What’s wrong with me ?

woman wearing black jacket with white headphones

Recognizing our struggles when reading a book or listening to a podcast is a profoundly healing experience.

So our problems are not only « in our head » ? What a validation!

It also normalizes our experience and help us find a sense of community: a lot of us have survived a traumatic past and we are all facing similar difficulties.

And best of all, it gives us hope: there is a cause of our unhappiness, and there is a way out. There both are not what we thought they were, but they exist nevertheless.

All of this went through my mind when listening to this episode of the CPTSD Podcast: Present-Day Symptoms and Consequences of CPTSD.

I strongly encourage you to listen to it if you know, or suspect, you have lived through ongoing trauma.

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27 October 2023 0

Book Review: Believing Me, from Ingrid Clayton

I came across Ingrid Clayton’s work while listening to an excellent podcast about Trauma Bonding; I liked what she had to say and the way she said it, so I bought her memoir, Believing Me.

Sure enough, I liked her book. Maybe it’s because our stories have similarities. Maybe it’s because she manages to describe universal aspects of trauma. Probably both.

Believing me can be useful especially for those of us who have been traumatized in our family of origin. It helps validate the weird dynamics of such families, and normalize our trauma responses later in life.

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9 May 2023 1

Book Review: The Body Keeps the Score

crop masseur preparing client for spine treatment

The Body keeps the score is the book I would have needed decades ago.

I would have needed it when I decided to do whatever was necessary to heal. I believe it would have saved me years of confusion.

And even if I feel much better these days, it is still an amazing read.

This book feels validating, compassionate and insightful. It explains perfectly how a traumatized person feels and thinks, and why.

More importantly, it’s full of hope that recovery is possible and points to proven, but not generally talked about, healing modalities.

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19 March 2023 0

Feeling dead inside

I was 17 when I realized I was feeling dead inside. I know I had already felt like this as a child. I did not have the words to describe it, but the experience was there already. Unfortunately, it followed me into my young adult years.

If you ever felt dead inside, you know how dark this place can be. It’s the fabric of depression. It prevents us from enjoying whatever is good in our lives; it can destroy our relationships, our successes and our health. It can leave us unable to feel love and caring, unable to mourn a loss – and ending up wondering if indeed we are able to love at all. It can prevent us from reaching our goals, even if we have the necessary energy, intelligence and skills. It can even prevent us from wanting anything at all.

We are going through the motions, disconnected from other people, life, and ourselves, and we are wondering what is wrong with us and if that’s all there is.

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6 March 2023 1

Me Too Therapy best healing books of 2022

I hope, dear reader, that you had a great start of 2023 ! I don’t know about you, but I never struggled to find a purpose each new year. I had a very clear one, even if I would have preferred not to have it: getting well. If you are on the same quest, I wish you a 2023 year full of insights, progress and healing.

Part of my own healing path has been to read books about recovery from trauma or any topic that I am struggling with. It didn’t do all the work, but it definitely helped to feel connected, to understand myself and to show me the way to a better life. Without these books, I would pretty much still feel lost.

In 2022, I’ve read about 20 healing books (not all published in 2022 by the way). They’ve all been helpful in some way, but three of them have been really awesome.

If like me you are into books as healing tools and do not know these ones, I suggest you give them a try. They may become a great help for you in 2023.

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1 February 2023 1

Fear based living

All too often, our decisions are based on the fear of getting in trouble or getting abandoned, rather than on the principles of having meaningful and equitable interactions with the world.
Pete Walker, in Complex PTSD, from Surviving to Thriving

6 November 2022 0

Fight, Flight, Freeze

No need to be a psychologist to know the “fight of flight” phrase. It has been pretty much everywhere, from tv programs to magazines to blogs to online psychology courses. Usually it comes with the example of a cave ancestor faced with a saber toothed tiger.

Threat ? Fight or Flight.

This “Fight or Flight” has been around since the 1920’s, initially describing the instinctual response of animals to danger. With time, it was discovered humans have the same hardwired reaction to threat, and that it can lead to us being traumatized.

Unfortunately, this idea that there are only these two possible reactions to a threat is shaming for us, survivors of sexual trauma. Because of course, when we disclose what we were victims of, or even in the privacy of our own heads, there it goes: “when it happened, why didn’t you fight? Why didn’t you flee?”.

Indeed, most of us did not: instead, we froze.

This can, and very often does, lead to unfair self blame later.

It can also be used by malicious or uninformed people as a proof of consent. I think you know, but just in case: not fleeing, and not fighting, is not a proof of consent. Unpressured explicit consent is a proof of consent. As for children, informed consent simply does not exist.

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2 November 2022 0

Emotional Flashbacks

Quite by chance, I took an incredible book with me during my holidays : Complex PTDS, from surviving to thriving, from Pete Walker. I bought it because of its amazon reviews. I remember one stating : “if you buy only one recovery book, buy this one”. This is quite a statement.

You will soon see my own review for this wise book, but one of the central ideas of Pete Walker, emotional flashbacks, deserves its own full post. I can’t believe I, whith all my reading and studying, came accross this idea only now. It does resonate with my whole experience, my whole life.

My experience with emotional flashbacks

I remember precisely when I kind of understood on my own what it was. I was standing, waiting for a tramway to go to work one morning. It was more than a decade ago, but I still recall how beautiful Paris was in the morning light. My significant other was travelling for a few days, and as usual when it happened, I was feeling scared and confused. I hadn’t slept much.

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28 August 2022 1