The Aftershocks of Childhood Shame: A Guide for Survivors

[Content Warning: This article discusses childhood trauma, emotional abuse, animal harm, and shame experiences. Please engage at your own pace and practice self-care while reading.]

Eliana closed her office door and leaned against it, suddenly breathless. Her presentation had gone perfectly—the client was impressed, her boss had praised her work in front of everyone, and the project was greenlit with an increased budget. By all accounts, this was a professional triumph.

Yet here she was, eyes closed, whispering, “I’m so tired,” as the memory flooded back without warning: She was nine, proudly showing her teacher the extra credit project she’d spent the weekend creating. The teacher had smiled, praised her work, and then asked her to present it to the class. Twenty-five years later, she couldn’t remember what happened next, only the crushing feeling that she’d done something terribly wrong by being proud of her work.

This memory, like dozens of others, would ambush Eliana throughout her days—while grocery shopping, during meetings, even when laughing with friends. Each one brought a physical wave of shame so intense it felt like her body was trying to collapse in on itself, along with an exhaustion that went beyond physical tiredness—a soul-level weariness that made her want to simply disappear.

If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. This experience—these ghosts of childhood shame that haunt adult survivors of complex trauma and narcissistic abuse—has a name: “shame flashbacks.” But knowing the term doesn’t ease the burden. What might help is understanding why you should never feel embarrassed about the things you did as a child, and learning how to finally put these ghosts to rest.

The Trauma Earthquake and Its Aftershocks

Childhood trauma like an earthquake—a devastating event or series of events that shakes the very foundation upon which you were building your life. The immediate impacts are obvious and catastrophic, but the damage goes deeper than what’s immediately visible:

• The foundation is compromised: Your developing brain, identity, and nervous system are altered by the experience.
• The supporting structures are damaged: Your sense of safety, trust, and self-worth develop cracks that may not be apparent until weight is placed upon them.
• The architecture becomes adaptive: As you continue to grow, you build your life around these compromised structures—developing strategies and beliefs designed to prevent further collapse.

The shame flashbacks you experience decades later are the aftershocks—seemingly random, unpredictable tremors that can suddenly destabilize you long after the original earthquake. Just as geological aftershocks can continue for years following a major earthquake, these emotional aftershocks can persist long into adulthood.

What makes these aftershocks particularly disorienting is that they often occur when everything seems stable. You’ve built a good life, you’re functioning well, and then suddenly—a memory, a gesture, a comment triggers an aftershock, and you’re plunged back into the feeling of the original earthquake, despite being far from the original danger.

Understanding shame as aftershocks helps explain why:

• The intensity feels disproportionate to the trigger
• The timing seems random and unpredictable
• The sensations are profoundly physical, not just emotional
• The experience can be as disruptive as the original trauma

Throughout this article, we’ll return to this metaphor to help explain both why these shame responses persist and how healing works—not by ignoring the damage, but by carefully reinforcing your foundation and retrofitting your emotional architecture to withstand these ongoing tremors.

Understanding the Roots of Shame: Psychological Frameworks

Before diving into the specific reasons you should never feel embarrassed about your childhood behaviors, it’s helpful to understand several psychological frameworks that explain why these shame responses persist long after childhood:

Complex PTSD and Chronic Shame

Many survivors of narcissistic abuse and childhood trauma develop what trauma expert Pete Walker describes as Complex PTSD (CPTSD). Unlike PTSD from a single traumatic event, CPTSD results from prolonged exposure to relational trauma, and one of its hallmark symptoms is a pervasive sense of shame. This isn’t just occasional embarrassment—it’s a deep, persistent belief that there is something fundamentally wrong with you.

Attachment and Shame

Our earliest attachment relationships shape how we view ourselves in relation to others. Secure attachment develops when caregivers consistently respond to a child’s needs with attunement and care. However, when these attachments are disrupted by narcissistic, neglectful, or abusive parenting, children often develop insecure attachment styles:

• Anxious attachment: Characterized by fear of abandonment and a tendency to seek excessive reassurance
• Avoidant attachment: Marked by emotional distance and difficulty trusting others
• Disorganized attachment: Involving contradictory approaches to relationships, often stemming from caregivers who were both sources of comfort and fear

Each of these attachment patterns intertwines with shame in unique ways, creating relationship patterns where either vulnerability feels dangerous (avoidant) or rejection feels catastrophic (anxious).

The Neurobiology of Shame

Your brain physically changed in response to chronic shame experiences. The neural pathways for shame became well-worn highways in your nervous system, activating automatically at the slightest trigger. However—and this is crucial—neuroplasticity means these pathways can be rewired. Your brain can create new, healthier response patterns with consistent practice and support.

11 Reasons You Should Never Feel Embarrassed About Things You Did As A Child

1. Your brain wasn’t fully developed

As a child, your prefrontal cortex—the part of your brain responsible for decision-making, impulse control, and understanding consequences—wasn’t fully developed. It doesn’t reach maturity until your mid-twenties. You literally didn’t have the brain capacity to respond “better” to many situations. You were doing the best you could with a brain that was still under construction.

2. You processed the world through a child’s perception and modeled what you saw

Children naturally see themselves as the center of their universe—not out of selfishness, but because that’s how developing minds work. When bad things happen around them, they assume they must be the cause. If a parent was angry, depressed, or abusive, you likely internalized that as “I made them feel this way” or “I deserve this treatment.”

This wasn’t your failure—it was a normal developmental response to abnormal circumstances. Similarly, you simply didn’t know there were other ways to be. Your environment was your entire world. If you grew up in chaos, chaos seemed normal. If love was conditional, conditional love seemed normal.

Children learn primarily through observation and imitation. If you behaved in ways that now make you cringe—being manipulative, passive-aggressive, people-pleasing, overly dramatic, or emotionally withdrawn—you were likely mirroring the behaviors that were modeled to you. You can’t blame a child for speaking the “language” they were taught.

3. You were programmed to maintain attachment at all costs

Human children are biologically wired to maintain connection with caregivers—it’s a survival mechanism. When faced with the choice between being authentic and keeping parental love and protection, your instinct for survival kicked in. If you abandoned your true self to maintain attachment, you were following the most basic human programming. This wasn’t weakness; it was your body’s way of keeping you alive.

4. You were taught the wrong lessons about your worth

If you grew up with narcissistic or emotionally immature caregivers, you were likely taught that your worth was conditional—based on achievement, appearance, behavior, or usefulness to others. Children believe what they’re told and shown, especially about themselves. The shame you feel isn’t evidence of your inadequacy; it’s evidence of what you were wrongly taught.

The Unpredictable Spotlight of Shame

Many survivors can recall moments when they were simply existing—playing, daydreaming, or just being a child—when suddenly an adult’s negative attention would spotlight them, often with humiliating comments: “Stop acting like the village idiot,” or “Do you have to be so embarrassing?”

These moments were particularly confusing and damaging because:

• You weren’t self-conscious until that moment—you were simply being yourself
• The criticism came without warning or explanation
• You couldn’t identify what you’d done “wrong”
• It was often performed in front of others, adding public humiliation
• The behavior being criticized was often just normal childhood existence

This pattern taught you that your natural state of being was somehow shameful, that you could be enjoying life one moment and be humiliated the next without understanding why. Over time, this created a hypervigilance about simply existing in the world—a constant background anxiety that at any moment, your very way of being might be deemed unacceptable.

When narcissistic parents use these tactics, they’re rarely actually responding to anything inappropriate in the child’s behavior. Instead, they’re often:

• Using the child as a prop in their social performance
• Attempting to get approval or laughs from other adults
• Asserting control and dominance
• Projecting their own insecurities
• Maintaining their role as the judge of all behavior

The result? A child who learns that existing authentically in the world is dangerous and that shame can strike at any moment, for no comprehensible reason.

5. You didn’t know you were allowed to have needs

Many trauma survivors learned early that having needs—for comfort, attention, help, or even basic care—was somehow wrong or burdensome. You may have been praised for being “so independent” or “such a little adult” when in reality, you were being neglected. Children are supposed to have needs. That’s normal, not shameful.

6. You were responding to impossible situations

Children in traumatic environments often face no-win scenarios: If you spoke up, you were punished; if you stayed silent, you felt guilty. If you showed emotion, you were “too sensitive”; if you didn’t, you were “cold.” The “wrong” behaviors you feel ashamed of were often your attempts to navigate impossible situations with the limited tools you had.

7. You had to become a different person to survive

Many trauma survivors developed a “false self” to please caregivers or avoid abuse. This might have involved being unnaturally quiet, overly agreeable, high-achieving, or taking on caretaking roles. If you feel embarrassed about being “fake” or “performing” as a child, remember that this was a sophisticated survival strategy—evidence of your resilience, not your weakness.

For many, this shift from authentic existence to self-monitoring happened suddenly and repeatedly. One moment you were happily playing, lost in your own imagination or joy, the next moment you were jolted into painful self-awareness by a parent’s cutting remark or dismissive comment. These moments teach children to subconsciously toggle between states: the freedom of unselfconscious being versus the constraint of being constantly on guard against criticism. Over time, many survivors learned to abandon the former entirely, living in a perpetual state of self-monitoring and performance. And much of the time they have no idea they’re doing this.

