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

I recently had the great joy of connecting with Stacey Fitzgerald. She is a Certified Nutritionist, Somatic Breathwork Practitioner, Trauma-Informed horse trainer, Singer/Songwriter, Wife, Mother, and Creator of Becoming Safe–an online course and community for healing through all forms of betrayal trauma. 

As soon as we started talking, I just knew I had to introduce you to her. I even had the chance to attend her amazing breathwork workshop, which was soothing, healing, and eye-opening!

RACHEL: What inspired you to start writing about/exploring this topic?

STACEY: In February 2021, I had what I call my Breakdown/Breakthrough, which was a resurfacing of unhealed and undiagnosed Complex PTSD. I was so rocked in my body, especially because I had done a lot of study and had a reasonably deep head knowledge of what I thought it was to “be well.”

I realized, through my own experience, even though I had processed it in my mind, was still stored in my body and had been coming out through my songwriting for decades!

And it was showing itself through severe panic attacks and debilitating physical symptoms.

I began a deeper study of all things nervous system and trauma, adding to my head knowledge, and then really finding and DOING the things for my body that helped to move the needle from knowing to being.

RACHEL: What key insights or lessons have you learned through your experiences with this subject?

STACEY: One of the questions I heard posed early on from an expert I was listening to was, “When in life have you FELT SAFE?” I found myself feeling stunned–I wasn’t really sure what was meant by “safe,” and I was quite certain that I had never really felt that way!

A key insight from that point was how we needed to REGULATE our nervous system before we process trauma. I realized I had been processing in my head, but not regulating my body. Regulation before processing is key!

The other key insight has been that our nervous system is not our enemy, even when it feels like it is! It is actually doing exactly what it was designed to do, which is keep us alive, and alert us that it needs our attention. We are not broken, rather, we are functioning exactly as intended.

The missing piece was understanding the language of the nervous system, and how to listen and respond to it.

Our body knows the way home, and when we learn to listen, and become friends with our nervous system, the way back to our true self becomes much clearer.

RACHEL:  What might you tell someone who is just beginning to work on healing trauma?

STACEY: It’s easy to say, but perhaps the hardest to commit to: you just cannot give up.

No matter what life throws at you, no matter what kind of break you might take from your healing, and whatever trouble you might get into because of that break, you have to come back to pursuing personal joy and ultimate peace.

My experience is that overcoming trauma and abuse comes down to accepting that while it was bad and horrible and wrong,it did happen. I learned to accept that it happened withoutcondoning that it happened.

So, how does a person do that? I think that one’s addictions are the easiest place to begin because there’s a free, accessible process: 12-step programs. These days, many good books you’ll come in contact with while working the steps include addressing childhood trauma. The best one I’ve reads is called Iron Legacy by Dr. Donna J. Bevan-Lee.

If you want to learn about recovery through written exercises and reading personal essays, get Iron Legacy. If you want to learn about it via story, get my book!

RACHEL: What challenges or misconceptions do you think people face when dealing with this topic, and how can they overcome them?

STACEY: I think many people feel like something is “wrong” with them–that they are alone, crazy, and broken. This misconception can lead to utter hopelessness, depression, or anxiety, and can cause serious health issues among many other uncomfortable and debilitating effects.

Knowing that the answer is closer than they realize brings hope and a sense of security to someone who may have been feeling really lost for a long time.

Another challenge is that others in their life may not understand what they are going through, so their efforts to “help” can often be more harmful than supportive, and lead to further disconnect, loneliness, and confusion.

Connecting with a program, a person, or a community that gets them (someone who understands what they’re going through, and how to take steps back to feeling safe) can be a lifeline in a sea of chaos!

RACHEL: Are there any common myths or misunderstandings about this topic that you’d like to address?

STACEY: The word itself–SAFE–can have multiple meanings and implications. For instance, “playing it safe” can infer that someone is hiding or holding back. And feeling “unsafe” can mistakenly be attributed only to physically dangerous situations, circumstances, and people.

When I refer to BEING SAFE, I’m talking about a felt sense of being at home in your own body, able to be calm and alert at the same time, and having a nervous system that can handle the stresses of life and then return to a restful state when needed. It’s about having CHOICE and not being STUCK in patterns of disfunction.

When I say that you can BE SAFE, I use the letters as an acronym to describe how it feels: Secure & Stabile, Awake/Aware/Alive, Free from…and Free to… (fill in the blanks), and Expansive–able to grow, learn, explore, and step into the fullness of what it means to be YOU!

