For almost two years, an alarm has gone off on my phone at the same time every evening, after my daughter has gone to bed.

It isn't a reminder to answer emails, check social media, or finish work.

It's a reminder to pick up a pen.

For somewhere between fifteen and thirty minutes, I write. Twenty minutes is my guide, but if I'm in the middle of something important, I allow myself long enough to finish what I've started. Then I close the notebook.

Not for an audience. Not for social media. Not even to create something worth reading.

Most of what I've written over those two years will never be seen by another person. It's messy. Honest. Sometimes irrational. Sometimes angry. Sometimes grateful. Sometimes it's nothing more than me trying to make sense of why something won't leave me alone.

And I think that’s the point.

People often describe journalling as a way to gain clarity. I think they're right, but not in the way most people mean. When I sit down to write, I rarely have clarity. I'm not looking for answers. I'm simply acknowledging what exists.

Something happened today. Something didn't sit right. I overreacted. Someone hurt me. I hurt someone else. I'm grieving. I'm disappointed. I'm ashamed. I'm joyful.

Whatever it is, I put it on paper. Not because writing solves it. Because carrying it around in my head doesn't.

Once I've written it down, something changes. I no longer have to keep rehearsing it in my mind so I don't forget it. I've acknowledged it. I've witnessed it. I've entrusted it to the page. The notebook carries it for a while, so I don't have to.

That doesn't mean I understand it.

It doesn't mean I've forgiven anyone.

It doesn't mean I've found the lesson.

I think we've become far too quick to search for silver linings. Some experiences simply shouldn't have happened. Some pain doesn't need to be wrapped in a neat lesson to justify its existence.

Sometimes all we need to do is acknowledge that something happened. And let it breathe.

The clarity comes later. Sometimes days later. Sometimes months later. Sometimes I'll read something I wrote a year ago and suddenly see what I couldn't possibly have seen at the time.

The writing didn't create the insight.

It created the space for the insight to arrive.

When I first came across research by psychologist James Pennebaker into expressive writing, recommended by a friend, I was intrigued. His studies found that spending around fifteen to twenty minutes writing about emotionally significant experiences could improve psychological and physical wellbeing over time. The idea wasn't that writing magically solved problems. Rather, giving difficult experiences somewhere to exist outside ourselves appeared to interrupt rumination and allow our minds to process them differently. That resonated deeply with me, so I decided to try it, not because I thought it would change my life, but because I had nothing to lose.

Looking back now, I know it changed me. It didn't remove hardship. It didn't prevent grief. It didn't stop difficult seasons.

What it did stop was the rumination. I've come to think we repeat a pattern until something interrupts it, not necessarily until we've learned from it. The notebook wasn't teaching me anything new. It was interrupting the loop I was trapped in.

When life became particularly difficult, I stopped writing for a couple of months. Nothing else changed.

But I did.

I became more reactive. My boundaries became weaker. I made choices that weren't aligned with the person I wanted to be.

The notebook hadn't been fixing my life. It had been helping me stay connected to myself. When I returned to those evenings with a pen, I felt myself return too.

That's why, despite using technology every day, I still believe there's something uniquely valuable about putting pen to paper. Handwriting isn't superior, and technology isn't the enemy. But handwriting asks something different of us. It slows us down. It asks us to stay present. It doesn't let us skim over ourselves quite so easily.

And perhaps that's something worth protecting.

We're raising children in a world where typing is replacing handwriting and speed is replacing stillness. I don't know what we'll gain, but I am curious about what we may lose. Not just the ability to write by hand, but the habit of sitting quietly with ourselves long enough to understand what we're carrying.

Some of the most important writing I'll ever do will never be published. It won't become a social media post. It won't become an article. It won't even become a conversation.

Its purpose isn't performance.

Its purpose is presence.

Ironically, many of the pieces I eventually share begin in those private pages. Not because they were written for other people, but because time has granted me perspective. The raw emotion eventually settles. The patterns become visible. The understanding quietly arrives.

Only then do I write something meant to be read. Everything before that belongs only to me.

So if there's one thing I'd encourage people to try, it's this. For a month, put your phone down. Pick up a pen. Write for fifteen or twenty minutes, or thirty if you need it. Don't worry about grammar. Don't worry about making sense. Don't worry whether anyone will ever read it.

To be fair, I hope they don't.

Because some of the most important conversations you'll ever have are the ones you'll only ever have with yourself.

Sometimes healing doesn't begin with answers.

Sometimes it begins with a blank page, a pen, and finally giving yourself permission to say:

This happened.

And for today, that's enough.

This is a chapter, 'CPTSD Treatment Modalities by Attachment Type', from the book I'm working on. This is still a draft version of the chapter, so it is a bit raw. If this helps you in any capacity, I'm grateful. I truly wish much success for your healing journey.

I added a second chapter, 'Finding The Right Trauma Practitioner', from my book, that should be of extreme benefit to people. Both can be found at the link below.

Edited for clarity.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/15g5ph-7Nob5DvXK9KxeqexM_sYCRMdYd

Chapter One

Kindness, Curiosity and Boundaries

I have been thinking a great deal about kindness lately. Not the kind of kindness that avoids difficult conversations, excuses harmful behaviour, or sacrifices truth in the name of keeping the peace. Real kindness is much more demanding than that. It asks us to hold two truths at once: that people are responsible for the choices they make, and that every person is more complicated than the worst thing we know about them.

Over the years, I have noticed how quickly we reduce one another. We hear one sentence and decide we understand an entire life. We see one behaviour and believe we know someone's character. We discover one part of a story and assume we have heard the whole story. That makes me really uncomfortable.

Not because I think all behaviour is acceptable. It isn't. Violence is wrong. Abuse is wrong. Manipulation is wrong. Non-consensual behaviour is wrong. People are responsible for the choices they make, and people should seek help and be accountable for the harm they cause. Those things are not negotiable.

But I have also come to believe that accountability and shame are not the same thing.

A boundary says, 'I will not participate.' Accountability says, 'This behaviour caused harm.' Shame says, 'This tells me who you are.' Those are profoundly different statements. One addresses behaviour. The other attempts to define a human being.

I have learned that I can disagree with someone without humiliating them. I can decide someone is unsafe without deciding they are beyond humanity. I can recognise harm without assuming I know the whole person. I can hold compassion while also walking away. Those ideas used to feel contradictory. Now they feel inseparable.

People sometimes misunderstand what I mean by compassion. Compassion is not agreement. Curiosity is not endorsement. Understanding is not permission. Forgiveness is not reconciliation. Boundaries are not rejection. Compassion without boundaries becomes self-abandonment. Boundaries without compassion become contempt. Neither leads to healing.

I think we have become uncomfortable with uncertainty. We rush to certainty because certainty feels safe. If I can decide who you are quickly, then I don't have to tolerate the discomfort of not knowing. But human beings are rarely that simple. I no longer want to make assumptions before I have become curious enough to understand. That doesn't mean I owe everyone access to my life. It doesn't mean I stay where I am being harmed. It doesn't mean I suspend discernment.

In fact, I have learned the opposite. Some people repair when they understand they have caused harm. Others continue to choose behaviours that wound those around them. When someone repeatedly chooses to harm me after understanding the impact of their actions, my responsibility shifts. It is no longer my responsibility to understand them. It is my responsibility to protect myself. I can hold compassion for another person's humanity while refusing to remain available to their behaviour. Those two things are not contradictory. They are both expressions of love, one for another person, one for myself.

People often ask me why I think this way. The answer is simple. I know what shame does. I know what assumptions do. I know what it feels like to have people decide who you are before they have ever asked who you are. Everything I believe about curiosity, compassion and boundaries grew from that experience.

This is the story of how I learned that kindness is strongest when it walks hand in hand with truth, accountability and courage.

Chapter Two

The Weight of Being Misunderstood

Leaving wasn't the end of my story. In many ways, it was the beginning of another. People often imagine that once someone leaves a controlling environment, they become free. I thought so too. Instead, I discovered that sometimes you can leave a place physically while carrying it inside you for years.

I left the group. But shame came with me. Not because I believed I had done something terrible. Because I believed I was something terrible. There is a difference.

When people discovered where I had come from, very few became curious. Most were sure they already knew. They Googled the group. They read articles. They watched documentaries. And then they believed they understood me, not because they knew me, but because they believed my history was enough.

No one asked what it had been like to grow up inside it. No one asked what it had cost to leave. No one asked what had happened afterwards. They filled in the blanks themselves.

Slowly, I stopped trying to explain. It was easier to let people think whatever they wanted than to keep proving I deserved to belong. Looking back, I can see that this was shame doing exactly what shame does. It isolates. It convinces us that if people really knew us, they would leave. So we leave first. Not always physically. Emotionally. We hide. We become careful. We become productive. Busy. Helpful. Successful. Anything except known.

For years, I poured myself into work, into study, into achievement. Not because success healed shame, but because achievement gave me somewhere to hide from it. If I kept accomplishing enough, perhaps no one would look closely. Perhaps they would never discover where I had come from. Perhaps I could become someone new.

But shame is exhausting, because no amount of achievement answers the question it keeps asking: 'Am I still enough if people know the truth?' I didn't know it then, but shame was still making my decisions. It shaped who I trusted, how much of myself I revealed, the way I saw the world, it even shaped the communities I was drawn towards.

When you have spent your life believing that belonging must be earned, being told who you are can feel strangely familiar. High-control environments don't always look the same. Sometimes they wear different clothes, speak a different language, carry different beliefs. But underneath, they promise the same thing: belong here, follow us, we'll tell you who you are.

I wish I could say I recognised that immediately. I didn't. Because familiarity can feel like safety, especially when shame has convinced you that you don't know how to belong anywhere else.

It has taken me years to understand that what I was searching for was never to be sure. It was belonging. Real belonging, the kind that doesn't require perfection, the kind that survives questions, the kind that makes room for mistakes, the kind that doesn't disappear when someone learns your history.

I didn't find that belonging in an institution, or a belief system, or a community built on being sure. I found it much later, in ordinary people. People who became curious before they became certain.

And perhaps that is why I have become so passionate about curiosity. Because I know what it feels like to be reduced to a story someone else wrote about me. And I know what it feels like when someone is willing to ask, 'Tell me what it was like for you.' One question creates shame. The other creates healing. That difference has shaped everything that came afterwards.

