drglenndoyle

It’s your gentleness vs. the sh*t show.

For many CPTSD survivors, it took a lot of pain and chaos to make us as gentle and mindful as we are. 

We’ve seen, we’ve experienced, the sh*t show. 

We have no desire to visit the sh*t show on anybody else. 

Sometimes, though, that “fight” response makes us seem a little combative. 

Sometimes that “flee” response makes us seem like we don’t like people. (And, of course, sometimes we don’t like people— and there’s nothing wrong with that.) 

Sometimes that “freeze” response can make us feel like we’re holding back or holding out on people. 

That is to say: sometimes trauma responses are going to make us feel or seem like people we aren’t. 

And yet, we still want to be gentle with the world, with other people, especially with animals. 

The vast majority of the CPTSD survivors I’ve ever met have wanted nothing more than to heal the world. 

We’ve decided the sh*t show stops with us. Which is why we go through the hassle of working a recovery. 

We don’t want to be like our abusers. 

Our abusers could not fathom doing the amount of kind of work we do in trauma recovery. 

I don’t care who your abusers were, whether they were people or institutions— they were gross.

The sh*t show actually belongs to them, even though we’re the ones who pay the price for their chaos. 

It’s actually a f*cking miracle we’re as gentle as we are. 

If you’re reading this, you’re doing something your abusers could not fathom. You’re reading, studying, taking in material to improve your life, to make things different. 

Remember that. 

Even when it feels like it’s an uphill battle, if when it feels like it’s not working, even when it feels hopeless and pointless— you’re committed to, and working to definitively, end, the sh*t show. 

I admire and love your gentleness. 

It’s not a weakness, it’s a superpower. 

And I’m not just saying that as a bullsh*t therapist trope— I mean I want and need more people like you in the world to push back the sh*t show. 

Breathe. Blink. Focus. 

drglenndoyle

Try a little love.

Many CPTSD survivors get hung up on this idea that we’re supposed to love the person we were when we were hurt— whether we were a child or an adult when that happened. 

The fact that complex trauma unfolds over time means that many of us were hurt both as children and as adults. 

But CPTSD survivors often want to instinctively hate or reject that person. 

CPTSD survivors are often told that it was somehow that person’s fault. 

We’re told that so frequently, in so many direct and subtle ways, that we often come to believe it— to just download that belief into our nervous system. 

It’s not that CPTSD survivors wake up and make a “choice” to hate or reject the person we were when we were hurt. 

We just wake up and register that’s how we feel. What we feel we’re “supposed” to do. 

One of the characteristics of CPTSD, as opposed to traditional PTSD, is that if f*cks with our sense of who we are. 

The symptoms experienced by CPTSD survivors don’t always center on what happened, like in PTSD. 

Rather, many of CPTSD survivors’ symptoms focus on us— specifically our identity and our worth. 

That’s what happens when you’re taken advance of in relationships that should be safe, as almost every CPTSD survivor has been. 

Realistic recovery from CPTSD asks us to extend grace and patience to the person we were when we were hurt. 

We don’t have to love the fact that we were hurt— but it’s real important we not let our hatred of the situation spill over on to us. 

There are CPTSD survivors reading this who will respond to what I just wrote by saying, “okay, but I DID do things that made me more vulnerable. I may not be totally responsible for what happened to me, but I DO bear SOME responsibility.”

We have to be really, really careful how we engage with that idea— that there may have been something we could have done different. 

The reality is, whether we could have done something different or not, things unfolded the way they did. 

There is absolutely no realistic benefit to going back and kicking the sh*t out of ourselves for what we “could” or “should” have done. 

Most CPTSD survivors have been immersed in shame and self-blame for as long as we can remember— don’t you think if that helped, it would have helped by now? 

Shame and self-blame are never going to be realistic, effective tools in CPTSD recovery. Never. 

Instead of coming at your past self— again, whether you were a child or an adult— maybe try holding your past self. 

Just hold them. Don’t judge them; don’t yell at them; don’t rush them. Don’t demand they be different. Don’t demand the past be different. 

