Becoming Your Own First Responder

Quinn sat on the edge of their twin bed, staring at their phone screen through blurry eyes. Their heart was still racing from the confrontation with River, their roommate who they’d thought was a close friend. River had cornered Quinn in the kitchen, demanding three months of rent money upfront since Quinn had just been laid off that morning over email.

“I don’t trust that you’ll be able to cover your half going forward,” River had said coldly. “All our friends agree with me.” The words stung worse than the financial demand. Had River really discussed Quinn’s private business with their mutual friends?

Quinn scrolled through their messages with Oakley for the dozenth time. No response. They’d been dating for two months, and now a week of silence. If Oakley wanted to break up, just say so. Where was the closure?

Quinn’s family had never been a source of emotional support. Why was there no one to simply say “I get it, of course you feel this way”? Am I too needy? Quinn wondered.

Outside, sirens wailed in the distance. The sound felt oddly poignant, someone out there was getting the help they needed, quickly. Quinn needed help, but from whom? Just someone to care.

Quinn had tried talk therapy at the sliding-scale clinic, but every session felt like paying to be invalidated. Quinn’s body felt heavy and disconnected and they couldn’t remember the last time they’d prayed. They weren’t sure God would hear them anyway.

All Quinn knew was the misery of being stuck in this room, holding a phone full of unreliable contacts. They wanted someone to witness what they’d been through, to believe them, to help them understand what they even needed. But that someone felt impossible to find.

If Quinn’s story resonates with you, you’re not alone. When the people around us don’t provide what we need, we can learn to become our own first responders. This isn’t about never needing support—it’s about building skills to care for yourself when others fail you.

When you’ve survived complex trauma, betrayal, or narcissistic abuse, you often find yourself desperately needing support from the very people who can’t or won’t provide it. This article will help you learn to become your own first responder. We’ll explore how to provide yourself with the essential things every trauma survivor needs:

1. Closure: Finding closure on your own when others leave you hanging
2. Validation: Believing your own reality when others won’t acknowledge it
3. Witnessing: Being seen and heard, even if it’s by you yourself
4. Nurturing: Providing comfort and care to yourself when you’re emotionally wounded
5. Safety: Protecting yourself when others don’t
6. Meaning-Making: Finding purpose in your pain when life feels senseless
7. Identity Rebuilding: Discovering who you are beyond survival mode
8. Professional Support: Knowing when and how to get backup

You’ll also find practical scripts for communicating your needs, gentle affirmations for difficult moments, and a comprehensive list of resources at the end. This isn’t about becoming completely self-sufficient or never needing anyone again. It’s about developing the skills to show up for yourself, especially when external support isn’t available or safe.

Understanding Your Survival Brain and Learning Self-Compassion

Before we dive into specific strategies, we need to talk about two foundational pieces that make everything else possible: understanding how your brain works during stress, and learning to speak to yourself with kindness instead of criticism.

Why Being Your Own First Responder Is Harder Than It Sounds

When you need these skills the most is often when they’re hardest to access. Your brain during trauma or high stress works very differently than your brain during calm moments. When your nervous system detects danger – whether it’s real physical threat or emotional overwhelm – your thinking brain essentially goes offline. This is your survival system doing exactly what it’s designed to do to keep you alive.

Instead of thinking clearly, you might find yourself responding automatically.

• Fight responses might look like getting angry, arguing, or feeling rage that seems too big for the situation.
• Flight responses could be wanting to escape, avoiding certain places, or literally leaving situations abruptly.
• Freeze responses often feel like going blank, feeling stuck, having trouble speaking, or feeling disconnected from your body or surroundings (called dissociation).
• Fawn responses might show up as people-pleasing, over-apologizing, or taking care of others’ emotions at your own expense.
• Flop responses combine elements of freeze and fawn – your body goes limp while you passively comply, like feeling numb during an argument or going along with harmful behavior because resistance feels impossible.

None of these responses are wrong. They’re your nervous system’s attempt to keep you safe. The challenge is that when you’re in these states, accessing the thinking, self-caring part of yourself becomes nearly impossible. If even choosing where to start feels impossible, that’s not laziness—it’s a symptom of trauma’s impact on executive functioning. Just begin anywhere, and let that be enough.

The Foundation: Changing Your Inner Voice

Perhaps the most important skill for becoming your own first responder is learning to speak to yourself with compassion instead of criticism. Many trauma survivors have developed a harsh inner critic that sounds like the people who hurt them. This inner voice might say things like “Maybe I’m overreacting,” “I should be over this by now,” or “I’m too weak to handle this.”

Safety begins inside your own mind. When you stop judging yourself and start supporting yourself during times of struggle, you can begin to see the possibility of actual safety and healing. This shift from inner critic to inner supporter is foundational for everything else in this article to work.

Quinn realized that they spoke to themselves more harshly than they would ever speak to a friend. When River demanded the rent money, Quinn’s first thought was “I’m so embarrassed. I’m such a failure for getting laid off.” Learning to respond with “This is a really difficult situation and anyone would be stressed” was the beginning of creating internal safety.

Real first responders understand that crisis situations require special protocols. They don’t just learn their techniques once – they practice them repeatedly until their responses become automatic under pressure. They run drills in calm moments so that when crisis hits, their training kicks in even when clear thinking doesn’t.

This means becoming your own first responder isn’t about having perfect responses in the moment. It’s about practicing small, simple actions when you’re calm so they’re more likely to be available when you’re not. It’s about progress, not perfection, and celebrating even the tiniest steps forward.

Here’s what realistic expectations look like:

During an acute trauma response: Your only job is to survive and get to safety. If you can remember to breathe or move to a safer space, that’s enough. You’re not failing if you can’t remember any techniques.

In the hours or days after: Basic self-care becomes possible. Maybe you can drink water, eat something simple, take a shower, or get some sleep. Small steps count.

When you’re feeling more regulated: This is when you can plan, practice new skills, and prepare for next time. Don’t expect yourself to do deep healing work when you’re barely hanging on.

Remember: even professional first responders don’t operate perfectly under pressure. What makes them effective is that they show up, they do what they can with what they have, and they keep trying to help. You can give yourself this same compassion.

Affirmation: “I am learning to show up for myself with kindness, one small step at a time.”

1. Closure: Finding Closure When Others Leave You Hanging

One of the most painful aspects of trauma and abuse is how often you’re left without closure. People ghost you, liars deflect when confronted, and sometimes the safest choice is to walk away without explanation. You’re left with questions that feel urgent but may never be answered. Oakley wasn’t the first person to ghost Quinn, and sadly wouldn’t be the last.

As your own first responder, you can learn to “secure the scene” and provide your own sense of closure. This doesn’t mean pretending everything is fine. It means acknowledging that closure is something you can create for yourself, independent of what others do or don’t give you.

Assess What Happened: First responders assess danger before acting. For you, this means acknowledging the truth of what happened—without needing anyone else’s permission to call it wrong. Once you name it for what it is, you can smartly refuse to open yourself to further harm. Quinn resisted the very strong urge to be vulnerable in a long cathartic text to Oakley after a week of silence. To send it and not hear back would only increase the injury and prolong the pain.

Remove from Danger Zone: Quinn left the kitchen and refused to engage with River until they could collect their thoughts. Once in the privacy of their own quiet space, Quinn could begin to sort out what just happened without allowing River to manipulate them further. If possible, you can make the choice to not give an unsafe person access to you without owing them an explanation. Safety first. You’ll be able to figure out next steps much more clearly when you’re away from danger.

Provide Treatment: Create your own closure rituals. Quinn wrote a detailed letter to Oakley expressing everything they wished they could say about being ghosted. They never sent it, but reading it aloud to their empty room and then tearing it up felt cathartic. They also wrote a letter to their boss for laying them off over email with no chance for a face to face conversation. Quinn still mentally replayed all the things they wanted to say for a while, but each time they followed the closure ritual, the power of painful emotions behind it weakened.

Adjust Perspective: Reframe your story in a way that gives you agency. Instead of “Why did this happen to me?” try “What can I learn about myself from how I survived this?” You get to be the author of what your experience means, regardless of what the other person intended.

For ongoing situations with harmful people you can’t completely avoid, you can create closure around your attempts to change them while maintaining necessary boundaries. It’s hard not to get stuck in cycles of trying to make unreasonable people be reasonable, or trying to get validation from people who will never give it. Learning to close the door on those attempts while still managing necessary contact is a vital skill.

Many survivors find this type of self-created closure overly simplified at first. “I’m choosing to close this chapter not because it’s resolved, but because I deserve to move forward” can feel impossible when you’re still in pain. That’s okay. Closure often happens in layers, and you might need to create it multiple times as you heal and understand more. Start with whatever feels manageable, even if it’s just: “I acknowledge that this hurt me, and that matters.”

Bottom line, you can process the situation on your own timeline without the other person participating. You can focus your energy on what you can control moving forward. And you don’t need an apology to know that what happened wasn’t okay.

Affirmation: “I can find closure within myself, even when others leave me with questions.”

2. Validation: Validating Your Own Reality When Others Won’t

Validation might be the most fundamental need for trauma survivors, especially those who’ve experienced gaslighting or emotional manipulation. When others have told you that your perceptions were wrong or your feelings were too much, learning to trust your own inner knowing becomes both essential and terrifying.

Take Vital Signs: Just like first responders check pulse and breathing to assess what’s really happening, you can learn to check in with your own emotional and physical responses as valid information. That knot in your stomach around certain people, the way your shoulders tense in specific environments – these are data points, not random occurrences. Even if these responses may be based on something historical rather than current, they are still real and need to be honored rather than ignored.

Document the Incident: Keep validation journals that create a record of your reality. Write down the facts of what happened, how it affected you, and why your response made sense. Include phrases like “Of course I felt scared when…” or “It makes sense that I was confused because…” Quinn started writing: “It makes sense that I felt betrayed when River shared my private business with our friends. Anyone would feel violated by that.”

Recognize Normal Responses: Learn about common trauma reactions to provide yourself with evidence-based validation. When you discover that being constantly on guard (called hypervigilance), feeling overwhelming emotions that seem bigger than the current situation (known as emotional flashbacks), or people-pleasing behaviors are normal responses to trauma, it helps you understand that you’re having normal responses to abnormal experiences.

Your nervous system often recognizes danger before your thinking mind does. Quinn’s body felt exhausted after every interaction with River, even “normal” conversations. Learning that this energy drain was a typical response to being around manipulative people helped Quinn trust their instincts about limiting contact.

