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

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. 

drglenndoyle

“Struggling” does not equal “failing.”

Struggling is not “failing.” 

Being in pain is not “failing.” 

Being ambivalent about recovery is not “failing.” 

Being unsure what the next step is is not “failing.” 

Those are all normal things that happen in trauma and addiction recovery. Every survivor or addict in recovery is going to experience versions of all of them. 

We don’t need to overreact to them. 

We don’t want to make judgments about our entire recovery arc when we experience them. 

Our old programming, however, is very much going to want us to believe anything negative we experience in recovery is a “failure.” 

Our old programming wants us to believe this, not because it’s true, but because it really, really wants us to give up— and it knows how sensitive we are to the sense that we are “failing.” 

Many of us have been told, straight up, that we’re a “failure.” 

Many more of us have been made to feel like we’re a failure, even if it hasn’t been explicitly stated. 

The culture does a fantastic— that is, horrible— job of making us feel like a failure when we’re not succeeding to its standard or conforming to its norms. 

Media and social media in particular are full of images and stories about people who “succeed.” 

Media and social media LOVE to bombard us with images of people who are conventionally attractive, economically successful, and/or talented in their field— and they invite us to compare ourselves to them. 

Turns out, most humans feel pretty sh*tty when compared to hot, rich celebrities. 

But trauma survivors also tend to compare ourselves, not just to celebrities, but also to the other human beings around us— who we invariably imagine to be feeling and functioning far “better” than we are. 

Much of the time we really have no idea how anyone else is really feeling or functioning— but nonetheless Trauma Brain is right there, cheerfully listing all the ways we’re falling short in comparison to our neighbor across the hall. 

It’s important we understand that Trauma Brian will never run out of ways to unfavorably compare us to literally any other human we encounter— and also that we understand, this is mostly propaganda. 

Don’t get me wrong: we survivors and addicts in recovery absolutely do experience comparably more pain and heartache than many people who have not been wounded as we have. It’s not a competition, but that is a fact. 

But that doesn’t mean we are “failing.” 

That doesn’t mean we are “hopeless.” 

That doesn’t mean we’re doing recovery “wrong.” 

And it certainly doesn’t mean we are “weak,” “stupid,” or any of the other colorful pejoratives Trauma Brain likes to toss at us when we’re down. 

Even being ambivalent about recovery, or for that matter staying alive, is not an indicator of “failure.” 

It’s an indicator of exactly what it’s an indicator of: we’re struggling. 

Of course we’re struggling. This is recovery. 

If you’re alive to read this, you’re not done. You haven’t “failed.” You haven’t “screwed up” your recovery. 

Even if you’re at a point in your recovery arc where the thing to do is press the “reset” button and functionally start over, that’s not a failure— that’s a necessary adjustment. 

Struggling does not equal “failing.” 

No matter how Trauma Brain tries to spin it.

drglenndoyle

The old thing and the new thing.

You don’t need to figure it all out today. 

You don’t need to do everything perfectly, or even competently, today. 

You don’t need to be particularly “productive” today. 

You don’t need to face every memory or feeling you’ve ever struggled with, today. 

You don’t need to confront everyone who ever bullied or abused you, today. 

There may be times and places for some or all of these in your trauma recovery— but all you have to do today, is manage today. 

One of our biggest vulnerabilities in trauma recovery is getting overwhelmed. 

We look at all that’s on our plate, everything that would need for change for us to consider our recovery “successful,” and we surmise— probably accurately— that we can’t do all of that today. Maybe we can’t do ANY of that today. 

The goal isn’t to all of a sudden be able to do any and every recovery task immediately. 

The goal is to nudge, nudge, nudge closer to realistically being able to do the most important of those tasks. 

To get clear on what, realistically, needs to happen for us to do the most important of those tasks. 

Whatever else trauma recovery is about for us, it is absolutely about our safety and stability today. Sustainably shifting how we feel and function so we are not at high risk of hurting or killing ourselves today. 

The big tasks on our plate in trauma recovery are probably going to require a skillset that we just don’t have yet— and that’s okay. Truly. 

Chances are, if you’re reading this, you’re very used to being shamed, or even punished, for not being able to do something yet. 