CPTSD tries to get us constantly demanding that we somehow be different. 

Turns out our nervous and endocrine systems don’t give a sh*t what we “demand.” 

Try a little love instead. 

You know, just see how it goes. 

Breathe. Blink. Focus. 

drglenndoyle

Your sensitivity is not a flaw. It’s a world changer.

You need to know that your sensitivity is not a flaw. 

I know, it can feel like it. It can feel like your sensitivity makes you vulnerable. 

And there are definitely people who will try to take advantage of how sensitive you are. 

But that doesn’t mean your sensitivity is a flaw, or even necessarily a weakness. 

Let’s be real: there are people who will try to take advantage of ANY quality we happen to have a lot of. 

And ANY quality that hooks into who we are and what we’re all about, including but not limited to our sensitivity, is potentially exploitable. 

So many trauma survivors walk around feeling like a raw nerve— and we so often feel ashamed of that. 

It doesn’t help that we have an entire culture around us glorifying “toughness” and portraying emotional non-reactivity as the essence of heroism. 

Let me tell you, real heroes are plenty sensitive and plenty emotional. 

I happen to think the way our culture glorifies emotional non-reactivity is kind of an exercise in wish fulfillment: we humans desperately wish we weren’t so sensitive or emotional, so we invent heroes who are defined by their ability to “suck it up.” 

The reality is, the world desperately NEEDS people who are sensitive and empathic. 

We don’t WANT an entire culture created by people who are out of touch with their feelings and intuition. That world would be a cold, hard place. 

CPTSD tries really hard to convince us we’re “damaged goods.” 

So many of us really, truly believe there is something fundamentally “wrong” with us— beyond the post traumatic injuries we’ve sustained and the CPTSD patterns we involuntarily run. 

An injury is not the same as a “flaw” or a “weakness.” 

The strongest, toughest athletes in the world get injured. 

The best designed bridges and buildings on the planet get damaged by earthquakes and storms. 

It is likely you, like me, are more sensitive than most. Things hit us harder. We have harder time compartmentalizing and moving on than many (which is why many survivors develop the psychological defense of dissociation— it seems to do the heavy lifting of compartmentalization for us, though relying on it in this way eventually creates more problems than it solves). 

That doesn’t mean we’re “immature,” “weak,” or any of the other dozen things Trauma Brain tries to call us. 

It definitely doesn’t mean our job is to somehow banish our sensitivity. 

We very much NEED our sensitivity. 

We also need to develop tools and philosophies that support us in managing that sensitivity so it doesn’t overwhelm us. 

Your sensitivity is not a flaw. 

It’s one of the best things about you. 

People like us are going to change the world in ways people not in touch with their sensitivity cannot. 

I truly believe that. 

drglenndoyle

You get to choose who you are sexually.

I think it’s real important, in trauma recovery, that we not pathologize our needs. 

That temptation is real, though— to chalk everything we feel or do or need up to a trauma response. 

Many of us have been so overwhelmed by trauma responses for so long, in fact, that we’ve come to kind of believe trauma is our personality. 

(This is one of the reasons I think CPTSD is real easy for some clinicians to misdiagnose as a “personality disorder”— you need to not only know what you’re looking at, but accept what trauma is and understand what it does to really see it.)

But not everything in our lives is a trauma response— even if many of our patterns and preferences have been shaped by pain. 

An example that comes up often is sexuality. 

It’s no secret that, for survivors of sexual trauma in particular, our experiences can play a role in how we experience our sexuality and what we want, need, and seek out in our sex lives. 

(By the way, this isn’t just confined to survivors of sexual trauma— people who have been subject to emotional abuse and coercive control, among other forms of complex trauma, can also find their sex lives profoundly impacted by what they went through, even if their trauma wasn’t explicitly sexual.)

Some survivors of sexual trauma come through the experience never wanting to consciously engage with sexuality again. 

Some survivors come through with preferences and response patterns that are shaped by the abuse— which can cause enormous shame or confusion. 

Some survivors may think they’re “fine” as far as dealing with sexuality goes— until they wind up in a sexual situation where “fight,” “flight,” “freeze,” “flop,” or “fawn” are suddenly running the show.