Now who doesn’t want to be SAFE when viewed in that light!?

RACHEL: What resources, tools, or next steps would you recommend for readers who want to dive deeper into this topic?

STACEY: I highly recommend learning about how your nervous system functions and what it’s doing for you. This means developing a regular practice of working with your body (physiology & nervous system), soul (mind/thought, emotions/feelings, will/choices), and spirit (your breath and connection to Breath/Spirit).

I offer an online course and community that contains all of that called Becoming Safe, as well as a rich resource section with connections to other people and sources like the work Rachel does.

I also offer a 90 Day daily somatic practice journey called “The Doing,” which is a great way to gently work with your nervous system and learn it’s language, developing a trusting friendship that serves you daily, as well as Somatic Breathwork Sessions designed to do the “deep” cleaning of clearing out what no longer serves us, and re-wiring into how we want to feel and show up.

Both of those offerings, as well as links to my Facebook pages and YouTube channels can be found on my website: onpurposeinternational.org

—

To your healing,

Rachel

P.S. If you’re ready to take the next step in healing from abuse and would like to explore enrolling in the Beyond Surviving program, start by applying for a Discover Your Genuine Self Session.

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

My father finally died a few months ago. Survivors will understand the word finally. I thought he would never die. Billy Joel’s song “Only the Good Die Young” was certainly true in this situation. I had gone no contact about seven years before, but the shadow of power this man wielded over my life continued, whether I was in contact with him or not. I even moved all the way across the country to put space between me and him. Space between the present and the past. The constructed reality he demanded everyone agree with, the dominating presence where no voice save his was heard, the judgmental pronouncements of doom and gloom over your life, the complete lack of understanding or empathy. These were just a few of the ways his brainwashing impacted me. 

These were just a few of the ways his brainwashing impacted me. 

And when he died, instead of the relief I felt at my mother’s passing, a terrible door that had been shut for over sixty years was opened. The parts of me from childhood that had split off and carried the load felt free to come forward, and it was hard. Hard to face them, hard to talk to them, and hard to become an ally to them instead of an enemy. 

There are no words to describe the damage and loss that occur when your parents choose the path of narcissism. To their very grave, my parents never had the slightest inkling of self-awareness or took any personal responsibility. In fact, my sibling and I were “disinherited.” The old threat to keep me within my father’s orbit finally came true. For me, I could understand it; I walked away years ago. But for my sibling who provided for my father financially and took care of his ex-wife, our mother, who otherwise would have been homeless, it was a low blow. Yet again, the narcissist showed his true colors. It did not matter what you did for the man; he did not know how to do anything other than hurt us. His final message? “You are worthless.” 

But I survived, and guess what? My father was wrong. It took everything I had to slog through the twisted spider web of lies he had spun. I spent decades trying to understand, reaching toward the truth that seemed to dissipate into mist at the slightest stress. To quiet the dissonance in my mind, heart, and soul. I used every technique and read every book I could get my hands on, but you know what? I made it. I have written a new chapter, established new relationships, and I walk in truth. What does the Bible say? The truth will set you free? Yep, that’s what it says. I can wonder at the joy in life, pursue dreams and goals I never thought reachable, and more than anything else, I can finish well, leaving a legacy of peace, encouragement, and kindness to my children. 

I pity my mother and father. They never knew how wonderful life could be. It is still hard sometimes, I suppose I will always bear the scars to a certain degree, but I made it. I made it out, and I am so thankful I did not give up. Defy trauma, embrace joy. It is worth it.

If you are interested in my newsletter or reading more content like this, please go to:

https://rebekahlaynebrown.com

Photo by Robert Anasch on Unsplash

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.

At first, I tried to push them back in, trying to make them fit into the version of my life I had always known. But no matter how much I willed them away, they kept coming—not in full, cohesive scenes, but in flashes, in body sensations, in a deep, unshakable knowing that left me questioning everything.

And that’s when the real battle began.

The Shock of Remembering

Nothing prepares you for the moment your own mind turns against you. One day, you think you know yourself. The next, you are drowning in memories that do not feel like yours but somehow are.

It feels impossible. Unbelievable. Like something you might have read in a book but never expected to happen in your own life. And yet, there it is.

For me, the shock came with a mix of emotions I did not know how to handle. Grief for the childhood I thought I had. Rage that my brain had kept this from me. Terror that if this was true, then nothing in my life had ever been what I thought it was.

And then came the worst question of all: What if I’m making this up?

