One of the most useful things I’ve learned about recovering from trauma is that my decisions need to be judged according to the incomplete information that was available to me at the time.
So, say I’m deciding whether to eat chicken at a restaurant. All evidence is that it’s a good idea. I’m hungry for chicken, and I usually feel good after eating it.
I eat the chicken, and I get food poisoning. The resulting illness causes me to fall short of responsibilities, and creates numerous problems for me and the people who depend on me.
What happened?
Trauma brain says: “This happened because I am Bad At Making Decisions. If I had made The Right Decision and not eaten chicken, everything would have been fine.”
Recovery brain says, “According to the information that was available to me, the chicken was unlikely to make me sick. Eating chicken was a Good Decision with Bad Consequences. This happened to me because I had incomplete information.”
The “trauma brain” response makes all decisions really hard, because each decision involves the prospect of being judged by a future self that has more information.
“Should I buy the $2 mouse pad or the $3 mouse pad? If I buy the cheaper one and it doesn’t work well, it will be my own fault for not buying a better quality one…”
(Then I might end up paying myself $1-per-hour to agonize over which mouse pad to buy, which is probably an ACTUAL unwise course of action.)
But if I foster the “recovery brain” response, I can start to trust that my future self will judge my decisions kindly.
“If I buy the cheap mouse pad and it doesn’t work, then I only gambled $2 on it. If I buy the $3 one and even it doesn’t work, then I’ll have more closely guessed how much I need to pay for a mousepad of sufficient quality.”
And then later when the mousepad doesn’t work: “Well, that didn’t work. At least I made a decision. The outcome has given me more information about the options available to me going forward.”
(Meta level: Decisions you made prior to reading this post about how to treat yourself were probably good given the information you had access to about trauma and recovery!)
tl;dr: Bad results are not always evidence of bad decisions. Give yourself the benefit of the doubt about why you do what you do.
Please register online if you aren’t already. Check your registration and your friends. Lots of people don’t have much time left to register! Don’t wait until the last minute!
how do you get rid of the part of yourself that wants to passively fish for sympathy/praise?
Three things. First, just ask for the praise. People are a lot more forthcoming with compliments if they know you’re open to them. There’s a persistent and subtle belief that praise should be saved for special occasions and that it’s excessive (effusive) if given freely.
Second, be more giving with compliments and praise to other people. Most people will hear a genuine compliment, and respond with one in return. This has the benefit of both making you more practiced in giving people meaningful compliments, as well as getting more direct positivity in your life.
Third, praise yourself. There’s a belief that taking pride in your own accomplishments is vanity. That’s super, duper bullshit. Play yourself up constantly. It will feel fakey and gross at first, but over time you’ll become much more able to actually look at your own actions and see when you’re doing something good, and believe in that goodness.
I suppose as a bonus 4th thing, you could look into behavioural therapy techniques and see if any suit your needs, as well, but they can be pretty hard to self administer.
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