I recently had the great joy of connecting with Robyn Vogel. She is the author of the book Come Back to Love: A Path to Healing and host of the syndicated radio show of the same name! She has spent more than two decades helping individuals and couples heal emotional wounds, release shame, and experience deeper, safer, more fulfilling love–within themselves and in relationship.

You all are in for such a treat! Her work carries warmth, depth, and grounded wisdom, and I’m so glad to be sharing her here with you.

————-

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

ROBYN: Healing from the death of my mom when I was 10 years old, and then losing my dad early and my partner at 40, led me to dive deeply into what it takes to HEAL and love again….to have the courage. How to keep opening my heart, even if I feel afraid.


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

ROBYN: One of the most important lessons I’ve learned through Come Back to Love is that love doesn’t disappear because we’re broken or “too much;” it fades when our nervous system learns that closeness isn’t safe. Most people I work with are intelligent, self-aware, and deeply caring. They understand their patterns, have done years of personal growth, and yet still find themselves repeating the same dynamics in relationships. What I’ve learned is that insight alone isn’t enough. Real change happens when we work with the body, the heart, and the protective strategies that once kept us safe.

Come Back to Love taught me, and continues to teach me, that healing isn’t about forcing openness or trying harder. It means slowing down, building internal safety, and gently renegotiating our relationship with vulnerability.

When we do that, love doesn’t feel like a risk–it feels like home.

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

ROBYN: One of the biggest challenges people face around love and intimacy is the gap between what they know and what they can actually live.

Many people understand their patterns intellectually. They can name their attachment style, see how their childhood or past relationships shaped them, and recognize what isn’t working. And yet, in real moments of closeness, conflict, or vulnerability, their system reacts before their insight can help.

Another challenge is that self-protection often masquerades as independence, strength, or emotional maturity. People may appear “together” on the outside while feeling guarded, lonely, or disconnected on the inside–and they don’t always realize how much armor they’re carrying until they try to let someone in.

There’s also deep shame around needing love at all. Many people believe they should be over it, healed by now, or able “to do it alone.” That shame can keep them stuck, cycling between longing and withdrawal.

People struggle because most approaches to healing focus on fixing rather than creating the safety required for real emotional change. Without that safety, the heart stays cautious–and love remains always just out of reach.


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

ROBYN: One of the most common misconceptions about love and healing is that awareness alone should be enough to change our patterns. We often believe that once we “know better,” we should automatically “do better.”

When old reactions or attachments resurface, we judge themselves as failing. In truth, insight doesn’t regulate the nervous system–safety, attunement, and lived relational experiences do.

Another myth is that the right partner will make everything feel easy. Many people assume that healthy love won’t activate old wounds. Yet authentic intimacy often brings our unhealed parts to the surface–not because something is wrong, but because something is ready to be healed.

There’s also a widespread belief that needing support means you’re weak or not healed enough. This keeps people trying to fix relational wounds alone, even though most attachment injuries were created in a relationship, and are healed most effectively in a relationship.

Many people assume healing means eliminating fear, pain, or protective behaviors. In my work, healing isn’t about getting rid of parts of yourself. It’s about understanding them, softening toward them, and allowing your truest, most grounded self to lead–so love becomes a place of safety rather than survival.


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

ROBYN: I recommend resources that support both insight and lived integration–tools that help people not only understand their patterns, but gently shift them in real time.

At the core of this work is my book, Come Back to Love: A Path to Healing, which offers a clear, compassionate framework for understanding why we repeat certain relationship patterns and how to change them. The book guides readers through my Four Gates Approach, blending Internal Family Systems (IFS), nervous system attunement, somatic awareness, and heart-centered reflection. Each chapter includes practical exercises and questions that invite readers into an experiential healing process, not just an intellectual one. 

I also have my program Ready for Love, which takes people on a journey from fear, anxiety, and a lack of confidence in love to knowing they are lovable and have the confidence to choose a healthy relationship going forward! You can learn more about that here: https://www.comebacktolove.com/heal-your-heart

Use the coupon code RACHEL500 at checkout to get a special discount!

Beyond the book, I often encourage practices that support nervous system regulation and self-connection–such as journaling, mindful embodiment, breath awareness, and relational reflection. I also recommend working with trauma-informed practitioners or communities where healing can happen safely in a relationship.

Ultimately, the most powerful “tool” is learning how to listen to your inner world with curiosity and compassion. When your system feels safe, love becomes something you can choose and sustain, rather than chase or endure.


—

What I really take from Robyn’s work is this reminder that love is not just something we learn to understand--it’s something we learn to feel safe enough to stay open to. There’s something so powerful in the way she brings it back to the nervous system and the body, not as a concept to master, but as an experience to slowly, gently rebuild.

So many people think they are “bad at relationships,” “too much,” or “not ready yet,” when what’s actually happening is their system is doing exactly what it learned to do to survive. Her work offers a compassionate reframe: nothing is broken, it’s all protective, and it can be met with care instead of shame.

I really appreciate how she brings people back to the idea that love is not something we force ourselves into. It’s something we return to when safety starts to grow again.

To love,

Rachel

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

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

The Weight You Carry

You wake up each morning with a heaviness that makes even lifting your head from the pillow feel impossible. The weight isn’t physical—it’s the accumulation of emotional wounds, betrayals, and the exhausting effort of pretending to be okay when you’re anything but.

There’s a peculiar kind of loneliness in walking through the world carrying this invisible burden. People pass by with casual greetings—”How are you?”—a question that forces you into an impossible choice: lie and say “I’m fine” while wanting to die inside, or risk the vulnerability of honesty when so few truly understand the depth of your pain.

So you smile. You nod. You perform the dance of normalcy while inside, a voice whispers that continuing to exist shouldn’t be this unbearable.

The Fog of Invisibility

In this state, it becomes frighteningly easy to picture a world without you in it. Not because you’re actively planning to leave, but because you fundamentally believe you don’t matter—not really. Even when people insist you’re important to them, their words can’t penetrate the dense fog you’re lost in.

You don’t even remember when you started believing you don’t matter. It feels like a truth you’ve always known, buried deep in your bones. There seems to be no amount of love, affirmation, or validation that will make it register in your soul that you truly matter. The narcissist didn’t create this belief, but they identified it with unerring precision and exploited it until it grew to consume your entire reality. Palpably feeling loved seems like something “other people” get to have, but it seems impossible for you.