8. You didn’t know healthy boundaries existed

If your boundaries were repeatedly violated, or if you witnessed unhealthy relationships, you had no model for appropriate boundaries. The times you may have been “too agreeable,” let others take advantage of you, or conversely, when you lashed out to protect yourself—these weren’t character flaws but symptoms of never being taught healthy boundary-setting.

9. Your emotional education was neglected

Children don’t inherently know how to identify, process, or express emotions—they need to be taught. If your caregivers dismissed your feelings (“Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about”), punished emotional expression, or were emotionally volatile themselves, you never received this crucial education. Emotional difficulties weren’t your fault; they were the result of emotional neglect.

10. You were dealing with an adult-sized burden with child-sized shoulders

Many children of dysfunctional families become parentified—taking care of siblings, managing household responsibilities, or emotionally supporting adults. If you feel embarrassed about times you failed at these tasks, remember that no child should have been given those responsibilities in the first place. The failure was in the adults who burdened you, not in your inability to carry that weight.

11. You were reacting to trauma, not choosing behavior

What adults may have labeled as “bad behavior” was often trauma response: hypervigilance, dissociation, emotional dysregulation, or fight/flight/freeze/fawn reactions. These weren’t choices; they were your nervous system’s automatic attempts to protect you from perceived threats. Your body was doing exactly what it was designed to do under threat.

The Body’s Response: Shame Lives in Your Physical Self

Shame isn’t just a psychological experience—it lives in your body. As psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk explains in his groundbreaking work “The Body Keeps the Score,” trauma and chronic shame create lasting physical effects:

Somatic Expressions of Chronic Shame

• Immune System Impact: Research from the ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) study shows clear links between childhood trauma and physical health problems in adulthood, including autoimmune disorders and chronic inflammation
• Physical Tension Patterns: Many survivors develop characteristic tension in the neck, shoulders, or gut—physical armor against perceived judgment
• Pain Syndromes: Conditions like fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, and unexplained pain disorders often have connections to trauma histories
• Your Body’s Alarm System: Shame triggers can send your nervous system into fight/flight/freeze/fawn states, affecting digestion, sleep, and energy levels

These physical manifestations aren’t “all in your head”—they’re real physiological responses to your experiences. The exhaustion Eliana feels when shame hits isn’t just emotional fatigue; it’s her body responding to a perceived threat with the same intensity as if she were facing physical danger.

Understanding this somatic component is crucial because healing often needs to involve both the body and mind. Practices like trauma-informed yoga, somatic experiencing therapy, or even simple grounding exercises can help recalibrate a nervous system stuck in shame response.

Try This: When shame hits, place one hand on your heart and one on your belly. Take three slow breaths while silently saying, “This feeling is old and was never about me. My body is responding to the past, not the present.” Notice any shift in your physical tension as you acknowledge the source of these sensations.

When Shame Has No Memory: Understanding Implicit Trauma

Not all shame comes with a clear memory attached. Sometimes, you might experience sudden waves of overwhelming shame without knowing why—a formless, nameless feeling that you’ve done something terribly wrong or that there’s something fundamentally flawed about you. This is often connected to implicit memory—experiences that were stored in your body and emotional systems before you had the verbal or cognitive capacity to form explicit memories.

These might include:

Pre-verbal Experiences

Some of our most profound shame can originate from our earliest years, before we could form narrative memories. The infant who cried and wasn’t soothed, the toddler whose excitement was repeatedly met with irritation—these experiences don’t become stories we can recall, but they become feelings embedded in our nervous system.

Atmospheric Trauma

Sometimes it wasn’t a specific incident but the persistent atmosphere of your childhood home. If you grew up with a pervasive sense that you were a burden, unwanted, or somehow “too much,” this might not be attached to any particular memory but was communicated through countless subtle interactions.

Body-based Shame

Many survivors experience shame as a purely physical sensation—a hollowness in the chest, a burning face, a desire to disappear—without a connected narrative. This can be your body remembering what your mind cannot explicitly recall.

The Shame of Existing

Perhaps the most profound form is what some therapists call “existence shame”—the deep sense that your very being, your taking up space in the world, is somehow wrong. This rarely connects to specific memories because it wasn’t created by a single event but by a persistent message that your authentic self was unacceptable.

How to Work with Implicit Shame

When shame arises without memory:

• Acknowledge the feeling without demanding a reason. “I’m feeling shame right now. I don’t need to know why to respond with compassion.”
  Attend to the body sensation. Place a hand where you feel the shame in your body. Breathe into that space with gentle awareness.
• Speak to the feeling directly. “This shame was never about me. It was about the environment I was in and the treatment I received. This feeling is old and doesn’t reflect the truth of who I am or who I’ve always been.”
• Create containment. Visualize the feeling as having boundaries—it is a part of your experience, not the totality of who you are. Imagine putting it into a golden bubble and letting it float up to the sky.
• Remember context. Even without specific memories, you can recognize: “These feelings were formed when I was vulnerable and dependent, in circumstances I didn’t choose.”

This formless shame can be the most difficult to address precisely because it lacks a narrative you can reframe. Yet by acknowledging its existence and responding with the same compassion you would offer to your remembered child self, you can gradually create new implicit memories—ones of being met with understanding rather than judgment.

When Children Harm: Understanding and Healing from Your Most Shameful Actions

Among the most painful shame experiences survivors carry are memories of times when, as children, they harmed others—perhaps another child, an animal, or themselves. These memories often carry the heaviest burden of shame because they seem to confirm the deepest fear: “I really was bad.”

A man in his sixties shared that his most persistent shame came from a memory of killing a turtle when he was six years old—an act he has carried as evidence of his inherent badness for over five decades. What he revealed later was that at the time, he was being sexually trafficked by his parents from infancy. This context changes everything about how we understand his childhood action.

The Neurobiology of Re-enactment

When children experience severe trauma, especially ongoing abuse, their developing brains and nervous systems are profoundly impacted. Children who harm others or animals are often:

• Re-enacting their own victimization: Attempting to process overwhelming experiences by shifting from the powerless position to the powerful one
• Responding from a dysregulated nervous system: Acting from fight/flight activation rather than from the higher reasoning centers of the brain
• Expressing unspeakable emotions: Using behavior to communicate feelings they have no words for and no safe person to tell
• Seeking a sense of control: Trying to gain some agency in a life where they have none

The “Identification with the Aggressor” Defense

Psychologists recognize that children sometimes psychologically identify with their abusers as a survival mechanism. This doesn’t mean they become like their abusers in character, but rather that they may temporarily adopt behaviors they’ve experienced as a way of making sense of their trauma or trying to master their fear.

Contextualizing, Not Excusing

Understanding the context of harmful actions you took as a child doesn’t mean excusing them or suggesting they didn’t matter. Rather, it means recognizing that:

• A child acting from trauma is fundamentally different from an adult choosing to harm
• Your actions emerged from your circumstances, not your character
• What you did then reflects what was done to you, not who you inherently are
• Children have extremely limited tools for processing severe trauma

Healing from Your Most Shameful Actions

If you carry shame about something harmful you did as a child:

1. Recognize your complete context. Don’t isolate the behavior from the full circumstances of your childhood. What else was happening to you? What were you being exposed to? What resources for processing emotions were available to you?
2. Apply developmental understanding. Children at different ages have different capacities for impulse control, emotional regulation, empathy, and understanding consequences. Your action needs to be viewed through the lens of your developmental stage at the time.
3. Practice fierce compassion. Imagine watching another child with your exact history do what you did. Would you condemn them as inherently bad, or would you recognize their pain and need for help?
4. Allow for grief alongside shame. Many survivors find that beneath their shame is profound grief—for the animal or person they harmed, but also for the child they were who was so desperate and alone that this action seemed necessary.
5. Consider symbolic amends. While you can’t undo the past, many survivors find healing in making contributions to related causes—supporting animal welfare organizations, child protection agencies, or other efforts that help prevent similar suffering.

Remember: One action, even a harmful one, taken by a traumatized child does not define their character or worth. It is a symptom of their circumstances, not their soul. That child—you—deserved help, not condemnation.

When Good Deeds Feel Shameful: The Paradox of Trauma-Induced Shame

One of the most confusing aspects of shame flashbacks is that they can attach to positive memories as easily as negative ones. Many survivors share the bewildering experience of feeling intense shame when remembering acts of kindness or generosity they performed—organizing charity events, helping others, sharing gifts, or expressing care.

A survivor might recall organizing a care package project for people serving overseas, only to be flooded with embarrassment rather than pride. Another might remember publicly thanking someone who helped them, and feel overwhelming shame at the memory. Despite having done something objectively good, the emotional response is pure, visceral shame.

This happens for several interconnected reasons:

The Distorted Mirror of Visibility

For those raised in environments where being seen was dangerous, memories of being visible—even for positive reasons—can trigger delayed shame responses. While a part of you genuinely wanted to contribute or express care (by organizing the care packages, for example), another part—the protective part shaped by trauma—later responds with alarm: ‘You’ve made yourself visible. You’ve taken up space. This is dangerous.’

This explains the confusing experience of feeling genuinely motivated to do something meaningful, only to be ambushed by shame afterward. The shame isn’t about what you did, but about the perceived danger of having been noticed at all, which might lead to unfair judgement—a danger that was very real in your childhood. Just for existing.

