drglenndoyle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“He just doesn’t get it.” 

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

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

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

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

Ultimately, self harm imitates our bullies and abusers. 

And we’re done with that noise. 

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

drglenndoyle

Trauma recovery and the zen of checking in.

One of the hardest parts of trauma recovery for many people is the check-ins. 

Trauma recovery thrives on self-check ins. 

So many of us were taught to deny, disown and ignore what was going on with us when we were growing up— physically, emotionally, spiritually. 

It’s really hard to meaningfully recover from trauma without reversing that habit of self-avoidance. 

That is to say: we need to check in. Take our own temperature. 

We need to ask good questions of ourselves— all day, every day. 

If we leave ourselves on CPTSD autopilot, we’re going to fall back into old patterns of self-neglect. Not because we want to, but because that’s our conditioning. 

Realistic trauma recovery means taking care of ourselves— and we can’t realistically take care of ourselves if we’re not paying attention to ourselves. 

Thing is: that’s hard. Checking in with ourselves is a hassle. 

Frequently we’ve gotten into the habit of not checking in with ourselves, because we don’t love what we see when we do. 

We avoid our sh*t for a reason. 

So those self-check ins, that are so important to meaningful trauma recovery, are harder than maybe they “should” be. 

You’re not alone in being reluctant to do it. 

You’re not alone in finding it hard. 

The key to the self check-ins is to not make them harder than they have to be. 

A self check-in doesn’t have to be comprehensive. You don’t need to go down a checklist. 

The main purpose of the self check-in is to communicate to yourself, to your nervous system and “parts.” 

We’re communicating to ourselves that our feelings matter. 

That our needs matter. 

The self-check in communicates to ourselves that, even if we were neglected for years by the people who were supposed to love us the most and pay the most attention to us, we’re no longer invisible. 


We’re no longer expendable or forgettable. 

Something I say to my patients a lot is, “recovery dies in silence.” 

What I mean by that is, we need self-communication in trauma recovery. We need to rewire and recondition how we talk to ourselves, how we direct our mental focus. 

We need to reshape our BS— our Belief Systems. 

All that requires constant, intentional communication inside. 

And that starts with the self check-in. 

“How’s everybody doing in there?” 

Don’t make it any more complicated than that. 

And don’t get discouraged if you don’t get anything back at first. 

Like every relationship, your relationship with yourself is going to take time to develop. 

Easy does it. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

And check in. 

(Now’s a good moment to start.) 

drglenndoyle

Trauma recovery and the zen of not overreacting.

If you’re reading this, you know that one of the hardest parts of trauma recovery is not overreacting. 

We don’t “choose” to overreact— we’re conditioned into it. 

We’re conditioned to believe we “have” to massively respond to many thoughts, feelings, and sensations. 

We’re conditioned to believe we “have” to punish ourselves for failures. 

We’re conditioned to believe we “have” to give up when we hit certain speed bumps or pot holes. 

The truth is, we don’t “have” to do nearly as much as our nervous system is convinced we “have” to— but we struggle to believe that, because so many of our reactions feel so urgent and unmanageable. 

Learning to not overreact, to not panic, takes a minute. 

And it also takes a steadfast willingness to not shame ourselves for the overreactions we’ve been conditioned into in the past. 

We didn’t ask for this conditioning. We don’t want it. 

The fact that we were conditioned to overreact to body sensations, thoughts, memories, or stimuli out there in the world— triggers— doesn’t make us “dramatic.” 

It makes us vulnerable to conditioning— just like every other human. 

So much of early trauma recovery especially is meeting our overreactions with acceptance, compassion, patience— and reminding ourselves that while there is no shame in this reaction, we can sit with it, breathe into it, manage it, and not amplify it. 

We don’t choose our reflexes. 

But we have some choices when we clock what’s going on. 

We don’t often have the choice to simply shut the reaction down— but we can choose how we talk to ourselves about it, how we explain it to ourselves, how we meet it, and what we do with our body and breathing in response to it. 