Find books, articles, podcasts, and videos by trauma experts describing experiences similar to yours. Hearing your experience described by someone with professional credibility can counteract years of being told you were “too sensitive.”

Finding Safe Online Communities: Look for moderated support communities rather than open forums like Reddit. Consider NAMI online support groups, 7 Cups peer support (which has some moderation), or closed social media groups with active moderation and clear community guidelines. Always prioritize communities focused on healing and recovery rather than just venting about trauma. When joining any online community, start by observing before sharing, and trust your instincts about whether the environment feels supportive or triggering.

Scripts for Seeking Validation:

“I’m looking for someone who can help me understand if my response to this situation makes sense, without trying to fix or minimize what I experienced.”

“I need to talk to someone who has experience with these types of situations and can help me reality-check what happened.”

“Can you help me understand if what I’m feeling is normal, without trying to talk me out of my feelings?”

For those dealing with discrimination or institutional problems, document everything. Keep records of incidents and note patterns. This isn’t just about building evidence – it’s about having concrete proof when others try to make you doubt what you experienced. (Although, it’s common for unhealthy people to refuse acknowledging the truth regardless of facts or evidence, which is even more reason to not rely on someone else for validation unless they’re proven to be emotionally safe.)

You might also consider using AI chatbots for perspective when human support isn’t available – while not a replacement for human connection or professional help, they can sometimes offer validation and help you organize your thoughts when you’re feeling confused or isolated. Type in the whole situation and ask the AI to help you understand the dynamics and facts.

Affirmation: “I trust my inner knowing and honor my emotional responses as valuable information.”

3. Witnessing: Becoming the Witness You Never Had

One of the deepest needs trauma survivors have is for someone to truly see and acknowledge what they’ve been through. When you’ve been gaslighted or told your perceptions were wrong, having a witness feels essential for healing. The challenge is that many people aren’t equipped to be present for your truth, especially if it makes them uncomfortable.

Assess the Situation: Learning to witness yourself compassionately is like being your own detective and medic combined. You’re both gathering evidence of what really happened and responding to that evidence with kindness rather than judgment.

Create Records: Trauma journals serve as both witness and evidence. Write specifically to acknowledge what happened with phrases like “This really happened,” “This wasn’t normal,” and “My feelings about this made sense.” Quinn started each entry with “Today I’m witnessing for myself that…” followed by whatever they needed to acknowledge. Sometimes the most healing thing you can write is: “What happened to me was real, and it affected me.”

For an easy start, try simple writing prompts:

• Today I acknowledge that…
• Something that wasn’t my fault was…
• A feeling that made complete sense was… Something I survived was…

Recording yourself speaking about your experiences can be powerful, especially if your trauma involved being silenced. You don’t have to keep these recordings forever, but hearing yourself speak your truth out loud, without interruption, can be deeply validating. You might also use voice-to-text features to create written records if speaking feels easier than writing.

Symbolic Expression: For experiences too overwhelming to approach directly, symbolic representation can help. Use objects, colors, or images to represent different parts of your story. A heavy rock might represent the weight you carried, broken pottery might represent what was damaged. Ponder the Japanese art of kintsugi – repairing broken pottery with gold, making it more beautiful than before – as a metaphor for how your healing can transform your wounds into sources of strength.

Observe Progress: Surround yourself with reminders of your healing journey – photos that show your growth, quotes that speak to your experience, or meaningful objects that represent your resilience. These visual cues can provide validation when you need reminders of your progress.

The Undefined Witness: Anonymous blogging platforms like Medium (with privacy settings enabled and comments disabled) can allow you to share your story without exposing your identity. Creative expression through art, music, or simple crafts like making collages can reach parts of your experience that words can’t touch.

Understanding Trauma Dumping: Many survivors experience an almost irresistible urge to share their trauma story repeatedly with anyone who will listen. This isn’t weakness – it’s your psyche’s attempt to find someone who will witness and validate your reality. The compulsive need to “purge” your story through repetitive telling is normal, but it’s important to recognize when you’re seeking external validation for internal wounds that need witnessing.

When you notice this urge, pause and ask: “What do I personally need to witness about this experience right now?” Often, you can give yourself this witnessing first, which reduces the urgency to seek it from others who might not be able to witness it safely. This doesn’t mean never sharing your story – it means being intentional about when, how, and with whom you share it.

Scripts for Requesting Witnessing:

“I need someone to listen to what I’ve been through without trying to fix or minimize what I’m sharing.”

“Can you just hear my experience without offering advice right now? I’m not looking for solutions – I just need someone to acknowledge that this was hard.”

“I’m looking for someone who can be present with me while I share something difficult, without trying to make it better or tell me how to feel about it.”

Affirmation: “My experience deserves to be witnessed with compassion, starting with my own.”

4. Nurturing: Providing Comfort When Care Isn’t Available

Learning to nurture yourself when you’re emotionally wounded is like performing emotional first aid. When you’ve grown up without consistent nurturing or been surrounded by people who didn’t provide care, you might not even know what nurturing feels like, let alone how to give it to yourself. Nurturing is responding to your pain with gentleness instead of criticism, meeting your needs with care instead of neglect, and treating yourself like someone worthy of comfort and kindness.

Triage Your Needs: The exhaustion from complex trauma runs soul-deep. You might feel like you’re barely hanging on hour by hour. Start with the smallest possible acts of care rather than elaborate self-care routines when you can barely manage survival. This might look like keeping snacks by your bed so you can eat something without leaving your room, having a water bottle within reach, or simply taking one conscious deep breath.

Provide Immediate Comfort: Physical nurturing can be accessible even when emotional nurturing feels complicated. Put your hand on your heart when upset, wrap yourself in a soft blanket, or make a warm drink. Your nervous system responds to gentle physical care even when emotions feel chaotic. Quinn found that warm baths helped when everything else felt overwhelming.

Develop Internal Caregiving: Practice self-parenting by developing an internal voice that speaks to you like a loving parent would speak to a frightened child. Quinn realized they were far more compassionate to friends than to themselves, so they started asking: “What would I say to my best friend if they were going through this?” Then they practiced saying those same words to themselves.

Create Comfort Kits: In a box, assemble a collection of items that engage your senses soothingly. Essential oils, calming music, soft textures, or peaceful images. Keep these accessible for when you’re struggling, because trauma often disrupts your ability to think clearly about what might help. If these items are already in one place, you only need to think of the singular box rather than the many things inside of it.

Find Natural Comfort: If possible, companion animals provide unconditional nurturing when human relationships feel complicated. Pets offer physical affection and acceptance without judgment. Even if you can’t have a pet, volunteering at shelters or watching animal videos can provide some nurturing energy.

Nature offers nurturing that doesn’t require anything from you in return. Trees, water, sky, and earth have been comforting humans for millennia. Even looking out a window at natural elements or having plants in your space can offer an awareness and connection to something large and wondrous.

Body Work: Professional touch therapy like massage, craniosacral therapy, myofascial release, or reflexology can provide nurturing through skilled, boundaried touch, especially healing for those whose trauma involved touch violation or who grew up without healthy physical affection.

Creative Therapy: For those with limited energy, try tiny nurturing acts: cutting paper snowflakes, coloring with crayons, making simple origami, or arranging flowers from your yard. The goal is gentle engagement, not masterpieces.

Affirmation: “I am worthy of gentleness and care, especially my own.”

5. Safety: Creating Protection When It Isn’t Provided

Safety is the foundation that makes everything else possible. Learning to create your own sense of safety isn’t about becoming invulnerable – it’s about developing your ability to recognize danger and respond in ways that protect your wellbeing.

Secure the Perimeter: Emotional safety boundaries are limits you set to protect your wellbeing. Don’t share personal information with people who’ve used it against you, limit contact with individuals who consistently upset you, or choose not to engage certain topics with particular people. If setting boundaries feels ‘selfish,’ remember: protecting your safety isn’t cruelty—it’s a prerequisite for healthy relationships. Boundaries aren’t walls – they’re gates you control. Quinn learned to stop sharing personal concerns with River after realizing River used this information to create drama with their friend group.

Protect from Further Harm: Safety includes shielding yourself from additional damage when you’re already wounded. Set inner monologue boundaries by learning to interrupt harsh self-criticism – and when you notice that critical voice, don’t judge yourself for judging. Simply notice it with curiosity rather than more criticism. Limit contact or information sharing with unsafe people during emotionally fragile periods. Avoid triggering news, social media, or content when you’re struggling. Create environmental protection by avoiding overwhelming places or situations, limiting stimulation when your nervous system is activated, and giving yourself permission to say no and not let obligation or guilt rule you. Also, protect yourself by not making big decisions when you’re in crisis mode.

Evacuate to Safety: Physical safety planning involves thinking through protection in various situations. Have exit strategies from social gatherings, keep important documents accessible, maintain some financial independence even if it’s just keeping some cash on hand, or know how to quickly contact help. Even small safety measures can significantly reduce anxiety and increase your sense of control.

Establish Communication Protocols: Digital boundaries have become increasingly important. Block harmful numbers and social media accounts, adjust privacy settings, use different email addresses for different purposes, and be thoughtful about personal information you share online. Your digital space deserves the same protection as your physical space.

Provide Calming Treatment: Learn techniques to help your nervous system recognize when you’re actually safe. Deep breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, grounding techniques using your five senses, and gentle movement can signal safety to your nervous system. Quinn learned to notice when their shoulders hunched and jaw clenched – signs their body was bracing for danger even in safe situations. Consciously relaxing these muscles helped their nervous system understand that immediate threat had passed.

Set Up Treatment Area: Create safe spaces in your physical environment where you can retreat to regroup. A corner of your bedroom with comfortable seating, a car where you have privacy, or even a bathroom where you can take breathing space. Having designated safe spaces helps you feel less trapped when situations become overwhelming.

Manage Resources: Financial safety, even in small amounts, provides important options and reduces vulnerability. Keep some cash accessible, maintain your own bank account, or develop skills that could provide income if needed. Even small steps toward financial independence can significantly impact your sense of security.

Scripts for Communicating Safety Needs:

“I need to step away from this situation because it doesn’t feel safe for me right now.”

“I’m not comfortable discussing this topic.”

“I need some time to think about this before I can respond.”

For systemic unsafe situations like domestic violence, stalking, workplace harassment, or family threats, safety planning becomes more complex and requires professional guidance through legal consultation, domestic violence advocates, or organizations that understand the specific challenges you’re facing. Don’t try to handle dangerous situations alone – these require specialized expertise to navigate safely.

