Tag: writing

Trauma survivors can be super vulnerable to black and white thinking. Ask me how I know. 

We can really struggle with seeing shades of grey— especially in what we feel or what we do. 

If we f*ck up, Trauma Brain is often right there telling us we “always” f*ck “everything” up— and maybe we don’t deserve to live because of it. 

Does that sound dramatic? Well, welcome to Trauma Brain. Where minor f*ck ups are often a slippery slope to “I don’t deserve to take up space and oxygen from actual worthwhile humans.” 

Why are we survivors so vulnerable to black and white, all or nothing thinking? 

It’s often because our patterns of thinking are structured around safety. 

In survival situations— like many of us grew up in— we didn’t have the time or luxury of thinking in shades of grey. 

We had to recognize and respond to threats immediately and empathically— and if something was maybe-or-maybe-not a threat, we had to err on the side of assuming it was dangerous. 

Once that black and white, err-on-the-side-of-assuming-the-situation-is-f*cked thinking becomes our default way of dealing with stressful situations, it’s hard to keep it from taking over our entire operating system— especially if our entire life has consisted of stressful situations. 

One of the reasons why CPTSD is so insidious is, it takes the adrenaline and collapsed focus that could help a human survive a short-lived traumatic stressor, and makes it our entire world. 

Since complex trauma often doesn’t have a clear cut “beginning” or “end”— it was just our life and our relationships, day after day, year after year— our nervous and endocrine systems had no way of knowing it was ever safe to switch off that state of sympathetic activation. 

All of which is to say, when your entire life is a traumatic stress situation, it’s hard to turn off those patterns of trauma responding— including black and white thinking. 

And then, inevitably, that black and white thinking gets turned on ourselves. 

We make one bad decision, and we have an enormously difficult time telling ourselves how we did that thing is how we necessarily do EVERYTHING; and if we’re just the “type” of person who makes sh*tty decisions, according to Trauma Brain, why do we even “deserve” any more chances? 

To people who don’t struggle with CPTSD, all of this might sound insane. 

But black and white thinking will kick our ass up and down the block, especially as we work to develop new patterns of thinking and responding (not “reacting”) in our trauma recovery. 

A place to start is by validating the “part” of us that is really into black and white thinking. 

Telling that “part” of ourselves that the job it did was really important in keeping us alive, and we’re grateful it exists. 

We’re not going to shame or pressure our way out of black and white thinking— those are the kind of self-punitive patterns that got us into this mess to begin with. 

Just start noticing when you’re diving deep into that rigid, all or nothing style of thinking, especially in your self talk. 

Then start taking a step back and asking some Recovery Supporting Questions (RSQ’s) about whether that rigid, emphatic thing you just told yourself might be “spiked” by Trauma Brain— and what a more realistic, self-compassionate version of that that statement might be. 

Yes, this is tedious work. It’s a pain in the ass. We’re trying to uproot and recondition patterns that had years to nestle deep into our nervous and endocrine systems. 

Don’t let anyone tell you confronting and shifting your black and white thinking is supposed to be easy. 

But also don’t let anyone tell you shifting your patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving is impossible, either. 

You are not the one human who has an unchangeable nervous system— even at your age. 

Start out with validation and noticing. 

This is how we realistically change how we experience the world and ourselves. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

Nobody can “make” us give up on trauma recovery. 

They can try. 

They can create circumstances that make it very, very hard for us to be patient and self-compassionate and grounded, as we need to be to realistically work our trauma recovery. 

They can distract us. 

They can try to hijack our focus. 

They can try to influence our self-talk. 

They can try to deprive us of resources we need to manage our physiology. 

They can do all kinds of things that can make it hard as hell for us to stay focused on our goals and values, the future we’re trying to create. 

But they can’t “make” us give up. 

They can’t “make” us harm ourselves. 

They can’t “make” us kill ourselves. 

Understand: it is not, in any way, shape, or form, “easy” to stay committed to our trauma recovery when a person or institution is out to make us feel like garbage. 

I’m not minimizing the massive influence others can have on us. That’s real. 

I’ll never tell you, as some therapists might, that no one can “make” you feel anything. Other peoples’ behavior can make it ENORMOUSLY easy to feel certain feelings, and ENORMOUSLY difficult to feel anything else. That’s real. 