“Easy does it. Don’t overreact,” is one of my go-to self-talk statements. 

Putting some time and space between trigger, reflex, and reaction is a game changer for many trauma survivors. 

It all starts with acknowledging our vulnerability to overreaction— and getting curious about how we can reel it in, without getting judgmental or aggressive with ourselves.

Breathe; blink; focus. 

drglenndoyle

This is your brain on CPTSD. Any questions?

Trauma responses literally scramble our brains. 

Well, “scramble” may not be exactly right. But trauma responses really do hijack specific areas of our brain— specifically the hippocampus (memory central) and the prefrontal cortex (decision making central). 

Most brain functions and areas aren’t quite as well understood as many sources seem to advertise— but we do know a few things about how fight, fight, freeze, fawn, and flop seem to impact our brain. 

For example, we know that when triggers slam into us, the hippocampus doesn’t process, consolidate, or retrieve memories particularly effectively. 

It’s one reason why post traumatic memory seems to “behave” so much differently than other memories— it’s being “regulated” and filtered by a brain structure that is on the fritz after being triggered. 

We also know that, when the sympathetic nervous system— the branch of our nervous system that throws the switch on trauma responses— is active, the prefrontal cortex seems to go largely offline. 

That is to say: we literally can’t think straight when we’re gripped by fight, fight, freeze, fawn, or flop. 

I’m not, actually, a believer that neurobiology can explain everything we need to know about trauma or recovery— but I do think a baseline knowledge of what CPTSD physically, chemically does to our brain can be helpful in easing off the self blame. 

How we feel and behave in the midst of trauma responses really are not “choices.” 

They’re the product of cortisol and adrenaline and dopamine surging through our most sensitive tissues, and knee-caping the organ that creates and consolidates our integrated experience of identity. 

Nobody’s “choosing” their way out of that neurochemical onslaught. 

Give yourself a break. 

You’re up against alterations in brain chemistry, structure, and function that ANY human, regardless of intelligence or “character,” would have trouble managing. 

The situation is not hopeless— but we need to be realistic where we actually have choices, and where we really, really don’t. 

Focus on the moments right AFTER you realize a trauma response has kicked in— when you start to regain some meaningful influence over your self-talk, mental focus, and physiology. 

That’s where your wiggle room is. 

That’s where we can start hacking back into our brain. Not before. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

drglenndoyle

Welcome to the sh*t show; we got fun and games.

So what do we actually do if the last day, or the last hour, was a sh*t show? 

Because sh*t shows happen, don’t they? 

Maybe we relapse. Maybe we self-harm. Maybe we get sucked into a shame spiral. 

It happens. Not “maybe;” this is the real world, and the sh*t show sometimes wins for a minute or two. 

First thing’s first, it’s not evidence you can’t do recovery. 


The sh*t show is actually part of recovery. Or dealing with it is, at any rate. 

Come on: how realistic was it ever going to be that you committed to trauma recovery, then everything was perfect or easy? 

That was never going to happen. 

You and I have been immersed in our trauma conditioning for years. Decades, most of us. 

That’s years and years of Trauma Brain, the internalized voices of our abusers and bullies, beating the sh*t out of us in our head. 

That’s years and years of neither our head nor our heart being truly safe for our “parts” or inner child. 

That was never going to go away all at once. 

The more realistic situation was always going to be reconditioning ourselves, one day, one hour, one decision— one MICRO decision— at a time. 

Which means we’re going to have rough moments. Moments where the sh*t show pops up for a return engagement. 

That actually doesn’t matter to our overall recovery arc. 

You know what does matter, though? How we respond. 

How we understand that rough moment. 

How we talk to ourselves during and after the sh*t show. 

How we direct our mental focus, or at last that sliver of mental focus we can influence, when the sh*t show pops up. 