Some survivors, for whom dissociation is a primary pattern, compartmentalize their sexual memories and needs into “parts,” which may in turn vary widely and wildly when it comes to what they like, hate, seek out, or avoid at any cost. 

Add to all this that the memory “glitches” experienced by many trauma survivors are very often especially glitchy around sexual experiences, both past and present. 

There’s no question: our experiences can profoundly shape who we are sexually. 

And but also: there’s no need to chalk EVERY sexual desire or dislike up to what we experienced. 

Maybe our trauma shaped who we are sexually in some ways— that doesn’t necessarily mean we have to reject who we are sexually (assuming we desire to connect with other consenting adults in non-harmful ways). 

In my experience there’s a strong temptation on the part of many survivors to reject anything and everything in their lives that they remotely suspect was shaped by trauma— and, sure, you can do that. 

But in doing that, you might be setting your nervous system up to feel more shame and self-rejection than is necessary or helpful. 

Put more simply: you get to like what you like and be who you are, including sexually, without the fact that your sexual self was partially shaped by your trauma polluting it. 

There are going to be many aspects or ourselves that have been at least partially shaped by our past and our pain that we don’t necessarily need to reject— and that we certainly shouldn’t shame. 

So your sexuality was influenced by what you went through. You get to sift through that understanding, and decide what you want to do about it. There’s no rule that says you “have” to reject things about yourself you’ve come to like or value. 

The core concept behind trauma recovery is autonomy. Autonomy, self-determination, psychological independence, is what was ripped away from us by our trauma. EVERYTHING we do in recovery NEEDS to be grounded in respect for our absolute right to choose who we are and what we’re all about. 

That includes our sexuality. 

Choose what to embrace and what to deemphasize about yourself. It’s your life. 

But don’t start out from the premise that you “have” to embrace or reject anything, just because of the experiences that shaped it. 

You get to choose. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

drglenndoyle

ATTACK of the SH*ITTY MOOD!!!

Where are all my survivors in sh*tty moods? 

I see you. I’m in one myself as I write this. 

Now: what does Trauma Brain tell us about sh*tty moods? 

Trauma Brain, the internalized voices of our abusers and bullies, tries to tell us that if we were working our recovery “right,” we wouldn’t have them. 

What a load of sh*t. 

Let me tell you something: the most successful trauma recovery is going to involve some sh*tty moods. 

The most successful trauma recovery is going to involve us not feeling great— about life, about our body, about whatever. 

The most successful trauma recovery is definitely going to involve more than a few “f*ck it” moments. 

NONE of that means we’re doing recovery “wrong.” 

In fact, as we work our trauma recovery, we tend to learn something pretty f*cking interesting: we can have sh*tty moods, and not do what we used to do. 

You know what I’m talking about. Get high. Cut ourselves to ribbons. Blow up our relationships. 

Oh, am I the only one who did that? (No, I am not.) 

A great deal of this trauma recovery thing actually hinges on what we DON’T do when we feel sh*tty— and how we meet ourselves when we feel like sh*t. 

Our default mode is often to meet ourselves with judgment. Maybe even abandon ourselves. 

Just now I had a series of moments when I felt like absolute sh*t about my body. And once upon a time, there would have been absolutely no other option I saw than hurting that body— partly because I hate how it looks and feels, partly because I “deserve” some sort of punishment for gaining a few pounds. 

And, yes: I had a flash of that old sh*t. Trauma Brain tried to tell me that I “had” to do something sh*tty to myself, to externalize and concretize this sh*tty feeling, instead of letting it bang around inside myself. 

The fact that I had that flash doesn’t mean my trauma recovery is f*cked. 

It means I have a choice in how to talk to myself, where to focus, and how to breathe and use my body now. 

I choose to meet this sh*tty feeling with acceptance and compassion— and let me tell you, it is f*cking hard. 

I don’t WANT to meet this feeling with acceptance and compassion. I WANT to go throw up everything I’ve eaten in the last twenty four hours and run about thirteen miles. Or, you know, figure out the fastest and cheapest way to get an opiate cruising through me. 