The “Am I Making This Up?” Spiral

If you have been here, you know the loop.

• Why now?
• Wouldn’t I have always remembered if it were real?
• What if I’m just looking for attention?
• What if I planted this idea in my own head somehow?

I wrestled with these thoughts constantly, dissecting every memory fragment, analyzing every feeling, desperate for proof that would make it undeniable. But that proof never came in the way I wanted.

Instead, my body became the evidence. The panic that gripped me in certain situations. The way I froze at a touch, I should have been able to tolerate. The overwhelming nausea, the shaking, the way my mind wanted to flee even when I was safe.

My body had always known, even when my mind did not.

But the doubts were relentless. There were moments when I was certain I had broken completely, that I was unraveling, that soon I would not be able to trust a single thought inside my own head. I had been sure of my past once. If that could change, then what else was not real?

When the World Feels Unreal

One of the hardest things about repressed memories resurfacing is how they shatter your sense of reality. Everything becomes uncertain: your past, your identity, your relationships. And if you are anything like me, you crave certainty. You want someone to confirm what you remember, to tell you it is real, to give you something solid to stand on.

But most of the time, that doesn’t happen.

I started second-guessing everything. I would stare at old photos of myself as a child, looking for signs in my own eyes. Did I look happy? Did I look scared? Could I have been hiding something even from myself?

And then there were the nightmares. The ones that left me gasping for breath, the ones where I woke up drenched in sweat, my body aching in ways I could not explain. My mind tried to tell me they were just dreams, but my body told a different story. The fear, the disgust, the panic. It was real.

I had to learn how to exist in the in-between, to trust myself even when I had doubts. To accept that my brain had done what it needed to do to protect me and that just because I didn’t remember for decades didn’t mean it wasn’t true.

The Despair of Not Knowing

No one talks enough about the despair. The way it can swallow you whole. When you start remembering pieces of something so unthinkable, its weight is unbearable.

I remember curling up in bed, unable to move, unable to function, my mind replaying the same thoughts on a loop.

“This isn’t real. This can’t be real.
But what if it is?
What if I’m losing my mind?
What if I’m just broken?“

Nothing shakes your sense of reality like waking up one day and realizing your past is no longer what you thought it was.

I would search my memories for signs, clues, anything that would either validate or disprove what I was starting to uncover. But memory does not work like that. It does not arrive neatly, in perfect order, with timestamps and witnesses. It drips in, slowly, sometimes violently, and often without warning.

And then came the darkest thoughts.

“What if I’m making this up because I want an excuse for my struggles?
What if I’m just broken beyond repair?“

I became convinced I was unraveling, that I would wake up one day completely lost inside my own head. The fear was not just about what had happened to me; it was about whether I could ever trust myself again.

The Darkness That Almost Swallowed Me

The grief was unbearable. It was not just about the memories. It was the loss of the life I thought I had. The childhood I had once cherished now felt like a dream I had woken up from too late.

And the worst part? There was no one to validate it for me. No way to prove or disprove what my brain was screaming at me.

There were days I couldn’t breathe under its weight. Days I wondered if I would ever feel normal again. Days I thought maybe it would be easier if I just disappeared.

This is the part people don’t talk about. The way the pain can feel so heavy that it drags you under. The way remembering doesn’t feel like healing at first. It feels like dying.

Grounding Through the Chaos

If you are in this place, if your world feels like it is cracking open, and you do not know how to hold the pieces, I want you to know you are not alone. And you are not broken.

Here are some things that helped me (and might help you, too):

• Validate your emotions, even when you doubt your memories. Your feelings are real, no matter what.
• Find safe people to talk to. Whether it is a therapist, a coach, a support group, or trusted friends, do not do this alone.
• Ground yourself in the present. When the past tries to pull you under, remind yourself that you are here, now. Feet on the floor. Breathe in your lungs. Safe.
• Give yourself permission to not have all the answers. Healing is not about proving what happened. It is about reclaiming yourself.

You Are Still You

When the past cracks open, it can feel like you are losing yourself. But you are not. You are still you. Maybe even more than you have ever been.

I won’t pretend this journey is easy. It is disorienting, painful, and sometimes feels impossible. But you are not alone. You do not have to have every answer to start healing.

Your story matters. Your pain is real. And you deserve to heal, whether the world ever sees your truth or not.

You Are Not Crazy. You Are Remembering.

If you are here, in the middle of the storm, feeling like you might not make it out, I need you to hear this.

You are not broken. You are not making this up. You are not crazy.

