drglenndoyle

Recovery isn’t recovery unless it’s realistic & sustainable.

Something that holds many survivors back in trauma recovery is, we can’t imagine a recovery that is consistent with the life we’re living now. 

I know, we’re working a trauma recovery to create a new life, that doesn’t particularly resemble the life we’re living now. 

But in the short term, if we can only envision trauma recovery as something that entails a drastic departure from our current reality, it’s likely going to affect our levels of motivation and belief. 

We’ve been around long enough to know that dramatic leaps rarely happen. They do happen, sometimes— but they tend to be the exception, not the norm. 

We’ve been around long enough to know that tomorrow is probably going to look a lot like today. Much like today looked a lot like yesterday. 

In trauma recovery, we are always swimming upstream against hopelessness and our vulnerability to becoming overwhelmed. Trying to envision our recovery as a whole new life, entirely incompatible with or removed from what we’re living now, makes us especially vulnerable to both. 

This is is why I sound like a broken record when it comes to taking baby steps. 

This is why I sound like a broken record when it comes to focusing on .01% shifts. 

This is why I sound like a broken record when it comes to setting recovery goals so small they feel stupid— goals so small it’d almost be harder NOT to achieve them. 

The truth is, I very much want a dramatically different life for you. That’s the only reason I do this work— because I love watching people completely remake themselves and their lives. 

But I want that transformation to be realistic. I want it to actually happen. I don’t want it to remain a fantasy that sounds awesome and is temporarily motivating— but which evaporates when it’s exposed to the pressures and obligations of our current life. 

Something we know very well in the behavioral sciences is that change that takes us dramatically out of our comfort zone is usually unsustainable without a massive level of support. 

I don’t know about you, but I don’t know many trauma survivors working our recovery who have a “massive level of support” handy. 

So: when I say start small, I’m not just talking about making changes you already have the strength and skill to make, although that’s obviously part of the equation. 

I say start small to avoid freaking out your nervous system. 

(If you’re a survivor working your recovery, chances are your nervous system exists at a baseline level of “freaked out”— we don’t particularly need to add to that with unrealistic expectations of recovery, you know?)

What I want for you in your recovery is to make consistent, manageable changes over time. I want, in six months, you to be able to look back on changes that you’ve made in how you think, feel, and behave, and realize, huh, it’s been six months— I didn’t think I could keep any of that up for six DAYS. 

What we think, feel, and do has a lot to do with neural pathways that have been shaped and conditioned over time. If we try to rip out every neural network we have all at once, our nervous system is going to respond to that feeling of chaos and unfamiliarity by reverting back to and doubling down on its old programming. 

That is to say, trying to make too many changes, too fast, not only won’t serve our trauma recovery— it’ll likely set us back.

Again, I don’t know about you, but I don’t have time to be set back in my trauma recovery. 

So: if you want to make radical changes in how you think, feel, and behave in the long term, I’m gonna ask you to make teeny, tiny, barely noticeable— but very consistent and very purposeful— changes in how you talk to yourself, direct your mental focus, breathe, and use your body day by day. 

This is how we realistically rebuild ourselves and our lives. 

This is how we sustainably recover. 

This is how we actually make it happen. 

drglenndoyle

“Should” & shame make us feel like sh*t.

Your mileage may vary, but I’ve never, ever gotten anywhere useful by telling myself I “shouldn’t” be feeling this way. 

There are lots of things we’re going to feel in trauma and addiction recovery that we would rather not. 

In fairness, there are lots of things we feel long before we start working our trauma or addiction recovery that we’d rather not— hence us choosing to work a recovery at all. 

But even after we get into recovery and start working it day to day, we’re often beset by feelings we just wish didn’t exist. 

Notably, a lot of grief tends to surface in trauma and addiction recovery. 

Trauma and addiction recovery work is, at its core, grief work. 

We grieve opportunities lost, relationships lost, old coping tools lost, old beliefs and illusions lost. 

We don’t productively process or move past anything in trauma or addiction recovery unless and until we’re willing to wrap our head around the grief that we’ve been desperately trying to avoid feeling. 

That said: who on earth actually wants to feel grief? No one. I surely don’t. 

So we do everything we possibly can to avoid feeling that grief. I personally have done backflips upon somersaults upon moonsaults to avoid feeling grief. 

But— if we’re honestly working our recovery, we’re going to feel that grief. We’re going to be asked to reckon with that grief. We’re going to have to make choices about how to meet that grief. 

Lots of us are used to greeting that grief, along with other feelings that surface as e work our recovery (or live our lives, for that matter) with shame. 

Many of us are real good, real practiced, at telling ourselves we “shouldn’t” be feeling a particular way. 


As a rule in recovery, every time your brain tries to “should” at you, it should raise a little bit of a red flag. 

It’s usually a sign that old conditioning is trying to influence our behavior. Trauma Brain is trying to get us to do something or not do something— and it’s trying to short circuit our conscious decision making to make that happen. 

Whenever Trauma or Addict Brain try to “should” at us, they often curiously neglect the “why” part. 

If they do try to tell us “why” we “shouldn’t” feel a thing, it’s usually kind of abstract. “You shouldn’t feel that thing because…well, you just shouldn’t.” 

Sometimes they’ll tell us we “shouldn’t” feel that thing because a “good” person wouldn’t feel that thing. 

Or maybe they tell us a “strong” person wouldn’t feel that thing. 

Or maybe Trauma or Addict Brain try to tell us we don’t have “permission” to feel that thing. 

Let me tell you the truth: you have “permission” to feel whatever the hell you’re feeling. 

(Actually, the real truth is, you don’t NEED anyone’s “permission” to feel anything.) 

We don’t ask for feelings. Feelings do not represent some deep fundamental truth about our “character,” our “goodness” or “badness.” 

Feelings just are. They represent an amalgam of our understanding, our conditioning, our values, and quirks of our neuropsychology. 

If we shame our feelings— these things we didn’t ask for, and which we frequently have difficulty regulating if we’ve been through trauma— we kick our self-esteem in the gut. 

“I shouldn’t be feeling this” is a statement that gets us nowhere. We ARE feeling this. Telling ourselves we “shouldn’t” usually only leads to feeling ashamed and helpless. 

I get it. Nobody wants to feel many of the things we feel int trauma or addiction recovery. 

But watch those “shoulds.” 

Maybe swap them out for, “It’s a complete drag I’m feeling this way, I don’t WANT to feel this way, I HATE that I feel this way;” then maybe follow up with “…but the fact that I feel this way makes sense, somehow, some way, even if I don’t understand it now.” 

Swap out judgment and shame for curiosity and acceptance. 

Yes, easier said than done. 

But that’s true of literally every recovery task and tool. 

You’re up to this.