Let’s talk about the opposition we face during trauma recovery – namely, from our social contacts who aren’t ready to have their own histories and perspectives pulled into focus. And, let’s discuss the reason why the battle is worth all the effort.

Don’t give up, brave Motherfucker. Remember that what you’re doing matters. For everyone. ✊

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Transcript / Blog Version:

Hey there, brave Fucker.

A few points here today: 1) seems like a fitting topic, as we head into the holidays or are reflecting on the ones that passed. Keep this under your belt if you’re engaging with the clan anytime soon. 2) I say “family” a lot in this post, but it’s relevant for any social contact that fits the bill, romantic ones being common sources of the same shit we’re about to cover. 3) holy balls, it’s the final episode of the season. Meaning, it’s another big takeaway conversation that integrates a lot of points we’ve already made. 4) I don’t mean to scare anyone with this information, just prepare you and explain both sides of the experience for everyone.

So like we said last time, always remember that what you’re doing – trying to improve the brain you’ve adaptively developed so far, for better outcomes in the future, and having the self-awareness and accountability to do so – is really fucking scary. And you’re doing it anyways, which is the definition of being really fucking brave.

I think so many of us are surrounded by a common attitude that “we are who we are, and deal with it… no matter what that means, no matter the level of abuse programming or emotional dysregulation.”

And you know what? Confronting t-word signifies the exact opposite attitude, in my eyes.

It’s not delusional and riddled with self-justifications. It’s self-aware and self-responsible. Directed towards fixing what hasn’t been working, realistically. And that’s a lot harder.

Because it requires looking at the parts you don’t want to see, and figuring out how to work with them to change the future. To take control of your life instead of letting past circumstances dictate everything else. To rewrite your story. (To be super lame.)

So I vehemently say… “good fucking job. I hope you recognize the strength that it takes.” The easier route is to wind up with parts that are JUST like mom and dad. And grandma and grandpa. And everyone else. To let your brain be wired the way it was wired, and everyone else can deal with it or be hated forever when they choose to leave.

The harder course is to turn against what’s already been stuck in your head and maybe executed on repeat by analyzing it, contextualizing it, and finding solutions to pull yourself out of it in real life.

It’s energetically costly. It’s time costly. And it can be ego costly. For those with a pretty shallow sense of self, based on maintaining the illusion that “they’re fine, it’s the rest of the world that’s the problem” – you know, not really going to be their cup of tea. Deep diving into personal memories that miiiiight include some unfavorable actions of their own, and being capable of self-accountability to say “not my finest moment, but I’m open to understanding why so it doesn’t happen again? Not their strong suits.

Hence, why most people don’t have the GUTS to do this work. And choose to believe that “people never change.” They “can’t.”

They can’t… only if they never try, through daily effort, to allow that brain to significantly change.

So. If you’re doing it… I guess you’re a real motherfucker, huh?

Huh.

Anyways, today we’re here not only to recognize your work, but also to talk about the idea of “breaking the cycle.” And why that’s such a massive deal – for you, for your family, and for everyone around you who you hope to influence for the better.

First things first, we know that PTSD is transmissible from plenty of prior episodes this season. We don’t need to experience the thing ourselves for our genes to be methylated and our brains to be developmentally affected. We pick up signals from other people, which forms our brains’ interpretation of the world, our emotional and our behavioral programs. Our early perspectives that all the rest will be grounded on and all our automatic reactions.

We also learn to coregulate with other people, which just teaches us to be anxious, avoidant, angry, cold, detached, neurotic, obsessive, depressive, or whatever their ailment was. And… of course, we carry their DNA, which tells us to be fearful of stimuli we’ve never even encountered before.

So yeah, we absorb our family’s shit, to put it in layman’s terms.

Plus, in our families, there’s usually a chain of events dating back several generations that can be easily explained by the two major reactions to unregulated people. We 1) lean in, and accidentally become them. Or 2) we overcompensate and do everything we can to avoid being anything like them, creating other problems and/or an internal battle against those early programmed parts.

Either way, no one in a system of trauma, such as a family or a close friend group, is stoked to have these patterns and personality traits brought up. Everyone likes to think that things are fine, or if things aren’t fine, it’s entirely whoever’s fault. In reality, there are a lot of complicated dynamics going on with interrelated traumas that (most likely) no one really wants to dive into.

See prior point on most egos not being up for the battle that is complex trauma recovery.

This means, changing the narrative – YOUR narrative – comes at a massive cost. It changes entire life histories of the people around you.