Your brain protected you the best way it knew how. And now, it is giving you back what you are ready to hold.

You do not have to remember everything to heal. You do not have to prove anything to be worthy of support.

Your pain is real. And you are not alone.

Hold on, friend, even when it feels impossible. Hold on.

Because the other side of this? It’s worth it. And so are you.

Photo by Vincent Burkhead on Unsplash

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.

I have faced many traumas in my life and experienced repeated betrayal, often from those we are told we can trust—family.

An Existential Identity Crisis

I consider myself a quirk of fate; by some macabre twist, I was launched into a profoundly dysfunctional family. I grew up fatherless in a middle-class Roman Catholic household in a small South Indian town. My older sister Melanie and I were raised by our young, widowed mother in our maternal grandparents’ home, where we lived with an extended joint family.

I discovered that my father passed away from a heart attack just months after my mother conceived me, so I never knew him. Growing up without a father left me feeling empty, which may have influenced my tendency to form fleeting connections with abusive relationships and toxic friendships. The absence of pictures of my dad was heartbreaking, as it felt like all memories of him had been erased. I understand my mother likely acted out of her own grief, but it was painful that she didn’t encourage us to talk about him, leaving many questions unanswered.

Becoming a Social Outcast

At first, my mother worked hard as a teacher at our school until my soon-to-be stepfather, a medical student seven years younger, came into the picture. In the conservative town we lived in, rumors about the teacher and the young man quickly spread, and all hell broke loose at my grandparents’ home. The entire family was upset with her new relationship, but my mother was so in love that she didn’t care.

The school was even worse; we became social outcasts overnight, facing snide comments from classmates and family friends who labeled us as “the daughters” of the “flighty widow.” The reputation stuck.

As a grown woman, I understand that my widowed mother had the right to move on and lead her life. However, at age five, I only felt the loss of friends. Back then, single mothers dating wasn’t common in rural India, and my mother was blissfully unaware, caught up in her new romance as she traipsed around town in love-infested bliss.

The Birth of the Fear of Abandonment

When I was in third grade, she finally married and a few years later moved to the Middle East with her new doctor husband, leaving behind two lonely kids and a controversial reputation.

At every family event, we were seen as the “orphan Annies” and “oddballs,” garnering pity or scorn from others. In that conservative town, we stood out, burdened by a reputation we longed to escape. This likely fueled my craving for love and contributed to  ADHD and borderline personality disorder, which I discovered many years later.

Meanwhile, my childhood became a series of moves between relatives, amplifying feelings of abandonment. We were treated as unnecessary baggage, and the meager food we received was often rationed. Name-calling and forced chores made us feel like maidservants, whether cleaning the house, doing laundry, cooking, or babysitting. I was not yet 13, and I often went to bed hungry.

With each move, my sister and I faced a new set of accusations. In hindsight, I believe this wasn’t because we lacked virtue, but rather because our relatives were tired of bearing the burden of my mother. This was their way of “passing the buck” to someone else. Meanwhile, our mother hardly contributed to our expenses or sent money to those who took care of us.

Though Mom would visit us occasionally, her relationship with us, her daughters, changed dramatically. She refused to believe what we had endured and the ongoing criticism from our “overburdened” relatives. Instead, she relied only on hearsay, choosing to accept the narrative that portrayed us as the problem.

Walking Away From Abuse

At a relative’s home, life became so chaotic that we went from being poor, abandoned orphans to harassed teens overnight. The saddest part was that no one, especially our mother, wanted to believe us. They preferred to sweep everything under the rug rather than face the discomfort of the truth. I realized they chose not to support us because it allowed them to avoid their responsibilities.

As a result, in an effort to protect ourselves, two vulnerable girls walked away from a highly volatile situation and sought help from strangers. We felt unsafe among our own family.

Believe it or not, since then, we have mostly been estranged from our mother and socially isolated from our relatives. Aside from the odd occasion, I haven’t spent time with my relatives or mom in decades. Mom systematically and deliberately cut us off from any contact with the family.

 There is bullying, and then there is bullying of the worst kind; it’s called “social isolation,” the kind that was perpetuated by my dysfunctional family and also by friends at school.

This is the kind of bullying where “the strong” band together and trample “the defenseless” because there is strength in numbers—often aided by money, peer pressure, or the seniority that comes with age.