Chances are, if you’re reading this, you’re pretty hard on yourself for not being able to do something yet— because that’s what we do. We take on the attitudes of our bullies and abusers, talk to ourselves and behave toward ourselves like they did— which means plenty of shame and impatience with ourselves. 

It’s real important, in trauma recovery that we clearly understand and remind ourselves: that was the old thing. This is the new thing. 

The new thing is accepting exactly where we are in this process, with no judgment or self-aggression. 

The new thing is meeting our struggles today, big or small, with compassion and patience. 

The new thing is commenting to ourselves, including our “parts” and our inner child, that we are unequivocally on our own side— that we will not take our frustration and embarrassment to on ourselves, physically or emotionally. Not if we can help it. 

If you’re reading this, you may struggle with feeing like you’re “not doing enough” to move your trauma recovery forward. 

That has nothing to do with whether you objectively are or aren’t doing “enough”— chances are it has to do with old conditioning, which has programmed you to call yourself “lazy” and punish you for any and all delays or setbacks. 

Just going with the flow of old, shame bound, self-aggressive conditioning was the old thing. 

Leveraging the tools of self-talk, mental focus, and physiology to interrupt old patterns— even partially, even imperfectly, even inelegantly— is the new thing. 

Neither you nor I need to play out our entire trauma recovery today. Really we don’t. 

We just have to identify the next teeny, tiny baby step forward. The next teeny, tiny micro decision that supports our recovery. 

The next thing we CAN influence, as opposed to the many, many, many (many!) things that are emphatically, demonstrably out of our control. 

We can do that. 

You can do that. 

Yes, you can. No matter what Trauma Brain is telling you right now. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

drglenndoyle

Our trauma responses are not “stupid.”

Our trauma responses are not “stupid.” 

Calling our trauma responses “stupid” doesn’t help us resolve or transform them— in fact, it does the opposite. 

We cannot resolve trauma responses we belittle. 

Our trauma responses doesn’t come out of nowhere. They don’t exist to frustrate us— even though they are definitely frustrating. 

Belittling our trauma responses is essentially telling our nervous system that we “shouldn’t” be experiencing them— it’s essentially invalidating our nervous system’s experience. 

We’re not going to resolve symptoms and invalidate them at the same time. 

Why do we reflexively invalidate our trauma responses? Mostly because we’ve been conditioned to. 

We’ve had our feelings and responses mocked and invalidated by others— so that’s what we’ve seen modeled, and that’s what we’ve internalized. 

We’ve also often come to believe the very fact that we have feelings is the problem. 

But the problem is not, and has never been, that we have feelings, or even reactions. 

The truth is, our nervous system is reacting the way human nervous systems react to trauma. Those reactions may be painful and inconvenient— but they are not “disordered.” 

What is “disordered” is the trauma that produced them in the first place. 

What is “disordered” is the mockery and other cruelty that we experienced because of our feelings and reactions— and that we’ve been tricked into recycling on our own time. 

What is “disordered” is that we’ve been conditioned by our culture to believe that our normal human reactions to trauma are pathological. 

YOU are not “disordered.” You are injured. 

We heal injuries by caring for them, not by belittling them. 

Trauma responses are many things— sad, infuriating, scary— but calling them “stupid” nudges us dangerously close to calling ourselves “stupid.” 

And you are definitely not “stupid”— especially not for experiencing or struggling with trauma responses. 

One of the undeniably hardest tasks of trauma recovery is rebuilding our self-esteem. 

Multiple variables affect how we think about ourselves, what we believe about ourselves, and how we relate to ourselves— but one of the most important of those variables is literally how we talk to ourselves. 

Abuse survivors very often grow up being told versions of “we’re stupid.” 

We’re told we’re stupid, our feelings are stupid, our reactions are stupid, our needs are stupid. 

That’s very often the script that has sunk into our bones. That’s our baseline. Believing we’re stupid, feeling like we’re stupid, calling ourselves stupid. 

That’s what we’re up against. 

That’s the programming we have to take great care not to play along with. 

It may seem like a semantic point, but calling our trauma responses “stupid” is moving in the wrong direction.

Compassion and care over casual cruelty. 

I don’t love my trauma responses, either. 

But I don’t call them “stupid.” 

The normal responses of my nervous system deserve better than that.