What we do with our breathing and body in those rough moments. 

Those patterns really, really matter to our recovery arc. Those patterns CREATE our recovery arc, actually. 

Trauma responses are not “choices.” 

What realistic trauma recovery is all about are the choices we make when we realize what’s going on, and we actually have some options again.

That is to say: don’t overreact to the sh*t show. Don’t panic. Don’t get discouraged. 

Don’t amplify or prolong the sh*t show with what you do next. 

Breathe; blink; focus; and remember who you are and what you’re all about. Remember your recovery blueprint and plan. Check your impulse scale. 

The sh*t show is not the end of recovery. It is part of recovery. 

Every survivor who has ever realistically recovered from trauma has gotten slapped with the sh*t show. 

And every survivor who has ever recovered from trauma has learned how to respond to it by doing the next right thing, with compassion, patience, and realism. 

Easy does it. 

drglenndoyle

Your pain matters, too– not just your trauma.

There are going to be things that cause us pain, that aren’t directly related to what we consider our “trauma.” 

Those things can be easy to overlook or minimize. 

We can fall into the trap of believing that, because these pain points aren’t the ones we’re “working on” in our trauma recovery, that they don’t “count.” That they can wait. 

I’m going to tell you that all of your pain points, matter. 

I’m also going to tell you that a significant part of this trauma recovery process is about respecting your pain and your needs, regardless of their origin. 

Yes, recovery from trauma often involves processing the specific pain from identifiable moments in our past. 

But just as often, it is about healing and developing our relationship with ourselves, day to day, minute to minute— and that task often doesn’t directly involve engaging our past. Not consciously, anyway. 

Part of developing our relationship with ourselves is taking our pain seriously. 

That can be hard, when we don’t even understand or pain, or have trouble putting words to our pain. 

We survivors like to feel in “control.” We like being able to draw nice, straight lines between our past trauma and our current pain and needs. 

When we can’t do that, we get squirrely. And when we get squirrely, we get avoidant. 

And when we get avoidant, trauma recovery stalls. Every time. 

For my money, self-care is the backbone of realistic trauma recovery. 

I know, I know, a lot of people think the term “self care,” alongside the term “trigger,” is overused— but whether or not the term “self care” is actually overused, I can tell you it is definitely under-PRACTICED. 

The kind of self care that is the foundation of realstic trauma recovery means doing what we need to do every day to minimize and resolve pain points in our life— that is, attending to and developing our actual quality of life. 

Put another way: pain in your life that is not directly related to the events and relationships that evoked your CPTSD is STILL valid, still deserves attention and care and self-compassion.

You are not taking away from your trauma recovery by attending to those pain points. 

To the contrary: every time you take care of yourself, every time you do something concrete to feel less pain and more lasting, authentic pleasure in your life, you are working your recovery. 

I’ve said it before: so much of real world trauma recovery doesn’t even involve engaging with our trauma feelings or memories. 

But it ALWAYS involves treating our relationship with ourselves as the most important bond we have— and a relationship that absolutely must be nurtured and protected at every opportunity. 

drglenndoyle

CPTSD is a lying liar that lies.

CPTSD will straight up lie to us. 

Thats’ what CPTSD does best, actually. Lie. 

It lies to us about who we are. 

It lies to us about what we deserve. 

It lies to us about what we can do. 

Survivors know this, but everyone needs to know this. 

CPTSD specifically gets in our head and f*cks with our beliefs. 

People have this idea that PTSD is about what happened to us, and it is— but CPTSD is mostly defined by what it gets us to believe. The lies it gets us to believe. 

That’s why it ruins our relationships. Or threatens to, anyway. 

That’s why CPTSD f*cks with our ability to work. 

It’s why CPTSD has us self harming and self sabotaging all day. 

Because of the BS (Belief Systems) that inescapable, long term, relationship-flavored trauma installs in our head and in our heart. 

CPTSD is about more than flashbacks. 