Rising from the Ashes

As a teenager, I found myself alone and began working hard to support myself. Life took a difficult turn; I met many people from whom I learned valuable lessons. I made numerous mistakes due to poor judgment and misplaced trust, but I’ve always managed to rise from them. While I regret those lapses, I would live my life the same way again because my past has shaped who I am today.

My career choice allowed me to meet many people. Early on, I took various odd jobs, each helping me develop new skills and fueling my ambition for success. I was open to any challenge, adapting and learning as I went. Eventually, I spent several years in the hospitality industry.

Final Thoughts: Know Thyself and Thou Shall Know Thy God

Along the way, I made friends and learned that everyone is unique; no one is perfect; certainly not people with the “pointy fingers.” Nevertheless, I noticed that most people focus on four basic needs: food, money, power, and sex—but not necessarily in that order. Whereas for me it has always been like Freddy Mercury sang that “crazy little thing called LOVE.“ But when we go through abuse, neglect, and trauma and don’t find love, we settle for mediocrity or less. Trauma comes in many forms, but it’s our choice whether to continue the cycle of family karma or to break it. The buck stops with you.

Whichever way it goes, childhood trauma makes you do the thing you’ve been “conditioned” to do all your life. I understand how challenging it can be to navigate through trauma, and I want to share what has helped me along the way: love, friendships, books, music, and spirituality. Healing is not a straight path, and I certainly don’t consider myself an expert. I’ve experienced the many faces of depression, including a recent episode of panic and anxiety, which I know can feel overwhelming. If you’re struggling, please remember that you don’t have to go through it alone. Reach out to your loved ones and consider seeking therapy. It’s so important to take that step and not delay getting the support you need. If you are like me, you deserve to find peace and healing.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

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.

Understanding the Impact of CPTSD on Personality

Trauma fundamentally changes how individuals view themselves, others, and the world around them. In CPTSD, the effects are often pervasive, shaping emotions, beliefs, and behaviours. Common personality changes may include hypervigilance, where individuals are constantly alert to potential danger, and persistent low self-worth, driven by feelings of guilt or shame. Many people with CPTSD also experience emotional dysregulation, where they struggle to manage intense emotions, often cycling through anger, sadness, or anxiety. These changes are survival mechanisms developed during periods of trauma but tend to persist, disrupting relationships and everyday life even when danger has passed.

How CPTSD Impacts Trust

Trust is one of the most significant casualties of prolonged trauma. The very essence of CPTSD involves a betrayal of safety, which creates deep-seated mistrust in people, systems, and even oneself.

For individuals with CPTSD, trusting others often feels unsafe or even dangerous. Relationships may be approached with suspicion, skepticism, or outright avoidance, as they constantly anticipate betrayal. Conversely, some survivors may overextend trust to gain approval or prevent rejection, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation or re-traumatisation.

Trust issues also extend inward. Many survivors struggle with self-doubt, questioning their own perceptions, decisions, or worth. This internalised mistrust can feel paralysing, preventing individuals from confidently navigating relationships or decisions. Furthermore, fear of intimacy often develops, as the vulnerability required for deep connections triggers reminders of past betrayals, leading to emotional walls and isolation.

Personality Changes Over Time

The cumulative impact of trust issues and trauma responses often leads to significant long-term personality changes. While not universal, many people with CPTSD experience heightened sensitivity to rejection. This can cause intense emotional reactions to perceived slights, even if unintentional.

Defensive behaviours are also common, such as isolating from others or relying on perfectionism as a means of control and protection. These coping mechanisms, while initially protective, can prevent individuals from forming meaningful connections or embracing growth.

Chronic guilt or shame also becomes a dominant trait for many. Survivors of prolonged trauma often internalise their experiences, believing they are fundamentally flawed or to blame for their suffering. These beliefs shape identity and self-esteem, making it difficult to engage confidently with the world.

Lastly, relationships may oscillate between extremes of closeness and distancing as survivors struggle to balance the fear of abandonment with the need for connection. This dynamic can lead to cycles of idealisation and devaluation, further complicating personal and social interactions.

The Path to Healing and Growth

While CPTSD creates significant challenges, healing and growth are attainable with the right tools and support. Rebuilding trust and addressing personality changes involves small, intentional steps and a willingness to confront past wounds.

• Seek Trauma-Informed Therapy: Approaches like EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing), Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), or Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) are highly effective in addressing trauma’s root causes and teaching new coping mechanisms.
• Rebuild Trust Gradually: Begin by trusting yourself through small commitments and achievable goals. Surround yourself with safe individuals who demonstrate reliability and respect.
• Practice Self-Compassion: Healing guilt and shame starts with kindness toward yourself. Techniques like mindfulness, journaling, and affirmations can challenge negative beliefs and reinforce your worth.
• Develop Healthy Boundaries: Learn to set and maintain boundaries in relationships, protecting your emotional and mental space while fostering mutual respect.

