Feats of Strength 💙 Trauma Recovery

This article helped change my life. I started lifting weights to help combat extreme anxiety, but found it also helped build a sense of self-worth I never possessed from childhood. 🧵/1 #traumarecovery #featsofstrength

@AlobhaPatrick Personally, I'd like to hear more from survivors working their recovery. Insights, break-throughs, challenges, thick description, but maybe that's just me.

I think we need to hear less from psychologists, analysts, and therapists.

@KemtrupTweets @JayceLong @proud_penelope @JonathanShedler You are missing a big voice in the social media space - people who are healing & talking about their recovery.

There is a difference between being a therapist who happens to be online who describes and argues for various points of view and being an online therapist. Great examples of the former are @JayceLong or @proud_penelope or @JonathanShedler An online therapist by contrast is

@TraumaHealing23 So true! I can't put my finger on it, but trauma really distorts time. Before healing, I though if I was perfect in the future, somehow that would fix my past? IDK, hard to describe. But all healing is in "the now" but it def. feels like it heals the child in the past.

@Feats_Strength IFS often feels like we are healing the past!

The practice of self-compassion isn't about helping our inner child "back then" –we can't change the past– but it's showing ourselves *right now* we were worthy of care & protection in spite of the past. It's not rewriting history, its updating the conclusions we drew from it.❤️‍🩹

@TraumaHealing23 Those revelations can really affirm the work we are doing is leading somewhere, to a completely different worldview.

@Feats_Strength So funny, in therapy today I described a recent huge shift and I literally said: “I just was able to get a more honest look at reality”! Serendipity!

A child will develop a distorted sense of causality if surrounded by chronic abuse & neglect. We'll believe our existence is the cause of horrible things–things we had zero influence over. Realizing "it wasn't our fault" isn't a cliché, its a total reappraisal of reality.

@BeTraumaFree Most "self help" either presumed I already had self-compassion for myself or that self-compassion was a weakness. Learning about shame was such an important step in my trauma therapy.

re: "optimization advice for healthy people." I diligently tried a long list of self help interventions for decades. None of it ever cured my complex trauma symptoms. What healed my complex trauma symptoms was trauma therapy.

@libriscent 💯 May folks stay around only because they can't bear bringing pain to others. Living a life that feels unkind, unjust, & worthless just to protect others from pain is about as selfless an act as I could imagine.

Saying suicide is selfish to a sucidial person is cruel

@_BLShelton Good observation!

Don't you find it ironic that the people who judge others w no information or interaction whatsoever -are actually pretty good at revealing their true character.

The “nobody’s coming to save you” line hits different for childhood trauma survivors. It's not motivational, it confirms a core wound—we were never worth saving. We didn't get the support we needed, but don’t get tripped up thinking we weren't worth it, or that we can't heal now.

Big breakthroughs are great, they'll energize our recovery efforts like nothing else. But the healthy habits of mind which define recovery are built upon the small, unremarkable choices to align our actions with our values. Recovery finds traction in our daily micro-decisions.

@HeidiPriebe1 The viewing car is the best. I beg you to also consider Amtrak from LA to Portland...City to desert & beach to mountains & evergreens is amazing!

If you are travelling between Colorado and California, you must — and I cannot possibly emphasize this enough — take the train.

@Persistence982 Breaking a generational cycle is rewriting a small part the cosmos for us all. Congrats to you and your family, may you cherish it & celebrate! ❤️‍🩹

GRADUATION DAY 🎓 Breaking cycles isn’t quiet work. It’s generational work. Allie & I are choosing a new path; one built on healing, truth & the kind of love that rewrites old stories. A week in Utah as a family to celebrate Allie's graduation from Family & Human Services was BIG

@TraumaHealing23 @LolaNeuroPhylo Quick search found this: medium.com/spy-novel-rese… Hutchins writes for scholars so its dry and I'm sure in 20+ years there's better, more accessible, writing our there...

@Feats_Strength @LolaNeuroPhylo thanks!

Research shows that your cognition is distributed throughout your entire body. Meaning you don't just think with your brain. You think with your entire sensorimotor system in dialogue with the world.

@TraumaHealing23 @LolaNeuroPhylo Upvote for book rec! I read Edwin Hutchins’ Cognition in the Wild a long time ago, but his battleship metaphor for extended cognition helped me grasp the basics. Maybe there's a good explainer on the web for this....

@LolaNeuroPhylo Good book on this topic you’d recommend?

@TraumaHealing23 Don't know if theres a psychological term for it (I'd love to know), but I use the phrase, "cosmic shit magnet" with my therapist. Even when my parents died -way before I started healing- it reinforced my belief I deserved pain; world doesn't make sense if it wasn't my fault.

One way to think of what complex trauma does to us: EVERYTHING is our fault. Then, all else flows from that. Healing is the only way out that I'm aware of.

@TweetATherapist There's some helpful observation here; I like that you connected high confidence and low curiosity. Curiosity is a core value I seek in people, it make them more interesting, and perhaps more human.

People victim-blame when they believe in a “just-world fallacy.” People get what they deserve. People cause their own problems. The world is fair and predictable. Nothing bad will happen to me. Good things happen to good people. Bad outcomes are deserved. Suffering means failure.

@DoctorPerin At age 10, I was in therapy and was asked to draw a lot. I drew Garfield (the cat) mostly & was always asked "why him?" Never had an answer & it stressed me out, felt like a failure. I needed my parents care & protection, not feeling like I was on trial.

I don’t treat children anymore. When a kid is identified for therapy I treat their parents.

Everyone experiences negative self-talk. But trauma-driven shame isn't just lots of negative self-talk–its categorically different. Its an invisible organizing principle, a silent bias toward self-cruelty. Healing isn't forgetting our past, its learning to be kind to ourselves.