It’s about more than hypervigilance, although CPTSD survivors can experience both flashbacks and hypervigilance. 

It’s about our self concept. The lies CPTSD gets us to believe about our very essence. 

This is what so many people don’t understand. 

Exposure therapy doesn’t undo this. 

Superficial cognitive therapy doesn’t undo this. Not entirely, not deeply. 

CPTSD and DID start to heal when we understand that this is overwhelmingly about our relationship with ourselves— and that the key to our healing is creating realistic safety inside our head and heart. 

CPTSD lies. 

CPTSD is probably lying to you right now, as you read this, actually. 

It’s probably telling you, “this doesn’t apply to you.”

It might be telling you, “you’re the exception.” 

It’ll tell you all sorts of things to get you to not think about things that matter to your recovery. 

Trauma Brain, the internalized voices of our abusers and bullies is nothing if not persistent. 

But remember: it lies. 

It lies, and it’s happy to use its lies to make you feel like garbage. Maybe even to get you suicidal. 

But once you understand how full of sh*t Trauma Brain is, you can’t un-know it. 

Nor do you want to. 

CPTSD is a lying liar that lies. 

Don’t mistake it for anything resembling your gut instinct. It’s not. 

Though it will do an amazing impression of it sometimes. 

drglenndoyle

Positive thinking won’t save us from CPTD– but.

Positive thinking isn’t going to save you or me from CPTSD. 

I wish it would. 

I wish I could tell you that all this CPTSD bullsh*t was a bad dream, that we could think our way out of. 

I wish I could tell you that all you or I had to do to recover from CPTSD is to fix our attitude. Because attitude is everything, and everything is attitude…right? 

Well. Not quite. 

Positive thinking doesn’t save anyone from anything. 

That said, what we think does matter. 

I’m not saying that we can think our way out of CPTSD, or that the only reason anyone suffers from CPTSD is because they’re “choosing” the “wrong” thoughts. 

(Though I’m sure someone in the comments who didn’t read this far into the post is probably going to say that. Stay toxic.) 

What I am saying is, we have a little bit of wiggle room in our thoughts. 

We have a little bit of wiggle room with how we talk to ourselves. 

We have a little bit of wiggle room in how we direct our mental focus. 

Mind you, that wiggle room may seem impossible tiny some days.

Some days it may very much feel like CPTSD is hijacking every goddamn thought in our goddamn head. 

(By the way, shout out to everyone who has ever asked if, strictly speaking, I “need” to use profanity on my posts. It’s a very f*cking good question that I will f*cking think about very f*cking hard, and get back to you. Thanks for reading.) 

I’m not saying we we have complete freedom inside our head or heart. 

I’m saying we have wiggle room— and, if we’re serious about trauma recovery, we need to take advantage of that wiggle room. 

If we use that wiggle room to focus on and amplify our limitations and our deficits— that’s going to have consequences in how we feel and function. 

Understand: negative thinking doesn’t CREATE CPTSD— but it can sure as hell be its biggest cheerleader and benefactor. 

Conversely, if we use that wiggle room to focus on and amplify our strengths and resources— that’s going to have consequences in how we feel and function as well. 

It will not “solve” all, or probably any, of our problems, and it will definitely not “cure” our PTSD. 

Positive thinking will not save us. 

But it will support our recovery a hell of a lot more realistically than negative thinking. 

I’m not saying bullsh*t yourself. 

I’m not saying “good vibes only.” 

I’m not saying your habitual thinking is your fault, or the “cause” of your pain. 

I’m just saying, get mindful and intentional about how you use your cognitive “wiggle room.” 

I’m saying that, for all the choices we DON’T have when it comes to self talk and mental focus, there are absolutely some choices we DO have. 

And I don’t believe in throwing away ANY tool that could potentially help us crawl out of this pit called CPTSD. 

drglenndoyle

Reality check.

The reality is: the feelings and memories aren’t suddenly going away. 