But— I choose to not do any of that. 

Why? Because that’s my trauma trying to control and hurt me. 

Remember: CPTSD’s “helpful” suggestions only serve its goal to make us feel like garbage. 

This feeling I’m feeling now is not fun. But I didn’t choose it. And I am not going to punish myself for something that happened TO me. 

My nervous system, my “parts,” my inner child— none of them asked for that. None of them need or deserve that. 

They are all looking to me to see how I handle this. 

And I choose self-compassion. Goddamn f*cking self-compassion. 

Why? Because I am not my father. I do not hurt people because I feel sh*tty— including myself. 

I offer this to you as an example of what goes on inside someone who is successfully working his recovery. 

Recovery is not about perfection, it’s not about never feeling bad, it’s not about never wanting to do the self-destructive thing. 

It’s about staying on track, even when the track is on f*cking fire. 

Easy does it. Breathe. Blink. Focus. 

And be on your own side. Have your own back. 

drglenndoyle

Stay away from the wrong people.

You do not have to apologize for staying away from the wrong people. 

The people who trigger you. 

The people who show no remorse. 

The people who mock, minimize, and sabotage your recovery, your dreams, and/or your life. 

Yes, in a practical sense, we can’t stay away from EVERYBODY whose presence is destructive to us— but to the extent that we CAN minimize our contact with even some of those people, we have every right to. 

We don’t have to justify it— especially to anyone who wouldn’t consider our needs and preferences “valid” without sufficient “justification.”

If you have CPTSD, you were likely hurt by people. 

You have every right to effortfully manage your exposure to and engagement with people going forward. 

It is perfectly normal and justifiable to not want to be around what you’re trying to heal from. 

Sometimes, when the person or people who hurt us are family, we get extra pressure to “forgive and forget,” to engage with them regardless of what they’ve done or how their presence affects us. 

You need to know: that pressure is not valid. 

Your needs, your mental health, and your physical safety ARE valid. 

As we get deeper in recovery, we understand more and more that so much of our mental health involves staying away from the wrong people. 

That’s not to say 100% of our mental health is in other peoples’ hands. 

It IS to say that, when we can, we should make certain choices to be safer and healthier. 

We don’t need to bend to gaslighting about whether our concerns or experience are “real.” 

We are not required to give third or fourth (or even second) chances to people who have shown us who they are with their behavior. 

Some people love to get on a high horse and proclaim that there is no justification for cutting people, especially family, out of our lives— that therapists and others go around “destroying families” by recommending patients go low or no contact. 

I can tell you that every time— every single time— a patient of mine has gone low or no contact with a family member or anyone else, it has been their idea.

I can also tell you that I have never, ever worked with someone who took going low or no contact lightly. 

I have, however, worked with many, many CPTSD survivors who truly did not feel they had a “right” to manage who they engage with. 

Many, many CPTSD survivors are thoroughly convinced they “have” to “tough it out” when it comes to tolerating the presence in their lives of people who only make them feel like garbage. 

You don’t. 

To the extent you can, stay away from the wrong people. 

If you do need to engage with toxic people, do what you need to do to manage your self-talk and mental focus before, during, and after engaging with them. 

Take others’ toxicity seriously as a variable that impacts your safety and stability. Don’t minimize it. Don’t ignore it. 

And don’t buy into anyone trying to shame you into having zero boundaries with people who really will ruin your life without a second thought. 

Breathe. Blink. Focus. 

drglenndoyle

Storms gonna storm.

Storms and earthquakes level bridges and buildings— which is not the “fault” of those bridges and buildings. 

Even bridges and buildings that are designed to stand up to storms and earthquakes, get f*cked up by them. 

It usually has nothing to do with how intelligently or well they were built. 

It’s more often the case that trauma is simply trauma. 

It’s the same with human beings. 

When something happens that injures us, it’s not our fault for not being “tougher” or “stronger.” 

There are absolutely events that overwhelm the capacity of the toughest, strongest humans. 

It’s not even necessarily the intensity of the trauma that makes the difference. 

