way to filter out of our experience anything that might possibly build our self esteem or support us in our recovery— but we cheerfully usher in anything that makes us feel like garbage or “confirms” our negative self image. 

The b*tch of it all is, it all feels very real. 

When it’s happening, we don’t realize we’re doing it. 

All we know is, it FEELS very right to brush off potential positives— and it FEELS very accurate to accept negatives about ourselves as “obviously” true. 

Here’s the thing: feelings aren’t facts. Not in this case, anyway. 

You might have heard the term “emotional reasoning” at some point in your recovery journey. It refers to another cognitive distortion, wherein we assume that things that FEEL true are “of course” true…when the reality is, how true something FEELS is not a reliable indicator of how true it ACTUALLY is. 

I know, I know. It can be hard to accept that something we FEEL is very true, something that SEEMS very true in our head, may not be true— but this is part of what trauma conditioning does to us. It warps our sense of perspective when it comes to evaluating truth, especially the it comes to judging ourselves. 

Understand: I’m NOT saying that we need to go through the world constantly doubting or questioning our gut. Our gut, what we instinctively feel makes sense, is a super important and valid source of information, especially about what we need and what’s going on inside us. 

Absolutely pay attention to your gut. 

And also: be crystal clear that trauma has brainwashed you and me to be harder on ourselves that is realistic or necessary. 

Be real about the fact that trauma conditioning will absolutely have us filtering out things we do well or right, telling us that our strengths and successes “aren’t real” or “don’t count”— not because that’s the truth, but because CPTSD does NOT want us building self esteem. 

We are not vulnerable to mental filter and emotional reasoning distortions because we’re “stupid.” 

We’re vulnerable to them because we’ve been conditioned. Programmed. Brainwashed. 

I know people don’t love to hear that, but it’s the reality of CPTSD. 

And unless we’re willing to see our trauma programming for what it is and what it does— especially how it mangles our beliefs about ourselves and our worth— realistic trauma recovery is going to be a pipe dream. 

Reality and recovery require us to be realistic and compassionate with ourselves— including (especially!) when our trauma condoning says we do nothing but suck and fail. 

Yes, you struggle. But that doesn’t mean you “only” suck and fail. That’s the mental filter and emotional reasoning distortions tag teaming you, enabled by CPTSD programming. 


Easy does it. Just start noticing when it’s happening. That’s the first step. 

Breathe; blink; focus.