The Contamination of Small Mistakes

When a small mistake or misunderstanding occurs within an otherwise positive action (like stumbling over words during a thank-you speech or forgetting to acknowledge someone important), the trauma brain magnifies this detail until it consumes the entire memory. This is because in abusive environments, tiny imperfections were often used as justification for disproportionate punishment or criticism.

The Discomfort of Positive Regard

Many survivors were conditioned to feel uncomfortable with positive attention or appreciation. If doing good things led to being singled out for praise, and praise was followed by heightened expectations or eventual disappointment, your nervous system might have learned to associate even positive attention with danger. And simultaneously, you may crave affirmation as reassurance against your deepest fears.

The “Who Do You Think You Are?” Effect

In narcissistic family systems, taking initiative often triggered the narcissist’s insecurity. A child demonstrating competence, leadership, or generosity might have been met with comments like “Who do you think you are?” or “Look who thinks they’re so special.” This teaches you that stepping into your power is somehow arrogant or wrong. Societal forces (e.g., school shaming, religious guilt, cultural hierarchies) often compound personal shame, making it harder to unravel. Especially in systems where:

• perfectionism is rewarded,
• self-worth is tied to productivity,
• self-criticism is mistaken for humility.

Healing This Particular Wound

This specific type of shame—shame for good deeds—can be particularly persistent because it’s so irrational, and yet so visceral. Here are approaches that can help:

1. Practice the “Both/And” perspective: “I both made a small mistake AND did something genuinely kind and worthwhile.”
2. Document objective feedback: Keep a record of the actual responses you received for your actions, not just the shame response your brain generated later.
3. Challenge the ownership of shame: When shame arises around a positive memory, ask “Whose voice is this? Who benefits from me feeling ashamed of my kindness?”
4. Reframe visibility: Practice saying “It’s safe for me to be seen doing good things” when these memories arise.
5. Honor your younger self’s courage: Recognize that any act of generosity or leadership requires you to overcome the very conditioning that now generates shame about it.

For many survivors, this shame diminishes over time with healing work, but it can persist for decades. The good news is that recognizing this pattern as a trauma response rather than legitimate shame is itself a significant step toward freedom. Your rational mind recognizing the irrationality of the shame is the beginning of its power diminishing.

Righteous Anger: The Path Through Shame

For many trauma survivors, there’s a crucial emotion that’s often missing in their healing journey: healthy anger. Survivors of narcissistic abuse were frequently punished for showing anger or taught that their anger was inappropriate, selfish, or dangerous. As a result, many survivors skip the anger phase of healing and default to self-blame and shame.

Why Anger Matters in Healing

Righteous anger—anger in response to genuine mistreatment—serves several important functions:

• It establishes boundaries: Anger signals “This treatment is not acceptable”
• It reallocates responsibility: Anger says “This wasn’t my fault; it was wrong what they did”
• It provides energy: Anger can mobilize you out of the paralysis of shame
• It honors your worth: Anger confirms “I deserved better than what I received”

The Shame-Anger Connection

Shame and anger are often two sides of the same coin. What looks like shame (“I’m terrible”) may actually be anger turned inward (“They treated me terribly”) because directing anger outward felt too dangerous in your childhood environment.

Accessing Healthy Anger

If you find yourself drowning in shame about past experiences, try these approaches:

1. Witness your child self: Imagine watching what happened to you happening to another child. What would you feel toward the adults in that scenario?
2. Write an unsent letter: Express all the anger you weren’t allowed to show then. No one needs to see this—it’s about accessing the emotion.
3. Use physical release: Punch pillows, scream in your car, or engage in intense exercise to help move the energy of anger through your body safely.
4. Validate the anger: Tell yourself “I have every right to be angry about how I was treated.”

Remember that healthy anger doesn’t mean acting aggressively or holding onto bitterness—it means acknowledging the natural emotional response to mistreatment as part of your healing process. For many survivors, allowing themselves to feel angry about their mistreatment creates space for the shame to finally begin dissolving.

When Present Becomes Past: Adult Shame Flashbacks

Thus far, we’ve primarily addressed shame related to childhood experiences or memories. But one of the most insidious aspects of trauma-based shame is how it infiltrates your adult experiences, creating new shame flashbacks about current events in your life.

Eliana’s experience at the beginning of this article illustrates this perfectly—her professional triumph triggered a shame response not because she did anything wrong in the present, but because the situation shared elements with past experiences where being visible led to painful consequences.

Why Adult Experiences Trigger Old Shame

Several mechanisms explain why perfectly ordinary—or even positive—adult experiences can trigger profound shame responses:

1. Pattern Recognition Gone Awry

Your brain is constantly scanning for patterns based on past experiences. When it detects elements that share features with earlier trauma (even subtly), it can activate the same emotional and physiological responses:

• A boss’s neutral feedback might trigger the shame response originally connected to a critical parent
• Receiving appreciation might activate the shame originally tied to moments when praise preceded disappointment
• Making a minor mistake might trigger the shame response from when mistakes led to humiliation

2. Emotional Time Travel

Trauma can create what therapists call “emotional flashbacks”—where you emotionally time-travel back to how you felt during traumatic periods, even without specific memories. During these states:

• Your emotional age regresses to how old you felt during the original trauma
• Your perspective narrows to match the limited understanding you had then
• Your body responds with the same physiological stress reaction
• Your beliefs temporarily revert to the negative core beliefs formed then

3. Nervous System Conditioning

Your nervous system developed conditioned responses to certain types of situations. When similar contexts arise in adulthood, your body responds automatically before your conscious mind has time to evaluate the present reality:

• Physical sensations of shame (face flushing, chest tightening, stomach dropping)
• Urges to hide, disappear, or apologize excessively
• Overwhelming fatigue or sudden disconnection from others
• Harsh self-criticism that seems to arise from nowhere

How to Distinguish Healthy Remorse from Trauma-Based Shame

Not all negative feelings about your actions are trauma responses. Healthy adults experience appropriate regret, remorse, and accountability. Here’s how to tell the difference:

Healthy Remorse:

• Is proportional to the actual impact of your actions
• Leads to specific behavioral change and repair
• Passes with time and corrective action
• Feels clean and clear, not toxic and overwhelming
• Focuses on the behavior, not your worth as a person
• Empowers you to do better

Trauma-Based Shame:

• Feels disproportionate and catastrophic
• Leads to global self-condemnation (“I’m terrible”)
• Persists despite evidence or reassurance
• Creates physical symptoms and exhaustion
• Attacks your fundamental worth and right to exist
• Paralyzes rather than motivates change

Breaking the Adult Shame Cycle

When you find yourself experiencing shame about current experiences:

1. Name the time travel: “I’m having an emotional flashback. This overwhelming shame is from my past, not my present. This shame was never truly about me.”
2. Orient to now: Identify specific ways your current situation is different from your childhood—the power you have now, the resources available, the people who support you.
3. Address the younger part: “The part of me feeling this shame is young and scared. That makes sense given my history, but I’m an adult now and can respond differently.”
4. Check external reality: Seek perspective from trusted others about whether your action warrants the intensity of shame you’re feeling. Often, what feels catastrophic to you appears minor to others.
5. Practice exposure with support: Gradually increase your tolerance for situations that trigger shame (like visibility, making mistakes, or receiving praise) while maintaining compassion for your responses.

Remember that these adult shame flashbacks are aftershocks—they don’t reflect your current reality but rather the continued reverberation of past events through your nervous system. With practice, you can learn to recognize them as such, reducing their power to define your present experience.

When Shame Feels Protective: Why We Resist Letting Go

One of the most surprising aspects of healing from shame is encountering our own resistance to letting it go. Even as the rational mind understands that these shame responses are irrational and harmful, a deeper part often clings to shame as if it were vital for survival. This isn’t a failure of healing—it’s a normal part of the process that needs to be approached with understanding.

How Shame Became a Protection Strategy

In trauma-informed approaches like Internal Family Systems (IFS), these resistant parts are understood as “protectors” that developed for good reasons. Your shame response may have originally served essential functions:

• Prevention of further harm: “If I feel ashamed enough, I’ll prevent myself from ever taking a risk that could lead to criticism.”
• Connection maintenance: “Feeling shame when I stand out keeps me from threatening relationships with caregivers who were threatened by my achievements.”
• Identity coherence: “This shame has been with me so long that it feels like part of who I am—who would I be without it?”
• Moral compass: “My shame proves I care about doing the right thing and prevents me from making mistakes.”
• Control illusion: “If I blame and shame myself, I maintain the illusion that I could have controlled what happened to me.”

Signs You’re Resisting Shame Release

You might be experiencing protective resistance if you notice:

• Intellectually understanding shame concepts but not feeling any emotional shift
• Finding yourself arguing with supportive messages (“That’s not true in my case”)
• Physical tension when trying shame-release exercises
• Feeling anxious or unsafe when imagining life without shame
• Worrying that without shame, you’d become selfish or careless

Building a Relationship with Your Protective Shame

Rather than fighting against this resistance, try approaching it with curiosity:

1. Acknowledge the protective intent: “I understand this shame feels necessary for my safety or identity.”
2. Dialoguing with shame: Ask your shame, “What are you afraid would happen if you weren’t here?” Listen for the answer without judgment.
3. Gradual release negotiation: “What would you need to feel safe enough to let me feel less shame in just one specific situation?”
4. Establish new protections: “Instead of shame, I can use discernment, boundaries, and values to guide my actions.”
5. Honor the service: “Thank you for trying to protect me all these years when I had few other resources.”