For many survivors, the only tether keeping them anchored to this world is their children. The thought of abandoning their kids is unthinkable—the one line they won’t cross. But this creates its own cruel trap: they don’t want to be in this harsh world, yet they can’t leave it. They’re caught in limbo, neither fully living nor able to escape.

This brings crushing waves of guilt. They grieve the time they’ve lost with their children while battling this internal darkness. They mourn not being the parents they desperately want to be—fully present, engaged, and joyful. Instead, they go through the motions, knowing their kids are growing up, that these fleeting years are passing, and that irreplaceable stretches of precious parent/child moments have been robbed by this struggle.

They’ll never get that time back. And just knowing this doesn’t magically end the struggle. So they face the heartbreaking knowledge that more days will be lost, more precious moments missed, before their children are grown and gone.

The Silent Struggle: Loss of Will to Live

Victims may feel deep apathy, hopelessness, or a loss of motivation to engage in life or pursue future goals. In narcissistic abuse and complex trauma, this often comes from prolonged emotional, psychological, or relational distress caused by the abusive dynamic.

This isn’t about wanting to die—it’s about no longer feeling capable of living. It’s waking up each morning, believing you don’t have what it takes to survive in this world. And you can’t imagine having to endure more days, months, decades feeling this way. Thinking about the future feels overwhelming and triggering because you’re bracing yourself for the next wrecking ball.

For survivors of narcissistic abuse, this silent struggle often goes unrecognized. Friends and family might see someone functioning—going to work, maintaining appearances—while inside, that person feels panic and dread about their own existence.

The Inner Struggle: Beyond the Surface

When Words Fail

For many people actively struggling with the loss of will to live, simply forming words to describe their experience becomes impossible. They may receive a text from a concerned friend asking, “How are you?” and find themselves staring at the screen, utterly paralyzed.

This isn’t merely an emotional block—it’s rooted in brain biology. When trauma overwhelms us, our nervous system can shift into a protective shutdown mode (what scientists call a “dorsal vagal state”). In this survival state, the thinking and language parts of our brain temporarily go offline. The brain literally deprioritizes our ability to form words and sentences while it focuses on basic survival functions. This is why trauma researchers sometimes refer to this as “speechless terror”—the experience is so overwhelming that the brain’s language centers cannot process or express it.

To someone who hasn’t experienced this state, it seems inconceivable that a person couldn’t muster a simple response. But in these moments, language itself becomes inaccessible. How do you translate the vast, formless void inside you into words? How do you explain that you’re simultaneously numb and in excruciating pain? That you feel nothing and everything at once? And you’re literally incapable of expressing it.

So the message sits unanswered. Adding another layer of shame, another reason to withdraw further, believing you don’t have what it takes to live in this world.

“But My Abuse Wasn’t That Bad”

A common obstacle to seeking help is the belief that their experiences “weren’t bad enough” to justify their deep suffering. Survivors often downplay their trauma, thinking:

“Other people have it so much worse.” “I wasn’t physically harmed, so why am I falling apart?” “They didn’t mean to hurt me, so this isn’t really abuse.” “I’m just too sensitive.”

Many struggle to accept the word “abuse,” finding it hard to connect it to their experience. This minimization isn’t accidental—it’s often shaped by the abuser, who downplays the harm they cause and makes the victim feel like their reactions are overblown.

This cycle of self-doubt deepens the pain, layering shame about the struggle itself on top of the original trauma.

The Protective Part That Wants to Give Up

In the internal family systems (IFS) therapy model, the part of us that wants to stop living isn’t trying to harm us—it’s trying to protect us in the only way it knows how. It’s not a destructive impulse but a misguided protector that sees ending the struggle as the only solution.

This part formed when other coping strategies failed—when fighting didn’t work, fleeing wasn’t an option, and freezing no longer brought relief. It whispers, “I can make the pain stop,” believing it’s offering mercy, not destruction.

Recognizing this as a protective response, however paradoxical, can help survivors replace fear and shame with self-compassion.

Living Minute by Minute

For someone in acute crisis, even “taking things one day at a time” can feel overwhelming. Their world narrows to surviving moment by moment, unable to imagine a future beyond the next few minutes.

They genuinely don’t know how they’ll exist from one hour to the next. Basic tasks become monumental achievements—eating a meal, taking a shower, responding to a text. On particularly difficult days, the only goal might be to eat three small meals or simply not resort to hospitalization.

These individuals often develop elaborate ways to avoid potential triggers. They may:

• Avoid all public places or social media for fear that one negative interaction with a stranger could push them over the edge
• Stop watching any shows with suspenseful or emotional content
• Experience panic at notification sounds, dreading the task of responding
• Rehearse casual conversations to prepare for inevitable social interactions

It cannot be overstated how fragile someone can be during these periods—existing in a constant state of pain and torment, where the slightest additional stress threatens to break them completely.

The Invisible Wounds

Beneath the surface of daily life, survivors of narcissistic abuse carry unseen wounds that impact every part of their being—their thoughts, emotions, physical health, and spiritual well-being. The harm runs deep because it attacks their very sense of identity and self-worth, leaving them questioning their right to exist.

Causes:

Existential Shame and Humiliation: Beyond ordinary shame about actions or behaviors, narcissistic abuse often creates a profound existential shame—the feeling that your very existence is somehow wrong or flawed.

This isn’t simply feeling bad about something you did; it’s feeling that who you fundamentally are is defective. The narcissist’s constant criticism, devaluation, and manipulation create a state of existential humiliation where you feel inherently unworthy of taking up space in the world. This deep shame becomes a core identity, making the thought of continuing to exist feel pointless or even wrong. You’re embarrassed at your own existence.

Emotional Exhaustion: Victims of narcissistic abuse often endure relentless invalidation, neglect, and emotional turmoil, leading to extreme fatigue and loss of motivation.

The constant vigilance required to navigate a relationship with a narcissist—walking on eggshells, managing their unpredictable moods, defending against accusations, and trying to make sense of reality when someone keeps distorting it—taxes every emotional resource you have. Eventually, your emotional reserves are completely depleted. You have nothing left to give—not even to yourself.

Hopelessness and Worthlessness: Narcissistic abuse can erode a person’s self-esteem and sense of worth, fostering feelings of being trapped and powerless.

After years of being told you’re not enough, that your feelings don’t matter, or that you’re the problem, you begin to see yourself through the narcissist’s distorted lens. Your achievements become meaningless, your dreams seem ridiculous, and your future appears pointless. Why bother living when you’ve been convinced your life has no value?

