The Space Between All and Nothing

Reframing A Cognitive Distortion

I feel like writing, I thought as I slathered deck stain along the cedar privacy panel we installed to hide our pool equipment. 

I would rather have been doing just about anything besides teetering atop a painting ladder, sweating profusely in the 90-degree heat. Still, since I hadn't felt like writing (or reading) anything on Substack in months, this burst of inspiration had my attention.

I remember the moment I decided a break was in order…

I had just left a Zoom meeting with a well-known writer who teaches Substack strategy, and I was feeling defensive. Despite all the nice things she said about my writing and storytelling ability, my biggest takeaway was that she wanted me to change the name of my newsletter because she believed that calling it Traumatized was too off-putting to attract a larger audience. 

She said a more "hopeful" title (her suggestion: Un-Traumatized) would attract more readers and drive subscriptions. She pointed out that if my goal was to publish a memoir one day, I needed to grow my numbers to show proof of concept.

I had taken several workshops with this teacher and trusted her opinion. I still do. I knew she had a point, but the name change didn't resonate with me. 

Changing the name of my newsletter to Un-Traumatized felt too much like trying to trick folks into thinking it was all feel-good articles and easy calls to action over here.

1%- 8% of the world's population suffers from C-PTSD—that's up to 624 million of us. We know the dark truth about trauma and how complicated it is to heal from. You can't reduce it to a 4-minute read and slap on a snappy title like Quick Tips To Get Your Life Back or 3 Simple Steps To Calm Your Nervous System. 

I was conflicted about the fact that I'd paid for this person's expertise and then chose not to take her advice. I felt like I didn't know what I was doing and needed to go dark until I figured it all out. 

Spoiler alert: I haven't figured it all out, but I have learned a few things during my hiatus.

The first is that two things can be true at the same time. I can value someone's opinion and (despite their knowledge or experience) still choose to ignore it because I value mine more. That doesn't make me right and the other person wrong.

I spent my entire life with an all-or-nothing frame of reference. Every choice was good or bad, black or white, right or wrong. I awaited the aftermath of every decision I made with bated breath, worrying about what would happen if I chose incorrectly.

If you have C-PTSD, you can probably relate.

All-or-nothing thinking is a distorted thought pattern many complex trauma survivors develop as a way of organizing and explaining their experiences and feelings. It's deeply rooted in feelings of shame and judgment and traps you in an "it is what it is" mindset that doesn't allow you to see other possibilities.

One of my favorite Peloton instructors likes to say, "I make suggestions; you make decisions." He might advise me to do another 60-second interval at an all-out sprint; that doesn't mean I have to oblige. 

Some days, I don't have the energy for a final push; others, I want a more accessible workout than the one he programmed. All that matters is that I know better than he does what's right for me and that I choose to honor that.

There's a whole lot of middle ground between all and nothing. Better yet? You can always try something else if the outcome of a decision isn't what you hoped it would be. In other words, it's usually not that serious. 

It's especially not that serious in the case of the title of this little newsletter of mine.

Healing has allowed me to see the possibilities beyond all-or-nothing. It's taught me how to be open to new ideas and (at the same time) trust myself and my decisions.