Building this relationship with your protective “shame parts” creates space for them to trust that you’ll remain safe as you gradually release their grip on your life. This is definitely not something to “power through.” This approach honors the wisdom of your whole self—including the parts that developed these strategies in response to genuinely difficult circumstances.

Breaking Free: Moving Beyond Childhood Shame

Understanding intellectually that you shouldn’t feel embarrassed about your childhood self is one thing. Actually releasing that shame is another. Here are some practices that can help transform these painful shame flashbacks:

Recognize the Flashback

When a memory ambushes you and that wave of shame hits, name what’s happening: “This is a shame flashback. This is my past, not my present.” Simply recognizing the process can help break its power.

Meet Your Younger Self with Compassion

When a memory surfaces, try this exercise: Visualize yourself at that age, in that moment. Now approach this child as the adult you are today. What would you say to them? How would you comfort them? Would you judge them harshly, or would you offer understanding? Practice directing the compassion you’d show to any vulnerable child toward your own younger self.

Challenge the Shame Narrative

For each memory that brings shame, ask yourself:

• What did I believe this said about me as a person?
• Who taught me to interpret it this way?
• How would I interpret this same behavior in a child I love?
• What context or understanding am I missing from my adult perspective?

Create a Reparative Witness

Many shame flashbacks persist because your child self needed a protective, supportive adult who wasn’t there. Now, you can be that person. When memories arise, practice saying (either silently or aloud): “I see you. This wasn’t your fault. You were doing your best. I’m here now.”

Practice Physical Grounding

Shame flashbacks often trigger the body’s stress response. When one hits, try:

• Placing a hand on your heart and one on your stomach
• Feeling your feet firmly on the ground
• Taking five slow, deep breaths
• Naming five things you can see in your present environment

This helps return your nervous system to the present, where you are safe.

Share Selectively

Shame thrives in isolation. Consider sharing your experience with a trusted person or trauma-informed therapist. Often, speaking our shame aloud in a safe space can diminish its power.

Develop a Mantra

Create a brief phrase you can repeat when shame flashbacks occur: “That was then, this is now.” “I was a child doing my best.” “I release all shame that was never about me, and isn’t mine to carry.”

The Self-Compassion Hurdle: When Kindness Feels Wrong

For many survivors, one of the most challenging aspects of healing is the practice of self-compassion. Despite intellectually understanding the concepts we’ve discussed, you might find that treating yourself with kindness feels:

• Fake or inauthentic
• Undeserved or unearned
• Selfish or self-indulgent
• Vulnerable or dangerous
• Foreign or uncomfortable

This resistance isn’t a character flaw or a sign that you’re “doing it wrong”—it’s a natural response when self-criticism was either modeled to you or became a survival strategy.

Why Self-Compassion Feels Threatening

According to self-compassion researcher Dr. Kristin Neff, there are several reasons why survivors struggle with self-kindness:

1. Familiarity with criticism: Harsh self-judgment feels normal because it mimics how you were treated
2. The drive for control: Self-criticism creates the illusion that you can prevent future mistakes or rejection
3. Identity concerns: If self-criticism has been part of your identity, compassion can feel like losing yourself
4. Misunderstanding compassion: Many survivors confuse self-compassion with self-pity or letting yourself “off the hook”
5. Fear of vulnerability: Self-compassion requires acknowledging pain, which can feel frightening

Easing Into Self-Compassion

Rather than forcing self-compassion (which often increases resistance), try these gentler approaches:

• Start with compassion for others: Practice kindness toward others, then toward your younger self, before attempting it for your current self
• Use the “good friend” perspective: Ask what you would say to a dear friend in your situation
• Begin with permission: “I’m allowed to be kind to myself about this specific thing”
• Acknowledge the discomfort: “It feels strange to be kind to myself, and that’s okay”
• Try physical self-compassion: A gentle hand on your heart can convey kindness even when words feel impossible
• Start with neutrality: If kindness feels impossible, begin with “I don’t have to condemn myself for this”

Remember that self-compassion is a skill that develops with practice. The discomfort you feel is not evidence that you’re undeserving of kindness—it’s evidence of how deeply you were taught that you were undeserving. And that teaching was wrong.

Rebuilding Your Foundation: Long-Term Healing from Shame

Returning to our earthquake metaphor, healing from chronic shame isn’t about pretending the damage never happened. It’s about carefully assessing the structural damage to your foundation and systematically reinforcing it to withstand future aftershocks.

Understanding Structural Damage

Just as structural engineers assess buildings after earthquakes, trauma-informed therapy helps identify where your psychological foundation has been compromised:

• Connection circuits: Your brain’s capacity for safe relationships
• Regulation systems: Your nervous system’s ability to maintain equilibrium
• Identity structures: Your core beliefs about yourself and your worth
• Agency architecture: Your sense of control and efficacy in your life

The Rebuilding Process

Healing involves reinforcing these damaged areas:

1. Foundation stabilization: Developing basic emotional regulation skills and safety practices
2. Structural assessment: Identifying the core beliefs and nervous system patterns that were damaged
3. Reinforcement: Gradually introducing new experiences and perspectives that strengthen your capacity to withstand shame triggers
4. Architectural upgrades: Building new response patterns that allow you to respond to shame triggers with compassion rather than collapse
5. Regular maintenance: Ongoing practices that continue to strengthen your resilience and self-relationship

Living in a Rebuilt Structure

A fully retrofitted building doesn’t look damaged anymore, but it has been fundamentally changed by the experience of the earthquake. Similarly, healing from chronic shame doesn’t mean returning to some imagined state of “never having been traumatized.” Instead, it means:

• You recognize aftershocks when they happen, but they no longer destabilize your whole structure
• Your foundation has been reinforced with compassion and understanding
• You’ve built beautiful new rooms in your life that weren’t part of the original blueprint
• You understand the engineering of trauma in a way that helps you support others
• You appreciate the resilience of your structure in a way others might never understand

This is why many survivors, once sufficiently healed, speak of being grateful for aspects of their journey—not for the original earthquake, but for the person they became through the process of rebuilding.

Copyright Notice: This excerpt is from my forthcoming book. All content is © 2025 Worldwide Groove Corporation. Unauthorized reproduction, distribution, or use of this material without permission is prohibited. Thank you for respecting my work. 😊

Photo Credit: Author, Substack

Guest Post Disclaimer: This guest post is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing shared here, across CPTSDfoundation.org, any CPTSD Foundation website, our associated communities, or our Social Media accounts, is intended to substitute for or supersede the professional advice and direction of your medical or mental health providers. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the guest author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CPTSD Foundation. For further details, please review the following: Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer

You’ve walked through storms that tested every part of you, and you stood back up, with courage in your heart.

PTSD may have shaped part of your story, but it does not define who you are. You are still whole, still capable, and your light and strength are still in your heart — they have only been waiting for you to see them again.

On this path of recovery, there will be moments of grief, anger, and pain. Let’s not push these feelings away or keep them bottled up. At such times, it helps to sit together, speak with compassion, and support one another.

Despite the past, I want you to believe in yourself. The strength that carried you through the darkness is the same strength that can now guide you toward healing. You have the power to begin anew, to rebuild your life piece by piece into something peaceful, meaningful, and filled with joy.

There is no rush, healing moves at the pace of kindness. Just breathe. Take one small step, then another. Trust that each moment of courage counts, and every gentle choice you make for yourself is a quiet victory.

Leave the pain where it belongs, in yesterday. Open your heart to the possibility that tomorrow can feel lighter. You deserve happiness, love, and a life that feels like home.

You’ve survived the hardest parts already. Now, it’s time to live again: freely, bravely, and filled with hope. The future is yours to create, and it can be beautiful beyond measure.

You are now becoming whole in new and beautiful ways. Gently step into your own light, and trust that every day holds a chance for renewal. You deserve peace. You deserve love. You deserve the good life you’ve always dreamed of: because it’s still waiting for you.

I want you to know that I understand because I’ve walked that path too. You’re not alone in this journey. If you ever need someone to talk to, a voice that listens and truly believes in your courage — I’m here. Always.

With Love and Light,
Jeanne💗

Feature Photo Credit: UnSplash

Graphic Credit: Author Owned

Guest Post Disclaimer: This guest post is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing shared here, across CPTSDfoundation.org, any CPTSD Foundation website, our associated communities, or our Social Media accounts, is intended to substitute for or supersede the professional advice and direction of your medical or mental health providers. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the guest author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CPTSD Foundation. For further details, please review the following: Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer

I got really angry last week with a colleague who offended me about my work. I had done nothing wrong; I was only guilty of caring for a child who needed emotional support when no one else noticed. I rarely get angry, but the other teacher’s insulting words made me see red. I had to leave the teacher’s lounge and try to walk it off before the end of recess.

In this article, I explore the topic of managing anger for trauma survivors who are living with Complex PTSD.

People choose to turn away from trauma and ignore the truth, although trauma is everywhere. The news cycle is constantly spitting out story after story of a world full of pain and suffering.

For trauma survivors, looking away is not possible because it is a part of us.

The anger is impossible to ignore.

During my healing journey, I have learned that there are no wrong feelings. It’s how we react to those feelings that proves what kind of people we are.