Cognitive Dissonance: The conflict between reality and the narcissist’s false narratives can contribute to confusion, self-doubt, and despair, making life seem meaningless.

Living in two worlds—the real one and the narcissist’s version—fractures your sense of truth. You doubt your own perceptions and memories. This constant state of uncertainty exhausts the mind and spirit, making simple decisions feel overwhelming. Life becomes a maze with no exit, where nothing makes sense anymore.

Identity Erosion: When someone systematically strips away your sense of self, you may eventually forget who you are outside of the abuse.

The narcissist slowly replaces your authentic self with the version of who you must become to survive. Your preferences, boundaries, dreams, and even your personality become shaped by their demands and criticisms. When you finally emerge from the relationship, you may feel like a stranger to yourself, unsure of what you like, what you want, or who you are meant to be.

The Layered Nature of Trauma: Many survivors of narcissistic abuse carry previous wounds from childhood that made them vulnerable to narcissistic manipulation in the first place.

Childhood emotional neglect, attachment trauma, or growing up with narcissistic parents can create the perfect foundation for later narcissistic abuse. The narcissist didn’t create your wounds—they simply found them with unerring precision and exploited them. This layering of trauma upon trauma creates a compounding effect, making recovery particularly challenging. You’re not just healing from the current relationship but from a lifetime of having your sense of self and worth undermined.

Grieving What Was Lost

Survivors of narcissistic abuse often carry an unspoken, invisible grief—a mourning that few recognize or validate. Unlike grief caused by death, this loss is ambiguous, complex, and deeply personal. What has been stolen isn’t just a relationship or a period of time—it’s a sense of safety, trust, identity, and sometimes, even the belief that joy is possible.

You may grieve the person you were before the abuse—someone who once moved through life with more ease, trust, or optimism. Or perhaps you grieve the time you lost—years spent trying to make things work, trying to be enough, trying to survive in an environment that was slowly eroding you. Some mourn the family they never truly had, realizing that the people who were supposed to love them were incapable of doing so in a way that was safe or nurturing.

Grief may also appear in unexpected ways: feeling waves of sorrow over memories that now seem tainted, feeling anger over what you tolerated before you understood it was abuse, or feeling deep sadness when you witness healthy relationships and realize what you never had.

Many survivors struggle with self-blame in their grief. They wonder, Why didn’t I see it sooner? Why didn’t I leave earlier? Why did I let it affect me this much? But this is not a failure on your part—it is a testament to how deeply you loved, how hard you tried, and how much you deserved better.

Grieving is painful, but it is also proof that you are healing. It means you are recognizing what you lost, what was taken from you, and what you still deserve. True healing doesn’t mean erasing the grief—it means making space for it while also making space for what comes next: reclaiming your life, your identity, and your future.

Living in the Shadow

When the will to live has been eroded by narcissistic abuse, survivors don’t just think differently—they experience the world differently. What was once colorful becomes gray; what once brought joy becomes empty; what once felt meaningful becomes pointless. This isn’t simply a shift in perspective but a fundamental alteration in how reality is experienced moment by moment. The outer persona may continue to function while the inner self has gone dormant, creating a shadow existence where one merely goes through the motions of living.

Manifestation:

Emotional Numbness: Victims may experience detachment from their emotions, as the constant invalidation and gaslighting make it difficult to trust their own perceptions.

Survivors often describe feeling like they’re “dead inside” or “just going through the motions.” This numbness isn’t a choice—it’s the mind’s way of protecting itself from overwhelming pain. When feelings have been weaponized against you, shutting them down becomes a survival strategy.

Reduced Capacity for Joy: Simple pleasures and future aspirations become difficult to connect with, as the narcissistic relationship strips away a sense of purpose and hope.

Activities you once loved bring no satisfaction. Future dreams seem pointless or unattainable. The present moment feels empty. This isn’t depression as most people understand it—it’s a profound disconnection from the very things that make life worth living.

Self-Isolation: Withdrawal from social connections and neglect of personal care are common as the person feels disconnected from the world.

The energy required for social interaction becomes too much to bear. Basic self-care feels pointless. Why shower, eat well, or rest when nothing matters anyway? This withdrawal often reinforces the feeling of disconnection, creating a cycle that’s difficult to break.

Persistent Feeling of Defeat: A pervasive sense that no matter what you do, things will never improve or change.

This isn’t pessimism—it’s the result of having your efforts consistently undermined, your successes diminished, and your hopes repeatedly crushed. When every attempt to improve your situation has been sabotaged, giving up seems like the only logical response.

Small Triggers, Massive Waves

For survivors with Complex PTSD from narcissistic abuse, what appears to be a minor incident can trigger a catastrophic collapse of your will to live. The depth of this reaction often seems incomprehensible to those who haven’t experienced complex trauma.

When Trust Is Shattered Again

Consider this true story: A trauma survivor hired a dog sitter through a reputable company while away on vacation. Midway through the trip, they discovered through security cameras that the sitter was neglecting their beloved pet—not staying at the house as promised, leaving the dog alone for 17 hours, failing to provide food, and sending false updates about the dog’s care.

From several states away, they scrambled to find emergency care for their pet while documenting the neglect with timestamped video evidence. The vacation was ruined, but worse was coming. Despite irrefutable evidence and promises from the company, the sitter remained on the platform after being suspended for only one day, even posting public lies denying any wrongdoing and openly calling the survivor a liar.

For someone without trauma, this would be infuriating. For a complex trauma survivor, it was catastrophic. The combination of betrayed trust, gaslighting, injustice, powerlessness, and institutional failure to protect the vulnerable hit every trigger point from their abuse history. Being publicly called a liar—and watching that lie be allowed to stand without consequence—recreated the exact dynamic of their previous trauma. And doing everything in their power to pursue justice, only to have no influence, was soul shattering. For weeks afterward, they found themselves thinking, “I don’t want to be alive anymore.” The depth of despair was so severe they had to ask family not to leave them unattended.

To an outsider, this reaction might seem disproportionate. But trauma doesn’t operate on logic. When your psyche has been previously shattered, even the smallest betrayals can reopen those wounds completely.