Trauma that is inescapable, that unfolds over time, and that entwines with our important relationships— that is to say, complex trauma— doesn’t have to be particularly “intense” in order to deeply injure us. 

Why does this matter? 

Because CPTSD survivors are absolute champions at self-blame. 

It’s not our fault— we’ve been conditioned, conned, into the habit. 

We’ve often been told, over and over again, by people in authority— parents, teachers, spiritual leaders— that we’re “bad,” we’re “lazy,” we’re “sinful.” That the problem is with us. 

We are designed to believe things we’re repeatedly told. Especially by people who have power in our world, people we “should” be able to trust. 

So when we start coming to terms with our post traumatic injuries, our first instinct is often to blame ourselves— our “choices” (which often were not choices), our supposed lack of “toughness,” our alleged lack of “strength.” 

Shame and self-blame just don’t work to change how we feel and function. Not over time, not in positive or sustainable ways. 

And but also, that shame and self-blame is often nothing more than BS (Belief Systems— but also the other kind of “BS”). 

You and I, as humans, were not designed to weather the kind of pressure that we were put under. 

Our evolutionary history may have designed us to withstand certain physical pressures— which is why you’re alive to read this, and I’m alive to write this— but evolution did not equip us to carry on in the face of mental or emotional or spiritual or financial abuse. 

This matters, insofar as CPTSD almost always springs from a combination of those, often in addition to physical or sexual abuse.

All of which is to say, most of the people reading this (and the person writing this) could probably use a reminder that it’s not our fault that we get injured by things we’re not designed to withstand— and that’s not our fault. 

A storm doesn’t have to be the worst storm in the history of storms to do significant damage to a structure— the storm just has to hit the structure in just the right way. 

Have you ever seen that old time video footage of a bridge wildly deforming because an earthquake just happened to hit with aftershocks that resonated at exactly the right frequency to destabilize it? Go look it up, it’s wild. 

The damage inflicted by trauma is not necessarily about intensity. It’s about how it resonates with our vulnerabilities. 

And the longer trauma takes to unfold; the more inescapable it is; and the more it entwines with our relationships, the more opportunities it has to resonate with the vulnerabilities of our human nervous system. 

None of which is our fault. 

We don’t “choose” trauma, and trauma responses are not “choices.” 

Recovery behaviors ARE choices— starting with noticing how we’re talking to ourselves, how we’re directing our “mental spotlight,” and how we’re breathing and using and taking care of our physical body. 

Self-talk, mental focus, and physiology. Every effective trauma recovery tool or strategy reduces to a combination of these three. 

Breathe. Blink. Focus. 

And notice when Trauma Brain is trying to blame you for a storm you didn’t invite, an earthquake you couldn’t prevent, or for being a normal, vulnerable human being. 

drglenndoyle

Disciplining our inner “drill sergeant.”

The “drill sergeant” thing doesn’t work when we’re trying to change the habits of self-talk and mental focus that keep us stuck in trauma. 

But it may be the only approach many of us know. 

We might not have seen or experienced many other techniques of changing habits. 

We might have been subjected to years of other people trying to coercively change us, and we might have “downloaded” their tactics into our head. 

Most trauma survivors know— or at least we hear, over and over again— that self-compassion is necessary in this work. But we don’t have any real experience with what “compassion” looks like. 

We do have a lot of experience with what kicking the sh*t out of ourselves, verbally and otherwise, looks like. 

So that’s what we keep returning to. 

Add to that, many of us have developed and reinforced the belief that we “deserve” harsh punishment for every imperfection. 

Part of us may truly believe that, whatever our habits happen to be at the moment, getting the sh*t kicked out of us is still about right. 

Something to think about is the fact that the military uses drill sergeants to create soldiers. 

Why? Because soldiers, at least at the beginning of their careers, aren’t supposed to think. They’re only supposed to follow orders. 

Drill sergeants exist to get new soldiers out of the habit of thinking for themselves, and into the habit of doing what authority figures tell them to. 

You could argue this is very necessary to a disciplined military— but I’m going to argue that this is a lousy model to create realistic CPTSD recovery. 