Dealing with and healing from Complex PTSD presents a complex state of living. Trauma changes the very essence of who we are and how we handle situations. Healing from trauma is like living with grief.

There are five stages of grief during a healing process.

1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

Source: Kübler-Ross grief cycle model from article: The Five Stages of Grief: https://www.psycom.net/stages-of-grief

These stages are vital in recovering from grief–and notice how anger is the second on the list. Trauma survivors are familiar with all of these stages, as they regularly appear in our everyday lives.

We experience the grief components of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance over and over. They can happen all at the same time when we are triggered. Thus, trauma survivors may feel things more intensely because it all feels so overwhelming and sudden. We also tend to struggle with grief because those feelings seem so “normal” to us.

Anger

Anger is an intense emotion where the adrenal glands in our bodies release stress hormones called adrenaline and cortisol. We feel flooded with an intense surge of energy as our brain reacts by sending blood away from our core into our muscles so that we are prepared for a physical reaction. Our blood pressure increases with our heart rate, and we experience a rise in body temperature. We might sweat, but our minds are focused and sharp.

Anger is a normal part of the grief process, and I recognize that it plays a big part in the healing from trauma. Feeling angry is natural. You may often feel “on edge” and “irritated” by people around you who simply “don’t get you.”

You have a right to feel angry, but it is how you channel that anger that is vital to your healing journey.

I know by my own experience that when we feel emotional, we aren’t always perceptive to those around us. We often make mistakes, and we apologize or regret our actions afterwards. We frequently take our anger out on the people we love the most, and this emotion shows itself in explosive rages. We know it isn’t right, but we still do it because they are closest to us.

What do you do when you feel angry? Where do you go? Who do you turn to? Is there an outlet where you can channel that anger into?

It is natural to feel angry and for those strong emotions to come to the surface to be dealt with. In fact, it is vital to voice that anger, though it is not healthy to be angry all the time. There has to be a balance in our healing. All feelings are important in our recovery, and anger is one of them. If you are feeling angry every day, your body experiences a chronic surge of stress hormones, which opens you to negative biological side effects like:

• Headaches
• Abdominal pain
• Insomnia
• Depression
• High blood pressure
• Increased anxiety
• Skin problems

These symptoms are the result of the body being in a heightened state of stress. Too much adrenaline and cortisol are not good for us. Many survivors with Complex PTSD have one or several of these symptoms. If you are feeling out of control emotionally, you need to try to recognize this feeling and incorporate some strategies to help your body get back in control.

Here are some coping strategies  I use when I am feeling angry:

1. Go for a walk and move away from the situation or people who made you feel angry.
2. Take notice of your breathing and try to calm your breath to a regular rhythm. If your heart rate is raised, you are not calm! Focus your eyes on a point in the distance and stare at it. Take in the details. What do you see?
3. Recognize the emotion for what it is. “I’m feeling angry because…” is a great way to start. Let the emotion wash over you like a waterfall.
4. Once you know why you are angry, come up with a solution for how you can move on.
5. Do something physical–go for a hike, a run, or do another sport to get rid of the stress hormones in your body. Then stretch or do something to cool down from that activity.
6. Talk to a friend or someone you trust about how you feel. It is healthy to turn to others in times of stress, and just being listened to and supported can help much more than words.

When I am really angry, I need physical activity to calm my senses. It is the only thing that helps me because, without it, the emotion will only grow. That anger will start to consume me, which is when I start making decisions that are not right for me or those around me. Sport helps me focus, and feel better. Physical movement helps me to experience calmness as the adrenaline of the exertion leaves my body.

Another alternative for me is music, as I play several instruments. I immerse myself in the rhythms and nuances of the vibrations and let the music flow deeply through me. Feeling alive and in the moment are the things that get me through my anger.

A Final Note

Close your eyes for a moment and think about your feelings right now. How are you today? Notice your heartbeat and the rhythm of your breathing. What is your body telling you? If the answer is angry, think about what you can do to feel better. How can you channel that anger?

Do you have a place where you can literally “let it rip”? Do you have such a safe place?

Think of activities you can do when you are angry (or any other emotions you might have). It is always good to have a backup for a rainy day of emotions. It is, after all, thanks to those emotions that we are who we are.

Don’t let anyone tell you that you are less. We are all important, and we each have unique and personal reactions to life events. You do matter ,and healing is hard. It takes time. Express your feelings–get them out and recognize them for what they are. We don’t want to judge what we feel, but we recognize that it is not at all healthy to keep anger, or any of our emotions, locked inside. Find a channel to release them, and get rid of the negativity that burdens the body, the mind, and the soul.

You will feel so much better after you have allowed yourself to experience anger.

My name is Lizzy. I’m a trauma survivor, a wife, a mom, a teacher, and an author.

If you like reading my posts, then please follow me.

For more about me: www.elizabethwoodsauthor.com

Support your fellow writer:

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Here are a few links to my top articles:

How To Explain Complex PTSD To Loved Ones

https://medium.com/illumination/how-to-explain-complex-ptsd-to-loved-ones-769f81d437ab

A Search for Identity

https://medium.com/beyond-lines/a-search-for-identity-893df7c970c2

Dealing With Flashbacks

https://medium.com/illumination/dealing-with-flashbacks-1b8c0d94c19d

The Knock on the Door that Changed My World

https://medium.com/illumination/the-knock-on-the-door-that-changed-my-world-ff126c8c07cf

This vignette may not be all that unique. Autistic people are often marginalized and excluded, not allowed to fully participate in society and live to their potential, because of the ableist world. All too often, they are not fully accepted and included. Instead, they very well may be subjected to neuroableism, “the specific type of ableism experienced by neurodivergent people due to systemic oppression in a supremacist-based society that values neurotypicalness as the ‘right’ way to be, think, and act.” Examples of neuroableism are “[a]ssuming all humans must conform to a specific way of being,” “[e]xpecting all humans to communicate in the same way,” “[j]udging and labeling neurodivergent people according to their ability to assimilate and hide their neurodivergence,” and “[r]efusing to learn to communicate with neurodivergent people in the way they need.”

Throughout their lives, autistic individuals often are expected to act like everyone else.

As autistic autism advocate Scott Frasard wrote, “[s]chools punish autistic children for stimming or not making eye contact,” “[w]orkplaces value ‘good communication skills’ over actual competence,” and “[s]ocial circles reward compliance and shun authenticity.”

Neurodiversity expert Bridgette Hebert Hamstead wrote about how inclusion often means autistic people conforming, not being accepted as their authentic selves:

Too often, inclusion does not mean changing systems to accommodate the needs of neurodivergent individuals. It means asking neurodivergent people to adapt to systems that remain rigid and unchanged. The message is not “we will meet you where you are” but rather “we will let you be here as long as you learn to act like us.” From classrooms to offices, inclusion is frequently contingent on compliance. You can be part of the group, but only if you do not rock the boat. You can join the team, but only if you keep your differences quiet. You can speak up, but only in ways that do not make others uncomfortable.

Hamstead addressed employment, which is key, as autistic people have challenges securing and maintaining employment:

In workplaces, inclusion is often performative. Employers promote diversity initiatives, host awareness events, or celebrate Neurodiversity Week, but they rarely examine the structural barriers that make the workplace inaccessible in the first place. Autistic employees are encouraged to disclose their diagnoses, but once they do, they are expected to work harder to “fit in.” Accommodations are grudgingly granted, if at all. Feedback is filtered through neurotypical standards of professionalism. There is little room for different communication styles, sensory needs, or pacing. The underlying expectation remains the same: adapt or be excluded.

Anger is natural. According to an article published by Harvard Medical School, “[in] psychological terms, anger is a normal emotional response to a person or situation you believe has treated you unfairly or has otherwise been hurtful or harmful.” Anger can be connected to “bullying, trauma, neglect, abuse, rejection, discrimination, or other struggles that may date back to childhood.” Anger can result from unfair treatment by one’s employer and denial of equal access based on illegitimate reasons, including gender and disability.

It is completely understandable that autistic people may have intense rage. They may have been constantly told that how they communicate and even how they exist is unacceptable. As Hamstead wrote:

The truth is, rage is a deeply valid and appropriate response to ableism. It is a valid response to being told your entire life that your way of being in the world is wrong. It is a valid response to being punished for sensory differences, isolated for communication styles, or gaslit by systems that refuse to accommodate your needs. It is a valid response to being infantilized, pathologized, and talked over in conversations about your own identity. It is a valid response to being denied employment, excluded from education, or subjected to harmful therapies because your brain does not function the way others expect it to.

Other sources of anger for autistic people may include sensory stimulation, others’ behavior, disturbance of routine and order, work-related and relationship-related challenges, imperfections of others, stress, and being ignored.

It may be challenging for autistic people to recognize and comprehend their feelings. Autistic people may express anger by yelling, name-calling, hitting, kicking, hurting themselves, biting, scratching, banging their heads, breaking items, and more. However, some of these actions, in modified form, may be used by autistic people to regulate their emotions. For example, some scratching could refocus an autistic person’s thoughts from anger and other negative feelings.

It is vital to address anger. Untreated anger may lead to adverse physical health consequences, including headaches, insomnia, depression, high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke, and more. It may also worsen mental health conditions, including complex PTSD and depression. In addition, as a result of rage, people may develop substance abuse disorder.