The Invisibility of Triggers

Triggers can be unexpectedly small—a flash of painful memory, an unanswered message, a minor mistake at work. To others, these moments seem trivial, but to a trauma survivor, they can spiral into despair in an instant, reigniting feelings of shame, abandonment, or fear. The body reacts as if the past is happening all over again, no matter how much time has passed. For someone with CPTSD, these moments can instantly trigger:

• Emotional Flashbacks: Suddenly feeling the same helplessness, shame, or terror you experienced during the abuse
• Overwhelming Fatigue: A wave of soul level exhaustion that makes continuing to stay alive seem impossible
• Dissociation: Mentally “checking out” because reality becomes too painful
• Return to Hopelessness: All progress seems erased in an instant
• Sleep Seeking: The desperate wish to “go to sleep and never wake up”—not actively wanting to die, but wanting desperately for the pain to stop

What makes these triggers so devastating is that they often appear inconsequential to others. A friend’s constructive feedback becomes a crushing blow. A minor setback feels like definitive proof of your worthlessness. A happy memory brings guilt and confusion rather than joy.

The thoughts that follow aren’t dramatic plans for self-harm but quiet surrenders: “Being alive is too hard.” “I can’t do this anymore.” “I just want this to be over.”

This is why recovery isn’t linear. A survivor might be doing well for weeks or months, only to encounter a trigger that temporarily erases all sense of progress and returns them to that place of not wanting to continue living. And they often suffer in complete silence, because how do you explain to someone that a seemingly minor disappointment has made you lose your will to live?

Read the rest of this article in the first book of Ellen’s series “There’s A Word for That”: https://a.co/d/01GdqiwJ

Copyright Notice: This excerpt is from my 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 – Additional Terms and disclaimers for images used in my posts on CPTSD Foundation.

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

Internalized Worthlessness: When You Truly Believe You Don’t Matter

Khalil stood in front of his bathroom mirror, adjusting his tie for the third time. His therapist Dr. Rivera had suggested this simple daily affirmation: “I matter. My voice matters.” But today, the words felt foreign in his mouth, like stones too heavy to lift.

The promotion letter lay unopened on his dresser—the department chair position he’d been quietly encouraged to apply for. Instead, he’d recommended his colleague Tariq, insisting Tariq would be “a better fit.” Yet in his current role, Khalil regularly stayed hours after his shift ended, taking on the cases nobody wanted, covering colleagues’ weekends without complaint, and volunteering for every committee that needed members.

“You’re the hardest working doctor in this hospital,” his supervisor often said, not realizing that Khalil’s relentless work ethic wasn’t ambition but atonement—constant payment for the space he occupied in the world.

Downstairs, his achievement awards lined the hallway—the community leadership plaque, his medical school diploma, framed articles about the free clinic he’d helped establish. His mother Amara had insisted on displaying them, proud of the son who had “made something of himself.” What the awards didn’t show was how he’d driven himself to exhaustion earning them, taking on impossible workloads while declining recognition that might put him too visibly in the spotlight.

At the clinic, he was known for working through lunch, seeing extra patients, and personally making follow-up calls on his drive home. The staff marveled at his dedication while worrying about his health. Last month, he’d nearly collapsed from pneumonia after refusing to take sick days, convinced the clinic would fall apart without him—not because he was irreplaceable, but because he felt responsible for everyone else’s welfare while dismissing his own.

“You coming to the fundraiser tonight?” His colleague Nisha had texted earlier. “They’re recognizing your refugee healthcare initiative.”

Khalil had responded with a thumbs-up emoji, not mentioning how he’d personally covered three families’ medical bills last month when funding ran short, stretching his finances thin. He hadn’t told anyone, adding it to the invisible ledger of things he did to prove his worth—a ledger that somehow never balanced, no matter how much he gave.

Last week, he’d run into Leila at a conference. Now married with children, she’d mentioned casually, “Remember how I always said you worked too hard? Looks like nothing’s changed.” She didn’t know that after their breakup, he’d thrown himself even deeper into his career, taking overnight shifts and weekend rotations that no one else wanted, filling every moment so he wouldn’t have to face the silence of his apartment and the whispers of inadequacy that filled it.

He practiced his smile in the mirror—the one that projected confidence while hiding the constant calculation happening behind it: Am I doing enough? Have I earned my place today? What more should I be giving?

The irony wasn’t lost on him. As a doctor, he fiercely advocated for his patients to prioritize their wellbeing, to set boundaries, to recognize their inherent value beyond what they could produce or achieve. He could articulate with perfect clarity how every human deserved care and rest simply by existing. For everyone except himself.

There’s a particular kind of heartbreak that comes from trying your absolute hardest to make a difference—whether in the life of someone you love, a community you care about, or a cause you believe in—only to watch your efforts disappear like teardrops in an ocean. You extend your hands to try to hold back what feels like a tsunami of dysfunction, injustice, or pain, and find yourself nearly drowning in the process. And after years, perhaps decades of this pattern repeating, something shifts deep inside. A quiet, devastating conclusion forms: I don’t matter.

This is internalized worthlessness—what psychologists might clinically term “existential invalidation” that has been absorbed into your very sense of self. It goes beyond mere discouragement or feelings of ineffectiveness. It’s the bone-deep belief that your existence, your voice, your efforts fundamentally lack the weight or significance to affect the world around you. Yet this belief, however entrenched, is a distortion, not a truth.

How This Wound Forms

Internalized worthlessness rarely begins in adulthood. Its seeds are typically planted in childhood, often in homes where a child’s emotions, perspectives, or needs were consistently dismissed or minimized. In narcissistic family systems, children learn early that their reality holds less value than the distorted reality their caregivers insist upon. They’re told they’re “too sensitive,” “overreacting,” or simply wrong about what they’ve experienced.

But even those who grow up in relatively healthy homes eventually encounter a world that can be profoundly invalidating:

• The high-achieving student whose genuine passion is met with indifference
• The whistleblower whose truth-telling is punished rather than rewarded
• The compassionate friend whose efforts to help a struggling loved one are resisted or rejected
• The advocate who watches institutions protect the powerful while abandoning the vulnerable

Each instance reinforces the message: “I don’t count. I can’t change anything. I make no difference.”

In our modern digital landscape, this wound now comes with metrics. Social media platforms offer concrete numbers to measure our “impact”—likes, shares, follows—creating an endless treadmill where we can never quite outrun the feeling of insignificance. Previous generations may have wondered about their reach; today’s can watch it quantified in real-time, often reinforcing feelings of inadequacy.