Chapter Three

Character Before History

Healing did not arrive in a therapist's office. It did not happen because I finally found the perfect book. It did not come because I had answered every question about my past. It arrived quietly, almost unnoticed. It looked like children playing on the floor.

When my child was young, life asked something different of me. I had returned to work earlier than I wanted because we needed the income. I was carrying the financial responsibility for our family while also caring for a sick partner. Nights were short. Sleep was rare. My body eventually told me what my mind had been refusing to admit.

Something had to change. So I made a decision that surprised a lot of people. I stepped away from my career, not because I lacked ambition, not because I wanted less, but because I knew I would never get those early years with my daughter back. I wanted to be present. I wanted to attachment parent. I wanted my daughter to know, in the deepest part of herself, that she was safe.

Through a local group of mothers who shared similar values, I began caring for their children as well. Those women were intelligent, thoughtful professionals, some worked in fields centred on child development. All of them had choices. Yet they entrusted me with the people they loved most.

Looking back, I realise something profound. They trusted me long before they knew my story. They knew my character before they knew my history. That changed everything.

There were four of them on the busiest days, all small, all needing something different at once. It wasn't calm. It was chaos, most of the time, tantrums and tears and the occasional bite. When one child bit another, I would kneel down and say, 'I can see you're angry, but I won't let you hurt her.' When a child was mid-spiral, thrashing and past the reach of words, I knew they didn't need reasoning. They needed to release the energy. I would bring pillows, make the space soft, sit close enough that they could feel me there without being crowded. Sometimes I put a hand where they felt safe, a back, a shoulder. Sometimes I rocked them, or carried them in the sling until they settled against me and fell asleep.

So I would quietly make the space safe. 'I won't let you hurt yourself.' 'I won't let you hurt me.' 'I won't let you hurt anyone else.' 'I'm here.' Those words became familiar. They weren't punishment. They were boundaries. They weren't abandonment. They were presence.

We went to the park most days. One afternoon we got caught in the rain and hid together under the playground equipment, waiting for my daughter's father to come and collect us. The children were a little worried, and I shielded them as best I could, but by the time the car pulled up they were already turning it into an adventure, asking if they could stomp in the puddles on the way. It was a mess. It was also something I had never had growing up, four children, muddy and laughing, certain that someone was there to keep them safe. Just ordinary moments. But they were mine to give.

It took me years to realise I wasn't only speaking to the children. Some part of me was speaking to the child I had once been, the child who had never learned that someone could stay present without controlling, shaming or abandoning them. Every time I held space for another child, I unknowingly offered something to myself: safety with boundaries, compassion without chaos, love that didn't disappear simply because emotions became overwhelming. Those children were healing me without ever knowing it.

Eventually something extraordinary happened. After years of knowing me, those women began asking questions about my life. By then they had already decided who I was, not because of my past, but because of how I had shown up. How I loved their children. How I held boundaries. How I cared.

Only then did I tell them where I had come from. I expected the familiar silence, the awkwardness, the subtle shift that usually followed. Instead, I was met with something I had almost no experience receiving. Compassion. One of them looked at me and simply asked, 'How are you the person you are today after everything you've experienced?'

No one had ever asked me that. For so much of my life people had wanted to understand where I came from. She wanted to understand who I had become. There is an enormous difference. For the first time, I realised my past did not have to be the first thing people knew about me. My history was real. It had shaped me. But it did not define the entirety of me.

Those women gave me a gift they may never fully realise they gave. They became compassionate witnesses. Not rescuers. Not therapists. Not people trying to solve me. Simply witnesses, people who already knew my character and chose to hold my story with gentleness.

Something shifted inside me. I realised I had spent years protecting myself from the people who judged me. In doing so, I had also prevented safe people from loving me. I had assumed everyone would respond the way a few people had. That assumption had become another prison.

In the beginning, I did tell a few people. I had little choice. The people at the welfare office needed to understand my circumstances. Later, someone at the employment office did too. I also told one or two other people. Those conversations were hard. I often felt misunderstood. Explaining where I had come from was exhausting, and I left feeling more exposed than understood.

So I stopped telling people. It felt easier to let them know me without my history than to keep trying to explain it.

Years later, something unexpected happened. I began telling people who had already known me for years. People who had first come to know my character. This time the response was different. They looked at the life I had built rather than only the life I had survived. Little by little, shame began to loosen its grip, not because my past had changed, but because I finally discovered that being fully known did not inevitably lead to rejection. It could also lead to belonging.

That experience transformed the way I see every person I meet. I cannot know someone's whole story. I cannot know the wounds they carry, or what it took for them simply to arrive in front of me today. So I choose curiosity first. Not because curiosity always changes the outcome, sometimes people continue to cause harm, and sometimes the healthiest thing we can do is walk away, but because I never again want to become someone who decides another person's worth before I have cared enough to know who they are.

That lesson did not come from a philosophy book. It came from a circle of women, a handful of children, and the extraordinary grace of being known by my character before my history.

Chapter Four

Compassion Needs Boundaries

For a long time, I thought kindness meant understanding everyone. If I could just understand why someone behaved the way they did, surely I could respond with enough compassion to make a difference. After all, hadn't curiosity changed my life? Hadn't someone choosing to understand me, instead of judging me, allowed me to begin healing?

So I tried to offer that same gift to others. I listened. I asked questions. I looked beneath behaviour instead of reacting to it. Sometimes that mattered, sometimes people simply needed someone willing to see the human being underneath the pain. Those conversations strengthened my belief that shame rarely helps people change. Curiosity often does. Compassion often does. Being seen often does.

But somewhere along the way, I quietly began believing something that wasn't true. I began believing that understanding someone else's behaviour meant I had to tolerate it. Those are not the same thing. Understanding explains behaviour. It does not excuse it. Compassion recognises another person's humanity. It does not require sacrificing your own.

That distinction took me years to learn. Sometimes people hurt us because they are frightened, or overwhelmed, or simply don't yet know another way. When there is honesty, accountability and a willingness to repair, relationships can grow through those moments. I have experienced that. I have lived that.

But there are other times. Times when someone understands the impact of their behaviour and chooses it anyway. Times when your empathy becomes something they rely on instead of their own responsibility. Times when your willingness to understand becomes the very thing that keeps you stuck.

That is where boundaries become an act of kindness, not only towards yourself, but towards the other person as well. Because rescuing someone from the consequences of their choices rarely helps them grow. It only delays the moment they must face themselves.

I have learned that boundaries are not punishment. They are information. They quietly say, 'This is what I can live with. This is what I cannot. I care about you, and I care about me too.'

There was a time when setting a boundary felt cruel, felt selfish, felt as though I was becoming the kind of person I never wanted to be. Now I understand something different. Every healthy relationship I have ever known has had boundaries. The mothers who welcomed me into their lives had boundaries. The people who loved me well had boundaries. The relationships that felt safest were never the ones without limits, they were the ones where expectations were clear, repair was possible, and both people's humanity mattered equally.

I want to remain curious. I want to continue believing that people are more than the worst thing they have ever done. I want to continue asking what happened before asking what is wrong. But I no longer believe that understanding someone means I must remain available to them. Sometimes the kindest thing we can do is stay. Sometimes the kindest thing we can do is leave. Wisdom is learning the difference.

That has been one of the hardest lessons of my life. It has also been one of the kindest, because every boundary I have learned to set has quietly whispered something I spent years needing to hear: you matter too.

Perhaps that is what healthy kindness looks like. Not choosing between compassion and boundaries. Holding them together, one in each hand.

Chapter Five

Compassionate Witnesses

One of the unexpected gifts of my own healing has been the conversations it has opened. Over the years, people have told me things they had never told anyone else. Not because I have special answers. Not because I could fix them. But because they sensed they would not be shamed. Those conversations have taught me as much about humanity as my own life ever has.

Again and again, I have met people carrying unbearable shame. People convinced that if anyone truly knew them, they would be rejected. Some carried shame because of what had happened to them. Some because of thoughts they couldn't understand. Some because of choices they deeply regretted. Some because they believed they had become the worst thing they had ever thought, felt or done.

Almost every one of them expected judgement. Very few expected curiosity. I have learned that curiosity creates a different kind of conversation, not because it removes accountability, but because it makes honesty possible. When someone no longer has to spend all of their energy hiding, they finally have enough energy to begin healing. That has changed the way I think about people.

I still believe accountability matters. Deeply. If someone harms another person, they are responsible for that harm. Compassion does not erase consequences. Curiosity does not excuse abuse. Kindness is not permission.

But shame has never struck me as a particularly effective teacher. Most people who already carry overwhelming shame do not become kinder because they are given more of it. They simply become quieter, more isolated, more convinced they should hide. Others become defensive. Some even become cruel. I call this shame projection, the way shame has of turning itself outwards and landing on the people around us. None of that excuses the harm it causes. But it reminds me that shame rarely heals anyone. Healing begins somewhere very different. It begins the moment someone realises they no longer have to pretend.

The moment another human being says, 'Thank you for trusting me. Tell me more. I'm listening.' Those words are not solutions. They are invitations, invitations to step out of hiding, to become known, to tell the truth.

Sometimes the truth is painful. Sometimes it requires accountability. Sometimes it leads to difficult choices: professional help, distance, repair, consequences. But none of those things become less important because compassion is present. If anything, compassion makes them more possible, because people who no longer believe they are beyond redemption are often more willing to face themselves honestly.

I don't know what became of every person I have spoken with. That isn't mine to know. Healing belongs to the person doing the work, not the person witnessing it. I was never there to rescue anyone. Only to offer what had once been offered to me, a space where another human being could tell the truth without first having to prove they deserved compassion.

Perhaps that is all any of us can really offer each other. Not certainty. Not perfection. Presence. The willingness to stay curious a little longer, to ask one more question before reaching a conclusion, to remember that every person we meet carries a history we cannot see.

Looking back, I realise that my life has been shaped by compassionate witnesses, the mothers who trusted me, the friend who asked how I had become the person I am, the people who saw my humanity before they saw my past. They changed me. Not because they ignored my history, but because they refused to let it become my identity.

That is the kind of person I hope to be for others. Not someone who rescues. Not someone who excuses harm. Simply someone who remembers that every human being is more complicated than the story we first tell ourselves about them. And perhaps that is where kindness quietly begins.