The stories that have been carried up until this point, all the perspectives that follow, the relationships and the daily living patterns that are created cumulatively? Suddenly up for new debate? That completely destabilizes a brain, ripping out its foundational perspectives, and rewrites entire books from these peoples’ personal libraries of life experiences.

It could change how they feel about everything for the better. But it would be a very disturbing process to get to that point.

So our families and old social contacts generally don’t love when we start examining generational opinions, life instructions, and narratives. And that’s exactly what we’re doing when we get mildly obsessed with understanding our pasts leading up to the present.

This is one of the reasons that CPTSD families don’t care for 1) therapy or 2) letting you have the perspective that these events happened to you, period, which might result in you speaking them out loud to others. Generationally traumatized families live in cult.ures of silence, and they like to control the narratives around them. Hence, all the triangulation and assorted relational abuse.

Opening up the story to outsiders could feel dangerous to people who’ve supported themselves in a little echo chamber of the same fucked up ideas and justifications. Especially if sooooome “part” of any in-group family member carries guilt about any of the past events. The manipulation will begin, a new narrative will be repeated, until everyone is on their side and everyone is trying to bury the past again.

So, instead, we’re not allowed to talk about what’s going on. It’s probably something you experienced early in life, hiding your home events from the outside. And it’s still the case today. We can’t bring it up. We can’t meaningfully discuss it. We certainly can’t break the family wide open and start pulling strings. That’s dangerous, for everyone involved.

And that’s one of the reasons that breaking the cycle is so difficult. No one else wants you to see the cycle. Because it is also their cycle. And they’ve worked very hard to avoid taking a good look thus far.

So, start down the path of trauma recovery? Start marching your way to family and close social network problems. It’s pretty universal, from what I’ve gathered in the years of trauma talking. I don’t think anyone in the community has reported differently.

So, I’ll be honest. Unfortunately, you can pretty well expect to be blacksheeped and scapegoated. To experience an uprising in conflict, even with people who seem unrelated to the issues you’re trying to resolve. To be purposely cut off from events and news updates (which may or may not be a bad thing, depending). To, and I don’t mean to scare anyone, experience some exile, as everyone attempts to push the dangerous clan member out for self- and other-protection. You know, framed as the person choosing to leave themselves, for reasons that amount to “hurt feelings” or “incorrect perspectives.”

Again, I don’t say this to freak any trauma recovery newcomers out. Just to speak to the commonality of the situation for those of us already in it, gone through it, or approaching it. Shit’s wild.

Google “Down the rabbit hole, the missing missing reasons” if you want to spend a few hours reading up on estranged family member tactics and viewpoints. You’ll see, the family response and interpretations of estrangement events are common. Just saying. Consensus is: you’ll feel better about your folks immediately, when you see that it’s all a typical response for a certain generation and personality type. It’s not about YOU, it’s about them.

Anyways, there will be relational trauma, in healing your relational trauma. That’s a fact.

You’ll see relationships take some tumultuous turns as you change your brain, because you’ll bring that inner work outward (integration!), to change your behaviors… and those include changing dynamics with your closest social contacts. Even if it goes unspoken, the changes in you will alter your old patterns. And that will bring up a lot of unwanted fuel for thought and discomfort from those around you.

Even if those changes ultimately are better for everyone… allowing for healthier, better informed about what “healthy relationships” really mean, established with boundaries to keep everyone safe….

…. Your fam doesn’t know what the fuck any of that is, and doesn’t care to find out.

Again, it would change their views on everything that happened in the past and require self-accountability to sew those stories back together. So, they won’t respond favorably to your favorable changes… they’ll revolt. They’ll escalate their behaviors to try to get a similar response from you. They’ll use increasingly emotional and aggressive tactics to get your attention or cause a disturbance that requires response – hoping that they’ll get something they know how to work with out of you.

That’s just behavioral science, folks. Brains trying to figure out why consequences aren’t matching their expectations based on prior experience, and increasingly desperately trying to validate themselves with one of the predicted outcomes.

So, yes… they’ll possibly attack you. They’ll isolate you. They’ll gaslight you. They’ll give you ultimatums. They’ll try to manipulate and guilt you.

Whatever they usually do? They’ll do it. And those efforts will get increasingly obsessive, if they don’t get the results they immediately expect.

Sometimes, the only way we can continue to manage this dynamic for the sake of creating healthier change? Is to end the dynamic. To go “no contact,” as the increasing social awareness of removing yourself from your family system calls it.