Whether we developed CPTSD in childhood or later, every survivor has been coercively controlled (and betrayed, for that matter) on some level. 

The reason why the “drill sergeant” style of relating to ourselves comes so naturally is because it’s what we’ve been immersed in. It feels “right” because it feels familiar. Our nervous system recognizes it (and our nervous system prefers things we recognize, even painful things, over things we don’t). 

But if we want to reverse the painful patterns conditioned in us by CPTSD, we’re going to need that critical thinking that “drill sergeants” would otherwise extinguish. 

We’re going to need that emotional intelligence that soldiers about to be sent to war are taught to suppress. 

We’re going to need compassion and patience that are not front line tools of most infantry soldiers. 

Don’t get me wrong: trauma survivors working our recovery are definitely warriors. 

But we’re not soldiers, per se. And trying to shape us like soldiers— i.e. staying in “drill sergeant” mode when you relate to yourself— will only deprive us of tools we need in everyday recovery. 

All of which is to say: my problem with the “tough love,” kick-the-sh*t-out-of-yourself, “drill sergeant” approach to emotional and behavioral change isn’t that it’s unkind. (Though I don’t love that aspect of it, either, honestly.) 

My problem with it is that it’s not just ineffective, it’s counterproductive. 

Realistic trauma recovery asks us to get OUT of the habit of harsh self-punishment, and to intentionally eschew shame as a “tool” of behavior change. 

Drill sergeants “motivate” via concentrated doses of fear and shame— and, again, I’m not passing judgment on methods of military training. (I don’t know near enough about it to pass judgment on it even if I wanted to.) 

Trauma survivors cannot stake developing our recovery behaviors on fear or shame. It just doesn’t work. It’s antithetical to the entire project. 

This leaves us with the question of, if not coercive tactics, what do we instead use to motivate us to change? 

Compassion. Patience. Realism. Grace. 

None of which come easy to people with histories or injuries like you and I have. 

Easy does it. We start where we start: noticing when we’re reflexively doing the “drill sergeant” thing in our self talk and mental focus, and engaging our “pattern interrupt” tools. 

Every CPTSD survivor has a version of this problem. DID survivors often have entire “parts” devoted to that “drill sergeant” voice. 

Easy does it. 

Breathe; blink; focus; and give it the time it needs. 

drglenndoyle

Nope: it wasn’t about you.

When I say “it’s not about you,” I’m not asking you to make an “excuse.” 

I’m not asking anyone to deny or disown their role in anything they genuinely had a role in. 

I’m not saying we’re powerless over every situation we find ourselves in. 

But when I say “it wasn’t about you” in reference to how you were treated by your parents or caretakers growing up, that’s literally what I mean: that wasn’t about you. 

We cannot “make” our parents or caretakers do their jobs. 

We cannot “make” someone abuse us. 

We cannot “make” someone neglect us. 

I don’t care if you were the most difficult kid in the world to parent: it was your parents’ responsibility to figure that sh*t out. 

It was emphatically NOT your responsibility to be an “easy” kid for them to raise. 

It was NOT your responsibility to be THEIR parent or caretaker. 

It was NOT your responsibility to figure out how to “make” them love or care or you. 

Some people read stuff like this and say, “Well, that’s OBVIOUS. Why are you saying OBVIOUS things that EVERYBODY knows?” 

Because, believe it or not, there are complex trauma survivors out there who really haven’t internalized this. 

They truly think it was their fault that they weren’t cared for. 

They truly think they were unloved because they were, or are, essentially “unlovable.” 

They truly think the problem was that they were a “difficult” kid to raise, and their parents, who were “just doing their best,” shouldn’t have to bear the blame for the sh*t show that was their childhood. 

If you follow my work, you know I’m not big on “blame.” 

I feel “blame” paradigms unduly center abusers and bullies, instead of the recovery work of survivors. 

But over and over again I encounter survivors blaming themselves, often harshly, for how they were treated growing up. 

I’m not saying kids need “perfect” childhoods. 

I’m not saying parents need to be “perfect.” 