Affirmation: “I can trust myself to recognize danger and take steps to protect my wellbeing.”Subscribed

6. Making Meaning: Finding Purpose When Life Feels Senseless

One of the most challenging aspects of trauma recovery is trying to make sense of experiences that seem senseless. As your own first responder, you can learn to create meaning from your experiences, even when no one else can provide satisfactory answers.

Observe Positive Gains: Post-traumatic growth doesn’t mean being grateful for trauma or pretending it was “worth it.” It involves recognizing ways you’ve developed strength, wisdom, or compassion as a result of surviving difficult experiences. Quinn noticed they’d become exceptionally good at reading people’s emotional states and recognizing manipulation. While they wouldn’t have chosen to develop this skill through trauma, acknowledging it helped them see that their pain had contributed to their ability to help others and protect themselves.

Documenting your capabilities and resources that helped you survive can reveal strengths you might not recognize. What qualities enabled you to endure what you endured? What internal resources did you draw on? Sometimes abilities that developed through survival – like being highly observant or good at reading situations – can be applied in positive contexts once you’re safer.

Define Values: Identify what matters most to you, separate from what you were told should matter. Trauma strips away everything non-essential, often revealing core values you might not have recognized otherwise. Quinn realized their experience with betrayal had taught them that authenticity and loyalty were non-negotiable in relationships – a clarity that helped them make better choices about who to trust.

If exploring meaning-making feels overwhelming or you don’t have clear answers yet, that’s completely okay. There’s deep healing in simply accepting yourself exactly as you are without pressure to “do better” or “be more.” Sometimes the most meaningful thing you can do is honor your current capacity without judgment. Recognizing your limits and working within them is wisdom, not weakness.

For a gentle start, try smaller approaches:

• What’s one thing I value about how I handled today?
• What’s one small way my experience might help someone else someday?
• What’s one thing I’m grateful survived in me despite everything?

Purpose-driven projects: These can transform personal pain into something that serves others. This might involve advocacy, creative projects, mentoring, or any activity that uses your experience to benefit others. The goal isn’t to make trauma “worth it,” but to ensure your suffering contributes to something meaningful that helps create positive change in the world.

When considering helping others, gently check that you’re offering help where it’s actually wanted and needed, rather than using service to others as a way to avoid dealing with your own pain. True service focuses on what the other person needs, not what makes you feel better about your experiences.

Faith Recovery: If your faith or spirituality feels fractured, that’s not a failure. Trauma can sever our sense of connection to the divine or sacred. Healing may involve reframing or rebuilding those beliefs in gentler, more loving ways—at your pace, on your terms.

Affirmation: “I can create meaning and purpose from my experiences, even the painful ones.”

7. Identity Rebuilding: Discovering Who You Are Beyond Survival

When you’ve spent years in survival mode, learning who you are beyond your trauma responses can feel both exciting and terrifying. Rebuilding your identity is like conducting search and rescue – you’re both discovering who you’ve always been underneath the survival strategies and creating who you want to become.

Search and Recovery Operations: Many trauma survivors realize they don’t know what they actually like, want, or who they are when not protecting themselves from harm. Start small with preference exploration. Notice what colors, foods, music, or activities genuinely appeal to you versus what you think you should like. Quinn discovered they actually loved bright colors and bold patterns and made a point to add pops of color to their cozy bedroom.

Assess Available Resources: Recognize capabilities you have that aren’t just about surviving trauma. What are you naturally good at? What do people come to you for help with? Sometimes strengths that developed through survival – like being highly observant – can be applied in positive contexts once you’re safer.

The reality is that trauma survivors are often behind in some developmental areas because you’ve been focused on survival while others had the safety to explore interests and develop skills. This isn’t your fault, and acknowledging this gap is important rather than pretending it doesn’t exist. You’re doing necessary work that others took for granted, and there’s no shame in starting where you are.

Discover New Skills: Learning new abilities in areas unrelated to trauma can expand your sense of identity beyond being someone who has “been through things.” You can try simple creative expressions: arranging books by color, creating small displays with meaningful objects, organizing collections like stones or shells in pleasing patterns, humming melodies that make you feel good, or moving your body in ways that feel natural and comfortable.

If identity exploration feels overwhelming, try very small creative acts: making simple collages from magazine pictures, doodling patterns while listening to music, or writing single words that describe how you want to feel. The goal isn’t artistic achievement – it’s gentle self-discovery.

Plan for the Future: Envision who you want to become rather than who you had to be to survive. If fear or pain wasn’t the primary factor in your decisions, what would you choose? This isn’t about denying your past – it’s about expanding your identity to include possibilities beyond your survival story.

Affirmation: “I am discovering and creating who I want to be, one choice at a time.”

8. Professional Support: Knowing When to Call for Backup

Just like first responders know when a situation requires specialized backup, learning to recognize when you need professional help is vital. This isn’t about failing to handle things independently – it’s about recognizing that some wounds require specialized treatment.

Recognize When Backup Is Needed: You deserve proper professional care, not just whatever you can afford. Working with poorly trained therapists can create additional trauma, waste limited resources, and convince you that therapy doesn’t work. A bad therapist can set healing back significantly, while a skilled trauma therapist can accelerate progress in ways that make the investment worthwhile.

Warning signs that indicate you need professional support include persistent thoughts of self-harm, inability to function in daily life for extended periods, substance abuse as coping, feeling disconnected from your body or surroundings in ways that affect your ability to function safely (dissociation), panic attacks that don’t respond to self-help, or trauma responses getting worse rather than better.

Other indicators that professional support would be beneficial: feeling stuck in the same patterns despite your efforts, relationships that consistently end in similar harmful ways, work performance suffering due to trauma responses, physical symptoms that might be trauma-related, or feeling overwhelmed by the healing process.

Request Appropriate Specialists: When looking for trauma-informed help, credentials and specialized training matter more than general therapy credentials. Look for therapists who specifically mention trauma training and use evidence-based approaches.

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing): Helps process traumatic memories through guided eye movements, allowing your brain to properly file away disturbing memories.

Internal Family Systems (IFS): Works with different parts of your personality, helping heal wounded parts while strengthening your core self.

Somatic Experiencing: A body-based approach that helps release trauma stored in your nervous system.

Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT): Helps examine and challenge trauma-related thoughts and beliefs.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT): Teaches specific skills for managing intense emotions and improving relationships.

Trauma-Focused CBT: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy adapted for trauma, helping identify unhelpful thought patterns while developing practical coping strategies.

Assess Qualifications: Questions to ask potential therapists and what answers to look for:

• “What specific training do you have in trauma treatment?” Look for: Specific certifications, ongoing education, years of trauma-focused practice
• “What approach do you typically use for complex trauma?” Look for: Evidence-based modalities, individualized treatment plans, familiarity with your specific type of trauma
• “How do you handle it when clients feel overwhelmed in session?” Look for: Trauma-informed responses, awareness of pacing, commitment to safety and not retraumatizing
• “What’s your philosophy about the pace of trauma healing?” Look for: Patient-centered approach, no pressure for quick fixes, understanding that healing isn’t linear

Identify Red Flags: Warning signs in potential therapists include minimizing your experiences, pushing you to “get over” things quickly, lacking trauma training, seeming uncomfortable with trauma topics, trying to diagnose you immediately, making you feel judged, or pressuring you to forgive without accountability.

Scripts for Communicating with Potential Therapists:

“I’m looking for someone with specific training in complex trauma and PTSD. Can you tell me about your qualifications and approach?”

“I need a therapist who understands that healing takes time and won’t rush the process. How do you typically pace trauma work?”

“I want to work with someone who uses evidence-based trauma treatments. Which modalities are you trained in?”

“I need to feel safe and understood, not judged or pushed beyond my capacity. How do you ensure clients feel safe in session?”

Handle Dangerous Situations: If you’re in immediate danger from domestic violence, stalking, workplace harassment, family threats, or other harmful situations, professional help should include specialized safety planning. Don’t try to handle dangerous situations alone – these require experts who understand the specific risks and safety strategies for your situation.

Legal Considerations: In some situations, therapy records can be subpoenaed in legal proceedings. If you’re involved in custody disputes, criminal cases, or other legal matters, your therapy notes might be used in court, and your therapist might be required to testify. Discuss confidentiality limits with potential therapists before beginning treatment so you understand what information might not remain private.

Coordinate Resources: Financial considerations include therapists who offer sliding scale fees, community low-cost clinics, employee assistance programs, insurance coverage for trauma therapy, community mental health centers, and university training clinics.

Affirmation: “I deserve professional support that honors my experience and accelerates my healing.”

The Reality of Healing: Progress Over Perfection

Becoming your own first responder isn’t about perfect self-sufficiency or never needing others again. It’s about building the inner resources to consistently show up for yourself—especially when support is absent. This takes time, with setbacks and breakthroughs, good days and hard ones.

Healing from complex trauma can be inconsistent. You might thrive in one area while struggling in another, or feel strong for weeks then barely function for days. This isn’t failure—it’s the nature of healing.

Celebrate every so-called “small” victory. Taking space when you need it, avoiding drama, trusting your instincts, or simply making it through a hard day without harming yourself—these are not small. They’re signs of strength and growth.

As you practice in low-stakes situations, the gap between knowing what to do and being able to do it will shrink. The goal isn’t to eliminate trauma responses but to expand your options beyond old survival patterns.

Your ability to be your own first responder will fluctuate. Some days you’ll use advanced tools. Other days, it’s enough just to stay alive and be gentle with yourself. Both are valid. Both matter.

You’re re-parenting yourself—learning skills others may have gained in safer homes, often while still facing ongoing stress. Acknowledge the depth of that work. It’s heroic.

You’re not meant to do this alone forever. Being your own first responder lays the groundwork for healthy interdependence—not isolation. As you grow, you’ll naturally attract healthier relationships and engage from choice, not desperation.

The goal isn’t independence—it’s interdependence: two whole people showing up for themselves and each other. That’s the kind of connection you’re preparing for.

Your healing matters—to you and to others. Every act of self-rescue sends ripples outward. You’re breaking cycles, modeling resilience, and helping build a world where those who’ve been hurt can still heal and thrive.

You are not broken. You are not too much. You are not alone. You’ve survived so much—and now, you’re learning to thrive. That takes courage. And you have more of it than you know.

Final Affirmation: “I am showing up for myself with compassion, wisdom, and patience.”