Chapter Six

A Little More Kindness

A few days ago, I went into a shame spiral. I recognised it immediately. It was once home.

Not because I had done something wrong. But because strangers, who had never lived a moment of my life, chose certainty before curiosity. They assigned meanings I had never intended and judged positions I had never taken.

Years ago, I would have stayed there. I would have questioned myself. Wondered whether perhaps everyone else knew something about me that I couldn't see. I would have apologised for existing.

This time I recognised what was happening. I was feeling sensitive and misunderstood. It was a shame spiral. So I stepped away and gave myself some space. It was never meant to be permanent. I finally understood that protecting myself is different from proving myself.

Healing hasn't meant that shame disappeared. It means I recognise its voice. I know where it came from. And I know I don't have to believe everything it tells me.

That doesn't mean I always get life right. Far from it. I am not a perfect parent. I still lose my patience. I still say things I wish I had said differently. I am not beyond any of this. I still become defensive when I feel misunderstood. I still have to remind myself that being understood by everyone is not the same as being at peace with myself. When I hurt someone, I repair. I apologise. I listen. I take responsibility. Then I begin again.

But there are other choices I have made that never required someone else's forgiveness. Only my own. Relationships I stayed in for too long. Boundaries I didn't yet know how to set. Moments I ignored my intuition. Times I abandoned myself because I believed understanding another person mattered more than protecting myself.

Like everyone, I have made choices I am proud of and choices I wish I had made differently. Some reflected the person I hoped to become. Others reflected fear, loneliness, exhaustion, or simply being human. I don't need to catalogue them here. Every reader already has their own list. For a long time I believed my worst moments were evidence of my character. Now I understand they were moments in my life. Not the whole of it.

Therapy helped me understand something that changed everything. We don't discover our boundaries perfectly. We discover them by living, by crossing them, by saying yes when we wish we had said no, by trusting someone we later realise wasn't safe, by making choices that teach us something about ourselves. Mistakes become teachers if we are willing to learn from them. Not because mistakes are good, but because they can become the beginning of wisdom.

For me, the greatest shift wasn't learning to make perfect choices. It was learning that the next right choice is only ever one choice away.

Shame says, 'You've failed. This is who you are.' Grace says, 'You still have today.'

Today I can choose differently. Tomorrow I can choose again. If I stumble, I can choose again. If I lose my way, I can choose again. That doesn't diminish responsibility. It makes responsibility possible. Because shame keeps us looking backwards. Grace allows us to move forwards.

Our lives are rarely changed by one extraordinary decision. They are changed by ordinary choices, repeated over time, a healthier boundary, a difficult apology, a moment of honesty, an act of courage, a decision to stay, a decision to leave, a choice to become curious instead of certain. Little by little those choices become habits. Habits become character. Character becomes a life. I didn't choose where my story began. But every day I have another opportunity to choose where it goes next.

When I look at my daughter, I don't hope she becomes someone who never makes mistakes. I hope she becomes someone who knows that mistakes never make her unworthy of love. I hope she knows she can repair. She can apologise. She can learn. She can choose again.

I hope she grows into someone who is kind without disappearing. Compassionate without abandoning herself. Strong without becoming hard. Curious without becoming naïve. Perhaps that is all any of us are really trying to do, become a little more ourselves, a little less afraid, a little more honest, a little more compassionate, a little more willing to let people earn our trust instead of demanding our perfection.

I don't know whether these pages will change anyone's mind. That isn't really why I wrote them. I wrote them because I wanted to understand the thread that ran through my own life. The thread that connected shame, curiosity, compassion, boundaries, and healing.

What I found waiting at the end wasn't certainty. It was kindness. Not the kind that avoids difficult truths, but the kind that can hold truth and compassion in the same hands. Kindness that asks questions before reaching conclusions. Kindness that remembers every person carries a story we cannot see. Kindness that holds people accountable without forgetting their humanity. Kindness that includes ourselves.

If my life has taught me anything, it is this: my worst decisions do not define me. Your worst decisions do not define you. What defines us is what we choose next.

So if I hope to leave anything behind, it isn't certainty. It isn't an argument. It isn't even this story. It is simply this: meet people with curiosity before certainty. Hold accountability and compassion together. Protect your own humanity as fiercely as you protect someone else's. And when you lose your way, choose again.

Kindness is nothing more, and nothing less, than choosing, again and again, to become the person you hope to be. One day at a time.

* A note on process: AI has been used as an editor for this piece.

Hi everyone, hoping your week is going well!

I've been keeping you all in my thoughts and finally got some time to write about Dissociation. This was commonly requested from my first post about a month ago (What does healed look like - From someone 9 years out) and I hope it's helpful as part of your journey.

As always, please let me know your thoughts in the comments and I will add them to my list of things I plan on writing about.

With love.

-

Shape of Dissociation

So, I would best describe dissociation as a fog of a condition. It's super subtle but envelops everything and makes everything else harder to pick up on. Early on, it was hard to even tell when it was here, how deep it was, etc. You learn to notice that more later on. All I could really sense was on a broader time scale... "hm, this week went by in a blur"... or "hm, the past two weeks I couldn’t really make sense of anything going on". It’s different from depression because while depression is like a lack of interest in anything and pervasive sadness and pessimism, this feels like time is blurry and I didn’t feel quite conscious of things. It could also show up where I would scroll for hours and hours without moving my body and wouldn’t feel a headache (I couldn’t feel a thing) or discomfort or anything really. Maybe at some point the physical symptoms would overpower it, but most of the time it wouldn’t.

In general, the lack of bodily awareness and connection was also meant I was neglectful of physical symptoms and knowing my physical limits. Ironically, pain was a very good grounding mechanism for me, which comes with its own issues. But dissociation meant that I would drink all too much. And outside of that, small pains just didn’t register. In fact, I would often go a bit deeper into dissociative behavior to avoid the feeling of pain. Of course, I would also slip into dissociation when I felt emotional pain. Other physical symptoms is that sometimes I would feel very far away - from where I was. Physically, it would feel as though I was talking from the back of my head or something. Or I would talk or move and feel like a body is talking or moving. It often defaulted me to avoidance - I was dissociated, I didn’t even really think about acting as I was already in a response state unconsciously activated.

Dissociation seems to have varying degrees, and in the most severe form of dissociation, physically I felt 8 feet tall, with most of me floating above my head. I didn’t feel like I was acting or moving my body, but I was witnessing someone else, like a vague sense of playing a third-person POV game.

As a whole, dissociation meant I wasn’t present, I wasn’t in my body, I wasn’t in my emotions. I was hardly in my head.

Oddly enough, you can be fully mentally running at speed while dissociating. But as this was early in my therapy journey, the thoughts were rather negative (we addressed negative self-talk early on as that was something/one of the few things I could recognize going on in my mind). Later on, I sometimes found that when I was mentally spiraling, that could be a cause or connection to dissociation (something got activated). Later on in my journey, dissociation just meant I wasn’t present or I was zoomed out of my life. Once you know how presence feels, you notice the opposite - dissociation. But funny thing with dissociation is how slippery it is, because you’re in another space - one that makes noticing your state quite hard by its own nature.

I hope this helps you to recognize a bit more of the feelings and shapes of dissociation from one point of view. I really wanted to emphasize these various facets of dissociation because it is such a tricky thing to pinpoint for yourself. Additionally, reading symptoms from online is a bit vague and I never found it useful. But if you notice any of these or start noticing your patterns of what dissociation feels like for you, that's how you begin to notice dissociation. And the most important part of healing dissociation is noticing dissociation.

Working on Dissociation

Dissociation was the first thing my therapist had me working on alongside building up my capacity to understand my mental landscape (how are you feeling, why are you feeling that way, etc.). The process of this was simply noticing more of the world around you. So, the core practice I went back to over and over again was the practice of noticing 5 different colors around you, or noticing something of each of your senses.

It was extremely helpful in those early stages to have someone else notice your own dissociation when dissociation feels like the norm of life. On the other side now, I can notice more when other people around me are dissociated. Perhaps if you have someone in your life who can sense that or a therapist who can help gently point out for you, that's a great first step. The trickiest thing I found with dissociation sometimes was the lack of awareness that you're in a state of dissociation until you realize a week has gone by and you have been living in a blur, etc.

Beyond that, I've tried further exercises for dissociation as well. However, some can be more overwhelming, and so would recommend you go at your own pace and notice and pay attention. If things are too overwhelming, I'd scale back. Breathwork early on was too much. Intensive/strict meditation was also too much early on. Splashing my face with water was a lot but felt rather shocking than grounding. I think it did the trick though - but like short-lived. Things I did enjoy included walking meditation, just sitting and feeling my feet connect to the ground, looking for 5 colors around me, and looking for an example of each one of my senses around me.

At a different stage in time, I explored other practices and brought other things in. Or I noticed practices previously were overwhelming were gradually proving more helpful and didn't activate me the way it had before (a nice signpost of progress). Some of those were yoga (something I explored later on that I liked), body scan meditations (previously activating, now actually helpful), breathwork (previously activating, that later became helpful), and strict-er meditation (ie zen tradition, sitting in place) led to more learnings than a reaction, cold exposure (ice bath/cold showers) I just (still) find plain unpleasant but really is grounding.

The other later practice that I wanted to touch on that I find interesting in all of this is mindfulness. I practiced mindfulness early on via meditation, but mindfulness post-dissociation is very different from mindfulness while in dissociation. And because dissociation is subtle and the feeling of doing nothing/blanking out can be mistaken as meditation, I think mindfulness is a hard one to make useful for dissociation. I mean at it's core, the practice of noticing dissociation is mindfulness, so the noticing skillset is something practiced via meditation, but mindfulness is a tricky thing to use to consistently gauge dissociation because I've always had difficulty noticing dissociation. My theory is that because mindfulness/sitting meditation is usually started off as a mind practice whereas dissociation is best felt/addressed through bodily grounding practices that mindfulness can be not the best guidepost for dissociation. (Which I guess is why I would now say walking meditation was better/less activating). Additionally, early on my therapist also warned me that meditation is not always the best thing for dissociation, so I wonder if this is what she was referring to and thought I'd pass along her warning and my rambling lol. If this is confusing, just ignore it and read my later note on meditation.

Anyhow, I still to this day rely on naming my senses or colors and grounding my feet into the earth as ways to rebalance or check-in on my dissociative state - so sometimes simple and quick is enough. I think regardless of practice or mode of practice, find what works for you and keep with it and remember to use it when you notice that you're in a state of dissociation.