When treating an extremely angry autistic client, mental health professionals need to address their thoughts and behavior in order to make the best recommendations to the client.

• Address your thoughts and behavior:
  • Create a safe neuro-affirming space, where you accept your client’s autism-related behavior.
  • Understand their anger – The world was not built for autistic people. Instead, it was built by allistic (non-autistic) people for allistic people.
  • Realize that an autistic client may have trouble getting through the following five stages of anger: denial, depression, anger, bargaining, and acceptance. It may be extremely difficult for them to accept their situation. They were born autistic and may have major problems because of how unaccepting and ableist the world is.
  • See what could help them when they get angry. – If/when they get angry while meeting with you, you could assist them with their preferred method(s).
  • Realize that you may be one of the few people who are available to talk with them. Many autistic people are socially isolated and lonely.
  • If meeting in person, lend your client fidget toys, which may help your client filter out potentially distracting information, decrease anxiety, and sooth themselves. Do not get distracted and/or thrown off if your client uses a fidget toy.
  • Do not:
    • Get exasperated regarding their intense anger. It is much more difficult to experience their life than to hear about it for a small period of time a week.
    • Get irritated with their autistic-related behavior (i.e., liking to e-mail). If you criticize them, you could trigger them, reminding them of others who have made similar remarks.
    • Trigger them – Triggering them could make them angry. For example, do not use certain words that upset them.
    • Be afraid of your client. Your client may be angry with how the world has treated them, not with you.
    • Get taken aback if your client has trouble with emotional regulation and yells and/or cries. Autistic people often have trouble controlling their emotions.
  • Make recommendations to your client (Be flexible with your recommendations. They may work for your client some days, but not others. Be sensitive to what is happening with your client in the moment.):
    • Encourage them to channel their anger into productive actions. – For example, working on autistic advocacy could help improve the world so others would not have to go through the same experiences as an autistic client. An autistic client can advocate for autism acceptance through various means, including writing, creating videos, speaking, and more.
    • Recommend a stop-think technique, which is similar to cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Under the stop-think approach, a person stops and speculates whether their thoughts are correct or beneficial, challenges incorrect or non-beneficial thoughts, and develops alternative thoughts.
    • Encourage the creation of an action plan that your client can use regarding anger. The plan could involve methods to distract themselves from situations, remove themselves from situations, avoid incidents that could upset them, and adjust their routines.
    • Suggest that your client practice radical acceptance. Radical acceptance, which is from Dialectic Behavior Therapy, is completely accepting reality instead of fighting it (even if the situation is unfair). Accepting does not mean approval or agreement. Instead, it means acknowledging that something happened. Radical acceptance prevents pain from turning into suffering, and it prevents such thoughts as “This is unfair?” As Hamstead wrote:

 “Radical acceptance is not about giving up or resigning ourselves to suffering. It is about recognizing that who we are is valid, even if we do not fit into the boxes society expects us to occupy. It means accepting our brains, our bodies, our patterns, and our needs as they are, without needing to justify or explain them. It means allowing ourselves to stop performing, stop apologizing, and stop trying to become someone we are not. When we accept ourselves as we are in this moment, with all of our complexities and contradictions, we create space for real change to happen. Not change that comes from pressure or shame, but change that comes from growth, care, and curiosity.”

She also wrote about practicing radical acceptance:

 “We become more present in our lives, less focused on proving our worth and more attuned to what we actually need and want. We begin to create lives where we can thrive—not in spite of our neurodivergence, but because we are finally living in alignment with it.”

Her suggestions on how neurodivergent adults can practice radical acceptance are:

1. “Notice your internal dialogue.”
2. “Allow yourself to rest without earning it.”
3. “Unlearn harmful definitions of success.”
4. “Practice saying no.”
5. “Create rituals of self-affirmation.”
6. “Surround yourself with people who affirm your neurodivergence.”
7. “Let your body and brain lead.”
8. “Accept that some days will be harder than others.”
9. “Release the idea of a ‘perfect version’ of you.”
10. “Return to acceptance again and again.”

You can educate your client about and help them with radical acceptance. For example, you can use a worksheet and help your client determine what self-affirmation moments would most help them.

However, recognize that your client may have a difficult time with radical acceptance, as in their lived experience, many may not want them and their skills. In addition, realize that your client’s immense anger can motivate them to try to have the world be more accepting of autistic people.

• Suggest exercise to your client, as physical activity can assist with emotional regulation and stress. However, as autistic people are more likely to be overweight or obese than others, recommendations to exercise could irritate your client. They may know about their weight issues and feel they are going to a therapist for mental health issues, not to be told to exercise.
• Encourage your client to relax. Ways to relax include deep breathing, tai chi, and other techniques.
• Encourage your client to attend a support group, as it may be beneficial.

Autistic people have every right to be angry, as they live in a world that was not constructed for them. However, they can be extremely valuable if they are respected, not marginalized. Have empathy for them, as you should for anybody.

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I was used to putting on a smile in public and controlling what was going on inside of me to the point where I got many comments from people in my life that they would never have guessed the level of suffering I was experiencing due to how well I concealed it. There were many times I lashed out at people, but almost everyone has had those instances at some point in their life. In general, it was a daily ritual of mine to power through school and work, which were great distractions for me, with a smile on my face, offering those around me the kindness that I wasn’t able to give myself, and I would return home to begin my rituals of self-torture and punishment.  

That night, I was trying to think of ways to calm myself down. I wanted to understand better what I was so angry about. I thought maybe I was getting super angry because I hated all the people who hurt me and hadn’t forgiven them yet. I had been searching for practical ways to forgive for so long because I couldn’t seem to figure it out. I read books, listened to podcasts,  and analyzed scriptures. I started questioning if I had ever had hatred for another human being in my heart and, if so, who? 

But when I finally got my answer, I hated one human being

I even got out a pen and paper and started trying to write down the names of all the people I hated. I sat there dumbfounded. There has to be at least one, I kept thinking as I shook my pen, trying to figure out who it was. I couldn’t think of anyone. I never once hated another human being and repeatedly worked to forgive and see the goodness in those who hurt me, even when they hurt me deeply.  

But when I finally got my answer, I hated one human being. And I hated her with a fiery, burning passion hotter than the heat of the bright, burning sun. 

It was me. I hated her. I hated my own guts. 

In fact, I hated my own name. I hated even thinking about it. Anytime someone called my name, even if it was a family member or friend trying to get my attention, it would spark flashbacks, and my body would jolt.

I very reluctantly started writing my own name with shaking hands and got through the first three letters, “Nat,” which is a nickname that many people in my life call me, before the tears started viciously flowing. I really did hate every fiber of my being, and I punished myself in ways that were too personal to mention. 

I Wasn’t Born Hating Myself

I wasn’t born hating myself. Society taught me to hate myself. The control systems of the world taught me to hate myself. Other people taught me to hate myself. I taught myself to hate myself. But unfortunately, no matter what was done to me, it was me who had become my biggest abuser. 

I couldn’t see the goodness in myself or forgive myself like I could with others. I couldn’t see what other people saw in me. I was punishing myself for things that weren’t even my fault to begin with. And over time, I hated my own guts more and more.  

Living in a “Never Good Enough” Society

Almost from the moment we are born, we are constantly shown signs of why we are not good enough. The indoctrination starts just about as soon as we exit the womb. We are fed marketing campaigns to tell us that we need these shoes, that makeup, this car. We are put in school programs that stifle our creativity as we try to make perfect grades and hit the requirements of what is asked of us to prepare us to follow rules and conform. Western society convinces us that we need labels, gimmicks, and symbols of status and prestige. We’re told that all these things will make us happy. But no matter what I obtained, they didn’t truly fulfill me. I was trapped in a cycle of needing the “next best thing” to keep up with constantly changing trends. 

Eventually, no matter what I obtained for myself, I was still in so much pain. I was willing to trade in all my material possessions and live in a cardboard box if it meant having freedom in my mind and body. I no longer cared about what I knew wouldn’t bring me fulfillment. I truly just wanted peace and contentment. It took much undoing and untraining for my brain to realize that I never needed all the gimmicks I thought I needed to be worthy or “good enough.” I can still be successful in my own way, and it doesn’t require labels. For me, my greatest success has been working my butt off to heal from the pain in my body that was in survival mode for the majority of my formative years. Nothing else mattered to me once I experienced true freedom, and the temporary things that I once thought would bring me fulfillment became last year’s news once I started being genuinely content (you can’t take your stuff with you when you die!). Of course, it is important to take care of ourselves and have enough to live comfortably. But I no longer felt the need to be a superstar in the corporate world, even though that was a goal of mine at one point. As a teenager who was passionate about computer science, I once dreamed of becoming a Chief Information Officer of a big tech company. But my life has changed so much, and my trauma made me reevaluate what was really important to me so that being a leader in the corporate world is actually the last thing I want. I’m currently working a simple job that works for me, pays my bills, and gives me enough to save and experience fun things with my family and friends when I’m not working. I spend the rest of my time on my healing journey and pursuing my personal passions that I don’t want or need to monetize. I don’t feel the need to run my version of the rat race. In fact, today, I am quite a minimalist and am content with my possessions, my finances, my home, and the simplicity of my life of newfound freedom. I truly do feel free. I also believe that, since I am in my mid-twenties, this doesn’t mean that once I take some time to relax and enjoy a simple life, I can’t go back to being ambitious in other ways but on my own time. Then, I will be able to conquer those things with peace and freedom rather than with constant anxiety. 