Resources

I have not personally used all of these resources, so please exercise your own discernment before engaging with these organizations.

CRISIS RESOURCES

For free and confidential support 24/7:

988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline Call or text 988, or visit www.988lifeline.org

National Domestic Violence Hotline Call 800-799-SAFE (7233), text LOVEIS to 22522, or visit www.thehotline.org

Love Is Respect (Dating Abuse Helpline) Call 866-331-9474, text LOVEIS to 22522, or visit www.loveisrespect.org

Crisis Text Line Text HOME to 741741, or visit www.crisistextline.org

Trans Lifeline Call 877-565-8860, or visit www.translifeline.org

TrevorLifeline for LGBTQIA+ Youth Call 866-488-7386, text START to 678-678, or visit www.thetrevorproject.org

THERAPY RESOURCES

Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT) Find CBT-trained therapists: www.abct.org

Association for Contextual Behavioral Science (ACBS) Find ACT-trained therapists: www.contextualscience.org

Behavioral Tech Find DBT-trained therapists: www.behavioraltech.org

EMDR International Association Find EMDR-trained therapists: www.emdria.org

The Center for Self Leadership Find IFS-trained therapists: www.selfleadership.org

ADDITIONAL SUPPORT RESOURCES

CPTSD Foundation – www.cptsdfoundation.org

Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA) – www.adaa.org

National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) – www.nami.org

Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA) – www.dbsalliance.org

National Center for PTSD – www.ptsd.va.gov

BPD Central – www.bpdcentral.org

Treatment and Research Advancements Association for Personality Disorder (TARA) – www.tara4bpd.org

National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) – www.nationaleatingdisorders.org

International OCD Foundation (IOCDF) – www.iocdf.org

Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD) – www.chadd.org

If you are experiencing thoughts of self-harm or suicide, please reach out for immediate help. In the US, you can contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988. If you are in immediate danger, call 911. You deserve support, and help is available.

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 experienced periods where I lacked self-understanding of what was going on with me.

I found myself puzzled by my feelings of unease when I was with certain people or in specific environments. For me, a feeling of unease persisted even in locations that appeared safe to everyone else. I could not explain it.

This confounded me further: I gravitated towards individuals whom I sensed were most familiar. They often ended up hurting me. This tendency endured lengthy periods within my existence.

Deep down, I held a belief that many trauma survivors share.

Feeling broken is a potential consequence of trauma.

But today, I understand the truth. I was not broken. I was living with the effects of long-term trauma, which we now understand as CPTSD (Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder).

This led to me having insecurity in safe environments, discomfort in stable relationships, and alienation from those who showed concern. Without even realizing it, I sometimes projected my inner pain onto the very people who meant me well.

That is what unresolved trauma can do to your nervous system.

I grew up in a hostile environment, surrounded by toxic relatives. On top of that, I experienced deep emotional pain from abandonment and rejection by my mother. As a child, I didn’t have the language to process any of it.

I bore the weight of confusion, sadness, and pain. However, my perspective changed as I got older. I understood the overall situation. My mother was not the source of the difficulty. She was also wounded.

She carried her own unresolved trauma, pain shaped by her upbringing, her environment, and the surrounding people. Because of that pain, her approach to love, reactions, and parenting was altered.

Understanding this did not erase what happened, but it gave me clarity. Still, as a child, I internalized everything.

I developed deep feelings of rejection, confusion, and even self-hatred. That pain extended beyond childhood. It followed me into adulthood, into my relationships, my self-worth, and my self-perception. Until one question became constant:

“What is wrong with me?”

If you have ever asked yourself this, I want you to hear this clearly:

Trauma can make you feel broken, but you are not broken.

You are responding exactly the way a human being does after prolonged emotional pain. What CPTSD does is not destroy you. It reshapes how you experience safety, love, and connection.

Why Trauma Leaves You Feeling Broken (But You’re Not)

One of the most confusing parts of CPTSD is this internal contradiction:

You can be in a safe relationship…

A calm environment…

Being around emotionally healthy individuals, despite this, you feel the following:

• Uneasy.
• Suspicious.
• Emotionally distant.
• Feeling overwhelmed or triggered.

Subsequently, shame appears and you ask yourself this questions.

“Why do I feel this way?”
“Why do I ruin good things?”
“Why can’t I just be normal?”

This is often where the belief grows stronger because “Trauma Can Make You Feel Broken.”

But what is happening is not weakness.

It is biology:Your nervous system learned that familiar equals safe, even when familiar was painful. So when you experience calmness, consistency, or real love, your system doesn’t immediately recognize it as safe.

It feels unfamiliar, and to a trauma-conditioned body, the unfamiliar can feel dangerous. This is why you may feel more comfortable with emotionally unavailable or inconsistent people. Not because you want pain; however, because your body has learned to associate pain with normality.

CPTSD: What Trauma Does to Your Nervous System.

CPTSD is not just about memories, it is about how trauma lives in your body. When you grow up in emotional chaos, rejection, or unpredictability, your nervous system develops survival responses:

• Fight: developing a defensive, reactive, or easily angered disposition
• Flight: you feel anxiety, over thinking, overworking and fleeing
• Freeze: you feel numbness, shutdown, procrastination
• Fawn: people-pleasing, self-abandonment

These are not flaws. They are adaptations, that helped you survive when you had no control over your environment. But when left unresolved till adulthood, they can make life feel overwhelming.

This is why Trauma Can Make You Feel Broken when

• Small triggers cause you to react strongly.
• In emotional situations, you tend to shut down.
• You struggle to trust love.
• You overthink relationships.

But your system is not broken but rather It is remembering what seems familiar.

The Hidden Damage of CPTSD: Self-Blame.

One of the deepest wounds of CPTSD is not just what happened to you, It is what you started believing about yourself.

As a child, you couldn’t say the following:

“My environment is unhealthy.”

So instead, you believed the following:

“Something is wrong with me.”

And that belief follows you into adulthood.

You may carry thoughts like:

• “I am too much.”
• “I am hard to love.”
• “I am the problem.”

This is where the idea that negative self belief becomes deeply rooted.

But here is the truth: You were not the problem. You were just adapting.

The Turning Point: Understanding CPTSD Changes Everything.

Healing begins when you stop asking the following:

“What is wrong with me?”

And start asking:

“What happened to me?”

This shift removes shame.

And without shame, healing can begin.

You start to see:

• A history lies within your reactions.
• Your triggers have a root.
• Your emotions are valid signals.

Instead of seeing yourself as broken…

You begin to see yourself as someone who learned to survive.

How to Start Healing When Trauma Leaves You Feeling Broken

Healing from CPTSD is not about forcing yourself to “be normal.” It is about teaching your nervous system that safety exists now. Below are few healing tips to help you get started.

1. Awareness without judgment

Instead of criticizing yourself, get curious and replace thoughts like:

“Why am I like this? ”With: “What is this protecting me from?”

2. Regulate Your Nervous System

Healing is physical, not just emotional.

Try:

• Deep breathing.
• Grounding exercises.
• Slow, mindful movement.
• Mindful walking.

These help your body return to safety.

3. Practice self-compassion.

Self-criticism reinforces your trauma and leaves you hopeless, but showing self-compassion helps heals it.

Start with these simple truths:

• “I am learning.”
• “I am safe now.”
• “My feelings make sense.”

Even if it feels unnatural, keep going.

Conclusion

Let this sink in:

Trauma Can Make You Feel Broken, But that does not mean you are not broken.

You learned  to survive environments that were painful, unsafe, or overwhelming.

And those adaptations stayed with you, even though you are no longer in that environment.

Take it easy on yourself and understand you are safe now; learning something new.

You are learning how to feel safe. You are learning how to receive love, How to live, and not just survive. Healing is not about becoming someone new. It is about returning to who you were before the pain, and that process takes time. So be gentle on yourself.

But it is possible.

Your 7-Day Healing Practice.

For the next 7 days, take 5–10 minutes daily and reflect on yourself:

• What happened today?
• What did I feel?
• How did I respond?
• What might this response be protecting me from?

Then say this: “This response made sense at some point in my life. I am learning new ways to feel safe.”

 Healing doesn’t begin when you “fix” yourself; It begins when you finally understand yourself…

Photo Credit: Unsplash

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

Far from it. It is the beginning of the work; it shows exactly where it needs to start.

“I can’t talk about it” is not resistance. It is information. It tells us that one or more barriers are in place. These barriers need to be identified, brought into the open, and presented to the client for consideration.

In short, “I can’t talk about it” contains enough information to guide the next phase of therapy, if its internal logic is made explicit.

Discovering Disclosure Barriers Is Therapy Gold

Finding these barriers is not a preliminary step. It is a vital part of the therapy.

The position of “I can’t talk about it” is itself a Stuck Point – one of those rigid, distressing thoughts and beliefs that feel impossible to move beyond.

Stuck points are often the mind’s default response to unprocessed trauma. They are not random. They are structured attempts to make sense of overwhelming experience.

What Sits Behind “I Can’t Talk About It?”

In therapy, it is often enough for now to talk about why you can’t talk about it. That is not avoidance. That is a large part of the work.

Like a form of emotional echo-location, we can begin to map the terrain indirectly.

By exploring the barriers and ‘exemptions’, we begin to understand:

• The shape of the trauma
• Its weight
• Its personal meaning

We may not be talking about the event itself yet, but we are getting very close to it.

Stuck Points Rarely Come Alone

Stuck points tend to multiply across time. The original traumas often give rise to unhelpful beliefs that harden into stuck points.

By exploring a person’s:

• View of the past
• View of the trauma(s)
• View of the time between trauma and now
• Experience of the present
• Expectations of the future

we can build a Timeline of Stuck Points, as shown in the diagram below.

Note how for each Timeline Key Moment, there are emotions/feelings attached.
Then, in each of the red boxes there are Stuck Point Statements.

Seeing the System Can Change Everything

You see now how we have a lot more information to work with.

We now know a lot more fixed beliefs and mental loops: Stuck Point Statements. What emerges is not a single belief, but a network of fixed positions, and how the person feels about them.

For many people, this is the first time they see the full picture. Thoughts that once felt chaotic and intrusive are now named, organised and contained.

Damaging thoughts that came into consciousness; caused harm and faded away, only to loop around repeatedly, now become known, visible and accounted for.

What once swirled unpredictably now has coherence, shape and boundaries.
That alone has therapeutic value.

When people see how many stuck points they are carrying, something often shifts.