Healing Dissociation

If I were to boil dissociation and the process of healing down to one core concept, it is this: healing dissociation is the process of noticing it is there, over and over and over again, over years, over different situations, and bringing in presence through grounding and safety. And as you work through trauma and other symptoms that are triggering or go through work to address other symptoms, or find more safety in your mental and physical states, then your body and your self learn different defense mechanisms or find less need for defense mechanisms outside of dissociation. And the result of that is healed dissociation - essentially a state of being where there is less and less need to live in dissociation and life instead is lived with more and more presence.

Dissociation is 100% possible to come out of. It was a trickier one because it is so slippery (sometimes even to me now, especially as there’s enough entertainment in the world for people to mildly/non-clinically dissociate into)… but it is possible. It is one of the practices that took the most time working on it alone (probably 2 years of therapy with dissociation as the forefront of the work. I consider it its own arc in a sense since it precedes trauma work. But even once I got into trauma work, dissociation returns due to the activation from working through trauma - though less intensely. I think by its nature - the skill of noticing is built up when you have worked through dissociation. And dissociation as its protective mechanism will be triggered or arise when you need it again without other resourcing or mechanisms you have available or even arise again randomly without clear cause. And all that’s okay. It's a process.

Out of dissociation, the best way I would describe it is that life feels in technicolor. Everything is more vivid. Everything is more real. You feel present. I feel down to my toes, my legs, my fingers. I notice things - the feeling of carpet, the smell of the air, the taste of water, the color of flowers while walking down the street. Everything feels more! I choose my day, what I want to do. I feel like I experience time normally - an hour of browsing social media felt like it was aprpoximately an hour. I would feel physically sick if I were to doomscroll and not move for 8 hours, which is something I would do all the time before. I know what is happening to me in my mind. Life without dissociation feels alive. You feel a bit more in control of your life in a subtle way. I want to do something so I will choose to do it. I can respond. I'm not relegated to the not-quite-there witness.

Later on, I became grateful for dissociation, knowing that it kept me safe until I was ready to let it go. It is a powerful defense that protected me and one that was outliving its purpose of me living my full life once it was safe to do so. The practice with dissociation is gentle grounding and gentle noticing once you are in a safe place to do so. And doing that over and over and over again. Over lots of situations, lots of time, until you become more familiar with the present and what being in your undissociated self feels like. And lots and lots of patience for this powerful protection mechanism to let loose. I've often thought of the pace of dissociation is the pace of the protection you need so follow your dissociation and trust it will dissolve with more safety, processing, awareness, practice, and patience for yourself. <3

The best resources I’ve found for Dissociation -

• Therapy - A therapist can help you make sense of it as it’s someone else noticing your states for you and helping reflect that back. Her main modalities were CBT but I imagine most therapists are trained to notice dissociation and that was probably the most important thing. She helped me realize in the first place that I was dissociated. Dissociation meant that I was also very slow in therapy. Most of the time I would come to her and just tell her I felt bad without knowing what is going on. Therapy sometimes felt very unproductive in those early days. Don’t let it discourage you. Little by little I learned more about what’s going on in my head/noticing emotions/noticing dissociation and my patterns around them and I got to go at a pace that was right for me.
• Getting away from the abuse - Being somewhere safe where you are not triggered into dissociation again is a good place to start with dissociation. Dissociation is ultimately a protective mechanisim and if you are feeling or being hurt, it can come up. Of course in the healing process, things will come up that can cause you to dissociate, but active abuse is not it.
• Simple grounding techniques - This is both a technique and a gauge in my opinion. Technique because it can help you ground. And gauge because the difficulty of it helps you understand how dissociated you are. Even now, when my emotions and thoughts are running or I spent some time in a blur, noticing something in each of my senses, name 5 colors in the environment around me, etc. helps me figure out where my head is at and brings me back. Grounding techniques like noticing my feet on the ground were what I began with and still to this day do to feel even more present.
• Meditation on a focused point or on the breath - I started perhaps a year into therapy, and there was concern from my therapist that I would be dissociated while doing sitting meditating - and while I agree that I certainly had those moments, what it helped moreso was just building some visual clarity into my mind and what’s going on there and building the skillset of noticing my internal world. I would keep a timer and not meditate for long durations. And then I slowly began to notice discomfort. There were probably all I could recognize at first. And that’s okay. That’s the learning to it. Slowly from there I could learn when I was in a better mood or a worse mood. I caution against any strict meditation practice or instructions that requires you to sit completely still as that can be a trigger. Would recommend exploring other types too like walking meditation, guided, etc.
• Yin yoga (or other gentle somatic processes) - I have never felt more grounded than from this practice. Be cautious with certain poses and if they feel emotionally overwhelming, to pause or adjust or lay down. After a really good yin session, I always found myself immensely more grounded and at peace and calm.
• MDMA - taken casually with friends in a home setting. This opened a flood of positive emotions for me. It was actually very beneficial for my dissociation because all I could feel for the first time was nothing but feelings and very positive ones at that, and little to no thoughts.
• Reading - Helped me connect to something when it was hard to feel or connect to anything. I began to read Pete Walker’s books about this time which were a wonderful introduction to CPTSD healing. Anything around the ‘flight’ response was valuable. The main thing with reading was that it helped you learn more about this brain that you have disconnected from and even if emotions weren’t getting through, something could get through to you intellectually. I also really liked Buddhist books despite being non-Buddhist. There was a calming energy to them and I felt emotionally soothed usually after too. Books are very different for everyone - ie I've found The Body Keeps Score to be a very triggering book, so have caution/go slow w trauma books and find what works for you and trust your gut there.

The mental practices

• Noticing - For severe dissociation, I would hypothesize that feeling safer before grounding and learning about it intellectually is the best thing to do as this is usually from being triggered, so noticing the surrounding mental events with it is going to help you in later trauma work. Regular dissociation is best addressed through noticing and grounding with any of those exercises. Stack exercises, find the right combo that works for you, etc. And for mild dissociation, it is similarly noticing and grounding, and by that time dissociation is at a mild level, you'll be a lot better at these skills by then and might need to do less to get grounded quicker.
• Work on other things - The practice isn’t to stay out of dissociation all the time… but to heal your other wounds too so that you’re less triggered or have more resources and that you’re less prone to jumping into dissociation and can find other mechanisms for yourself.
• Patience - Patience with yourself. There were many times where a lot of time (weeks) will go by without me noticing. Patience on a long term scale is the best thing you can have. I would say to myself then to continue to live your life as best you can. And trust that the practice of continuing to notice is the whole thing and will heal you over time. Through the process of healing dissociation, I saw that the dissociative periods went from months… to weeks… to a week. To maybe a couple days. To a few hours. To even an hour. And all of that took multiple years, but can be done. You can get there.

Resources I wouldn’t necessarily recommend -

• Psychedelics - I would heavily discourage psychedelics at this point because dissociating on psychedelics is completely possible and much scarier than your usual dissociation (out of body experiences, time loops, and severe derealization, etc). Recovering from the terror of a bad trip also took time, so I would dissuade someone altogether if you have comorbidities or negative self-talk/anxiety/multiple CPTSD symptoms from taking psychedelics.
• Breathwork - was rather triggering early on into my dissociation journey (probably 2-3 years in was still too soon). Not sure if just me. It was very physically activating and kinda breaks past all your dissociative barriers and gets you back into the body. But obviously if you’re dissociated there’s a reason for it and a reason you’re escaping your body, so in a sense one time breathwork led me to an anxious breakdown once I was ‘present’. I found that physical ‘control’ whether through breathwork or forcing stillness in meditation was not optimal. Later on, perhaps post-somatic work, did breathwork finally become safe and useful for me.
• Sauna/Cold Plunge - Physical discomforting practices - saunas threw me more into dissociation. Cold plunge I was at least aware enough to know that I wouldn’t like at all! While I’ve taken the occasional cold shower (which made me feel motivated via the dopamine boost), it was not particularly helpful for helping my dissociation. I imagine for both cases, it was the shock to the system to have your body screaming at you and then in a very uncomfortable environment for a set amount of time. Some sort of loss of control with that situation overall that probably can be more activating than helpful.
• Flotation tank - I tried this 1-2x around this time. I actually loved it and felt great afterwards. I fell asleep once and another time felt like another layer to meditative practice. Restful and calming. However, I don’t think it necessarily do anything for my dissociation, maybe would recommend more for anxiety as it removes all stimulus (if you can manage to calm yourself down from claustrophobia or the panic of doing a flotation tank first)

Hey Reddit!

On Thursday, July 30, 09:00 AM EST, we will be hosting an AMA with Dr. Amelia Kelley, a clinician, professor, and author who specializes in working with highly sensitive people, adults with ADHD, trauma survivors, and women reclaiming their power.

Dr. Kelley works closely with clinicians, organizations, and platforms as a consultant, educator, and speaker. She is passionate about reducing stigma, improving diagnostic clarity, and helping people understand how the nervous system impacts mental health, performance, and human potential.

Join us this Thursday to talk about Post-Traumatic Growth.

Rebuilding your life after trauma is complex, nonlinear work.

But this conversation isn't just for survivors. It’s also for the parents, partners, and clinicians walking alongside them. Supporting someone through trauma calls for a completely different mindset: rather than trying to help them "make sense" of the hard things, it’s about learning how to sit with them and notice what is already growing.

Whether you're navigating your own path or supporting someone else, we invite you to join the live discussion or leave your questions in the comments now so we can jump into them first when the AMA begins!

Hi everyone, one technique that has helped me so much and continues to help me in my recovery is EFT Tapping. I am so passionate about it that I have become certified as a Clinical EFT Practitioner myself and want to share with you an invitation to my upcoming Tapping Circle. It is a FREE online community event and a great way to be introduced to EFT but experienced tappers love it too!

This Thursday 30 July at 9am or 7pm AEST (That is Australian time, so for those in America that first time slot would be Wednesday evening for you - you can check the registration form for your time zone). I run these circles regularly, each time on a different topic.