But I will tell you: no one can “make” us surrender in our head. 

No one can “make” us decide that trauma recovery is not worth it. 

No one can “make” us give up on our “parts” and inner child. 

This post isn’t some bullsh*t toxic positivity “you control everything about your experience” spiel. Obviously other people can exert such an influence on our experience, that in no realistic way are we “choosing” what to feel in those moments. 

And let’s be clear about the fact that certain people very much want us believing, at the core of our being, that they CAN “make” us give up. 

But they can’t. 

And that’s why we’re going to win. 

Remember that scene at the end of “The Truman Show” where Truman, determined to sail his boat to the edge of his world, is buffeted by heavy storms sent by the “director” of the show, who is equally determined to drown him? 

We are Truman. 

And, like Truman, we’re not giving up— no matter how intense and scary the storm. 

(Believe me: I understand exactly how intense and scary the storm can get. I’m not guessing. I know what you’re up against.)

Breathe. Blink. Focus. 

And remember Truman. 

CPTSD tries to cut us off from ourselves. 

I know that might sound strange, but that’s the bottom line of what it does. 

CPTSD tires to drive wedges between the “parts” of us, such that we’re not in touch, we’re not collaborating, and we’re not caring for or about those “parts” of us. 

We’re not making a “choice.” It’s programming, conditioning. 

This is almost impossible to explain to someone who doesn’t struggle with CPTSD, but many survivors reading this know exactly what I mean. 

That sense of self-alienation. 

That sense of not feeling like yourself, for no discernible reason. 

That sense that there are “parts” of us that hold and need things—but which we can’t quite access, and we’re never sure why. 

It can all sound “crazy” to a non-CPTSD survivor. 

But for survivors, dissociation, depersonalization, and derealization are often everyday occurrences. 

They often occur so regularly that we don’t even register them as particularly unusual or remarkable events. 

Dissociation happens when we’re reflexively, involuntarily removed from, cut off from, distanced from, or made unaware of something we feel, need, remember, or otherwise experience. 

Depersonalization is when we don’t feel like ourselves. We know we ARE ourselves— but we don’t feel real. 

Derealization is when the world around us doesn’t feel real. When we feel floaty, or as if everything is unfamiliar, strange, or overwhelming. 

All of these are more common experiences for CPTSD survivors than is commonly acknowledged— even by survivors. 

We often don’t acknowledge these things because we don’t love them. They’re disorienting and inconvenient and sometimes scary. 

And, not for nothing, we sometimes don’t even realize we’re experiencing them in the moment. 

(That’s kind of the problem with symptoms that f*ck with our sense of presence and reality.) 

It all comes back to CPTSD trying to alienate us from ourselves— from our memories, our emotions, our needs, and even our physical reality. 

Realistic recovery from CPTSD always involves reconnection— first and most importantly, with ourselves. 

It always involves rediscovering who we are and what’s authentic and essential to us. 

We are simply not recovering while remaining splintered and scattered and floaty. We have a life to live here.

That’s NOT to say recovery from CPTSD (or DID, for that matter) involves “parts” going away— quite the opposite, actually. 

What recovery DOES involve is lowering the barriers between “parts.” 

It DOES involve giving “parts” opportunities to support each other. 

It DOES involve us being as grounded in the current moment as much as possible— not because the current moment is always great (sometimes the current moment absolutely sucks), but because right here, right now, is where we have our power, our autonomy, our wiggle room. 

CPTSD must fail to divide and conquer us from within. 

We need to have a united internal front— and an internal environment in which “parts” know, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are wanted, needed, listened to, and protected. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

One way I think about trauma recovery is, it’s the process of becoming unrecognizable to our abusers, our bullies, and people who knew us when we were going through the worst of it. 

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with who we were. 

It’s that this project, trauma recovery, is about rebuilding ourselves, from the ground up, at the level of identity. 

We can have all the empathy in the world for who we were then. 

In fact, it’s really important we not blame or shame the person we were then. 

And but also, we need to move on from them. 

Not “abandon” our past self— but evolve beyond them. 

The psychological research tells us over and over again that change “sticks” when we incorporate it into our identity. 