There is often a moment of recognition, even shock. The realisation comes,

“All this has been running my thinking.”

In many cases, the person has already begun opening up, without realising it.

By describing their beliefs across time, they have revealed:

• How the trauma shaped their identity
• How it influenced their interpretations
• How it continues to operate

From here, some stuck points can begin to loosen.

For example:
“The old me is gone” may soften when examined more closely. It may be that the past is being viewed through a rose-coloured nostalgic lens, and that in truth, there were significant life difficulties before the main trauma event(s) occurred.

This does not dismantle the belief entirely. But it creates a small opening.
And sometimes, that is enough.

From Mapping to Movement

Through a combination of:

• Recognising the cumulative weight of multiple stuck points
• Gently re-examining less rigid beliefs

The conversation can begin to shift.

The trauma, once avoided, sometimes becomes:

• Something that can be approached
• Something that has edges
• Something that can be worked with

From there, deeper phases of therapy may become possible.

But It Is Not Always That Straightforward

In many cases, the barriers are more entrenched.

This is where a deeper understanding becomes necessary.

‘I Can’t Talk About It’ and Stacked Disclosure Barriers

“I can’t talk about it” stuck points do not always operate in isolation.
They can combine. They can reinforce each other.

This is what we will call Stacked Disclosure Barriers.

A person might reveal:

• Disclosure Barrier 1: “There’s no point talking about it.” (Futility)
• Disclosure Barrier 2: “I don’t want to burden anyone.” (Moral)

This creates a closed system:

• It won’t help
• It’s not safe

No action feels possible.
No action feels justified.

Until each position is understood, the system holds.

Please see below for a diagram: Timeline of Stuck Points with Stacked Disclosure Barriers.

Where to From Here?

At this point, the therapist has something extremely valuable.

The client has revealed not just their distress, but the logic that sustains it.

This is where the work becomes precise:

• Futility blocks everything downstream
• Moral beliefs can mask deeper positions

Therapists tend to work with the barrier that makes all other work feel pointless or unsafe.

For the purposes of this article, we will begin with the disclosure barrier of futility.

Example 1: Futility Thinking – “There’s No Point”

“There’s no point talking about it. What happened can’t be undone.”

At first glance, this seems reasonable. And in one sense, it is true.

But beneath this statement sit deeper beliefs:

• “I am uniquely broken.”
• “My suffering is irredeemable.”
• “Nothing can change how I feel.”

From this position, not talking is logical.

The Unifying Principle of Futility Thinking

People do not open up simply because they feel understood.

They open up when they believe something useful can happen.

The barrier is often not:

“This hurts too much”

It is:

“This won’t help”

Understanding Futility Thinking

Futility thinking sounds rational:

• “Talking won’t change anything.”
• “Nothing will fix this.”

But the mind has shifted from:

“It won’t undo the past”
to
“Nothing can change how I experience it now”

That is the critical shift.

Why This Thinking Exists

Futility protects:

• You don’t have to try
• You don’t risk disappointment
• You don’t re-enter the pain

But it assumes the only purpose of talking is to fix the past.

What Therapy Actually Does

Therapy does not change what happened.

It changes what happens next.

It changes:

• How the experience is held
• How it is interpreted
• How it moves through you

A gap begins to form between:

1. The painful event
2. The belief it can never ease

A skilled therapist will explain and demonstrate that the (1) The painful event and (2) The belief that the hurt can never be reduced, are two different things.

From here:

• Rumination loosens
• Memories move toward acceptance
• The “negative future mirror” begins to weaken (the belief that the future will be as bad as or worse than today.)

The hurtful event still happened, and the memory of it will always be there, but the strongly felt relationship with the trauma can begin to ease, by degrees, until the previously all-consuming pain can be viewed through a lens of greater emotional comfort, and distance.

Eventually it becomes possible to walk alongside the memories, contextualising them as events that happened, but which do not have to interrupt one’s sense of journeying through life in pursuit of personally valuable goals.

Example 2: Moral Barrier – “I Don’t Want to Burden Anyone”

“I don’t want to put this on anyone.”

This is often strength, misapplied.

People are trying to:

• Protect others
• Avoid harm
• Carry their own weight

But the belief shifts from:

“I don’t want to harm others”
to
“My pain harms others”

When Silence Feels Right

From the outside, it looks like avoidance.
From the inside, it feels like integrity.

“I don’t want to put this onto other people.”

This aligns with values:

• I protect others
• I don’t hurt people
• I carry my own weight

Silence becomes loyalty to those values.

Why This Is Hard to Shift

When a belief attaches to identity, it feels like truth.

Therapy then looks like harm transfer.
Speaking feels like:

• Burdening
• Contaminating
• Imposing

So silence feels right.

The Hidden Assumption

“If I speak, others will feel what I felt.”

Trauma makes this feel true.
But therapy works differently.

A therapist:

• Contains
• Regulates
• Structures

They are not harmed by the material.

Why It Still Feels Unsafe

Many people have learned:

• Disclosure leads to dismissal
• Or overwhelm

So the nervous system says: “Be careful.”

Safety builds through experience, not reassurance.

Often the first step is the articulation of the disclosure barrier:

“I feel like if I talk about this, I’ll hurt you.”

Then:

• The belief becomes visible, and can be discussed
• The therapist invites small ‘test’ disclosures (sometimes framing them as ‘5%’ disclosures)
• The feared outcome does not occur

This begins to loosen the equation:

“If I speak, I cause harm.”

Final Position

“I can’t talk about it” is not a wall. It is a doorway.

Not into the trauma itself, not yet. But into the system of beliefs around it.

Once that system is:

• Visible
• Organised
• Understood

It can be worked with.
It can be questioned.
It can begin to loosen.

That is where movement starts.

Not all at once. Not completely.
But enough.

And often, enough is where everything begins.

Courtesy of www.reliefandhope.com

Important Caveat:
Some “I can’t talk about it” is not belief-driven. It is state-dependent:

• Freeze
• Shutdown
• Dissociation

Not all barriers are cognitive. Some are physiological constraints.

Evidence-Based Citations:

1. “I can’t talk about it” as information, not resistance

Principle: Client avoidance or silence contains clinically meaningful data rather than being obstruction.

• Judith Herman (1992). Trauma and Recovery.
  → Establishes that avoidance and silence are core trauma responses and meaningful indicators of psychological state.
• Bessel van der Kolk (2014). The Body Keeps the Score.
  → Describes how trauma is encoded non-verbally and why clients may be unable, not unwilling, to speak.
• Edna Foa & Kozak, M. (1986). Emotional processing of fear. Psychological Bulletin.
  → Avoidance is part of the fear structure and signals where therapeutic work is needed.

2. “Stuck points” as structured beliefs

Principle: Trauma-related beliefs are organised, not random, and maintain distress.

• Patricia Resick et al. (2017). Cognitive Processing Therapy for PTSD.
  → Defines “stuck points” as rigid maladaptive beliefs that maintain PTSD.
• Resick, P. A., & Schnicke, M. K. (1992). Cognitive processing therapy. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.
  → Introduces the structured nature of trauma-related cognitions.
• Aaron Beck (1976). Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders.
  → Foundational work on cognitive schemas shaping emotional responses.

3. Indirect processing (“talking about why you can’t talk”)

Principle: Approaching trauma indirectly is still therapeutic work.

• Marylene Cloitre et al. (2012). STAIR model.
  → Emphasises phased treatment and indirect engagement before trauma processing.
• Herman (1992)
  → Phase-oriented trauma therapy: safety → remembrance → reconnection.
• Pierre Janet (1907/modern interpretations)
  → Early work on dissociation and the need for gradual integration.

4. Mapping beliefs across time (timeline work)

Principle: Trauma impacts past, present, and future meaning-making.

• Janoff-Bulman (1992). Shattered Assumptions.
  → Trauma disrupts core beliefs about self, world, and future.
• Ehlers & Clark, D. (2000). Cognitive model of PTSD. Behaviour Research and Therapy.
  → Persistent threat arises from maladaptive appraisals over time.
• Donald Meichenbaum (1994). A Clinical Handbook.
  → Emphasises narrative reconstruction and meaning across timelines.

5. Making implicit systems visible

Principle: Naming and organising internal experiences reduces distress.

• Daniel Siegel (2010). Mindsight.
  → “Name it to tame it” concept, linking awareness to regulation.
• James Pennebaker (1997). Expressive writing research.
  → Structuring emotional experience improves psychological outcomes.
• Karl Weick (1995). Sensemaking in Organizations.
  → Coherence reduces chaos and improves functioning.

6. Belief loosening through cognitive reappraisal

Principle: Small shifts in rigid beliefs create therapeutic movement.

• Beck (1976)
  → Cognitive restructuring as core mechanism of change.
• David Clark & Beck, A. (2010). Cognitive Therapy of Anxiety Disorders.
  → Examining beliefs reduces emotional intensity.
• Ehlers & Clark (2000)
  → Updating trauma appraisals reduces PTSD symptoms.

7. “Stacked” or interacting barriers

Principle: Multiple beliefs interact to maintain avoidance.

• Steven Hayes et al. (1999). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.
  → Cognitive fusion and experiential avoidance as interacting systems.
• Marsha Linehan (1993). CBT for Borderline Personality Disorder.
  → Multiple reinforcing belief systems maintain behavioural patterns.
• Paul Salkovskis (1996).
  → Safety behaviours and beliefs form self-reinforcing loops.

8. Futility thinking (“this won’t help”)

Principle: Engagement depends on perceived utility, not just distress tolerance.

• Albert Bandura (1977). Self-efficacy theory.
  → Behaviour depends on belief that action will produce results.
• Irvin Yalom (2002). The Gift of Therapy.
  → Hope and perceived usefulness are central to engagement.
• Frank & Frank (1991). Persuasion and Healing.
  → Therapy works partly by restoring expectation of benefit.

9. Therapy changes relationship to the past, not the past itself

Principle: Distress reduction comes from reprocessing, not erasing events.

• Edna Foa et al. (2007). Prolonged Exposure Therapy.
  → Emotional processing reduces distress without changing the event.
• van der Kolk (2014)
  → Trauma memory integration changes lived experience.
• Francine Shapiro (2001). EMDR.
  → Reprocessing alters emotional intensity and meaning.

10. Moral barriers and identity-linked beliefs

Principle: Values can reinforce avoidance when misapplied.