One of the most powerful and often unconscious dynamics in this struggle is how our primal need for attachment frequently overrides our authenticity. As humans, we are wired for connection before almost anything else. When faced with a terrible choice between maintaining our authentic sense of worth and maintaining attachment to important people in our lives, our survival brain will often sacrifice our self-worth to preserve the attachment.

This explains why even people who intellectually understand their inherent value may continue to behave as if they don’t matter when around certain people – particularly authority figures, romantic partners, or family members. The threat of losing connection activates such primal fear that abandoning our truth feels like the safer option. Children in invalidating environments make this bargain instinctively: “I’ll believe I don’t matter if it means you’ll stay connected to me.” As adults, we continue this pattern unconsciously, particularly in relationships that echo our early attachment experiences.

The Blueprint for Future Relationships

This early conditioning creates a powerful template that shapes all future relationships. Having learned that their needs and opinions matter less than others’, many carry this blueprint forward, unconsciously seeking out or creating situations that confirm what they already “know” to be true. They enter friendships, romantic relationships, or work environments where they automatically defer to others, accept mistreatment as normal, and feel guilty for having needs at all.

They become magnets for people who sense this pliability and exploit it – partners who expect them to remain in relationship while being totally neglected, friends who disappear when support is needed but demand immediate attention for their crises, bosses who pile on extra work without recognition or compensation. They’re so busy hustling for their worthiness, they don’t even notice their own self-worth baseline is at zero.

What makes this cycle so devastating is how it confirms the original wound. Each relationship that follows this pattern becomes another piece of “evidence” reinforcing the belief that was planted long ago, operating beneath your conscious awareness but directing your choices nonetheless.

The Paradox of Accomplishment

Perhaps the cruelest aspect of internalized worthlessness is that it often persists despite objective evidence to the contrary. Many who suffer from this belief are highly accomplished individuals—teachers who’ve inspired hundreds, healthcare workers who’ve saved lives, artists whose work has moved many to tears, parents who’ve raised kind and capable children.

Yet deep in their nervous system, a primal panic remains: I haven’t done enough. It’s not enough. I’m not enough.

What makes this so insidious is that this belief often operates completely outside of conscious awareness. Many people reach middle age or beyond before realizing that “I don’t matter” has been the invisible force shaping their entire lives – their career choices, relationships, how they respond to conflict, their reluctance to ask for help, their endless drive to achieve, their difficulty receiving love. It’s not a thought you consciously think, but more like an operating system running silently in the background, influencing everything without announcing its presence.

When you receive genuine words of appreciation, these validations can get dismissed as the other person just being nice, unable to alter your core belief of unworthiness. The belief exists primarily in your nervous system, not your logical mind, which is why reasoning with yourself rarely helps. You can’t estimate how much you would need to achieve or how many affirmations it would take to finally feel secure in your worth.

This relentless sense of ‘not enough’ is not just personal but reinforced by cultural narratives that equate worth with productivity, self-sacrifice, and external validation. Messages from family, media, and institutions can make it seem as though our right to exist is contingent on what we contribute, further embedding this belief beneath conscious awareness.

As people age and their spheres of influence naturally shift or narrow—retirement from a profession, children growing independent, physical limitations increasing—this sense of worthlessness can escalate into an existential crisis. They feel they’ve failed to earn their right to occupy space on this planet, as though existence itself were a privilege that must be continually justified through service, achievement, or impact.

The Wider Context of Invalidation

This personal wound exists within societal structures that reinforce it. Many who feel this profound worthlessness are responding to very real systems of invalidation:

• Survivors of narcissistic abuse whose reality was systematically denied
• Marginalized groups whose histories, experiences, and pain are routinely dismissed
• LGBTQIA+ and gender non-conforming people whose identities are questioned or rejected
• Immigrants facing dehumanizing rhetoric, policies, and the constant threat of deportation
• Patients with invisible or contested illnesses who face medical gaslighting
• Neurodivergent individuals whose perceptions and needs are invalidated
• Whistleblowers and truth-tellers who face institutional silencing
• Elderly people whose wisdom and contributions are increasingly overlooked
• Children whose emotions are dismissed as manipulation or overreaction

In each case, people receive the message that their existence, their suffering, their perspectives simply don’t matter enough to deserve acknowledgement or response. For those holding multiple marginalized identities—like being a disabled survivor of color—these messages compound. Systems of oppression conspire to amplify worthlessness, making healing both more urgent and more complex. When these messages compound over time, the toll on mind, body, and spirit becomes inevitable.

The Compounding Weight of Intersectionality

For those holding multiple marginalized identities—such as being a disabled survivor of color or a queer immigrant—messages of worthlessness are amplified by overlapping systems of oppression. For example, Black women often face the “strong Black woman” stereotype, which equates worth with relentless self-sacrifice, while neurodivergent individuals may mask their needs to avoid being labeled “difficult.” These layers create unique barriers to healing, requiring approaches that honor both personal trauma and systemic erasure. These systemic intersections often exacerbate the trauma types we’ll explore next.

The Impact of Different Types of Trauma

The wound of worthlessness can be deepened by various forms of trauma that operate at different levels:

Systemic Trauma: When entire communities or identity groups face discrimination, marginalization, or violence, the message that “you don’t matter” becomes institutionalized. This creates a burden that goes beyond individual healing, requiring collective recognition and systemic change.

Intergenerational Trauma: The feelings of worthlessness can be passed down through families, with parents who never healed their own wounds unconsciously transmitting these beliefs to their children through behaviors, attitudes, and unspoken family rules.

Developmental Trauma: Occurring during critical periods of brain development, this form of trauma shapes how the nervous system responds to stress and connection, often creating deep patterns of shame and self-doubt that feel wired into one’s very being.

Cultural Trauma: When dominant narratives consistently devalue certain ways of being, thinking, or existing, people can internalize these messages as truth about their fundamental worth.

Each of these trauma types requires specific healing approaches that acknowledge both the individual pain and the larger contexts in which that pain exists.

Internalized Ableism: A Special Form of Worthlessness

For neurodivergent individuals, people living with disabilities, and those with chronic illness, internalized worthlessness often takes the specific form of internalized ableism. In a society that equates productivity with value and independence with dignity, those who need accommodations or whose bodies or minds work differently receive constant messages that they are “less than.”