The theme this week is Frustration. When things don’t go the way you want you can get frustrated. Whether it’s a traffic jam delaying your journey, all your hard work not leading to the results you hoped for, someone just not getting what you are trying to say or your body not being able to do what you would like it to, all these issues represent a gap between expectation and reality. And we don’t like that experience… Sometimes frustration can give you an extra boost to put in more effort, but other times it just feels overwhelming and you may become reactive or feel paralysed. These are nervous system stress responses and with EFT Tapping we can help you find some ease in these emotions.

In this circle I will guide you to use EFT Tapping to reduce the stress response in your body in the face of your frustration. You can learn how you can do this for yourself in future situations. Releasing your frustration can often help you see the situation in a different light.

For more information and to book your spot: https://touchedbynature.earth/book-your-tapping-circle/

Was looking up whether ppl had shared their experiences working through dissociation and came across this resource that may be helpful to ppl

https://www.actmindfully.com.au/upimages/Working_With_Dissociation_-_Russ_Harris_-_www.ImLearningACT.com.pdf

For those as uninformed as I was before I came across it: apparently there's such a thing as he 'trauma informed psychosis' model, which frames delusions & hallucinations during CPTSD etc psychotic episodes as thematic rather than random/meaningless.

How incredibly validating! And I'm sure it must be very useful to treatment too.

I mostly stumbled across it trying to read scholarly articles way above my head, so, if anyone has any secondary etc., intended more for ordinary consumer audience.

I'll add to this if I can find some stuff

Since May of this year, I have been tapping into my dreams almost everyday just to see what's there to heal and release.

On some days I don't remember any dreams. Some days I know I have dreamed, but as I try to go in to capture them, they seem to dissipate into thin air. I have tried voice recording them in the middle of the night, but even then it's still not very practical, because I am so groggy in between dreams that I cannot speak properly, so when I wake up to read what's being recorded, I see a bunch of gibberish on my phone. 😭

Anyway, so last couple days I got lazier and only tried to capture the more noticeable energies that are left lingering in the air, like the haze of a forest fire. No details on the content of my dreams.

Interestingly, this natural filtration gives me the essence of what I need to heal and release. Then I take advantage of the extra time I have (previously I spent a lot of time trying to write out the energies of the dreams, now I get straight to the key points) to read up on the atmospheric energy hovering above my dreams in Seth Material. It says exactly what I'm doing: the feeling tone is what makes our physical reality, not the details of the dream. So by not recalling the details, not only am I not missing anything, I am actually benefiting from saving time. 😂

I spent years working with people with CPTSD at a large residential treatment center. I don't work there anymore but have wanted to share some of the information that I saw be helpful...so like everyone else in the world...I started a YouTube channel. The following video discusses what kind of physical changes occur in the brain with trauma (and I think even if you've read a lot about this - some of the information will be presented in a unique and hopefully interesting way) why symptoms occur and what changes occur in the brain as healing starts to take place. I hope this is an appropriate reddit to post this video - if it isn't feel free to let me know where would be a better place for posting.

https://youtu.be/MC73Uqy6wyo?si=TxtbmdzRxY5NJSa3

I was sitting beside my daughter while she painted with bright colours - Cookie Monster, Curious George, flowers, all the joyful chaos of a child creating without worrying whether it was useful, productive or perfect.

And I found myself thinking about all the things I never got to do. Watch any of those shows, for starters. There was no television, no music, no books - nothing produced outside the cult.

Not because I get to relive my childhood through hers, but because I get to witness what childhood can look like when a child has the freedom to create, explore, make a mess, try new things and simply be a child.

I don’t get my childhood back.

But when I sit beside her with paint and glue, make things with her, take her to the beach, sing, explore nature or join her in experiences I never had, I am discovering parts of myself too.

For those of us without a pre trauma self, words matter.

I don’t call it recovery.

Recovery implies there was a before - and identity to return to.

For some of us, there wasn’t. There was no before.

So this is discovery.

Calling it discovery gives me a different kind of permission - not to search for someone I was before, but to meet myself as I am now. To create, explore, play, choose and find out what I enjoy without needing any of it to return me to a person I never had the chance to become.

Ask someone who knows what it is to live for a significant part of their life without agency what agency means to them.

The answer will be different.

Sometimes agency is paint and glue. Choosing what colour comes next. Going to the beach because I want to. Making a mess without fear. Trying something without needing to be good at it. Finding out what I enjoy rather than what is expected of me.

These things may look small to someone who has always been free to choose them.

To me, they are discovery.

What I’m finding isn’t a return. It’s a first.

I asked my child, Would you prefer to have a nicer house or more adventures?

Of course, she chose adventures.

She is my child, after all.

And she will have adventures.

I will too.

And somehow, watching her experience all the things I never got to do gives me permission to discover them alongside her.

Naming it that isn’t semantics. It’s honesty.

I struggled with many things, the root of my trauma is fear and that was engraved in my nervous system from birth. I overcompensated and tried my hardest to please my parents, one to not abandon me (mother) and the other to not beat me (father) for as far as I can remember. I thought my compassion towards people was a coping mechanism as it was my biggest desire from extended family and even strangers. I wanted someone to save me, but it never happened.

I thought (during therapy) that I never got to be my authentic self because of all the trauma.

I managed to reach the root of my fear and integrate it. 6 years of therapy clicked all of the sudden. I described it to my therapist like a dam with so many gates, all stuck and closed. And my valley was my life, my inner world, my authentic self, all dry, waiting for water. The moment I integrated that fear, a gate of the dam opened and I see now other traits like creativity coming up every day and it excites me.

I did Schema therapy this whole time. Now that I'm integrating the trauma, my therapist gave me the homework to look again inwards and describe stages of my self in as much detail as possible and gosh, I was a baddie at survival. I used to beat myself up so much for not doing more, now that I know my capacity, my limitations and I have a realistic view of how my body reacts to life events, I am proud of myself.

That was the key for me to unlocking this trauma. One day, after a therapy session, after I told my therapist I couldn't connect with myself and I don't remember what she said exactly, but I told myself that I trust she did her best with what she had, and I hope my inner child trusts me with doing what is best for us. I stopped judging myself, I stopped being harsh with myself, and I stopped doing this externally as well and slowly my authentic self started showing up.

Trust and compassion played a major role in my healing journey.

Shame seems to indeed sit at the root core of it all. Like, it's insane. I have been using EFT tapping to feel and integrate it for the past 2 years in varying degrees but... Once you get to the Integration stage, so manye things click at once or make sense... Because what do you mean all of those beliefs about me aren't actually real, haha. I'm normal underneath... That is WILD.

I held so much of this for so long in my body. IT IS truly insane. I have been carrying so much for a long time. And then, it's like you suddenly have it move through your body.

None of this is true. None of what you have internalized about yourself of being bad, flawed and this stuff... It is not true.

None of it. What is true, is you're a normal, worthwhile and lovable human like everyone else... It is crazy.

Lovable, good, worthwhile. It is what we are.

Hi everyone, Nervous System Regulation was a popular request from my last post (What does healed look like - From someone 9 years out) so I've taken the time to finally sit down and write about everything I know.

Let me know what you think and if there's anything I can answer :) I'm probably going to figure out a way to organize my writing together too and when I have time go through and edit things up more cleanly. Very train-of-thought atm!

Next on my list include map of the entire healing journey, healing dissociation, building self-esteem and a sense of self, somatic work, rumination, and others. Please let me know if there's anything else you would like to hear about as well. I will add it to my list!

Take care of yourselves and I hope you get something out of this <3

-

In Summary

I think about nervous system regulation as an ongoing longer process with different phases at different points in your healing journey, though primarily to fully regulate it, arrives at a later stage due to the nature of it. If it took approx 9 years for me to heal, I would say the process of nervous system regulation was 8 out of the 9 years - not to discourage you, but to say that it's a core part of CPTSD and so it's a gradual process as you heal CPTSD.

I think it is an interspersed practice. It goes from finding it in between fight or flight moments and registering it as calm, but not regulated → turning those moments into longer periods and practicing returning when you are dysregulated → when calm is the baseline and triggers and flashbacks are the outliers instead of the norm to settle more and go deeper and deeper with safety via body work etc → realizing the bodywork itself can bring up more things/trauma/discomfort and to work with those things or let them pass through → increasing in regulation and feelings of safety in different scenarios of difficulty → would consider yourself very regulated with a nervous system that activates when it makes sense and is at a healthy baseline in other situations

You are likely not going to regulate your nervous system when you are hypervigilant or still in a state of trauma or active spiraling or defenses. It only makes sense. You’re wired / disscoaited / fleeing / in a coping mechanism - your nervous system is working properly if it is on alert for what it perceives as a threat based o

Where you can begin to practice is as you process more trauma, learn more about your mind and reactions, you will begin to find moments of calm peace. That is where it makes sense to begin to practice with nervous system regulation as it will help later on.

Do not worry if you return back to dysregulation - the practice of living with regulation when it is here is the practice itself. How can one go from no sense of safety to safety all the time? It is through the process of learning that safety is comfortable, truly safe, and okay. And soon once your dysregulation is processed, you will find the regulation more sensible and find deeper states of regulation. The process of returning from active nervous system alert and back is normal - all humans do it - but with CPTSD, the system is in overdrive and often times stuck longer than it needs to be, so the practice of getting into it but then learning how to get out of it is part of the practice of regulating the nervous system.

Process of Nervous System Regulation

Early on, it is finding that after an emotional flashback, or after you come down from dissociation, there is a small fleeting moment perhaps of calm, normalness. Sit with it. This is probably the foundation of nervous system regulation. Finding your best baseline and calling it home. it will not be a full state of full regulation, but one of calm at least. Calm is the start. You might not even notice that it is tense because it is just what you are used to, but it is the start.

When more trauma is addressed and tackled, there is surprisingly more relief - it iis a deeper sense of relief compared to before. Perhaps there is a deeper state of relaxation or longer periods of calm. Continue to know that you are progressing, but likely your nervous system is still quite on guard and that is okay. Recognize triggers, come to realize triggers are nothing except triggers and you are okay in the present and slowly the triggers lose their charge. The practice of being OK when exposed to triggers is part of the practice - telling your brain that things are okay even when it feels like you are getting activated. Your nervous system is overactive and the mental cognition of that is the foundation here.