• Kristin Neff (2003). Self-compassion research.
  → Harsh self-standards often mask as morality.
• Hayes et al. (1999)
  → Values can both guide and rigidify behaviour.
• Brene Brown (2012). Daring Greatly.
  → Shame and fear of burdening others inhibit disclosure.

11. Gradual exposure and “test disclosures”

Principle: Safety is built through experience, not reassurance.

• Foa et al. (2007)
  → Gradual exposure reduces fear response.
• Joseph Wolpe (1958). Systematic desensitisation.
  → Incremental exposure reduces anxiety.
• Cloitre et al. (2012)
  → Skills + gradual disclosure improves outcomes.

12. Final principle: “The system becomes workable once visible”

Principle: Insight plus structure enables change.

• Siegel (2010)
• Pennebaker (1997)
• Ehlers & Clark (2000)

All converge on the same mechanism:
awareness → organisation → reappraisal → reduced distress

Photo Credit: Unsplash

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

For most of my twenties and thirties, I lived a contradiction I tried to hide from everyone.

On the outside, I seemed to have my life together–running a photography studio, exhibiting my work, and telling jokes when I had the energy. But I kept away from people a lot of the time, because on the inside, I was a wreck. I never knew when a simple “how are you?” would send my jaw locking, my throat clenching, and my entire nervous system into a tailspin that could last weeks. I called it “hiding my tail.” It was a full-time job, and I couldn’t tell anyone about it, because to me, it was absolutely humiliating–something I had vowed to take to my grave. And to make things worse, I had no clue, no understanding of what was going on inside me.

This was the aftermath of a nervous system collapse I’d had when I was twenty-two. I now understand that is was C-PTSD, but at the time was just a nameless catastrophe that tortured me daily. And I was completely on my own with it, having no idea how to find my way back to the luminous joy I once lived.

Then in 1993, six years after the collapse, I started walking into alleys at night with a camera. I didn’t know why, but I knew the second I stepped into one of those dark, abandoned places, the anxious core of me would go very still. It took me a long time to understand what was happening. But here’s what I’ve come to believe: the ruins were echoes–I would say mirrors, but I hated looking into mirrors back then, so echoes it is. And looking into them was the first thing that gave me any real relief.

The Cost of the Mismatch

If you’ve lived with complex trauma, you probably know the feeling I’m trying to describe. There’s a constant gap between what’s happening inside you and what you allow yourself to show on the outside. The world expects–actually, prefers–a certain version of you: one that is calm, present, and engaged. Thus, you spend every waking minute trying to force this mask while a different reality runs underneath.

That mismatch is exhausting and painful in a way that’s hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t lived it. It’s not just the trauma symptoms themselves. It’s the second job of hiding them. By the time you’ve performed your way through a normal afternoon, you’ve burned through more energy than most people spend in a week. Sometimes a 2-minute conversation would make me want to lie down for a week.

I didn’t have language for any of this back then. All I knew was that being around people felt like wearing armor that was slowly crushing me, that I constantly feared had too many holes where my true self was visible. I needed somewhere I could take off the facade.

What the Alleys Gave Me

The time I ventured into a dark, unlit alley alone, in Montreal in 1993, I didn’t know what to expect, but I knew I was walking into a potentially dangerous place. I should have been afraid–I was in a menacing spot, carrying expensive photo equipment, no one knew where I was; a dangerous character could have walked out of the shadows at any moment. Instead, something else happened. The city noise dimmed. The darkness wrapped around me like a warm blanket. And a soothing, peaceful calm settled inside my body.

I wrote later that I felt “a kinship with everything around me.” That’s the closest I could get. Once my eyes adjusted, I could see the brick walls were gouged and scraped. The ground was streaked with old grease and broken glass. Paint was peeling off a doorway. It was, by any normal standard, an ugly, depressing place. But to me, it felt like the first space I’d walked into in years that made me feel at home.

The alley looked the way I felt. Reviled. Forgotten. Ruined. The kind of place most people don’t want anything to do with. And because it didn’t hide any of its brokenness, it couldn’t pretend to be anything else. I had found a place where I didn’t have to pretend either, and I could finally breathe.

I think this is the part most people miss when they see my photos. They assume I was drawn to dangerous places because I was reckless, or because I had a death wish, or because I wanted dramatic photographs. None of that was true. I went to broken places because, for the first time since my collapse, I had found somewhere my outside world matched my inside world. I was alone in the dark, and the exhausting masquerade simply stopped. In a place that was already broken, I didn’t have to hide anymore.

What Happened When I Started Lighting Them

If the story ended there–broken man finds peace in broken places–it would be a sad kind of comfort: a man learning to live in the shadows. But something more interesting happened. The next day, after my first night of shooting in these rundown urban corners at night, I laid out the photographs on a light table.

I had gone out expecting to return with ugliness. I say “ugliness,” because that was the only honest response I had to what I felt inside, and that’s what I wanted to capture. But somehow, what I’d photographed wasn’t ugly. A faraway mercury vapor streetlight had cast green color over the brick. A faint sodium light had made the rust glow orange. And the moonlight had dusted everything with its own unique beauty. I’d wanted ugliness, but I’d come back with a strange blend of both ugliness and beauty.

It was fascinating. 

I went back out the next night, and the night after that. The same thing kept happening. And eventually I started doing it on purpose – bringing my own colored lights, lighting the walls and the doorways during twenty to forty-minute exposures, transforming each ruin into something theatrical and luminous. I never eliminated the decay. The cracks and the rust and the grime stayed visible in every image. I only changed the light that fell on them, and this changed how they were perceived.

That’s when I started to understand what I was actually doing.

I wasn’t just identifying with these places. I was rehearsing something. Each photograph was a small, repeatable demonstration that something broken could become beautiful without ceasing to be broken. The damage was still there. The light just made it visible in a different way. Over twenty-five years and more than 1,200 nights, I performed that demonstration over and over, in alleys and ruins, until my nervous system finally started to believe it.

What Environment Has to Do With Healing

I’m not a clinician. I can’t write a paper on this. But I’ve thought about it for a long time, and here’s what I keep coming back to:

Recovery, at least the kind I needed, isn’t only about what happens inside your head. It’s also about where your body is. The right environment may not fix you. But the wrong one – the one that demands you perform an exhausting, unsustainable version of yourself–can keep you stuck, and beating on yourself for years.

For me, the “right environment” was the one most people would have called “wrong.” Dark, dirty, dangerous, abandoned. And yet these places allowed me to breathe and to be myself. They didn’t ask me to be anything I wasn’t and that let me drop my armor. And once I could just let my real self be out in the open, something else became possible: I could start working on the broken parts instead of hiding them.

I think a lot of people in recovery are looking for a place like this without knowing it. I don’t recommend you start hanging around alleys and ruins at night for 25 years, but maybe your place is a forest, a garage, a kitchen at three in the morning, a long drive with no destination. Whatever it is, it’s the place where you don’t have to waste energy pretending.

For twenty-five years, mine had broken windows and graffiti and the smell of wet rust. And every time I walked into one of those places, bringing light to the darkness, a little more of my buried light–hiding deep inside of me–started to find its way back.

Photo Credit: Author

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’ve been lucky to come across a free 90-minute Webinar with Dr. Gabor Mate, and have been consuming it for the past three days. Dr. Gabor Mate has launched a new program on how to heal from trauma through go.mentorshow.com. It’s a program for trauma survivors, and I recommend that you check it out if you are struggling with any trauma.

Dr. Gabor Mate asks: What do you feel?

Anger

Sad

Fear

Shame

Happy

Dr. Gabor Mate says that you can feel all kinds of emotions, but there could be trauma lurking behind them as well.

You will know if this is you because you feel it. Trauma is your response to what happened to you, whether from experiences such as child abuse, domestic violence, divorce, an accident, a war zone, or the loss of a loved one.

Trauma is everywhere in our society right now: we know this because we are living with it. You can’t help but encounter something distressing in the world or at home, because it is everywhere on social media and in the news. It is constantly reported, with photos and video coverage — happening in 3D whether you choose to ignore it or not.

The way you respond to traumatic events is your personal trauma. It’s what you feel inside your body, mind, and heart.

I agree with Dr. Gabor Mate. Many of us trauma survivors manage our daily lives by wearing masks to cover up our emotions. And the majority of us are awesome at doing it. In fact, we are so great at wearing our masks that we suppress what we really feel.

Think about it…

How often have you said yes to something that you don’t want to do? 

How many times have you stuck your neck out for someone who went against your personal desires? Like giving them a ride in the opposite direction of where you needed to be, making yourself late in the process.

How often do you put others before yourself? 

Do you ever put yourself first?

I’ve done it, and I’m still doing it after years of therapy. I know better, and yet I’m still doing it.

There comes a point when you’ve got to take charge of your own healing together with a therapist’s support. This is where I’m at now, and I’ve been doing so for some years.

You can heal from your trauma, too. Check out Dr. Gabor Mate’s latest program on go.mentorshow.com

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

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

For more about me: www.elizabethwoodsauthor.com

Support your fellow writer:

https://ko-fi.com/elizabe69245484

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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

Like so many people who finally “discover” what is wrong with them, I embarked on a program to “fix” myself. I was determined to overcome the earlier portion of life that had hampered and shaped me. For the last near decade, I struggled to find help that was qualified, knowledgeable, affordable, reachable, and available. It’s a set of problems that most folks with CPTSD (at least here in the U.S.) commonly have to fight their way through.

“Maybe now,” I think, “maybe now I’ll have time to finally heal.”

And then I wonder, is it worth it?

I suspect some readers will give that sentence the side-eye.
It sounds kind of unintuitive to my mind, too. But here is the thinking behind the idea…

I’ve written before about the crushing sense of lost time that overshadows me. As you might guess, as I’ve gotten older, that sense of the end is nigh is only looming larger in my thoughts. I really don’t have time to waste.

So, am I calling the attempt to “heal” from CPTSD a waste? No, I’m not (although, yes, I might be, a little). And there stands a spectacular example of the near-terminal ambivalence that can accompany folks sporting this lovely set of letters. Let me try to explain. It goes like this:

Healing takes time. That’s a given. There is no pill, no magic word, no ritual that can reshape me into a whole and functional human in an instant (pity that). So healing takes time and work. Don’t forget the work!

It also takes money and access to resources, both of which are in short supply in my life at the moment.

Let’s limit the scope of this question to just one aspect: time. I have limited time on this rock–that’s also a given. Modern medicine might extend my life, but I want functional years. And I want them now, while I can still function.