It also tells us over and over again that change does NOT stick when we hold on to our old identity. 

For example: quitting an addiction, like smoking, tends not to “take” as long as one thinks of oneself as a smoker who is trying not to. 

But when one shifts their identity, so one does not think of oneself as any kind of smoker anymore, when smoking becomes something so foreign to their identity that they wouldn’t even think about picking up? That’s when quitting “takes.” 

The same can be said of any time we try to significantly change what we believe, what we feel, and what we do. We can’t think of ourselves as the same-old-person-who-is-trying-to-change. 

We need to shift our identity. 

And then we need to talk to and behave toward ourselves as if our new identity is set in stone. 

All of which is to say: trauma recovery is not about staying the same person and trying to make some tweaks. 

It’s about reformatting our own hard drive. 

The reality is, trauma has ALREADY reformatted our hard drive. It’s ALREADY shaped and shifted who we are, on the identity level. 

Trauma recovery is about us taking that power and autonomy back. 

It’s about “brainwashing ourselves”— with ideas and beliefs that we choose, in the service of an identity that feels chosen and authentic to us. 

That is to say: becoming unrecognizable. 

Understand, your mileage may vary. All I can speak to is the ideas and frameworks that motivate me, focus me, speak to me, in my trauma recovery. 

I don’t get all that motivated by the idea of making some minor tweaks in how I feel or behave. 

I do get motivated by becoming someone my bullies and abusers would not recognize. 

I get motivated by the idea of reshaping myself so completely that, while I love and accept and forgive my past self, it would be hard to believe I grew into the powerful, autonomous, self-responsible “recovery me” I did. 

Don’t play small. 

Become unrecognizable— and more authentic than you’ve ever been. 

Breathe; blink; focus. 

The secret to trauma recovery is not “try harder.” 

And your problem in trauma recovery is not that you haven’t been trying hard enough. 

“Try harder” is not even a strategy. It kind of sounds like one, but it’s not. 

“Try harder” is the kind of thing people say who don’t understand trauma or recovery. 

Most people reading this, especially if they’re recovering from CPTSD, already feel an enormous amount of guilt for supposedly “not trying hard enough.”

This tends to be true no matter how hard they’ve been trying. 

But this isn’t an effort problem. 

If you’re reading this, you probably didn’t have the safety or support you needed to develop effective strategies for living. 

Note I said “living”— not just “surviving.” You obviously survived, since you’re reading this.

But if you’re reading this, odds are you haven’t really been living. 

You’ve probably not had the safety or support to really define or work toward your goals. 

You’ve probably not had the safety or support to really engage and enjoy what you like. 

Hell, you may have been expending enormous bandwidth just staying alive. 

No shame, no shade— but that’s not really “living.” 

And the problem has not been you “not trying hard enough.” 

The problem has the lack of safety and support. Tools and philosophies that you should have been taught by the people who said they loved you—but you weren’t. 

It doesn’t matter how hard we want or try to build a house, if we don’t have a hammer. And a lot of other tools and materials, for that matter. 

Where did that “try harder” thing come from, anyway? 

Usually it came from someone who wanted to blame us for our own pain. 

After all, if our suffering reduces to a problem of effort, they don’t have to take any responsibility for it, do they? 

Then we survivors take that “not trying hard enough” BS (Belief System) and apply it to ourselves, because on some level we actually like the idea that we can do more or less ANYTHING if we just “try hard enough.” 

We would rather feel guilty than powerless, as an old Dialectical Behavior Therapy saying goes. 

No one, and I mean no one, is harder on trauma survivors than we ourselves are. 

It starts out with us imitating our bullies and abusers— who were often our primary caretakers and models— but we sure take it and run with it. 

We don’t do this because we “like” it. We do this we lack alternatives. We don’t relish the idea of building a house without a hammer, but we’ve never been given a hammer to work with. 

We’ve only been told “try harder.” 

Taking realistic responsibility for our trauma recovery is a good thing, a necessary thing, a beautiful thing. 

But we’re not going to “try hard” our way into building a house with our bare hands. 

We need tools. 

Think stacking your toolbox— with tools other than shame or pressure. 

Breathe; blink; focus.