No matter how much we wish they would. No matter what we do. 

We can do things to make ourselves less vulnerable to them and we can do things to diminish their intensity— and, yes, we can process them so they don’t affect us the same way anymore. 

But they won’t suddenly go away because we want them to. 

So: we need to find a way to be with them. To coexist with them. 

We need to find a way to sit with and tolerate those feelings and memories, at last temporarily. 

That requires patience. That requires realism and compassion and the willingness to allow those feelings and memories to exist— to not demand they go away or not exist. 

It requires our willingness to not beat the sh*t out of ourselves for having those feelings and memories. Not that anybody reading this— or the person writing this— ever does that, right? 

Right? 

Among the things we want and need our trauma recovery to be, is realistic. And realistic trauma recovery does not indulge fantasies about sudden transformation. 

The changes we make in our nervous and endocrine systems in trauma recovery will take time. That’s the reality. 

No, we don’t love those feelings and reactions and memories. And we don’t have to love them. 

But we do have to accept that they exist. We do have to let them exist. 

And we do have to commit to not attacking, shaming, rejecting, or abandoning the “parts” of ourselves that hold those feelings and memories. 

I know— tall order. 

But welcome to trauma recovery. 

It always, always starts with acceptance. Accepting reality. Accepting what happened, happened. 

Accepting that we do not have a choice about whether or not we’re trauma survivors— but we do have a choice whether to work our trauma recovery with patience, self compassion, and realism. 

Those feelings and memories are not suddenly going away. 

But we can work with them— if we’re not too busy denying and disowning them, or punishing the “parts” of ourselves that hold them. 

drglenndoyle

Recovery takes the time it takes. And that’s the good news.

Oh, I get it: you are frustrated as f*ck with how long this trauma recovery thing is taking. 

That’s very normal— both for it to take the time it takes, and for survivors to be frustrated by it. 

The reason trauma recovery is taking so long is not because you’re doing it wrong. Or because  you’re “stupid.” Or because you’re “lazy.” Or because you’re “weak.” 

Trauma recovery takes the time it takes because it’s not a bullshit quick fix. 

Trauma recovery isn’t even a “fix,” per se. It’s not something that happens TO us, like our abuse or neglect were. 

Trauma recovery is a lifestyle. 

It’s a series of choices we make anew, every day. 

Choices about what? About how to talk to ourselves. 

About where to direct our mental focus, even in the small ways we can. (You are leveraging the tool of mental focus right now, by reading this— so you have at least SOME influence over it.)

About how to breathe and move and otherwise use our body. 

Getting realistic about trauma recovery means getting realistic about how trauma wounded us— and the reality is, trauma wounded us by conditioning us. By programming us. By driving certain beliefs and habits deep into our nervous system. 

That’s not the kind of damage we un-do quickly or easily. 

But it IS the kind of damage we CAN un-do— if we’re realistic about how that’s done, and consistent about using our recovery skills, tools, and philosophies. 

A trauma recovery SKILL is something we can do. 

A trauma recovery TOOL is something we can us. 

A trauma recovery PHILOSOPHY is an framework that informs how and when we use our skills and tools. 

We are making choices about self-talk, mental focus, and physiology all day, every day— and within those choices, we are either using or not using specific skills, tools, and philosophies to support our recovery. 

If, day by day, day after day, we use our trauma recovery skills, tools, and philosophies to guide our self talk, mental focus, and physiology, we WILL change our nervous system. 

That is to say: we WILL recover. 

The human nervous system is demonstrably plastic—changeable— and recovery is inevitable with the right blueprint. 

But it does to happen overnight. 

Thank goodness for that. 

Because I want your and my trauma recovery to stick. 

I want us to realistically, sustainably change our nervous systems— not just to feel better, but to function better. 

It takes the time it takes and it’s frustrating as f*ck. 

But the fact it takes the time it takes is also the good news.