So instead of growing, I became small. I learned to do without. I learned to stop wanting. Then I stopped dreaming. I remember in high school frustrating a teacher to no end because I couldn’t answer the question, “Where do I want to be in ten years?” I had no way to even frame the question in my mind. Answering was impossible.

Fifty years on, I finally have an answer. I want to write. I want to tell stories and be remembered for them.

Finally, after treading water for decades and floundering in some pretty heavy seas for nearly another decade, I have a direction.

And I have no time.

That’s the part that feels cruelest.

There is, associated with CPTSD, a form of pain in knowing that you aren’t living. And, once you discover the reason behind the problem, that ushers in a new challenge of doing the work to birth yourself, years later. And finally, when you know, or at least have a pretty good inkling of who you are, you find that you have no time to become that person.

Obstacles that folks faced with support (and while they had youth on their side and a “the future ahead of them”) I am facing now, well over half-way through my expected years.

So, here’s the reality I’m wrestling with: I can function to an extent day to day. Pursuing healing, the messy de- and then reconstruction would take time and resources I don’t have. What I do have is a direction. After flailing for over fifty years, I have a direction. And, I have limited time.

Photo Credit: Unsplash

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

In 1987, I walked into a job interview in Montreal and couldn’t say my own name.

I was twenty-two. Two days earlier, I’d been at a party with friends, cracking jokes, feeling like the world was mine. Now I was sitting across from a man who’d asked me the simplest question in the world, “Your name is?” and something was blocking the pathway from my brain to my mouth. My jaw locked. My throat clenched. I started sweating. I finally squeezed out my name, terrified, though I had no idea of what.

That was the beginning. Within days, my ability to hold a simple conversation was destroyed. People became a source of dread. My face would contort, my eyes would twitch, and every interaction was like trying to keep calm while a tarantula was crawling on me. It became impossible. The outgoing, confident guy I’d been my whole life appeared to be dead.

I saw psychiatrist after psychiatrist, but nobody could tell me what was wrong. They treated me for depression and anxiety, but nothing stuck, and nothing made sense for whatever had broken inside me. The condition I was living with didn’t even have a name yet. C-PTSD wouldn’t be a term until 1992, and the WHO didn’t officially recognize it until 2018. The doctors were working with an old map.

So like many others before and after me, I was on my own.

Into the Dark

Six years after my collapse, on a spring night in 1993, I grabbed my camera and tripod and walked out into the city. I had no plan. I was still in the grip of the trauma, and I needed to be somewhere alone, and the darkness of the night just helped me to disappear.

I ended up at the foot of an unlit alley in a rough part of town. I should have been afraid; it was a menacing spot, I was alone, carrying expensive gear in the middle of the night. But something strange happened. I walked in, and the deeper I went, the better I felt. The city’s noise dimmed, the darkness thickened around me like a blanket, and for the first time in years, I felt calm. It was a deep peace I had long forgotten.

In that dark alley, I didn’t have to perform for anyone. Nobody was there to see me struggle. The constant exhausting effort of pretending I was okay simply stopped. In a place that was already broken, I didn’t have to hide anymore.

I set up my camera, and a 25-year practice began.

A Ritual I Couldn’t Explain

I went back the next night. And the next. Over the following weeks and months, going out into dark, forgotten urban spaces with my camera became the only thing I wanted to do. I started seeking out the ugliest, most abandoned places I could find – alleys, ruins, crumbling corners. Something about matching my surroundings to what I felt inside brought relief.

It took me 20 more years to finally understand this was more than photography. I was performing a ritual.

Each shoot followed the same pattern. I would enter a dark, frightening space alone, stand in the darkness until my eyes adjusted, and I could see. I’d carefully compose the crumbling space in the camera, then I’d step into the scene with my lights, and over twenty to ninety minutes, I’d bring color and light to the wreckage, section by section. When I was done, I’d step back, close the shutter, and leave.

Enter the dark place. Stand in it until you can see. Decide how to frame the damage. Then bring light to the darkness, and find ways of making a frightening reality into something beautiful.

I was rehearsing my own recovery in physical space, over and over again, without knowing that’s what I was doing. The camera was recording evidence that the transformation was real. Each photograph was real proof that something shunned and forsaken could become beauty, that you could enter the wreckage and come out with something worth keeping.

The Paradox That Made It Work

One of the strangest things about those years is this: I was not afraid of what everyone else feared, and yet deadly afraid of what everyone else shrugged off as life. A brief conversation could trigger a tailspin that lasted weeks. But standing alone at 2 am in a place where gunshots had just rung out? I was perfectly calm.

It took me a long time to understand why. The danger in the alleys was external, concrete, something I could respond to. The danger that crippled me – social interaction, being seen, being asked to speak – was internal, invisible, and nothing I tried could touch it. In the alleys, my hypervigilance, the constant scanning, became an asset instead of a symptom. My broken wiring was, for once, perfectly suited to my environment.

I’d found the one context where my damage was useful. And without realizing it, I was using that context to slowly repair the damage.

What I Know Now

I did this for twenty-five years. Over 1,200 nights in more than thirty cities. The photographs were exhibited in galleries and museums, covered by the New York Times, PBS, NPR, and ABC. People responded to the images without knowing the story behind them, and that’s how I wanted it. I planned to take that story to my grave, until it became more important to me that the photos be fully understood.

Only while writing my book did I finally learn the name for what had happened to me in 1987. Only then did I begin to see the pattern – that I had accidentally invented a practice that addressed my specific injury with eerie precision. The repetition, the controlled exposure to fear, the physical engagement, the mindfulness in darkness, the transformation of something broken into something beautiful – it mapped onto things clinicians now describe as somatic regulation, graded exposure, and meaning-making. I had no framework and no clinical language. My body just knew what it needed, and it dragged me to the places where healing could happen.

I’m not a therapist. I can’t tell anyone what their body needs, and I certainly don’t recommend the risks I took, which seemed to be calibrated to my specific injury. But I can say this: if you’ve found something that calms you and you don’t know why, pay attention. If you’ve built a ritual that doesn’t make sense to the people around you but keeps you upright, don’t dismiss it. Your body may be solving a problem your mind hasn’t caught up to yet.

I spent twenty-five years not understanding what had happened to me, or what to do about it. But my body knew, and kept telling me.

Photo Credit: User Supplied from their Book: Alley’s & Ruins.

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’m surprised I wasn’t born wearing a tiny pair of boxing gloves. That would have been appropriate, given the kind of life I would be leading as a kid.

For people like me who grew up with complex trauma, our nervous systems helped us survive through trauma responses. Way back in the early 20th century, an old guy named Walter Bradford Cannon coined the ‘fight or flight’ responses in his 1915 book titled Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear, and Rage. This work is grounded in physiology, though, the way the body responds–not psychology or trauma theory.

“Freeze” was added later by trauma researchers, and Complex PTSD expert Pete Walker added “fawn” in his 2013 book Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving. Fight, flight, and freeze are biologically ancient reactions in animals and humans, while fawning is innately human, rooted in relational trauma. When people “fawn” as a trauma response, their nervous system is helping them survive in a socially unequal power struggle. Generally, those who fawn in a situation will attempt to appease or please their abuser as a response to abuse.

I was not made to fawn. That doesn’t make me any better than someone who fawns, or freezes, or flees; this is just how I am made, deep within the biology of my cells. Because of this, I have a hard time understanding that response because I have witnessed chronically abused children, first-hand, and I just wanted to scream, “STAND UP FOR YOURSELF FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!” Or, “why are you letting her manipulate you like that? You see this is about control, right?”

Perhaps I had to be a fighter in order to thrive after the traumas I experienced as a child and young adult, I don’t know for certain. I am working on being more understanding and accepting that not everyone is made the way I am, and that for some people, standing up for themselves could feel like a death sentence.

I hated watching these children being raised by an emotionally abusive mother, and then their brother was added as an abuser, as well. It was heart-wrenching to see how their response was to fawn. The times they did try to fight, before puberty, their mother put them in their place very quickly; she threatened to kill herself, and they were terrified of her. Even though they’re young adults now, they are still drinking the Kool-Aid, and I mourn the kind of lives they could have had if they didn’t grow up that way.

My life might have been easier if I just fawned over my mother’s demands, her insults, her constant criticisms, and her blatant and excessive coddling of my brother–who was only 15 months younger than I was.

If I fawned instead of fought, I probably wouldn’t have been institutionalized in a mental hospital on my 13th birthday because she just couldn’t handle me. I probably wouldn’t have been constantly grounded for nonsense, including taking away my ability to get to work.

The truth is, I fought her constantly with logic, with reason, with common sense. But emotional abusers are anything but logical and reasonable, especially emotional abusers with personality disorders like borderline, narcissistic personality disorder, and bipolar disorder. I was fighting a battle that I would never win as a minor–but I fought anyway.

By the time I left for college (which I did 100% on my own, without support), I was battle-scarred and seeping from so many wounds–but no one could see them. I was exhausted from the fight, which had gone on for eight years straight. Distance helped immensely and because I was not connected to my abuser in any way, especially emotionally, removing myself nearly completely helped me feel just a little bit closer to normal.

We fighters are very misunderstood because our survival strategy violates social expectations about how pain, fear, vulnerability, and self-advocacy are “supposed” to look. The other trauma responses retreat, appease, or disappear, but we fighters move toward the threat, and that makes people uncomfortable–especially the abusers. However, some abusers, like mine, used it to their advantage.

A fight trauma response looks like a raised voice, firm boundaries, anger, confrontation, or refusal to back down. On the outside looking in, these appear deliberate, like the person fighting is choosing conflict. In reality, this fight response is automatic nervous system mobilization. Our body detects danger, so it prepares to push back in order to survive. In my personal situation, my abuser used it as evidence that I was “difficult,” “impossible,” and “defiant”.

People assume, “that person could control it if they wanted to”, or “they just seem to enjoy conflict” because responses look active rather than passive. We humans are much more comfortable recognizing trauma when it looks like collapse compared to when it looks like resistance.

Anger is one of the least tolerated emotions, especially when it’s expressed by women, children, and marginalized people. When trauma shows up as anger, it gets moralized instead of medicalized. Rather than asking, “What threat taught you to respond in this manner?” people ask:

Why are you so aggressive?

Why can’t you calm down?

What’s wrong with you?

This fight response is misread as a character flaw instead of a complex learned survival skill.

