Tag: therapy

Our trauma conditioning is real good at screeching at us that we’ve “failed.” 

Trauma Brain, what I call the internalized voices of our bullies and abusers, seems to find an endless variety of ways to inform us that we are a “failure.” 

Trauma Brain tells us we “fail” at relationships. 

Trauma Brain tells us we “fail” at managing our finances. 

Trauma Brain tells us we “fail” at managing our emotional reactions. 

Trauma Brain tells us we “fail” to make good choices. 

And on, and on, and on. 

To spoil the suspense: Trauma Brain will never tell us we’re good at something, or that we did something better than we expected to, or that our success at something was kind of a mixed bag. 

Through the magic of the cognitive distortions of black and white thinking, emotional reasoning, and mental filter, Trauma Brail will stay remarkably on message: that we are a “failure.” 

Here’s the thing: it is the case that trauma survivors experience tend to experience challenges and struggles with…well, everything Trauma Brain flatly declares us to have “failed” at. 

But you need to know that struggling is not the same as “failing.” 

Everybody who has ever succeeded or gotten better at dong a thing, has struggled with it. 

The fist step to actually being good at doing a thing is, well, sucking at it. 

One of Trauma Brain’s insidious tricks is trying to tell us that we’ve “failed” at something we’re struggling with— because the fact of our struggle seems to give its argument a germ of credibility. 

After all, most of us trauma survivors are VERY aware of the things at which we struggle. 

And if we weren’t aware, Trauma Brain is “helpfully” right there reminding us— often repeating not only the words of our bullies and abusers, but also amplifying the feedback we get from others around us who don’t understand why we can’t just get our sh*t together. 

An important step in our trauma recovery is gaining clarity about what’s actually happening when we supposedly “fail” at something that we imagine “most” adults don’t struggle with at all: we’re not, actually, “failing.” 

We are doing the thing as best we can, with the tools we have. 

We’ll get better at doing the thing the more tools we develop— and we develop new tools as we make it safe inside our head and heart to work on those tools without judgment or shame. 

Understanding this was a game change for my own recovery. 

It also felt like a risk. 

My father was an abusive, addicted narcissist who had created enormous wealth and material success in his life— and he, among others, strongly conditioned in me an abhorrence of “making excuses.” 

If I explained to my father the difference between “failing” and “struggling,” I am positive he would mock me for “making excuses.” 

I always assumed my dad was a wealthy man, because of his material success— but now I understand that he wasn’t particularly wealthy. Not really. 

He was just a guy with money. 

People who create real success, real wealth, understand the difference between “struggling” and “failing.” 

Yes, accepting that difference may feel like a risk, because Trauma Brain— who, in my case, often speaks in the voice of my father— will tell you you’re being a “loser” and setting yourself up for even more “failure” by “letting yourself off the hook.” 

But distinguishing between struggling and failing— properly understanding struggle as a necessary point in the developmental curve of building a skill— is not “letting yourself of the hook.” 

It’s not making excuses. 

It’s getting real about how skills are learned, tools are developed, recovery is shaped, and a successful life— even beyond trauma recovery— is built. 

Nobody dissociates for the hell of it. 

Nobody dissociates to be a pain in the ass to anybody else. (Believe me, dissociation is a much bigger pain in the ass to trauma survivors who dissociate than it is for anybody else— if we had the choice, we’d find a much less fraught way to annoy you.)

Nobody “chooses” dissociation as a coping tool. 

Dissociation is a reflex— and, like most reflexes, it exists to keep us away from pain or danger. 

Why would we dissociate to avoid pain or danger? 

Usually the reason is because we literally had no other way out of that pain or danger. 

Dissociation is escape for people who can’t physically escape. 

This is what so many people don’t understand— or maybe don’t want to understand— about dissociation: that not everybody can “just leave” a dangerous situation. 

Domestic violence victims very often cannot “just leave” a relationship on which they are economically dependent or in which children are a factor. 

Victims of spiritual abuse often can’t “just leave” a church or community that is their main or only source of social contact and support. 

Children cannot “just leave” a family in which they are being abused or neglected. 

Complex trauma survivors who do not know, in the moment, that they are experiencing complex trauma cannot “just leave,” because they don’t yet realize there is anything to escape. 

There are dozens of reasons why physical escape from pain or danger is simply not a realistic option for many. 

As a result, our nervous system “solves” this “no win” problem by inventing a “back door”— namely, dissociation. 

Sometimes that dissociation looks like just “checking out” or “floating away.” 

Other times, especially when we need to stay or appear highly “functional,” dissociation looks like a “part” of ourselves coming forward to do what needs to be done in the moment, while the rest of us “loses” the time that part is “out.” 