This can manifest as:

• Feeling like a burden when asking for needed accommodations
• Pushing through pain or exhaustion to appear “normal”
• Hiding aspects of neurodivergence to fit in, even at great personal cost
• Measuring self-worth by ability to function according to neurotypical or able-bodied standards
• Constant apologizing for needs related to disability or neurodivergence

Healing from internalized ableism involves recognizing that human value does not depend on productivity, independence, or conformity to neurotypical standards. It requires finding communities that celebrate neurodiversity and disability justice, where different ways of being in the world are recognized not as deficits but as valuable forms of human diversity.

The Just World Fallacy and Cosmic Unfairness

Many who struggle with internalized worthlessness are, at heart, idealists. They believe deeply in justice, compassion, and the possibility of a better world. They are the ones who feel actual pain when witnessing cruelty or indifference. Their sensitivity—often pathologized as weakness—is actually a form of moral courage and empathic awareness.

When these sensitive souls repeatedly witness:

• Corrupt individuals rising to power while ethical ones are marginalized
• Wealth accumulated through exploitation rather than contribution
• Vulnerable populations abandoned by systems meant to protect them
• Truth distorted while lies are amplified
• The natural world desecrated for temporary profit

…something breaks inside. They feel like a tiny speck trying to resist a tornado of corruption and cruelty, powerless against forces that seem to reward the very qualities they’ve refused to embody: selfishness, manipulation, callousness, greed.

The psychic burden of maintaining hope in such circumstances becomes overwhelming. The gap between what should be and what actually is grows too vast to bridge, and with it comes profound disillusionment about one’s capacity to matter in such a world.

Few experiences cut as deeply as pouring everything you have – your time, energy, heart, voice, resources, and courage – into fighting for justice or positive change, only to watch the forces of corruption, indifference, or cruelty prevail anyway. The environmental activist who watches corporations continue to pollute despite years of advocacy. The family member who tries everything to help a loved one escape addiction only to attend their funeral. The whistleblower who sacrifices their career to expose wrongdoing, only to see perpetrators promoted while victims remain silenced.

The unique agony of these experiences lies in having to continue living in the reality you fought so hard to change. You must still breathe the polluted air, still pass the house where your loved one used to live, still read industry publications praising those you know have caused harm. Each day becomes a reminder of your defeat, your smallness against systems that seem designed to crush the compassionate and reward the callous.

After several such defeats, a bone-weary exhaustion sets in – not just physical tiredness, but a depletion that reaches into your soul. You begin to wonder if the problem isn’t the injustice itself, but your naïve belief that your efforts could ever make a difference against it. And that wondering hurts more than any external defeat ever could.

Many who experience this deep wounding come to see their own empathy and moral sensitivity as liabilities rather than strengths. They may wish they could stop caring so deeply, stop feeling the pain of others, stop being moved to action by injustice. This too becomes evidence for the belief that something is wrong with them – that they were built incorrectly for this harsh world, too tender to survive in it without constant wounds.

The Toll of Worthlessness

When the belief that you don’t matter takes root, it exacts a devastating toll across every dimension of your being:

Mental and Emotional Impact

The mind becomes a battlefield where what you know clashes with what you feel. You might understand in your head that all people have value, but your heart refuses to include you in that category. This painful split creates a constant inner tension that wears you down day after day.

You might find yourself living in constant worry, always on high alert, thinking “If I stop proving my worth even for a moment, I’ll be abandoned.” Depression can settle in like a heavy fog, bringing thoughts like “Why even try if nothing I do matters?” When you make a mistake, shame can wash over you for days, far beyond what the situation calls for.

Many describe the crushing experience of “emotional flashbacks” – where a small setback today suddenly throws you back into the overwhelming feelings of being worthless that you experienced as a child. The voice in your head becomes so harsh, so familiar, that you mistake it for the truth rather than recognizing it as echoes from the past.

For some, this struggle becomes so unbearable that they lose the will to continue. The thought takes root: “If I don’t matter, why go on?” This isn’t simple sadness, but a soul-deep exhaustion from fighting to feel valuable in a world that seems to confirm at every turn that you aren’t. This despair can lead to a dangerous defeat – not just on goals or dreams, but on life itself.

Physical and Somatic Manifestations

The body keeps the score of this internal battle:

• Chronic tension, particularly in the shoulders, jaw, and stomach
• Disrupted sleep patterns, often with difficulty falling asleep
• Digestive issues triggered by chronic stress
• A sensation of heaviness in the chest or throat
• Exhaustion that doesn’t resolve with rest
• A physical collapse response when facing situations that trigger feelings of ineffectiveness

The Body’s Role in the Experience of Worthlessness

The belief that you don’t matter isn’t just a mental concept—it lives in your body as well. Research in trauma studies has increasingly revealed how our bodies store emotional wounds, particularly those formed in early childhood before we had language to process them.

When children experience consistent invalidation, rejection, or neglect, their developing nervous systems adapt to this reality. The constant state of feeling unsafe, unwelcome, or burdensome creates patterns of physiological stress that become encoded in the body. Over time, these patterns become your baseline—so familiar that you don’t even recognize them as abnormal.

This embodied experience of worthlessness often manifests as:

• Chronic muscle tension, particularly in areas associated with protection (shoulders, jaw, abdomen)
• A collapsed posture that literally takes up less space in the world
• Shallow breathing that never quite fills the lungs completely
• Disrupted interoception (the ability to sense and interpret internal bodily signals)
• A persistent feeling of being “on guard” even in safe environments
• Disconnection from bodily sensations as a survival mechanism

What makes this particularly challenging is that many people with internalized worthlessness have diminished interoception—the ability to accurately sense what’s happening inside their bodies. You might not notice hunger until you’re lightheaded, fail to register fatigue until you collapse, or be unable to identify emotions until they’re overwhelming. This disconnect happens because sensing your needs requires believing those needs matter—something your nervous system may have learned wasn’t true.

Healing worthlessness therefore cannot be purely cognitive. You can intellectually understand that you matter and still have a body that behaves as if you don’t. True transformation requires working with the nervous system directly, helping it establish new patterns of safety, belonging, and inherent value. Practices like trauma-sensitive yoga, somatic experiencing, or even simple body awareness exercises can gradually help reconnect you with the bodily sensations that have been muted or misinterpreted for so long.

Pay particular attention to moments when setting a boundary or asking for something you need creates intense physical reactions—racing heart, churning stomach, dizziness, or the urge to flee. These are not signs that you’re doing something wrong; they’re your body’s outdated alarm system responding to perceived danger based on early experiences. With patience and practice, you can teach your nervous system that standing in your worth is safe, that your needs are valid, and that your body deserves to exist fully in the world.