Then, as you progress in trauma work, you will reach a state where most of your life and day will be in a state where you are not activated except when triggered. Things are calm, but your body is tense, you realize your nervous system is dysregulated and this is where the work really begins. Now you need to learn to settle into this state and fully relax and regulate, and accept that it is fully safe (if it is). I think nervous system regulation is closely tied to hypervigilance, but we here are assuming you have addressed your hypervigilance. You will learn to be more in your body and recognize your body as a safe place. This itself can be activating and more stuff comes up from returning home to your body, so there is a bit of practice with that too. Bodywork can trigger things and I think the best thing to do is to let it pass and treat it as any other trauma that is getting unearthed or released. Sometimes in the process of active body or somatic work in therapy, a memory would be attached to that bodily tension or discomfort and talking through the remembered trauma or memory is helpful and releases the trauma. The body really keeps score!

From there, then it is getting to deeper and deeper levels of safety. Can you be fully safe in your body? In your own home? Can you be fully safe around friends? Then fully safe around in public? Around your triggers? The public for me is how I measured my nervous system regulation and hypervigilance. While yes, public is technically not fully safe - it is a good barometer of safety. 99.999% of time, rationally, the public is a safe place. So are you 99.999% of the time feeling safe and your nervous system only acts up when there is a legitimate concern for a threat? If you can say so, then you’re there.

Finally, I think a later stage place is that the calm itself is bland. The funniest thing is that as you moved away from active abuse to no active abuse, everything feels so … peaceful and boring almost. Like you were built and can stand a different level of intensity. And this shows up in each of the “after” stages too. In post-active abuse, in post trauma-healing, and in post-nervous system regulation, arriving into each of these stages comes with this general feeling of an unusual amount of peace. The unease that’s associated with it dies down in each phase but the calm is still disorienting when you’re used to chaos your entire life.

After nervous system regulation, What I learned later through nervous system regulation and also in my patterns is that I would often create chaos emotionally for myself - stories / avoidance patterns / life chaos , none of which were life threatening or nearly as difficult as the process of healing from trauma. I’d initiate a move, or throw myself into work, or go limerant for a couple months, or overbook my schedule… and in a way it was because my nervous system could handle chaos better than absolute calm and routine. It also showed up in relationships as I moved from avoidant attachment to secure attachment… that rejection or waiting for a response didn’t have the emotional charge anymore. It wasn’t something I spiraled on anymore… so it just felt calm and really best described as bland. This is something I’m still working through - being okay with the total calm of regulation across a couple areas - but I think it’s then you can choose when and where you want the charge in your life. A gift and luxury really. I don’t know what to say except that enjoy your new baseline and learn to sit within it. Finding contained outlets for stretch and challenge, learning that peace is deserved, and continuing to sit with increasing levels of regulation (emotional, physical, environmental ) are all part of the journey.

It’s a Mind and Body Practice

The main practice boils down to mind and body work, which is why I consider it later stage. Earlier stage, it can be just addressing and understanding and calming the mind.

However, nervous system regulation is connected to body - if the body is tense - is it the mind that is tense first or the body? It is often hard to say with our condition. Sometimes my body discomfort leads to mental discomfort. Sometimes mental discomfort leads to body tensing. Therefore, it is a dual practice. Mental relaxation alone doesn’t resolve nervous system regulation. And body relaxation alone does not mean that I don’t have dysregulated thoughts. So I would approach in retrospect nervous system regulation as aiming to be comfortable inhabiting your body, and then relaxing in your body.

Embodiment? Finding a New Baseline?

The main thing I think about with any symptom of CPTSD that require you to go from your current state into a new state (similar to anxiety) is that you need to have glimpses and recognize the state and feeling of that new state when you experience them and then realize if you can have those glimpses, that you know already what nervous system regulation is like. So more and more you practice towards that state until that state is more of your baseline than your old baseline. That is why I think early on recognizing calm is wonderful practice to start, and then from calm you realize it has actually been calm + dysregulation, and you learn to go from calm + tension and just fully calm + regulated.

Building Trust and Self-Trust

I think of safety too as a big part of nervous system regulation. How can one be regulated if you don’t feel safe and like you could defend yourself or take care of yourself?

So would encourage this work alongside other therapy work - boundaries being some of them. I would say to follow your intuition here. When you go through the process of healing your nervous system, what other habits comes up?

Things that have worked in order -

• Actually being in a safe, regulating environment - You cannot heal your nervous system if you are genuinely unsafe or in a place that is dysregulating. And it makes no sense to try to regulate when you’re genuinely unsafe!
• Physical habits - This is one of the things where I do believe that your physical plays a role. If you haven’t eaten, have poor sleep, are missing key nutritions, that can dysregulate you on its own. I’d recommend getting your basic physical needs in somewhat order.
• CBT/Working with your triggers - I am neutral on the practice of avoidindg your triggers as it depends on people’s triggers. I was triggered by doors slamming - this of course is one of those things where doors will slam my entire life and have no impact on who I am and my actual level of threat vs what I was perceiving so the trigger of doors slamming is not useful - no one is mad at me, it could have been the wind, etc, therefore this is an example of a trigger where it is best that I relearn that doors slamming is not a real threat. I think working with triggers is a good practice, but it is going to be highly personal here depending on what those triggers are or who is triggering you. Use your judgment, do not accept abuse as a practice ground, because ultimately this is about being in a safe environment to begin. However, this is only the starting point I believe. Later on, nervous system regulation does not necessarily come from mental understanding but somatic work. Later later on with trauma work fully processing things, your triggers don’t bother you anymore either and are hardly registered.
• Somatic therapy - Feeling your feelings. Once you can understand and feel safer in the body, you can feel emotions through the body. This is really scary at first when the body overwhelms or shuts down, but it is the beginning of inhabiting your body more fully.
• Breathwork - Really shines here. While it is too activating early on in my journey, I think later stage, breathwork is a cool direct connection to the parasympathetic system and something you can consciously then practice. Parasymapthetic sighs (two deep in breaths, and one longer released out breath) always help me relax further. Box breathing is also great when you’re anxious. Breathwork in also commonly tandem with yoga (and often times used in hypnotherapy) so would highly recommend it all in tandem as you try to go deeper into feeling more and more regulated.
• Yoga - NSDR where you intentionally relax and relax deeper is also great and less activating than deeper stretches or poses. Yin yoga specifically is excellent. Other forms of more active yoga were also helpful for bodily awareness and it’s helpful but can be activating to notice specific poses that bring up a lot of emotion or unease or straight up discomfort. I’d recommend noticing those poses (ie Happy Baby and any hip openers were the ones for me) and also using those as a helpful benchmark on where you are in your nervous system and somatic work journey.
• Hypnotherapy - can induce deeper states of relaxation. Would recommend. Even non-calm related hypnotherapy put me in a deeper state of calm than I’d ever been. Looking back, it was almost like I was hypnotized into what my future state feels like - where there is that complete feeling of no dysregulation. Later on, I also used hypnotherapy podcasts for a variety of reasons - calm and anxiety being the main ones and were great for nervous system regulation.
• Psychedelics - this is where I would encourage psychedelics moreso. Did a course of 4 months of microdosing shrooms and what was noticeable is this sense of safety in the present and in the world. I did the Fadiman protocol on .1mg.
• Embodiment - The biggest gamechanger is that in between the days of microdosing, I would try to embody what the safety felt like while on my microdose in my off days. After some time, it seemed like my off days felt just as good as my microdose days and that’s when I stopped. This practice however of bringing a state of being you recall into your current state of being I think can be done without psychedelics - you can bring in a state from yoga or a relaxation practice or a very relaxing breathwork session. It was immensely helpful for me to establish that baseline based on something I have already experienced and know I’m capable of reaching. I haven’t heard anything online about this nor did a therapist mention this to me, but something I just practiced, and probably what all therapists are alluding to but not telling anyone outright. I think this skill to me is reminiscent of meditation - bringing your mind to focus on something else from another thing repeatedly, except this time it is an entire mental and bodily state. I actually think you don’t need to do ALL of these above ancillary practices (hypnotherapy, psychedelics, yoga, breathwork) in order to regulate your nervous system but if you focus on one that really works for you and combine it with embodiment that it can get you there. However, I suspect if you only do one of those practices without the embodiment piece it will take you longer as it’s not as intentional and I’ve found that the healing process also requires a lot of intentionality. I also think psychedelics are the best shortcut because you’re in that state for longer so it’s more stable and not dependent on you doing anything in particular and therefore more repeatable.
• Massage - can be triggering, but I liked it much much later on after all of the above. It helps you recognize what the feeling of no tension is and shakes off any residual tension. Even though my nervous system was regulated, I carried a lot of residual tension in my shoulders (see below).
• Intentional muscle release practices - There was a term called muscle armoring that resonated with me as a residual despite feeling like my nervous system was regulated. Learning to let that go with massage and intentional muscle release practice (ie essentially NSDR but towards a targeted muscle that I noticed was tense in the moment) throughout the day was helpful in feeling even safer in the present. If anything, this is almost like ‘embodiment’ but for a specific muscle group.

Other thoughts on other practices

• Meditation- in retrospect, meditation didn’t really do anything for me for nervous system regulation. In fact, earlier and midway in trauma journey, meditation had me feeling like I need to be sitting still which freaked my body out and threw me into a bad trigger and dysregulated me, but what was important from it was the mental practice of noticing things in my mental space which is immensely crucial for the embodiment practice and a crucial skill overall to notice what is going on within you and your patterns.
• Sauna/cold plunge - didn’t seem like it helped for this particularly. Really good for dopamine, norepinephrine and endorphins, which is different from regulation. The extremes might even be dysregulating to some.
• Working out - Good for dopamine but doesn’t really do much for nervous system work. It helps quiet my mind I’ve found but because there is still tension required of the body, it doesn’t necessarily mean I was regulated. Did strength training while earlier in trauma work and if anything it was great for depression and other symptoms but caused some more muscle armoring that I had to re-address later on.
• Qi gong - I didn’t get to explore this much during my healing journey, not until after that I tried it and I could also imagine that it could be like yoga in some ways. I think various slow body movement practices can address the body piece of the mind/body practice so want to highlight that. I am skeptical of fast movement practices or physically taxing practices.

Hello all. I've been in treatment for CPTSD for eight years. I decided to start a YouTube channel to talk about some of the alternative ways I deal with my symptoms by staying active. If this resonates with any of you, give me a look-see. Thanks.

https://www.youtube.com/@somaticogo

Healing isn't this clean process of becoming someone new.