Engage in Support Networks: Whether through support groups, friends, or community resources, connecting with others who understand your journey can provide strength and validation.

A Journey of Transformation

The effects of CPTSD on trust and personality are deeply ingrained but not insurmountable. Healing requires patience, persistence, and support from trusted professionals and networks. Through intentional effort, survivors can begin to rebuild their sense of self, reclaim their resilience, and foster healthier, more fulfilling relationships.

While the road to recovery may be challenging, it also offers opportunities for profound transformation. By addressing the wounds of the past, individuals with CPTSD can step into a future defined not by their trauma but by their strength, growth, and renewed ability to trust.

If you have been impacted by betrayal, you might like to check out my blog, Betrayal Trauma & CPTSD. https://cptsdfoundation.org/2022/09/22/betrayal-trauma-cptsd/

Photo from Unsplash: timo-stern-EvcUtLF12XQ-unsplash.jpg

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.

“You Will Not Steal My Spotlight”

I was a victim of multiple “mean girl” witch hunts throughout my formative years. Some situations were more overt; others were covert — in the forms of emotional and psychological abuse. What was especially damaging was that, more often than not, I considered these people to be my friends. With numerous targets on my back, every school day and athletic activity became a war zone, wondering when the next barrage would hit. I noticed and absorbed most things committed against me, even when they were subtle. After a time, the insults and the venom spewed against me all became the same mantra of: “You don’t belong here.” I kept a “brave face” in public and pretended like it wasn’t affecting me, but I went home each night to take it out on my pillow.

I know most friendships end naturally — seasons change, we grow, we move on. But mean girls cannot simply walk away from their friendships as if they died naturally. They must burn the place down and make their old friends suffer intensely. They usually find courage in a cadre of new friends who latch onto and magnify the insults aimed at their victim. While these new friends have no actual animosity towards the target, groupthink and peer pressure overcome decency, allowing them to band together to outnumber the victim. It’s classic female pettiness that groups of women have perfected throughout history and something that’s immortalized in Western culture through chick flicks and reality television shows.

Nothing ever made me feel more guilty for just existing than the mean girls I’ve encountered. I couldn’t fathom that the people who once seemed to care could transform into creatures consumed with a seething hatred of me, deriving a twisted glee from my suffering. Mean girls turn their noses up at other women, but they are guilty of the very things they criticize. Sometimes, the hatred flows from a need to destroy what the mean girl hates in herself – aiming her poison at that mirror image of herself made flesh. It could be something as simple as the fact that another woman is comfortable in her own skin. If that other woman didn’t strike a nerve in her, she wouldn’t give her a second thought. But if another female threatens her spotlight, she is to blame. And she must be destroyed.

I’m Not the Sorority Girl Type

Growing up as a female in the southern United States, I knew I should prepare myself for social suicide if I didn’t join a top sorority in college. I didn’t realize until I got to college, though, that the Greek system on my campus had ruthless standards. When the sorority rush didn’t work out in the way I had hoped, the rejection made me wonder what was “wrong” with me. For months, I considered trying again to be invited to a sorority I liked. I wanted to fit in with the other young women who looked from their Instagrams like they lived perfect lives in their Barbie Dreamhouses. I attended recruitment events, but something felt “off.”  I thought, Do I want to change myself so I’m accepted by the same people who had already rejected me? Or, could I find other things that aligned more with my goals? I chose the latter, and on that path, I found some of my best personal growth.

Once I became aware of the Greek system’s impossibly high standards, I concluded for myself that the hierarchy the fraternities and sororities put in place for themselves was ridiculous. On campus, there was a derogatory term coined by the Greek system for those deemed to be “beneath” them. They called the outsiders “God-Damn Independents” (GDI). Many people brushed me off as unworthy of their time once they learned that I was a GDI, and these moments were subtle reminders of the rejection I experienced as a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed freshman. But I was never one to look at another person by any labels that they did or did not have. I met many women in college, some who were in sororities and some who weren’t, even supporting my sorority friends at some events. Being a GDI allowed me to build my own unique story on campus without forcing myself to meet the requirements of a system that judges young women based on things I consider to be superficial, such as their attractiveness, social connections, and parents’ wealth. I later looked back and was glad I did not join a sorority.

