I’ve spent the better part of a decade in therapy trying to understand my CPTSD. I’ve learned an enormous amount about how childhood trauma affects the brain and why experiences from decades ago can still influence how I react to things today.

But lately, I’ve found myself thinking about something different. For all the work I’ve done trying to understand my trauma, how much time have I actually spent getting to know myself?

The sexual abuse began when I was five years old, barely old enough to understand the world around me. What happened during those years would affect the rest of my life.

There’s no version of myself from before the abuse that I can look back on. By the time I was old enough to form lasting memories, my brain was already learning that the world wasn’t always safe. That makes it difficult to know which parts of my personality developed naturally and which I may have developed to survive.

When Everything Becomes a Trauma Response

Take my sense of humor, for example.

Anyone who knows me will tell you I’ve always enjoyed making people laugh. I’ve made jokes at funerals and at times when I probably should have kept my mouth shut. It’s just what I do.

But I’ve also learned that humor can be a defense mechanism. If I can make someone laugh, I can sometimes avoid having to talk about something uncomfortable.

For a while, I wondered whether that meant my sense of humor was simply another trauma response. Now I’m not so sure it matters.

I enjoy making people laugh, and that’s not something I want to change about myself. I suppose the important thing is recognizing when I’m being funny because I want to be and when I’m using humor because something makes me uncomfortable.

I’ve noticed similar things with how I react to other people.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been incredibly aware of changes in people’s moods. Someone can be a little quieter than usual, and before I know it, I’m wondering whether I’ve said something wrong.

I can spend hours replaying a conversation that probably lasted five minutes, even though the other person has likely forgotten it ever happened.

Meanwhile, I’m still thinking about something I said on Tuesday.

That’s CPTSD for you.

Recently, though, I’ve become less interested in trying to work out what everyone else is thinking. It’s not that I’ve stopped caring about people. I’m simply tired of feeling responsible for things that might have absolutely nothing to do with me. And even when they do, I can’t go back and change what happened or how I reacted at the time. I can only try to understand it better and decide how I want to live going forward.

There was a time when, if someone was upset with me, I’d immediately want to make things right. I’d explain myself until I was blue in the face, hoping they’d understand where I was coming from. Sometimes I’d even apologize because I couldn’t stand the feeling that someone was unhappy with me.

Allowing Myself to Have Ordinary Feelings

Lately, I’ve found myself getting pissed off instead, which initially made me wonder whether that was another trauma response.

Then I thought, hang on a minute. Am I not allowed to feel that way?

Why does every emotion I experience have to be examined under a microscope?

I’ve spent so long trying to understand my reactions that sometimes I forget I’m allowed to have perfectly ordinary human feelings.

This is something I’ve also been learning through emotional regulation.

For a long time, I thought being emotionally regulated meant staying calm and not allowing things to bother me. I’ve since come to understand that it’s more about how I respond to what I’m feeling.

I can be angry about something without immediately reacting. I can feel anxious without assuming something terrible is about to happen.

It sounds simple enough, but when your nervous system has spent most of your life preparing for danger, it’s a lot harder than it sounds.

I’m getting better at it, although there are still days when my brain decides we’re going to revisit something embarrassing I said fifteen years ago.

Apparently, that conversation still needs reviewing.

What I’ve started to notice is that I’m becoming more comfortable experiencing an emotion without immediately trying to understand where it came from.

And that’s made me think about the way I’ve approached healing over the years.

I’ve spent an enormous amount of time trying to understand what’s wrong with me. I know that’s not technically what therapy is about, but sometimes that’s how it has felt. There’s always another pattern to recognize or something from childhood that suddenly makes sense.

Understanding those things has helped enormously, and I wouldn’t change the work I’ve done. But I do wonder whether I’ve become so focused on my trauma that I’ve forgotten there’s more to me than CPTSD.

I don’t want to spend the rest of my life treating myself like a problem that needs solving.

I know I’ll never be completely free of what happened to me. There will always be things that affect me differently because of my childhood, and I’ve accepted that.

Learning to Look Forward Instead of Back

Someone recently asked me what I actually wanted from life, and despite how simple the question seemed, I had to think about it.

I want to be happy. I want to watch my daughter grow into adulthood and see what she makes of her life. I’d like to enjoy whatever years I have ahead of me without constantly feeling there’s something about myself I need to work on.

Nothing particularly extraordinary.

What struck me afterward was that none of those things had anything to do with CPTSD. For once, I wasn’t thinking about what I needed to fix or overcome. I was thinking about things I was looking forward to.

I can’t remember the last time I approached my future quite like that.

For years, I’ve wondered what kind of person I might have become if the abuse hadn’t happened. Whether I would have been more confident or made different choices.

The truth is, I’ll never know, and I’m starting to realize that trying to answer those questions isn’t going to get me anywhere.

I was five years old when the abuse began. I hadn’t even started figuring out who I was, yet for much of my adult life I’ve imagined there might be another version of me buried underneath everything that happened.

Someone I need to find before I can finally feel comfortable with myself.

But I’m beginning to question that idea.

I can acknowledge that trauma influenced how I developed without allowing it to define everything about me. And if there are things about myself I’d like to change, I don’t necessarily need to understand exactly why I became that way before doing something about them.

Something occurred to me recently that I haven’t been able to shake.

Maybe discovering who I am isn’t about finding someone I’ve lost. Maybe it’s about finally giving myself permission to become someone I’ve never really had the freedom to explore.

I quite like that thought.

For once, I’m not particularly interested in figuring out what happened to make me the person I am. I’m more interested in seeing who I become.