No one is funding my writing. If this saves you a therapy appointment, feel free to buy me lunch: Venmo @ellentift

Spiritual Impact

Perhaps most profound is the spiritual crisis this belief creates:

• A sense of cosmic abandonment or rejection
• Difficulty receiving love or care from the divine
• Questions about whether existence itself has meaning
• Disconnection from one’s sense of purpose or calling
• The painful sense of being invisible to whatever forces govern the universe

Beyond Achievement: The Many Faces of “Not Mattering”

While feelings of worthlessness often attach to achievement and impact, they manifest in many other domains:

Relational Worthlessness

Many experience the belief that they don’t deserve love or meaningful connection:

• The person who automatically moves aside when someone walks toward them on the sidewalk
• The partner who can’t express needs for fear of being “too much”
• The friend who never initiates gatherings, certain no one truly wants their company
• The family member who sits silently at holiday gatherings, feeling invisible
• The person who accepts mistreatment, believing they deserve nothing better

Bodily Worthlessness

Some experience profound alienation from their physical existence:

• Difficulty taking up physical space or speaking up
• Neglecting basic self-care, feeling their body doesn’t deserve attention
• Apologizing for basic needs like hunger, rest, or medical care
• Pushing through illness or pain to avoid being “a burden”
• Feeling fundamentally uncomfortable in their own skin

Existential Worthlessness

Others experience a cosmic sense of being superfluous to the universe:

• The belief that their death would go largely unnoticed
• Feeling like an “extra” in the story of life rather than a protagonist
• A persistent sense that no one cares about their perspective
• The sense that their suffering or joy is insignificant to the larger world
• Feeling fundamentally alone even in crowded rooms

Moral Perfectionism: The Exception Rule

Those who struggle with worthlessness often live by a profound double standard — what we might call “the exception rule.” This manifests as the unshakable belief that:

“It’s fine for others to be human, make mistakes, and have limitations—but I must do better.”

This isn’t ordinary perfectionism aimed at achievement, but a moral imperative about one’s basic right to exist. The person operating under this belief system might:

• Easily extend compassion to others while mercilessly judging themselves
• Set impossible standards for themselves that, when inevitably unmet, confirm their unworthiness
• Make elaborate excuses for others’ shortcomings while allowing themselves no margin for error
• Believe they must “earn” what they freely insist others deserve inherently
• Feel fraudulent when receiving care or compassion they freely give to others

This moral perfectionism often operates beneath conscious awareness, becoming so deeply ingrained that it’s perceived as fact rather than a learned belief. It often stems from early experiences where a child’s worth was contingent on meeting impossible standards, carrying responsibilities beyond their years, or compensating for dysfunctional family systems. The child learns that their basic safety depends on extraordinary performance, creating a profound split between what they believe about others’ worth and what they believe about their own.

Read the rest of this article in the first book of Ellen’s series “There’s A Word for That”: https://a.co/d/05GMPCCX

Copyright Notice: This excerpt is from my 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: Original Content Image

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

Not all people living with CPTSD have a history of childhood trauma, but those who do may struggle relationally because of learned coping mechanisms that served to connect to caregivers in childhood (e.g. perfectionism, people pleasing). Our very first venture in life is connecting with our caregivers; therefore, it is important to understand that children will adopt and repeat behaviors they perceive as aligning with their caregivers.

Such behaviors can and often do cause relational issues in adulthood, as many survivors of childhood trauma do not recognize their behaviors as anything more than how they accomplished that connection in childhood. Many times, these relational issues are explained by attachment styles, but rarely are relational issues connected to learned behaviors related to a lack of safety and choice in childhood.

Those of us with a history of childhood trauma may lose adult relationships because those behaviors that connected to caregivers in childhood are ineffective in healthy adult relationships. My friend Lauren Starnes explained it like this:

“behaviors that served to connect you in childhood serve to disconnect you in adulthood”.

Perhaps the saddest part of childhood trauma is its potential to affect people across their lifespan. Suffering often continues into adulthood and is played out in fractured and lost relationships. Nobody is at fault, really. Usually, loved ones (especially a spouse) are operating with a knowledge deficit.

Knowledge is powerful, and understanding how childhood trauma affects humans has the potential to support survivors of childhood trauma and those who love them. Additionally, trauma survivors are not without responsibility and that is sometimes a hard truth, but healing comes with learning. Knowledge provides safety and autonomy–something those of us with a history of trauma know little about.

But as adult survivors, we can choose to learn and alter ineffective coping, we can choose power, we can learn and we can change. We have a choice now. The work is hard, but it is worth it.

“When you know better, you do better” Maya Angelou

Perhaps one of the most liberating experiences as a survivor of an abusive childhood came when I finally understood the effects of childhood trauma. It wasn’t until I began advocating for survivors that I learned about Adverse Childhood Experiences.

I felt validated and suddenly able to extend grace and compassion for my behaviors that hurt the people I loved. I understood that, given my experiences with abuse and neglect, I was simply doing the best I could with behaviors I had created to survive and connect. There were parts of me that weren’t convinced that I had an abusive childhood, but learning about Adverse Childhood Experiences altered my life and gave my pain a name.

Adverse Childhood Experiences is measured by a questionnaire (10 questions) that probes for abuse (emotional, sexual, physical) and/or neglect (emotional, physical). Also included are separation factors such as severe mental illness in the home (resulting in hospitalization or completed suicide); substance abuse; or imprisonment of a family member. The ACE questionnaire was developed by Kaiser Permanente and the Centers for Disease Control in the 1990s. Originally created as a weight loss study, researchers found a connection between childhood trauma and physical manifestations that caused participants to drop out of the study. Since many survivors of childhood trauma are high utilizers of the health care system (Hargreaves et al., 2019), the ACE study could be foundational to our understanding (and DSM adaptation) of CPTSD.In the meantime, an understanding of maladaptive behaviors that may be present in survivors of childhood trauma could support survivors.

Those who have a history of Adverse Childhood Experiences need social support, but often maladaptive behaviors serve to disconnect them from people. Until survivors recognize these behaviors, they cannot address them. After many fractured relationships, I realized I had work to do including learning healthy ways to connect to my friends and family. For me, two prominent behaviors caused irreparable fractures in important relationships—people pleasing and perfectionism.

People-pleasing can manifest in many ways, but perhaps the most prominent is the inability to say no to others.