Fighters disrupt people’s comfort and their need for control–especially emotional abusers. Freeze and fawn responses make the other person feel needed, calm, unchallenged, and in charge, whereas fight responses do the exact opposite. Fighters will question authority and push back against unfairness; they refuse to emotionally disappear when mistreated, and will make tension visible and uncomfortable for those in the room.

Systems like families, workplaces, and relationships that rely on silence and compliance are threatened by those who have a fight response. It’s easier to label the fighter as the problem than to examine the environment that required the fight response to begin with.

As much as it pains me to admit this, fight is related to fear and is rarely recognized as such. As humans, we are taught that fear looks like crying, avoidance, withdrawal, and panic, but for fighters, fear looks like increased energy, argument, defensiveness, and readiness, along with a “bring-it-on” attitude. Because fear is hidden inside these other, more aggressive emotions, it’s missed and replaced with incorrect assumptions about hostility and ego. In truth, fight is fear with momentum.

Many fighters grew up where fight was the only protection they had in emotionally abusive, chaotic, or unsafe environments because freeze wasn’t safe–it meant they would be the target. Fawn didn’t work–their needs weren’t respected, nor were their efforts to be nice/good/useful recognized. Flight wasn’t possible because they couldn’t leave and had nowhere to go. So, fight was the only way to maintain dignity, boundaries, or a sense of self.

I want to share a brief story.

When I was 11 years old, my father was out of the house because his heroin habit took over his life. One bitterly cold night, there was a knock at the door. Usually, my mother was working, but she was home that night. My father came to the door asking for food and a blanket. He pawned his leather jacket and was homeless.

I heard his plea and got up from watching my TV program to make him some Campbell’s Chicken Noodle soup, spread some butter on white bread, and take my blanket off my bed, which was gifted to me by my neighbor, Mary. I carefully took these through the living room and was blocked by my mother, who threatened me, belittled me, and cursed me, but I fought back with everything I had to get to the door and give my father food and warmth.

Writing this still fills me with difficult emotions. The trauma of that night is woven into the fibers of who I am. She would not keep me from helping my father without a fight, and, in the end, he had the soup, and I let him keep the blanket.

Culturally, we seem to prefer trauma survivors who are quiet, forgiving, insightful without being threatening, and resilient–but in soft, palatable ways. Fighters complicate the story because we’re not always gentle; we may hold on to anger longer; we may not rush to forgive (or may not forgive at all); we may insist things were wrong and, at least at first, demand retribution if not at least some form of acknowledgment of the wrongdoing done to us. All of this makes us fighters hard to celebrate and easier to dismiss.

If you’re a fighter, I stand in solidarity with you. Fighters are misunderstood because our trauma response looks like aggression instead of fear, choice instead of instinctual reflex, and defiance instead of personal protection. This makes it so much easier to blame us than to recognize the threats we had to deal with every day, and how we learned to survive them.

Photo Credit: Unsplash

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

Resources

Cole, P. M., Martin, S. E., & Dennis, T. A. (2004). Emotion regulation as a scientific construct. Child Development, 75(2), 317–333. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2004.00675.x (article)

Marshburn, C. K., Cochran, K. J., Flynn, E., & Levine, L. J. (2020). Workplace anger costs women irrespective of race. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 579884. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.579884 (article)

Perry, Bruce. (2021). What Happened to You? (book)

Riggs, S. A. (2010). Childhood emotional abuse and the attachment system across the life cycle: What theory and research tell us. Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, 19(1), 5–51. https://doi.org/10.1080/10926770903475968 (article)

Walker, Pete. (2013). Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving (book)

Xu, M. (2025). Reconsider the anger of marginalized communities. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 51(2), e70018. https://doi.org/10.1111/jmft.70018 (article)

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 browse an old magazine, flip through some patterned papers, tear off some tissue paper, and imagine how these pieces fall into place. I go from feeling as though I have no control over anything to feeling complete as though I have complete agency over my actions. Now words are needed to express or to analyze how I am feeling. This is a nonverbal process that allows me to experience my emotions in a structured and safe way.

When words fail me in a journal, collage becomes my way of communication and processing without collapsing. The words come later when I am feeling more articulate and centered. 

Collaging a little bit every day has been beneficial to my mind, bringing peace to my nervous system. The activity of crafting gets me out of my head as someone who overthinks and easily becomes stuck in a creative block. When my brain becomes too blocked up with thoughts about perfection, the anxiety makes it harder to create.

Collaging gives me the freedom to glue anything I want to paper without overthinking. Additionally, when the stress from vulnerability factors throughout the day puts me in freeze mode,  a creative practice, especially collaging, helps me get out of that freeze. 

For the days when I’m so stuck in freeze that I can’t seem to find inspiration to collage, I find that watching YouTube videos of other people making art inspires me. In that situation, I sit with the video playing in the background while I make art. It’s as though I am making art with another person in the room.

In fact, if I can, I like to have friends over for crafting. Establishing a sense of community while making collage art is also one way that I ground my anxieties, dread, depression, and trauma symptoms. 

Collage also has the benefit of slowing me down when I’m overstimulated. If I sit down at my crafting space, take some slow deep breaths, and put on some slow music in the background, I am telling my body that it’s safe to slow down now. I may stare at a pile of paper scraps, slowly letting my fingers pass along the texture of each one, noticing the colors and patterns. Letting some ink, glue, or paint get on my fingers is extremely satisfying in the process, as well. This slowing-down process detangles my thoughts from mental constipation, opening up my creativity. 

As someone who struggles to name my strengths, I find collage an empowering tool that builds confidence in my artistic abilities.

I have a lot of trauma from my formative years in school, as I was a child who struggled academically early on. Teachers expressed disappointment, and my peers called me stupid. I even had one teacher call me stupid. So ever since then, I’ve carried these experiences with me into adulthood.

Recently, I’ve found collage to be a tool that empowers me to look at my work and feel good about it. It gives me the confidence to keep working in other creative outlets, such as painting, drawing, and writing. 

Being able to piece together a whole new image from a bunch of ripped-up images is like putting myself together after falling apart. It’s not only satisfying to rip, cut, glue, touch, and smell the materials. The tactile experience is both internal and external. When I come home from work feeling dysregulated, sitting down with a blank art journal page to create a collage creates a sense of warmth and safety within me.

In making collage, I am communicating with myself, externalizing my inner experiences so they don’t create more wounds.

Photo Credit: Unsplash

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

It is not because you are incapable.
It is not because you are hypersensitive or hypo sensitive.

More often than not, the greatest obstacle to feeling freely is this: a nervous system that has been living in prolonged stress, and a brain that has adapted to conserve energy in response to that stress.

When the body perceives an ongoing threat—whether from life events, emotional pain, or chronic pressure—it shifts into survival mode. The nervous system prioritizes protection over connection, and the brain begins to operate from an energy-conservation model. This means it becomes less interested in exploration, openness, and emotional processing, and more focused on efficiency, prediction, and staying safe.

Brain scientist Delia McCabe speaks to this beautifully: when we understand how the brain functions, we can begin to create the internal conditions that allow us to feel safe enough to feel. Without that sense of safety, the brain will always default to protection.

And protection, while essential in moments of real danger, can become limiting when it turns into a long-term state.

In trauma-related stress, the body produces elevated levels of stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. These are powerful chemicals designed to help us respond quickly to a threat. But over time, they come at a cost. The production and recycling of these stress hormones require significant nutritional resources—vitamins, minerals, and amino acids that the body also needs for other essential functions.

One of those functions is the production of serotonin, a neurotransmitter deeply involved in mood regulation, emotional stability, and a general sense of well-being. Another is acetylcholine, which plays a key role in learning, memory, focus, and the processing and integration of new information.

When the body is under prolonged stress, resources are diverted toward survival. This can gradually lead to nutrient depletion, leaving fewer building blocks to support balanced mood, clear thinking, and emotional regulation. The result is not just psychological—it is physiological.

You may feel more reactive, more anxious, more depleted.
You may find it harder to focus, remember, and process.
You may feel emotionally flooded one moment and numb the next.

This is not a personal failure.
It is a system under strain.

At the center of this system is the limbic system—the emotional brain. This includes structures such as the amygdala, which scans for threats, and the hippocampus, which helps process memory and context. When stress is chronic, the amygdala becomes more sensitive, more reactive, more likely to interpret neutral situations as threatening. At the same time, the systems that help regulate and contextualize emotion can become less effective.

This is why emotions can feel so intense, so sudden, and sometimes so disorganizing.

They are not just emotions.
They are survival signals amplified by a system that has been on high alert for too long.

And yet, within this understanding lies something deeply hopeful.

Because when we begin to support the nervous system and the brain in the ways they actually need, the experience of emotion begins to change.

We can start by creating conditions of safety.

Not by forcing ourselves to feel everything at once, but by gently teaching the system that feeling does not equal danger.

This can be as simple—and as profound—as:

• Slowing the breath to signal calm to the nervous system
• Grounding through the body by feeling the feet or the support beneath you
• Softening the muscles, especially around the face, jaw, and chest
• Orienting to your environment to remind the brain you are here, now, and safe

These small acts, that can be so quickly overlooked, can and do begin to regulate the limbic system when practiced with nervous system awareness in mind. They reduce the body based intensity of the stress response and allow the brain to shift out of pure survival mode.

As this happens, something begins to open.

Emotions, which once felt overwhelming or fragmenting, start to feel more fluid.

There is a beautiful truth about emotions that many people never get to experience fully:

When emotions are felt fully, without judgment, the often-frozen, stored stress associated with them begins to mobilize. Knowing how to orient this release of energy is equally important.

With the practice of titration and pendulation, we learn to fear emotions less and less. They arrive, their expression is felt, and they pass—like birds free to fly and land again.

It is when they are resisted, suppressed, or feared that they tend to linger, intensify, or fragment our inner world, often times causing inflammation due to the stress of storing them.

Feeling safe enough to witness your own emotional landscape—without immediately trying to fix, judge, or escape it—is one of the most precious and empowering skills you can develop.

When we can create and share that space, something shifts. You are no longer at the mercy of your emotions.
You are in a relationship with them. And from that relationship, regulation, integration, and healing become possible.

Over time, as the nervous system learns that it can feel without being overwhelmed, and the brain receives signals of safety while it approaches what is stressful to feel, the entire system begins to reorganize and create new predictions.

Energy becomes more available.
Mood stabilizes.
Clarity returns.
The body feels less like a battleground and more like a place you can inhabit.

And perhaps most importantly, you begin to rediscover something that may have felt lost for a long time:

The freedom to feel.

Photo Credit: Unsplash

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