To allow a brain to fucccccking operate according to the owner of the organ, instead of being forced to jump every time something new becomes your responsibility to fix, or someone’s having a tantrum, or other unfair and unpredictable expectations are placed on your head again.

We’re trying to make new programs? Disrupt old patterns? Then we can’t be engaged in the same old shit. Or else we’re just strengthening them and putting ourselves back into our parts’ boxes.

So, a lot of us get some recovery under our belts and have to take the leap – no contact. And, look, it can feel brutal. That’s a big part of the reason that “bravery” goes hand in hand with trauma recovery. You will be working against your socially programmed brain, which will try to tell you that the ending or pausing of relationships means danger and detachment from the world. That you can’t walk the earth on your own. This is some old, helpless programming that needs to be re-examined… but it’s going to require a lot of work to get there. Understanding your relationship to relationships – your attachment to attachment – is an obstacle, all its own.

Not to mention, all the personal challenges you face breaking that cycle. Obviously, all this inner work is difficult, resource expensive, and regularly painful. It can feel as terrible as it is ultimately healing. The cost is equal to the benefit. But, now consider doing all that trying inner work… coupled with the added determent of doing it without any social support.

Maybe, even, with social opposition.

And it’s a whole new rodeo. Life difficulty level: cranked up even higher.

But… let’s not also forget that with our highly sensitive powers and histories of emotional abuse, we’re often extra-influenceable by those people in our immediate vicinity. Their energies, opinions, and perspectives have a way of corrupting our own, and reverting them back to views that benefit other people. So we FEEL this family upset, as if it isn’t being demonstrated openly enough in other ways. Couple that with the instinct to protect them, and the empathy to be able to understand that they’re also complexly traumatized?

And it’s a real motherfucking challenge on five different levels, breaking the cycle. At times, you might wonder if it’s going to break you, the way it’s certainly seemed to break your social connections.

But here’s the thing to remember… it’s not helping anyone for you to keep suffering forever. You can’t be your best Self. You can’t give back to people. And you might even be teetering on that suicidality point, pre-examining your trauma past. So although it’s painful for you, recovery is your best option to be able to start really living.

Plus, as far as how your recovery will impact others… remember that it’s also not helping to keep performing in the same trauma plays for five generations. It’s enabling. It’s keeping THEM in a state of suffering, too. And it’s allowing them to be dependent on your own healed t-brain to support their own in staying similarly wounded. A break in the relationship might be exactly what they need to find their own feet again.

And secondly, remember that it doesn’t have to be forever. The social obstacles that you’re facing? Can be permanent, if that’s what your recovery calls for. If they’re physically abusive or unregulated to everyone’s destruction, there’s no rule that you have to maintain relationships with those who hurt you. That’s an abusive narrative to keep victims entrapped.

But if you DO want to re-establish relationships, know that it isn’t impossible. A no contact setup isn’t a death sentence. Even if they tell you it is. And they may. I got a “don’t come to my funeral” from my experience.

Well… look, Fucker… I’ve been re-invited to that memorial since. Which is to say, things change. You’re changing. They’re… maybe not changing. But they CAN. And that can, at this point, possibly only be fostered through seeing someone else successfully doing it. Which might take them a long time to believe – they’re going to have to test you first.

But until they do see those changes and desire to join in the march, you don’t really want to interact with them anyways. See a billion past warnings about family re-immersion, tethering, failed boundaries, and ability to pull you backwards into child parts in this series.

So, if you still have love for your family but you just can’t engage with them right now, don’t fret too much. Give it some time, space, and (someday) energy… and see if it can heal, like your brain has.

To communicate any of this, I recommend using broad, passive language, statements that don’t include psychology concepts. So, nothing like “because YOU do this, my brain dis-associates…” That language will set of their defenses immediately, and you’ll never get your point across.

When embarking on a no-contact or limited-contact setup, I recommend words like, “I need some time to focus on my life.” It leaves room for them to be in that life, later, once it’s sorted out a bit. And it doesn’t poke at their egos or unwanted, possibly shameful, memories. If they demand you should be focusing on THEIR life, instead… well, there’s the whole problem. Just maintain your boundary – YOU also exist, and that life needs a captain.

Always remind yourself, when I’m not here to do it for you… You aren’t a bad person for needing a break. You’re doing what you can to help everyone, probably after everything else hasn’t worked. And hopefully, someday, that relationship can be re-approached for the benefit of everyone.