I’m not saying that poor parenting is the only cause of CPTSD. (In fact, I think childhood bullying gets vastly UNDER-discussed in CPTSD spaces in contrast to bad parenting.) 

What I want everyone to understand, though, is that, no matter how you feel about your parents or caretakers, no matter what their situation or challenges were, no matter what they have or haven’t taken responsibility for or apologized for since, it was not on you to accommodate them growing up. 

It was not on you to be their therapist. 

It was certainly not on you to be any kind of “partner” to your parents in any kind of adult sense. 

I don’t care how smart you were. 

I don’t care if you were an “old soul.” 

That sh*t was not on you. Shouldn’t have been on you. 

Adults who turn to children to get needs met that should be meet by other adults, harm children. 

You are not the exception. 

And it wasn’t about you. 

But— letting that go can be a b*tch. 

Give it the time it needs. 

drglenndoyle

Trauma identity and recovery identity.

To me, an unexpected challenge of trauma recovery is keeping our recovery identity top of mind. 

Most of us have been conditioned, sometimes for years, in what can be called our “trauma identity. 

We’ve been sold a bill of goods— about who we are, what we “deserve,” what we’re capable of. 

We’ve been conditioned in a whole set of beliefs about ourselves that aren’t grounded in reality— they’re based on what our bullies and abusers told us and made us feel about ourselves. 

We end up with this smorgasbord of beliefs and habits that aren’t really us— but which we are very attached to and entwined with. Our “trauma identity.” 

It’s one of the reasons so many survivors kind of confuse our symptoms with our “personality”— we’ve been basically brainwashed by our abusers and our experiences to believe that’s who and what we are. 

If we want to realistically recover, we’re going to need to give our nervous system an alternative, a recovery identity, to shoot for and flesh out.

Our recovery identity is everything about our life that we’re trying to create. 

It’s how we want to feel. 

It’s how we want to think. 

It’s the habits we want to cultivate. 

It’s even how we want to look. 

Think of our recovery identity as our roadmap— what we’re trying to make of our lives in trauma recovery. 

Defining a recovery identity, and keeping that “roadmap” handy, really matters, because otherwise we fall prey to the “pink elephant” problem. 

You know the “pink elephant” problem, right? Try this: DON’T think about a pink elephant. Come on, I said DON’T. Think about ANYTHING other than a pink elephant. 

Hard, right? That’s because our brains are not designed to NOT think about things. 

If we go around thinking about our “trauma identity” and telling ourselves DON’T think about those things, DON’T do those things, come on I said DON’T, no really DON’T…guess what our nervous system is going stay fixated on? 

That’s right: our “trauma identity.” 

It’s not enough to just define what we DON’T want. Most of us have been thinking non-stop about what we DON’T want for years. 

What we need is a template for what we DO want. What we value. What we’re trying to create. 

I’m a big believer in defining our recovery identity so specifically that we could crate a list of the characteristics we’re trying to cultivate in recovery— and I’m a big believer in checking that list often, to remind ourselves of what we’re doing here. 

It’s a big risk in trauma recovery, losing sight of what we’re doing here. 

The project can be so exhausting, so frustrating, so annoying, that if we don’t have a clear vision of why we’re doing this, we can lose momentum, develop the “f*ck it’s” real fast. 

So: define your recovery identity. Keep a running list of all of the the characteristics of the recovered version of “you.” 

Remember that your recovery identity isn’t a “perfect version of you— that doesn’t exist. 

It’s the version of you that prioritizes consistency, integrity, self-compassion, and personal responsibility. 

It’s the version of you that works every day to communicate with and take care of your “parts.” 

It’s the version of you that refuses to kick the sh*t out of yourself for setbacks or mistakes. 

Those are some starter examples— but you’re going to come up with a lot more. 

Make that list and keep it handy. Remember that the process of trauma recovery is about reconditioning our thoughts, beliefs, and habits, in patterns WE choose and that serve US. 

Think of your recovery identity not just as a goal, but a tool for shaping your self-talk, mental focus, and physiology. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

And remember who you’re becoming.