True Contentment Comes From Within

True contentment was always within me. I never needed anything else. Once I became content with myself, I made the decision to do the things that make me happy and not worry about chasing after the next best thing. For me, my greatest possessions are my moments of genuine contentment and freedom. Loving myself has allowed me the opportunity to love others much more than I was capable of before. 

The notion that loving ourselves and taking care of ourselves is narcissistic or selfish is pretty foolish to me. The fear of being labeled narcissistic, arrogant, cocky, selfish, or a braggart was what kept me in my self-loathing for so long. I was terrified to appear too confident in myself because I knew that I had made some people uncomfortable before. I had many moments of confidence and personal success, and when I received pushback from others who were not happy for me but instead angered by my joy, I began to question if I was acting arrogant for feeling proud of myself. However, this is not logical. We are absolutely allowed to feel proud of ourselves when we reach personal milestones. I also believe it is possible to find a healthy balance between confidence and humility without being arrogant. The easiest thing for an outsider to do—if they feel upset about, jealous of, or threatened by someone’s genuine contentment and confidence—is to label them negatively to make themselves feel better about their own self-loathing and their fears of embracing their own self-confidence for fear of the same pushback they give to others. 

I had to get over my fear of loving myself as well as the fear of what others would think about that. Loving myself and taking care of myself is not selfish. It is a requirement to survive. It is a requirement to maintain a job. It is a requirement to make a difference in the lives of others. It is a requirement if I desire to be a wife and mom in the future because I cannot take care of other people if I cannot take care of myself.  

We Must Love Ourselves as Much as We Love Others

For the longest time, I had so much love to give everyone except for myself. It got to a point where I was overcompensating by giving to others because I thought my worth came from what other people thought of me. My giving nature drove me crazy, especially when it got to the point that it was at the expense of my own well-being, and I could not take care of myself. I had to take active steps to start genuinely loving myself before I set back out to love others even more than I did before. During my healing process, I finally started to see bits and pieces of the deep love that the other people in my life always had for me. Loving myself has made loving others so much easier.

I always wanted to help others by sharing my story. But first, the process had to start with me. Once I put in the work and overcame my own challenges, I felt ready to share my story with the world. 

Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog post do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

“Anger” is a loaded word, especially when used against trauma survivors who retain anger as a natural reaction to their abuse. 

My years of trauma caused a lot of built-up anger in me. But, once I started to heal and gradually escaped my constant fight-or-flight mode, I realized that I was not a naturally angry person at my core. This surprised me because I had previously accepted the fact that I was just born an angry person and that, as a highly sensitive person, I was just naturally set off by small things.

I Wasn’t Really an Angry Person

Discovering that anger isn’t my natural state but that my anger was a result of my body storing a great deal of trauma was a watershed moment for me. For so long, I had a seething mass of internal anger that ate me alive and made me hate living in my own body. I would go home, lock myself away, and scream obscenities at myself in the mirror, all while trying to fathom what I had been through. In retrospect, my body was trying to release the anger that had been stored up from years of trauma that I had not fully faced or released. While I believe it is necessary and even healthy to release those emotions constructively, I held it in publicly and chose to take it out on myself when I returned home. (Which, at the time, was the only way I knew how.)

What was I so angry about? I wasn’t so sure at the time. I just looked in the mirror, opened my mouth, and let the bile and hatred pour out of me, and it felt uncontrollable. I thought screaming these things would make me feel better and offer me some form of closure on what I had been through, but they didn’t. The more hatred and vitriol poured out of me, the angrier I became. 

But looking back, I was simply angry about the trauma I had suffered.  The things that had happened to me? They made me angry.

Trauma survivors, I want to assure you of something. Those things that happened to you and to me? They are not fair. They are not okay. They are not right. But guess what? 

Your anger is valid.  Your anger is real. Your anger needs an outlet. But you have a choice.

You can let the anger consume you for the rest of your life or do something else entirely. 

You Have a Choice

I actually used to get really angry when people told me: “You have a choice.” 

My 90-year-old grandmother, one of my best friends, was someone who would tell me this all the time. She would end her calls with a saying that she loved, and I could hear her smiling through the phone. She said, “If it is to be, it is up to me.” It’s a quirky saying, and I really do love it now, but I would often scoff after I hung up the phone. She doesn’t get it, I would think. (Looking back, maybe I should have understood that she had more than six decades of life experience with me.)

After hearing so many people tell me that I have a choice, I would just get angry again. I would think: I really don’t have a choice. These flashbacks, thoughts, and memories are so intrusive. They just don’t get it because they don’t have C-PTSD. If they had been through what I had been through, they’d understand and be angry. Being told that I’m making the choice to be miserable is so insensitive. And I would let the anger continue to consume me. 

These are the kinds of thoughts I had. While there’s some truth to them, especially in thinking that some people don’t understand my traumatic experiences, the fact that we all have a choice regarding our anger does not minimize the truth. 

Once I accepted the fact that I did have a choice as to whether I let these flashbacks take over my mind for the rest of my life, I got to work on making the choice to overcome my symptoms.

Healing starts with a choice

It doesn’t mean that these things will clear out overnight. In fact, for some, it may be years, even decades, before they do. I know C-PTSD survivors in their 50s and 60s who still struggle in this way, and that is not their fault; they just haven’t been helped in the proper ways.

Take Baby Steps to Heal Your Nervous System

Healing is about implementing the proper tools little by little. Make the choice to take baby steps that result in a healing journey. 

One of my baby steps in controlling my nervous system was getting outside for 5 to 10 minutes a day. It doesn’t sound like much to some people, but I had been so isolated for so long and my body and nervous system were so frail that I was not used to being outdoors hardly at all. I had also been heavily medicated on psych medications for many years, and being in the sun while on those medications can cause harmful side effects. 

Once I had gotten off all my psych medications (all tapered off with the help of my psychiatrist—do not taper off medications on your own!), I made time daily to be outside in natural sunlight. I would go outside for those few minutes, ensuring I had enough skin showing by wearing a tank top so the sun could beat down on my shoulders, sitting by the lake for 5 to 10 minutes with my feet in the grass. I would set my timer, practice breathing during my time outside, and go back inside once it was done. The whole experience was so intense that I would have to go back inside and sleep for a few hours because that’s how exhausted my body was just being exposed to the sun and the outside world after years of isolation. 

I kept doing this daily, gradually increasing my time outside, and my efforts sparked results. This year, I am able to spend hours outside. I will even bring my laptop to the park and work remotely for a few hours. I will lie down in the grass and practice my breathwork, and the sun feels amazing on my skin. I still do feel exhausted after being in the sun, but it’s a healthy level of exhaustion, and it’s to the point where I can continue on with my day without taking a nap. 

After understanding why I had so much anger in my body and making the choice to work through it, I discovered that, at my core, I’m not an angry person. There’s little that makes me that angry anymore. It’s so freeing to feel this way because I never thought I could get to this point. In the past, small things would spark anger, making my daily life unmanageable. But today, anger is the exception, not the rule. I feel a consistent amount of peace and freedom. Many people, even those who don’t identify with C-PTSD or PTSD, struggle with road rage. I will unashamedly raise my hand and say that I was one of them, especially after living in big cities for so long. But I practice driving very calmly now and do not experience road rage. Even when someone cuts me off in traffic, I don’t feel anger and don’t scream and yell—I just brush it off and chalk it up to that person having a bad day and continue focusing on driving safely. Or, if I’m in public and someone says something stupid to me or gets angry at me, I can stay calm and not angrily lash back at them. In the past, I would have felt the need to fight back and prove them wrong; now, I just move along and let them feel their anger—because it is not my own.

To all trauma survivors who struggle with anger, have patience with yourself and understand that it was never your anger to begin with. Take baby steps to realize you can work through it, you can release it, and that a consistently calm world is waiting for you at the end of the path.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels

Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog post do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

What was less developed were the part(s) of us who needed to learn to “take no sh*t.”  We learned, or were forced to learn, to relinquish our innate “fight” response, which would have created healthy boundaries; to do anything like asserting ourselves with appropriate anger threatened those with power over us.  Back then, it invited the real possibility of dangerous reprisals.   So, we shut it down.

There’s a trifecta of choices to respond to caregiver threats

With relational trauma, there’s a trifecta of choices to respond to caregiver threats; they are commonly known as fight, flight and freeze responses. A fourth response—fawn—is a strategy identified by Pete Walker that has been the missing piece to complete the CPTSD response repertoire. In my view, “fawn” responses are adaptive responses often derisively labeled in adulthood as being “people pleasing” or “co-dependent.”

Kids who went the “fawn” route were part of the quiet brigade.  They were the ones who generally didn’t act out but were good, kind, cooperative, or responsible people.  They perhaps performed well in life and probably looked good from the outside. But, underneath appearances, these kids were really too good for their own good.  Because they had to relinquish any “fight” or self-protective anger at their mistreatment, they lost access to a key emotion that guards personal integrity and a cohesive sense of self–healthy anger.