Amenability as a child connected me to caregivers, and I learned early to always agree to any plan and never to resist. While this did connect me to my mom in childhood, in adulthood it has served to separate me from people.

For example, when making plans with others, I did not have the language or the ability to simply say “no thank you, that doesn’t work for me,” so I cancelled more plans than I kept. After a while, friends and family stopped asking me to make plans with them. This led to loneliness, shame, and despair.

Once I learned that I simply wanted people to be happy with me and to accept me, I understood that people-pleasing was not the way to deeply connect with them.

Now, when something is asked of me, I do not answer on the spot. My standard is “let me get back to you”—because I know I almost always don’t want to go with that plan. Taking a moment to think allows me to choose to respect the time and energy of my friends and family while also giving me the choice to make a decision based on interpersonal factors (time, energy, desire). Both can be true; I can respect their time and energy, and I can choose to say no–without fear of separation from them.

The key to recovering from people-pleasing is to choose wisely who you allow into your inner circle.

Be careful about anyone whose presence in your life depends on how many times your will is bent to theirs. For those living with a spouse, it is important to invite them to join you on your healing journey. And if people-pleasing is a behavior you use to connect with others, consider having honest conversations with those in your circle. Recruit them to help you. Ask them to stay connected to you even if you don’t accept those dinner plans.

For those of you who love people pleasers, don’t hesitate to go deeper when making plans or when submitting a request to them; their default may always be to make themselves amenable to you.

When the people pleaser behavior is present, gently guide them back to connection with you that is not based on their amenability to your plan.

The opposite is true, though. Be careful about keeping people in your life whose connection to you depends on your performance. Sometimes this means separating from family members; this can feel brutal, but sometimes it is necessary for your healing. Ask me how I know…

Perfectionism is a common maladaptive coping mechanism that is a result of childhood trauma (Smith et al., 2019). This maladaptive coping mechanism, often adopted in childhood, is particularly difficult because perfectionism can equate to vocational and economic success.

However, perfectionism can cause problems in adult relationships because perfectionists also hold others to high standards. The perfectionist can be judgmental of others, particularly when others don’t meet perfect standards. I learned that perfect grades connected me to my mom, something I deeply desired, and as long as I can remember, I never accepted less than 100% in my academic pursuits.

This became painfully clear to me when I submitted my dissertation to my chair. When she requested a minor revision, and I was unable to accept the revisions as minor and deemed the entire document (245 pages) a failure.

During a subsequent counseling session, I realized that it was never about being perfect; it was about being securely attached to my dissertation chair, whom I highly respected. It was a valuable lesson for me and one that I am still learning.

I am learning that I am not perfect, and I am learning that my friends and family are not perfect. I am learning that we grow together and that life is messy, and that mistakes will be made.

Sometimes I sit in imperfection just to demonstrate that imperfection will not kill me. Those imperfections have nothing to do with my value as a human being.

Perfectionism may have served its purpose in childhood, but it will destroy our ability to maintain strong relationships in adulthood. Learning to accept imperfections may always be a struggle, but I am grateful for supportive people around me who remind me that I am valuable even if I never accomplish a single thing in this life. That is true of you too, my fellow survivor.

You do not need to be perfect to be loved; you just need to be you to be loved. For those of you who love survivors of adverse childhood experiences we need you to extend care and compassion, and maybe even congratulations when we stop trying to be perfect for you to accept us.

Keep reminding us that you love us because we are imperfectly human.

Dear Survivor: you can rest now. You are accepted. You are SEEN. You are KNOWN. You are HEARD. You are VALUED, JUST as you are. Dear loved ones, it is important that you get help too. Don’t give up, keep fighting for us.

Remember, nobody did that for us when we were most vulnerable. The best news? There is help, there is hope. There are armies of people who want to stand in the gap for you. I am honored to be one of them.

Sources:

Hargreaves, M. K., Mouton, C. P., Liu, J., Zhou, Y. E., & Blot, W. J. (2019). Adverse childhood experiences and health care utilization in a low-income population. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, 30(2), 749–767. https://doi.org/10.1353/hpu.2019.0054

Smith, M. M., Saklofske, D. H., Yan, G., & Sherry, S. B. (2019).
Adverse childhood experiences and multidimensional perfectionism in young adults. Personality and Individual Differences, 146, 53–57. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2019.03.042

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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

Anxiety is the emotion that people feel involving tension, fear, and worry in response to a threat or a perceived threat. Anxiety triggers a stress reaction in the body, which manifests in several physical ways. For example:

• Increased heart rate
• Faster breathing
• Sweating
• Irritated
• Tense muscles
• Concentration
• Problems sleeping

Anxiety can happen to anybody. We just don’t talk about it–but maybe we should. Maybe it’s time that we start talking about how we feel, because I can guarantee that most people you know have suffered from anxiety at some point this year. Anxiety doesn’t just happen when we are afraid. Daily life is full of situations that could go wrong. This includes:

• Important events or decisions–You worry about a change at work which will affect you and your team.
• Public speaking–You worry about a presentation that you are about to give to a global audience via Zoom.
• Social situations–You dread going to the office Christmas party. 

Anxiety is common in our society but it’s not disussed nearly enough. People are left to suffer when there are simple strategies that can help.

Strategies to Reduce Anxiety

Self care

Relaxation techniques

Exercise

Getting enough sleep

Reduce caffeine intake and other stimulants–such as sugary drinks

Talking to a friend about how you feel

Therapy

If your anxiety is severe, it might be a good idea to find a skilled therapist who can help you with targeted strategies.

Medications

Your doctor can prescribe medicines to relieve your symptoms.

Preventing Anxiety from happening

Don’t tell yourself not to worry. The act of worrying is a response to the situations.

1. Try out a meditation app like “Calm.” Meditation can help when you constantly think about your situation by helping you focus your mind elsewhere. This can work on communication, too. Instead of zoning out of conversations, you tune back in to what the person is telling you. What did they say?
2. Don’t let negative thoughts settle in your head. Instead, wash them away and let them go. Imagine a river and watch your thoughts leave, or you could put your hands under the faucet and let the water sluice over your hands as your thoughts vanish between your fingers. Write those negative thoughts down.
3. Write a list of the best/worst-case scenarios.
4. Exercise.
5. Practice mindfulness.
6. Relaxation/yoga.
7. Listen to music.
8. Ask yourself, “Will this matter in a week?”
9. Maintain a balanced diet.
10. Ask yourself: “What if?”

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

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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

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.

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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

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