One of the most arduous battles of complex PTSD is rewiring the deep-seated belief that we are inherently bad, defective, and shameful people. It's an exhausting grieving process involving the cleanup of a lifetime of messes, be that debt and financial ruin, damaging relationships, housing instability, addictions, disordered eating habits, crippling loneliness, you name it. This can be a minefield for a leftist. Leftists are TOUGH on each other, typically from a good place. Leftists have faith that people of character can handle this. Often, shaming is a tactic to get people to step up and do more, to become less self-involved and more collectively-minded. However, I find that adult victims of child abuse and neglect already have a deep well of shame within them, and even if they're working through it, leftist culture can be difficult to navigate when it pours salt in that wound. Cyclical burnout and incapacitation can result, and then the shame compounds due to feeling weak, bad, and worthless for bottoming out and being so sensitive when the cause is so much bigger than the self. It's as if, in an attempt to become less self-focused, we bypass what truly needs to be addressed and become even more self-focused.
I experienced abuse, neglect, instability, poverty, and psychological terror throughout my childhood. I'm 29 and have been in and out of therapy since I was 18 (Medicaid covered it in my home state). As I grew into my political identity, I began to take issue with the insufficiency of CBT, the western failure to address socioeconomic causes of mental health issues and inter-generational trauma, and the commodified, hyper-individualistic nature of "healing" and "self-care". I have spent a lot of time reading perspectives on psychology and mental health practices through a critical leftist lens. In the meantime, I received so many diagnoses and was treated for the symptoms rather than the root causes (severe ADHD, depression, anxiety, OCD, the whole range of eating disorders including being at death's door with anorexia in my early 20s, exercise addiction, substance abuse problems, and demotillomania). I spent years cycling through a succession of mediocre-to-harmful therapists and lost confidence in the whole institution.
That being said, earlier this year, an illness in the family and another event in my life "triggered" (a word that feels so cringe but has no alternative) a severe state of prolonged dissociation, intensified OCD habits, rapidly-worsening work performance to the point of consequences, social withdrawal, huge mood swings, and the return of old harmful coping mechanisms. I realized I was not okay and hadn't worked through what I needed to work through at all. Meanwhile, the urgency of our ongoing mobilization has intensified each day.
I had the great fortune of finally finding a therapeutic approach that is effective for me, RRP therapy. I'm actually processing the past and maturing as a person, rather than just talking about painful things to no end while my whole life is on fire, ruled by debt and mood-based behaviors. I appreciate how RRP places importance on community and group therapy in addition to individual therapy. It feels a lot like processing grief, so it's very emotional and nearly all-consuming in these early stages.
Necessarily, this is a self-indulgent and self-compassionate process. At times, the left seems allergic to self-compassion in lieu of self-criticism, and I understand this, but I can't reconcile these contradictory sentiments right now. I'm starting to backpedal and become neurotic about it. I'm feeling a lot of guilt and shame about putting so much time and energy into helping myself while there is a holocaust going on in Gaza and vulnerable people here at home are being disappeared for speaking out. I feel gross even as I write this out because I fear it comes off as a cry for validation and reassurance rather than a desperate plea for workable strategies for moments like this, when the power of one's own ridiculous subconscious wiring threatens to overpower and cloud one's values.
This is the cycle in which I keep getting trapped: I work on recovering from my past; I feel ashamed about spending time, energy, and money on trauma work that could otherwise be spent organizing with others; I hear speeches or see social media posts by other leftists that validate my shame by calling out people who aren't dedicating their free time to the movement every day; the shame deepens; I feel like a narcissistic, pathetic, deficient loser for spiraling into shame and depression instead of feeling humbled and energized by the call to action; I reprioritize action over recovery while still in that subconscious place of guilt and shame; I bottom out; repeat.
Even though I DO participate in actions and I'm consistently vocal, I don't dedicate the majority of my free time to organizing. My free time is limited. I have a full-time and a part-time job, I'm financially scraping by, I have a dog, my current housing situation is unstable and has to be sorted out, and I am now spending more money and time on therapy than ever (I no longer have Medicaid; I have employer insurance). It feels like I'm making excuses, and maybe I am.
In the meantime, in my group therapy context, people say they need to "check out of the news" for their well-being while they're working on recovery and don't think it's healthy for people in trauma recovery to be too plugged in. I sense that they believe my feelings of guilt and complicity are a trauma response rather than a conscientious response. I disagree with them. I think it's vital to stay informed and involved. However, the overwhelming and incapacitating levels of guilt and shame I sometimes feel over my low capacity are definitely exacerbated by trauma, and this is extremely unhelpful. It feels so self-indulgent to become overcome by emotions because I'm not doing enough. I've been afraid to talk to other leftists about this because I feel like so many leftists have an astounding, heroic capacity to put their own emotions, well-being, and desires aside in clear-eyed pursuit of resistance. And a lot of those people have lived through worse than I have. I wonder if they'd think I'm rotten to the core (rot is soft and mushy, after all).
I fully expect some very harsh responses, this being Reddit, and while I'd love to be wrong, I'm taking this risk because I want to do better. I want to strengthen my character until I have no inclinations to ask questions like these or make shit about myself. I'm clashing with myself.
So, has anyone else experienced something similar, or are you experiencing it now? How are you prioritizing and navigating? Do you believe that individual mental health/trauma recovery work needs to be put on hold in moments of urgency, or do you think it's possible to pursue both effectively?
Thanks so much.
TL;DR: I feel like a bad leftist because I'm devoting so much time and energy to recovering from complex PTSD. I'm wondering if I should press pause on my trauma work because there are more important matters at hand for the people and the movement at large, but I also feel hopeful that I might become much more productive and consistent in the resistance if I finally get through this trauma processing work and get myself into a better, less self-indulgent place. I'd love advice.