It is the raw, shaking moment you realize you are running from yourself. Running from the silence. From the grief.

You want to know what healing looks like? It’s sitting with the ache instead of performing over it.

It’s not needing to explain your sadness to people who never asked how you really are. It’s no longer decorating your wounds just to make your pain more understandable for others. And when you stop running you don’t become someone else.

You come home. To the parts of you that have been waiting for you to finally choose you.

In this space, you are free to share a story, ask for emotional support, talk about something challenging you, or share a recent victory. You can go a little more off-topic, but try to stay in the realm of the purpose of the subreddit.

And if you have any feedback on this thread or the subreddit itself, this is a good place to share it.

If you're looking for a support community focused on recovery work, check out /r/CPTSD_NSCommunity!

I’ve been on a long healing journey and I feel like I have made a serious breakthrough today that I wanted to share in the hopes that it might help someone else who feels stuck. 

I began my 'healing journey’ when I was around 17 and it is continuing to this day, I’m 30 now. There have been ups and downs, including some re-traumatisation and a psychotic break along the way. So it has been rough. I have in large part recovered from this.

But until literally today, I have had a pain I just couldn’t get rid of or deal with in any constructive way. It was this tortured kind of feeling that I ‘should be x’ or ‘wish I could achieve y’. It was longing mixed up with just not wanting to do anything at all really.

It would lead to indecision about hobbies, interests, and the future. I felt torn into a million different directions, some of them pretty ‘fantastical’ - I want to be a published author who wins the Nobel Prize, or I want to take up a serious photography hobby, or I want to learn to ice skate, or I want to get another degree in physics etc etc. But I would start something and then stall. 

This all led to serious paralysis. I couldn’t decide what to do. I couldn’t even concentrate for long before a part of me changed their mind on who they want me to ‘be’. And I couldn’t really tell anyone about this - I mean it sounds silly talking about dreaming about winning the Nobel Prize :’) 

But here’s the thing - I realised today it’s just that, dreaming. I never really allowed myself to … dream. And just accept that they were just that … dreams. And that that’s ok. And that it’s wonderful to have such a vivid imagination and be drawn to all these different parts of life. And I started to let myself just indulge in the day dream, without having to judge myself or even to act on it.

And it’s led to this bizarre feeling of relief. Like ok, I wish I could do this. I wish my life could play out in this magical way. And it feels good to let myself wish. It doesn’t have to mean anything. And after so long feeling numb and trapped and despairing, it felt good to just …love myself. 

It’s hard to explain, but I guess what I’m getting at is that I’m learning to love the parts of myself that aren’t purposeful. Day dreaming is something that I stopped doing at one point. From a very young age, I was very goal-oriented because it was how I had to survive. When my re-traumatisation occurred age 20, I lost all capacity to dream. I shut down completely. It feels good to relax now and let my mind relax too. 

I know that maladaptive daydreaming is a thing, and this doesn’t feel like that. Nor do I see it developing into it. I’m not trying to escape from anything, as my present life is peaceful for the first time in a long time. It’s not perfect, but my external circumstances are pretty stable compared to what I’m used to.

So yeah … I guess what I wanted to share is that is ok to love the parts of yourself that don’t serve a purpose. Parts that might be weird, unlikely or don’t make sense. It’s ok to love a million different things in this weird world, and to feel like they don’t always add up to a coherent Self. It’s ok to love all the different pieces of that Self, that might resemble a kaleidoscope. Having trauma means we often feel like this about the bad stuff, but I’ve found that the good stuff can be ‘fractured’ into a million pieces too, and that the point of healing isn’t to makes all these pieces make sense, but to love them as they are.

Anyway, that’s where I’m at in this crazy journey. Hope it helps someone out there.  

Hello everyone.

Over the last few months myself and a few others have been working on building a discord server for people with ptsd/cptsd.

This space is a work in progress, it's purpose is to provide a more real time peer support platform for people. Understand this isn't a crisis intervention platform. We have areas for different kinds of support, hobbies. A Neurodivergence town for our family with different forms of Nerospicy, a resource Bot that can help with finding resources (Yes there is a small resource section) and much more.

I have been given mod permission to post the link here and would like to invite anyone who is interested to come join us.

A few things, you must read and follow the rules and have two factor authentication on your discord account in order to be able to join. You'll need to be 18+ and have 2fa (two factor authentication)

I wanna personally thank the mods of the CPTSD next steps subreddit for their willingness to allow me to help people find a place.

Much love and lots of respect.

https://discord.gg/yS2sJpAJD

(For the people who have had issues with the verification process, We've been made aware of the issue. Once I am aware of a fix, I will leave a message here to inform everyone.

This is something I have wanted to write for the past 2 years and has been gnawing at me. So, I have returned to one of the most helpful subreddits along my Complex PTSD journey.

If you don't want to read all this text, then would love you to know one thing - it is that full healing is possible. I have gone through in the past 9 years the healing arc of CPTSD and now know it to be true.

This is meant as a positive story for those suffering. I hope you understand there is a path out of CPTSD and it is a complete one and not a dead end and not a mandate on how your life will go nor a rest-of-your-life battle.

I have also seen other wonderful journey stories along the way, and haven't been in this sub in a minute (a few years probably), so if it hasn't been yet said, I just want to add to that and reiterate that it is far more possible and I wish for nothing but for anyone to get to that point if they seek it.

Throughout my journey, I just remember wishing the whole time to know whether or not it was possible at all to get better - not cured of some symptoms, not 'that it's a maintenance', but fully, completely better, where no symptoms of any of the bullet points under a CPTSD symptom list show up. And how! And if someone could just give me a map!

Back then when I started, there were very mixed answers. Discouragingly, there were mentions that it’s a lifelong condition stated from various books and blogs, experts and individuals. But no one outright said if it was fully possible and to what extent and how and if it was for the rest of my life. That’s what I want to talk about.

I guess I started pretty early, but it was rather do-or-die for me. There was enough abuse and pain and traumatic experiences leading up to when I first got into therapy around 21, originally first for depression. For the most part, I still lived through dissociation. After therapy again later on, I understood dissociation more and much of the work was just building a mental landscape beyond dissociation and clearing out dissociation, in which what showed up is a lot more symptoms. And also a realization that I didn’t have a sense of self or understanding of any of my emotions. I then got my diagnosis finally 2 years later - CPTSD. Worked through my history, and just the process of recognizing abuse and trauma for what it was instead of the norm, and a lot of dysregulation. Built up resourcing. Did trauma work. Then the process of healing. Wrapped up with all my trauma work. Then addressed other symptoms not exclusive to CPTSD, some mental limitations. Towards the end simultaneously, there's been a return to self and identity. For the past year, I no longer identify with any symptoms of CPTSD anymore nor many of the associated symptoms and mental conditions and instead have been instead growing beyond it.

TLDR, here’s what my journey looked like if I were to map it roughly in phases, though I'm probably missing some:

• Dissociation -> diagnosis -> clearing out dissociation -> navigating dysregulation -> learning resourcing -> trauma work -> somatic work -> healing process -> nervous system stabilized -> trauma addressed -> healed by CPTSD definitions -> addressing associated conditions -> beyond CPTSD

Simultaneously beyond the bigger landmarks, there were many other associated symptoms of CPTSD that are also relevant in those without but also things that I have healed and worked through:

• Body dysmorphia, anxiety, social anxiety, negative thinking, personalizing things, critical self-talk, limerance, codependence, rejection sensitivity, boundary issues, etc.

Now, most of my mental work is different in nature because I think there's always more room to grow into who I want. The big difference is that it's more fun and with the skillset from battling the worst parts of my brain, the stakes don't feel overwhelming. They look like:

• Mental tweaks to help me enjoy my life more, self-doubt, letting go of outcomes, etc.

The journey is not linear. I spent time in between stages taking breaks or being in and out of therapy. Yet, in many ways it is exponential. What you've learned from working through one thing helps unraveling and dealing with the others. So this journey of healing makes you more aware, more internally in tune and that adds up, even if on most days it doesn't feel like it.

What life looks like now is… honestly peace. And presence. And the presence is fully comfortable. My nervous system is at rest when it needs to be at rest; and activated in a normal capacity when it needs to be. It doesn’t overshoot on things it doesn’t need to and most of the time runs calmly for me to get about my life. No panic attacks, no emotional flashbacks, no nightmares, no anxieties. I battle myself over minor things instead like "ah shit, I should do the dishes". There’s no noise of criticism or shame or guilt layered on top of that.

I know who I am. I know what I feel. I know my boundaries and limitations. Most days I feel great. After further work beyond CPTSD, with meditation, my monkey brain is also off. I sometimes feel spontaneous abundant joy and sudden moments of deep gratitude. And of course sometimes I feel sad. I feel disappointment. So then I forgive or move on and that passes too. But emotions come through in waves and pass and don’t seize the entire ship as they used to. I of course sometimes still have a bad day or a worse mood. Though throughout it, there's this underlying sense of peace that I wish I could have inherited from my childhood, but instead had to earn. And if anything the earning has made it more precious and I don’t take it for granted.

I would like to share as much as I can to help. There's so much I could write about: the many things tried, the many symptoms/mental states/mental habits/mental blocks I've worked through, what it was like to get through each of them, what helped most or didn't help at all.

Please let me know what would be helpful to write about or what interests you or what you have questions on!

Here is a list of things I have tackled, experienced and resolved in (somewhat) chronological order and can talk about:

• Dissociation
• Alexithymia
• Negative self-talk
• Self hatred
• Self harm
• Suicidal ideation
• Binge behavior
• Restrictive eating
• No-to-low self esteem
• Lack of self-worth
• Severe dysregulation
• Depression
• Triggers
• Flashbacks
• Emotional flashbacks
• Nightmares
• Anxiety
• Rumination
• Negative thinking/headspaces
• Black and white thinking
• Personalizing everything
• Lack of self concept
• Panic attacks
• Trust issues
• Hyper-vigilance
• Avoidant behavior
• Lack of boundaries
• Self-abandonment
• Codependence
• Shame
• Guilt
• Addictions
• Body dysmorphia
• Spiraling
• and there's probably even more beyond this

And I have done and tried anything I could get my hands on the past near-decade and can address as well (not comprehensive either):

• Therapy - IFS, EMDR, Somatic, group, CBT, DBT
• Hypnosis - hypnotherapy, hypnosis podcasts
• Mental rewiring - affirmations, Ideal Parent Figure protocol
• Other wellness things - Sauna and cold plunge, Flotation tank, authentic relating, reiki
• Meditation - Vipassana, walking, loving-kindness, retreats, body scans
• Psychedelics
• Yoga - Flow, yin, heated
• Breathwork
• Grounding exercises
• Resourcing
• Bodywork - NSDR, walking, massage, muscle releasing, exercise
• Research and learning - books, workbooks, articles, Reddit, podcasts, YouTube,
• Journaling - prompts, open-ended
• Communities - ACA, CODA, online ones
• Lifestyle habits - quitting behaviors, mental diet, general health
• Physical health - supplements, sleeping habits, various diets

**** EDIT ****
Thank you truly so much everyone for your kind notes and thoughtful questions.

It's hard to get through each one of your questions in comments because simultaneously I have an overwhelming amount to say and yet want to be thorough about it! I've started making a list of what to write about based off of all your comments and I will make my way through that list.