And still other times, dissociation looks like some aspect of our experience, such as our emotions or our memory of specific things, being made inaccessible to us, so we can “function” for a period of time without feeling the “weight” of what’s been dissociatively cordoned off. 

There’s no denying that dissociation is an ingenious strategy for “escaping” situations in which there is no practical or physical escape, at least in the short term. 

I strongly believe any realistic trauma recovery strategy needs to give dissociation and the “parts” of ourselves that have gotten us though tough moments their due. 

Any recovery “strategy” that shames us for dissociating (or shames any other symptom) is not realistic or sustainable. Actual trauma recovery never begins with shame and is never supported by shame. 

It is the case that, if we’re serious about taking back our life from complex trauma, we need to make ourselves less vulnerable to dissociation as a symptom— but that is not the same as shaming ourselves for it or making our “parts” disappear. 

We need to remember that if we’re reflexively dissociating, that means some part of us is in flashback or otherwise feeling panicked or threatened— and we need to look inside to understand what’s getting triggered and how we can be there for ourselves. 

It’s not that dissociation is “bad” or “wrong.” It’s a symptom, and symptoms, while often inconvenient or destructive, are not “bad” or “wrong.” 

It’s that we need to take seriously what dissociation is trying to tell us about what’s going on in our nervous and endocrine system right now— and we need to ask intelligent questions about what we need. 

This isn’t about “staying present” for its own sake. 

This is about committing to not ignoring or abandoning “parts” of ourselves stuck in “trauma time” inside. 

Making the inside of our head and heart is always worth the effort— and when and how we dissociate is going to show us where to start with that commitment. 

Validation really, really matters in trauma recovery. 

The core of our complex trauma wounds was invalidation. 

By abusing us, our abusers and bullies communicated that our humanity was invalid. 

By neglecting us, negligent caretakers communicated that our needs were invalid. 

There is a reason why trauma survivors resound so strongly to validation— because very often we are thirsty for it. 

Parched for it. 

In fact, some times we survivors are so thirsty for validation that something else happens to us: we settle for it. 

That might sound strange— what does it mean to “settle” for validation? 

What I mean is, there are going to be people who may, in fact, validate our experience or our pain, either meaningfully or superficially— and that will scratch an itch for us that we profoundly need scratched. 

But validation might be where their support basically ends. 

What many trauma survivors don’t sufficiently understand is that we do need validation— but we need that for starters. 

Validation of our wounds is not a recovery strategy. 

Validation of our wounds is not the same as tools and ongoing support (though validation is, of course, an element of support). 

Having been in the space of publicly supporting trauma survivors in their recovery for almost ten years now, I’ve observed something: there are many social media personalities who will, in fact, validate our experience as trauma survivors. 

I’m glad we’re in an era where, even as the world continues to largely ignore and invalidate CPTSD survivors’ experiences, many survivors can turn to social media creators and communities for validation. 

However, I want all survivors to clearly understand that validation, as important a tool and experience as it is, isn’t meant to get us across the finish line of our recovery. 

I know of survivors who, even as they find validation-focused trauma recovery content helpful, get frustrated— usually with themselves— for not knowing what to do next. 

Unfortunately, a realistic trauma recovery blueprint needs to entail more than validating quotes. 

A realistic trauma recovery blueprint very much needs to involve more than various kinds of assurances that what happened to us, shouldn’t have happened to us— as true and validating and important as that is. 

Sustainable trauma recovery ultimately has to run on more than validation. 

Mind you: it’s difficult to generate trauma recovery content on the internet that both goes beyond validation, and also applies broadly enough to do numbers. I know, I’m faced with that task every day. 

That is: I understand why so many trauma-focused creators begin and end with validation. 

But what I want you, my audience, to understand is, you’re not supposed to collect all these quotes and suddenly, magically understand what the nuts and bolts of your individual trauma recovery is all about day to day. 

In my content, I do my best to balance validation with applicable knowledge, skills, tools, and philosophies that apply to most survivors, most of the time— but I know I don’t always get that balance perfect. 

The point is: don’t feel bad if all the validating, evocative trauma recovery content you consume online still leaves you with questions or struggles in designing your recovery.

CPTSD recovery is not easy. The nuts and bolts of CPTSD recovery are often counterintuitive. And every survivor’s recovery is highly individual— what worked and works for me may lead you into crisis. It’s anything but one size fits all. 

I believe it’s worth the trouble to continue generating trauma recovery content online, and, to be clear, I am so glad there are other content creators who also offer trauma survivors food for thought every day on the internet. 

Just remember: quotes and other nuggets of inspiration do not replace tools and strategies. 

And validation of our past experience, while crucial, is not the same as managing today or designing a future. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.