The biological, evolutionary, and social function of anger is to help us know our boundaries and empower us to set them.  Much of the relearning in healing from early relational trauma is coming to recognize, accept, and comfortably express our anger in appropriate and clarifying ways.  Healthy anger, when reclaimed, is not only a birthright but a way through which we rebuild our vitality.  The tricky part for people scripted in the fawn response is that often, even a hint of anger is immediately traded out for another emotion, particularly shame.  This happens so quickly that one is ashamed before registering, and one might be self-protectively angry.

Shame is an emotion that can bind every other emotion.  Typically, with the fawn response, shame is managed with “withdrawal” or “attack self” scripts.  Both of these scripts adaptively served to make us smaller targets for continued abuse while regrettably shutting down our access to self-protection.

Because we came to understand anger as an emotion of “power over,” thus something wounding and to be avoided, we have to begin by redefining what healthy anger is for us.  Healthy anger does not trample over other’s thoughts, feelings, or boundaries.  Healthy anger actually seeks “power with” another person by clarifying the terms of the relationship in a cooperative, honest, and restorative way.  Begin by redefining anger for yourself by asking these questions:

How did I come to understand what anger was?  How did I see anger displayed or expressed in my family?  Or did it go underground?

What positive or negative associations do I make to having anger, my anger or another’s?

Do I feel ashamed or guilty when I feel angry?   

What is my anger “style”?  Do I shut down, lash out, or chastise myself for having anger?

What small steps may I take to begin to connect with and name my anger?  For instance, how do I know when I’m mildly angry?  What physical sensations do I feel…a clenching in my solar plexus, heat in my chest, a reddening of my face, clenching my jaw or fists?

As you identify, elaborate, and define how you experience your anger, the next step is to get clear about the issue(s) your anger is spotlighting.  Before acting on the anger, sit with it long enough to define the problem and the solution or clarification you seek.  Finally, gradually learn to “speak for your anger, not from your anger,” meaning let anger inform you while at the same time speaking from a measured place of clarity, decisiveness, and respect for yourself and the other.  None of this is clean or easy.   However, the “trial and error” effort is worth the reclamation of an incredibly important and empowering source for setting boundaries and finding a new sense of self-worth and emotional vitality.

Image credit:  Mauro Savoca/Pexels

Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog post do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

** TRIGGER WARNING – Mention of self-harm/ injury. ** Take care when reading this article.

I don’t exactly remember when I started self-injuring, probably around 11 years old. I scratched the back of my hands or used sharp objects to scratch my arms. How superficial it was at this stage; my inner pain and terror were real. I wasn’t allowed to express my inner turmoil; my actions and my behaviour spoke louder but were ridiculed and minimised. I was being a teenager, a very difficult one. I was told I had nothing in my head and was always unhappy to start with.

Much later in my life, after years of not physically harming myself, one evening brought strong rejection/ abandonment trauma up and I cut myself. It was no longer superficial. I did it for years, secretly. I also starved myself. I wanted to disappear, or better still: I wanted to die. The thing was: I was a mother. A stressed out, single mother with little support. So, I held on, one day at a time. It left me exhausted though. My pain needed out. When I was really unwell, I overdosed a few times, one of them I was driven to A&E. Taking meds, any meds in the hope to fall into oblivion, even just for a few minutes is another form of self-harm. It is also dangerous to our bodies, even if we survive.

There are millions of reasons why someone hurt themselves. Most of the time it can be traced back to a stressful or traumatic event. For children and teenagers, victims of abuse at home or/and at school, who have nobody to turn to, or who have reached out but have been dismissed, the pain, the sadness, and the feeling of abandonment are deep. Without a safe outlet and a safe person to experience these raw emotional flashbacks with, the pressure builds up and needs to be let out. For me, it was also to show how much I was hurting on the inside as I have been told I don’t look depressed or traumatised. Because of my appearance, my difficulties weren’t taken seriously.

The question to ask, isn’t: “Why are you hurting yourself?” but: “What is hurting you?”, or “What is happening to you?” Whatever comes up, needs to be accepted as it is. Sometimes, we don’t get any answers: the pain is so overwhelming, it is hard to express through words, especially for children and teenagers. “It is no big deal. I don’t want to talk about it.” this is a hard response to accept. As parents. we want to know so we can make it all better. As friends, we want to help too.

If young people’s suffering is being downplayed because “They are teenagers.” Adults who self-injure are called childish, and immature. For all, this behaviour is labeled as a cry for help, attention seeking. It is a cry for help, one that has been left unheard, or worse completely ignored, for too long. It isn’t attention seeking, it is connection seeking. We, human beings, thrive and heal through connections, loving, accepting, and safe/ respectful connections.

In the instance someone you love is self-harming, pushing for an answer, for a conversation, a resolution isn’t helpful. We can’t shame anyone into recovery. We can’t love anyone into recovery either. The priority needs to be ourselves so we can keep on being this kind, accepting loving presence for our closest and dearest, who are suffering. For parents. it is heartbreaking. Of course, our responsibility is to keep our children safe and if the self-harm means our children land in A&E, it is distressing. No matter what we do to avoid any more injuries, they find ways to do so. We might feel guilty for not being more vigilant. We might start going through their bedroom and hiding blades, knives, etc. We are on alert and worried. Self-care still needs to be a priority so we can be a lighthouse in our children’s turbulent times. Mind offers good guidance on their website: “Helping someone who self-Harm”. And Mumsnet has a wonderful article: “What you can do if you know or suspect your teenager is self-harming“

If you are self-harming/ injuring: I am sorry you are in so much pain. I know you aren’t being difficult, or dramatic. You are hurting and your experience matter. I really hope you have at least one person you can turn to, someone you can really rely on. I also know that many of you don’t have such a person in your life. Getting access to affordable person-centered, trauma-informed, and compassionate therapies is harder than ever because of the lack of funds and the never-ending economic crisis. You can check the links below for help.  You aren’t being immature, and you aren’t disordered. You are suffering.

The mind gives tips for coping with urges to self-harm right now

The way I was able to stop self-cutting was by reminding myself that I will no longer hurt myself the way my family hurt me. I started to eat again when I started to approach this behaviour with Self-Compassion. Was it easy? Is it easy? No. It is an ongoing process. The way someone can stop themselves from hurting themselves is very personal. There is no one solution fitting all. The best remedies are patience, loving kindness, acceptance and (self) Compassion while safely exploring what lies beneath the physical wounds.

Helpful websites:

• stem4
• National Self Harm Network (NSHN)
• Harmless.org
• Young Minds
• Childline
• healthtalk
• Mind (For Adults)

Love & Light

Sylvie

Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

What is The Dread?

The Dread. That sounds rather odd doesn’t it? It makes dread personal. Like a living thing that comes in and out of my life as it pleases. Well, that’s exactly what it feels like. In author, Stephanie Foo’s excellent book about recovery from CPTSD, What My Bones Know, she coins the phrase, “The Dread.” It struck a chord in me. I can’t think of a better name for this life altering, nagging suffering than, “The Dread.”

Is it anxiety? Is it fear? Is it stress? Is it threat? I would answer that it is all of those things and more. The Dread is the anticipation of anxiety, fear, stress or threat. It comes to me unbidden. A job change? Conflict? Frustration? Technology? The future? Money? Performance? Medical appointments? These things and many more alert The Dread that it is time to show up. And show up it does.

It hangs over everything seeking to destroy anything good or any enjoyment I might have out of life. It makes me afraid of everything; afraid to try, afraid to live. How do I explain this phenomenon? Where does it come from? Why are survivors of early childhood trauma plagued by The Dread?

The Dread is directly connected to the nightmare that was my childhood. As soon as I am old enough to have memory, my mind and emotions have already acclimated to constant threat, terror, and boundary crossing. As a child,The Dread helped me anticipate abuse. It told me to be careful. “Now is the time to go hide until the threat has passed.” I learned to expect dread and it came to live within my heart, even when there was calm. Nothing belonged to me, not even my own body. All I had were my inner thoughts and my abusers even tried to control those. When abuse is unremitting, dread moves in to stay. Even after I grew up and left my abusive family, I continued to live with The Dread. 

Our nervous system is hardwired for threat. The Dread’s original purpose was as an alert to danger. It existed for our survival and protection. Eric Gentry, author of Forward Facing Freedom, says that “The Dread (my term) is an automatic response to perceived danger that exists entirely within our own bodies and minds. It is the sympathetic nervous system alerting the fight or flight response.” Because it is so deeply hardwired into our brain, The Dread is a difficult monster to banish. 

A survivor friend once shared with me that she just couldn’t get up enough courage to move toward healing. Courage is not the problem. I suspect it is The Dread doing its deadly work in her life again. The Dread becomes a fifty foot wall every time we approach healing. Why? Because in order to dismantle The Dread, you have to stop trying to avoid it. And that feels worse than The Dread does. We blame ourselves for The Dread, or for responding to The Dread. In the words of my favorite therapist, “You are not flawed. You have a wound.” In other words, it is not your fault, and you haven’t caused this.

This blog series about The Dread will run in four parts.  1. What is it?  2. The Lies of The Dread. 3. The Narcissist and The Dread. 4. How to banish The Dread. I hope you’ll stick with me and send your comments and insights via email or the question box on the front page of my website. My next series of podcasts will also be about The Dread. Click and subscribe and leave a comment on Youtube. Defy Trauma, Embrace Joy…let’s banish The Dread forever!

To contact the author and to receive a free trauma-informed newsletter, video, and worksheet every Friday, sign up at:

https://authorrebekahbrown.com/

Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.