We Cannot “Fix” Mean Girls

When I was younger, I was competitive. Years of trauma made me realize that nothing was that serious to me anymore. In the past, I had plenty of jealousy toward other girls and women myself. However, I still forced myself to be polite to them (even through gritted teeth), go home and cry about it, and move on with my life, never thinking about it again. I didn’t set out to destroy their lives because I was jealous. Mean girls do not have this emotional maturity, though. They are sore losers. Mean girls relentlessly punish their victims for their success and joy, no longer seeing their victims as human beings with feelings but as emotional punching bags for their own anger.

I hate interpersonal tension. I typically seek to resolve it through mature communication and mutual forgiveness, as any healthy person would. In one bullying situation later in life, I decided to take the “kill them with kindness” approach — returning my bullies’ hatred with genuine kindness, even when my heart was pounding out of my chest. It was an interesting experiment. You see, bullies don’t expect their victims to react this way; they expect them to submit to the abuse. It was my way of sending them the telepathic message of: 1) Why do you feel the need to treat me this way? And 2) You won’t destroy me. Regardless of my fear, each time I conquered the people who had made me suffer deeply with a big smile, it was an empowering “win” for me.

I was a little naive to believe that my kindness might soften their hearts enough to help me resolve the tension. They were unsure how to react once I started taking my power back, and they started losing control over their victim. It made their blood boil, and I watched their own hatred eat them alive as they wrestled with the fact that their victim was beating them at their own game. The continuous rejection and fuming anger in response to my kindness caused discomfort within me, and I continued to absorb their negative emotions as if they were my own. I even wondered if I was still “wrong” for opening my mouth to be kind. But as my repeated forgiveness of them forced their facades to fall like dominoes, I started to become less afraid of them, and I learned through their body language that they were completely terrified of their own victim. They froze in their tracks like deer in headlights, couldn’t communicate properly due to their voices that shuddered in terror and couldn’t even look me directly in the eyes as they cowardly resorted to side eyes, bloodshot with abomination and fear. Those same abusers eventually waved their white flags in their own way, unable to face their victims with dignity, and I knew in my heart that I had won that brutal battle.

When I realized that all the perpetrators throughout my life were driven by fear, it changed my entire perception and made overcoming the ruminations and flashbacks much easier. All those people seemed so intimidating at the time. The way they carried themselves, it felt like they’d hung the moon. But this is by design — they need to be envied to mask what’s really happening on the inside. The real reason they act superior to others is their own deep insecurity and envy of other women.

Most mean girls have multiple victims

My bullies wanted to steal the joy that was left in me because they were internally miserable. Beyond their mocking laughter and sadistic smirks, I never once saw the mean girls in my life genuinely smile. I only saw perpetual pouts, judgmental side eyes, and cold glares through lifeless eyes. If mean girls continue to latch onto other mean girls and feed on each other’s negativity as their source of empowerment, they will never become empowered women capable of standing alone. They dig their own graves — no one enjoys walking on eggshells around cutthroat girls and women, whether at school, in the workplace, or in their personal lives. As time robs them of friends and their victims move on, they’re only left with those cold eyes reflecting back at themselves in the mirror. 

Not Everyone Turns Out to Be a Mean Girl

No matter how many female friendships have turned sour, I’m so glad I put my heart out again. I cherish the female friendships I have today. We are low maintenance, understanding that we all have our own lives. Some have kids, some are freshly married, and others are focused on their careers. The best female friendships are the ones where I don’t have to hold myself back for fear they might ruin our friendship and become my bullies over trivialities. 

Kindness Always Wins

If the mean girls who targeted me knew the extent of the suffering they caused me, they’d probably be satisfied. I doubt I ruined any of their lives; they moved on without a care in the world. Yet, there I was, living in isolation for fear of upsetting more people. I blamed myself heavily for my reactions to their abuse. But the people in my life who knew what I had been through kept reminding me: “You did nothing wrong. You did everything right.” Because abuse is never the fault of the victim. I put in a lot of hard work with some professionals who are trained experts in helping victims of bullying, and the type of somatic therapy that helped me the most in this regard was EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy). I remember when the professional — who helped me process the memories, emotions, and self-guilt — looked me in the eyes and told me, “One day, you will thank them all.” After my hard work, I no longer feel the need to prove any of my bullies wrong. I can rest my head on my pillow each night, knowing that regardless of the ways I was treated, I chose love and forgiveness in the face of the evil committed against me.