And remember, that’s why it’s crucial to heal. In order to help the people we care about, we need to be better-off, ourselves. A strange concept, when you’re raised in a crab bucket social group. But the fact is, you can’t help anyone by being unhealed or limited in life, yourself. Staying the same isn’t an assistance to anyone, it’s a hindrance to everyone having different interactions that open new experiences to them.

And as you heal? Also, be ready for new folks to entire your life. If your family can’t be a part of it right now, you’ll find a fake family to fill the void. Your new brain will attract ones that meet it in a similar place, and healthier relationships will be available to you without trying to rewrite lifetimes (or generations) of old dynamics.

Meaning, on the other side… You’ll find folks who finally “get it.” And you have the option to reform better-bounded relationships with the people who never did.

Meanwhile, you can rest easy, knowing that you aren’t perpetuating the same cycle. To your friends, partners, or coworkers. Especially, not to your children.

And… isn’t that the biggest reason to put in the effort to break the chain?

I think one of the biggest doubts we all face is “parenting fear.” How can we spare our kids from the same mental fate that befell us? Especially when we talk about how automatic and instinctual these patterns become, and how easily transmissible they are to others? How can we keep them from designing brains just like ours?

Well, we really can’t. That’s just biology. That’s brain development. It’s going to happen, they’re going to carbon-copy many parts of their brain from yours.

So the only answer is recovering that brain.

Building a better brain, yourself, so you can offer it as a model to those who follow. Give them some better blueprints for what living and relating can look like. Don’t pass on the same plans as your family handed you.

And it’s never too late to do that. Even if you’ve been off to a rocky parental start, brains are always observing and changing when people allow them to. And kids tend to permit such changes a little more than adults.

Just remember, nothing is permanent, and the future isn’t here yet. You’re working on making it. There’s always time to be who we know we truly are, as our fullest, most authentic, most guttural, Selves. And that paves an easier way for everyone in our orb. Especially when it comes to healing and designing healthy brains, themselves. Let me say, I know people who’ve changed positively as adults from their parents changing positively in old age. It shook up the whole system and benefited everyone, including in their relationship. So it’s never too late.

And on that note, returning to our societal commentary for a second… Look, it’s been a lot of rough, destabilizing, traumatic times. But, still, our next generations have a sunnier outlook than those that came before – you know, maybe not geopolitically or environmentally.

But, with the number of folks who’ve been determined enough to understand who they are and how that affects others? With the ability to transmit information through little DIY conversations about the reality of deeply dismissed issues?

Things ARE changing. This CPTSD conversation has grown enormously since 3 years ago when this project started. Childhood trauma and resulting brain operations ARE table discussions, more and more frequently these days. We’re making the first real effort to understand our Selves and break the cycle. And we’re taking that burden on our own heads and shoulders, when it would be so much easier to keep transmitting the same patterns.

So much for being part of a lazy, hedonistic, toxically-individualized generation, huh? Sure seems like the opposite. Looks to me like we’re the ones putting in the most work and changing life for everyone, as a result.

And. That is why your recovery matters – why breaking the cycle is worth it – if you ever doubt that you aren’t enough of a reason. You are. And the impact you have on the world will back that up.

Change your brain, change your life, change your relationships.

In that order.

Maybe, it’ll mean a whole new world for everyone around you. Not one that falls into the same cycles. A new understanding of brains and the ways they adapt – so we can counteract their most traumatic perspectives, and set up future generations with more empathy, safe personal connection, self-accountability, and better functioning equipment. And a resulting new world order, free from the common trauma cult.ure that’s been pulling us into a societal regression.

At least, we can muffing hope. A little stabilization, healing, and integration around here would go a long way. For all of us.

All it takes to make this come to fruition? Is everything you’ve got. Self-awareness, adaptive abilities, accountability, commitment to a different life for everyone around you, healthier perspectives… and a whole lot of GUTS.

Courageous Motherfucker, you.

And when you start to doubt it, please remember to:

Always Hail your Self.

Hail the trek you’ve stepped up to.

Hail the effects it can have for everyone. For the world, if we think big picture.

And hail Archie. King of the fucking Fort, running free forever.

Til next time… which… could be a lot sooner than a year…

I love ya. Recovery is an ongoing challenge in so many ways. But you’re never alone, you’re not busted or broken, damaged, doomed, or dead yet… and I respect the hell out of what you’re doing. For everyone. I hope you do too.

Cheers, y’all.