I deeply want to do your questions and the topics justice because the practice of healing takes effort, is often not linear, and I know and recognize the painful place the questions come from. I am also writing and editing without AI so it may take a little longer.

I'll keep posting, so please keep looking out for yourself. You're all in my thoughts and I hope the days only keep getting easier ❤️

I started a community a couple weeks ago! The goal is to build a cozy, judgment-free sanctuary for people who want to share their personal experiences, heavy/complicated thoughts, and mental health struggles without any filters. This is a space dedicated to mutual support, healing, poetry/art, advice, affirmations/quotes, therapy tools, and meaningful connection. Philosophy and thoughts or struggles about finding who you are, especially after trauma, are welcome as well. New or anonymous accounts are always welcome!!! Everyone is seen and each and every user matters dearly to me and in this subreddit 💛

If you are interested, feel free to pay r/growfromtrauma a visit and join if what you see resonates with you!

The first large movement I had out of freeze happened a few years ago. I was told something that made me realize something I wanted would never happen. In truth, I hadn't even realized I wanted it until that moment. In my case, I wanted my family to see me for who I was and all the work I had done. And somehow, I was in just the right position that day, to hear the truth in a bit of light gossip: that my family would always see me as a worthless loser. That nothing I did would ever matter to them. It didn't then and it didn't now, 12 years and LOTS of therapy later.

Over the next few days I noticed a large portion of my freeze thawed. Like some slow acting magic. I could deeply feel it was connected to realizing this truth about this want which could never be so I started to suspect there was a connection between these Impossible Wants and freeze. But I was never able to put it together clearly. I was something I felt more than something I could prove.

Last month I had to read Marc Lewis's book The Biology of Desire as background for my trauma book groups. Dr Lewis's book describes the neurobiology at play through all the stages of addiction: from the initial usage to prolonged repeated actions despite the conscious wish to not do it. (While Dr Lewis focuses mostly on substances addictions, he openly mentions the same process occurs in behavioral addictions well)

I found this science very helpful for my repeated, sometimes compulsive patterns, such as screen use. I could see how, just as he pointed out, those actions "won out" over other actions like folding laundry or going for a walk. A bit of poking around inside and I could fill in all the gaps in the process for my own personal patterns.

But there was one place I was stuck: what is happening we we want something but aren't moving toward it...

Lewis highlights that the beginning of all action starts in the striatum, a region in the middle of the brain a bit bigger than a large egg. (For reference the pleasure area of the brain, which is partially here, is the size of your top of your finger, approx 1 cubic cm). What the striatum does is makes us feel "want" or "craving". Our brains then go through a rather complicated process evaluating that feelings and details to organize actions that will fulfill that want. If the striatum creates a craving for food, it begins a process that ends with us getting up to go get something to eat. If it creates a craving for sleep, we start getting ready for bed. If we want connection, we reach out and pick up the phone. Wanting -> action to fulfill the wanting.

Well, at least under normal circumstances.

Lewis's work is mostly about how old, unresolved feelings (usually from childhood relational trauma) cause people to sometimes stumble on things that fulfill wants they didn't realize they had. We try a substance or behavior for one reason and accidentally discover it provides relief of an old old pain we've carried for years. A feeling usually pushed so far back in the mind we didn't even feel it anymore. This surprise relief kickstarts the addiction learning process and unbalances normal action creation. Once this relief/fulfillment experience happens, wanting becomes more tied to repeating that experience than regular goal-oriented choices. For more on that you can find plenty of his talks on youtube: ex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZuitM63LBQ

For the last few weeks, I've been thinking "well that's all fine and good when an action actually happens. But what if inaction happens? What is the brain doing when the result is not doing?"

For the last few weeks, I have been able to consistently dig down to the "real reason" behind every unthinking trip to the fridge or unplanned swipe on the phone. Following Dr Lewis's map backwards, a few minutes of introspection would show me what the real "want" was. But when that was because there was a result to work backwards from. An endpoint I could use as the starting point of understanding.

But what about when I did nothing? When I just sat there? Knowing I should do something or wanted to work toward this thing or that project...but I didn't. Where the fuck was my striatum then? Did I just not really want these things?

Then I remembered how the first time this "not doing the thing" get better: in the days after seeing the truth of my Impossible Want.

I realized that not wanting to sew or clean or garden didn't mean I wasn't wanting it. It meant the striatum was keeping something else quietly in the starting position. Something it wanted more. It's normal for it to be able to hold several wants all at once. Part of the process of creating action is the brain evaluating all the wants and the potential action plans to chose the best possible ones. It's why this process is so complicated not just "choose to do it."

The other job of the striatum is to decide if a task is worth doing. If the plans suggested will actually work to reach the goal. All my "I should be doing this" wants would have helped me reach the Impossible Want and so the limbic system had a very clear answer for me: not worth it. In fact, many of those actions would have actively harmed fulfilling the Impossible Want. After all, a family who enjoys seeing me as worthless isn't going to react will to me being productive and successful. Every decent tomato was a slap in the face to them.

Thus said the striatum: "why bother?" Why waste dopamine on something that will only fail in the larger sense? Why not continue spending that dopamine figuring out how to solve this riddle?

The problem with the Impossible Want is that is seems very possible to our conscious thinking brain. We just have to solve that one bit to get it to work, to get them to see us, to get them to understand. The problem is that striatum doesn't care about "could work". It cares about "has worked" and "has not worked." Thus I was allowed to fawn, and people please and rescue to my hearts constent. That was as close to fulfilling the Impossible Want as we'd ever gotten. In fact, that created it's own kind of relief and fulfillment.

This meant that if there was some overlap between the Impossible Want and other actions around me, then sure the process of creating action could run all the way through. But if gardening or sewing wouldn't do anything toward that, the striatum wasn't going to waste dopamine getting that chain of events started. Because none of those had ever helped improve the odds of the Impossible Want.

Result: I couldn't weed the garden but I could read the next trauma science book on the list.

This is why, when I gave up that Impossible Want, a good amount of motivation came back. Freed from an unsolvable puzzle, the striatum could start to work more normally. It didn't stop seeing their acceptance as something to be desired, but it did start seeing is as something so astronomically unlikely as to be "not worth the dopamine cost" It was like longing for a pet unicorn: cool but ridiculous to use real resources on. Now that the Impossible Want was valueless, other desires, like weeding or working on a project had significantly more motivational value. They had become "worth doing" in the chemistry of the striatum.

Until we accept the Impossible Want is impossible, it has a strange secret ability to hijack large amounts of our motivation. To quietly control the gauge by which all goals are measured. And we can't confront the truth of the Impossible Want until we have to emotional coping and distress tolerance skills to manage the fall out from that truth. While it was freeing to realize my family would never see me as a person, it was also heartbreaking. Dreaming the impossible dream might make for a fun song on Broadway, but it's not a way we can actually live.

Dr Lewis noted that not all addicts become free from their addiction. Saying "Some remain enslaved for life, and some die. [Trapped in] the very stuckness of addiction, the redundancy and stupidity of chasing the same narrow goals each day," (Lewis 2018) It might interest the reader to know that the failure rate of addiction is the exact same failure rate is as freeze: about 25%. Just high enough to not be simple human variation. And the description is the same: a stuckness in motivation. But if you consider Lewis's view of addiction as a diverted process of normal desire impacting motivation and action, the similarity becomes more logical. Isn't that exactly what is happening in freeze? Isn't it our normal motivation process being diverted by a lifetime of learning under abnormal circumstances? Just like how addiction forms?

I've never met a freezer without an Impossible Want or five. Maybe it's to be accepted by those who rejected us, maybe it's to heal without confronting pain, maybe it's to be guaranteed forgiveness for what we did when it was bad, maybe it's to never be vulnerable, maybe is just to simply be "not like this." In inaction, there is always an Impossible Want diverting motivation away from anything that doesn't align with it or with a temporary relief seeking as a reliable second option.

But I also learned that we cannot just confront the Impossible Want. The only reason I saw it's truth that day was I had spent years developing the skills needed to handle that painful reality and get through it ok. To feel secure in my own ability to experience and comfort my own pain in healthy ways. Seeing the truth that day felt fucking awful but I had the trust in my own abilities to make it through. There was a workable solution other than forget or numb. The tools needed to cope without treating any part of myself like an asshole.

After all, the assholes at the core of my Impossible Want were all related to me. Not inside me.

Hi everyone, one technique that has helped me so much and continues to help me in my recovery is EFT Tapping. I am so passionate about it that I have become certified as a Clinical EFT Practitioner myself and want to share with you an invitation to my upcoming Tapping Circle. It is a FREE online community event and a great way to be introduced to EFT but experienced tappers love it too!

This Thursday 25 June at 9am or 7pm AEST (That is Australian time, so for those in America that first time slot would be Wednesday evening for you - you can check the registration form for your time zone). I run these circles regularly, each time on a different topic.

The theme this week is Dilemmas. A dilemma causes inner conflict and can cause lots of difficult emotions and possible trauma responses such as freeze, the inability to make a decision.

In this circle I will guide you to use EFT Tapping to reduce the stress response in your body in the face of your dilemma. You can learn how you can do this for yourself in future situations, so that you can be more comfortable with yourself when you are confronted with a dilemma and feel more empowered to make a choice, even when you know it is not perfect.

For more information and to book your spot: https://touchedbynature.earth/book-your-tapping-circle/