Mean girls cannot fathom that other women can be successful without being mean girls— because the only way they know how to achieve their success in life is by hurting innocent women who get in their way. Only weak women bully other women. Strong women don’t revel in others’ weaknesses; they rejoice in uplifting their gifts. Strong women don’t loudly support women’s causes in public but privately bully the women in their lives. Strong women support other women regardless of social, political, or religious differences. Strong women know that every woman is allowed to shine her light without threatening her own.

The only thing that makes the mean girls of the world powerful is the power that we choose to give them. Rather than feeling humiliated by them, victims should laugh off their immature behavior and embrace humble flattery that we’re living rent-free in their heads, even if they’re operating off the blatant lies they tell themselves about us. I now know that if another woman is angered by my existence when I am not doing anything wrong to her, it is her issue, not mine. I will never again bow down to women who act like the queens of the world but, in actuality, are internally angry about the fact that the world does not bow down at the feet they’ve used to trample the bright lights of other women.

I would rather stand alone than participate in being a bully or a bystander. In the future, if I ever have to choose between fitting in with a group of women who bully other women to be admired by others or being on the outside, mocked by them as a “God-Damn Independent,” I’ll choose to be a God-Damn Independent any day of the week.

Photo by Anastasia Shuraeva on Pexels

I was living in a different country, and had one friend, and no family around me when I fully accepted that my marriage had gone past the point of rescue. I was deeply entrenched in the most vulnerable position I had ever been in my life, with the added responsibility of holding my daughter close, during the torrents of change that we were embarking on.

I separated from my husband but remained living in the same house. No one fully knew the situation as I placed all my energy into beginning an external restructure plan to rebuild a life for me and my daughter. I worked around our schedule and attended to the most important job of all, being a mom while forming a new secure base. 

When we moved from the house, I handed my ex the easiest divorce of all time. I fought for nothing − only an average monthly sum to help financially support my daughter (which, of course, he stopped paying after a couple of years). I choose peace and freedom of movement back to the USA, instead of long-haul arguments over possessions, properties, and pensions. He agreed to all without any objection.  

I had begun putting my nursing qualification and intuitive healing abilities to work and became a Craniosacral Therapist. The training was intense. I was not aware nor resourced to deal with everything that my body remembered, but I did not. 

Years of betrayals, not just by my ex-husband, but those of a dangerous neighbor, an uncle, a deeply disturbed teacher, my father, and a brother of a friend had left somatic emotional scars and memories that slowly over time began to overwhelm my nervous system.  

I continued with the training and established a business that worked for me and my daughter. I showed up as a stable, happy mother, therapist, and yoga teacher.

It is truly amazing how well we can cope − until we don’t! 

The band-aids brought me to better times. My daughter was growing and I had slowly developed a solid new relationship with a sober, loving, strong partner by my side.

Eight years along, I was breathing deep sighs of relief while feeling held by the arms of my inner beliefs in true love. I was letting go and sharing the responsibilities of single parenting while trusting deeply in my new relationship. The irony of it all is that my heart and body fell out of agreement. 

My trusting heart was moving forward, but my body’s inner surveillance system overpowered me and began to pull me back. 

**It is so important to attend to your physiology before psychology, as it will win every time.**

“You cannot use thinking solutions for physiological issues.” (Dr. Andrew Huberman)

Inside I was beginning to literally shake underneath the true toll of all the betrayals. Anxiety began to take a firm foothold in my body and my nervous system eventually said “enough” as full-on panic entered every domain of my being. 

Thankfully I had some awareness of what was happening and tools on board to get me through the day. But deeper work on my nervous system had to be done to fully break the bonds of betrayal and relieve their burden on my biology. Talk therapy, although a little helpful, fell short. 

I needed to take firm hold of the reins of my nervous system and slowly regain its trust as I began living life in the present and not from the intrusive reminders from the past.

I know this:

Everything in life is better when you have your nervous system on board. 

What I needed was a complete nervous system overall and indeed that is what I did. I pulled all my knowledge together from nursing to craniosacral therapy, yoga, the vagus nerve, polyvagal theory, and gut health and basically taught myself how to reclaim my physical, mental, and emotional health, stability and well-being. 

Self-study is the most beneficial study of all: know yourself well and know your nervous system well. It’s your best ally when healing the bonds of betrayal. 

Do you need to heal the bonds of betrayal?

Let’s have a conversation on how I may be able to help you.

www.handsoftimehealing.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 post do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.