Just because you were susceptible to trauma does not make you responsible for trauma 

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]Just because you were susceptible to trauma, does not make you responsible for trauma. The years I've been working with survivors, again and again, I have seen us walk away from extreme, brutal situations with an absolute determination to heal, to grow, to break cycles, only to find out that that desire and the healing itself does not make you immune to life and tragedy and grief and loss.

[00:00:26]But also sometimes chronic trauma can make us vulnerable and susceptible to more trauma. And when that happens, what I've seen so often is people go into a shame spiral. And if there's one thing that can interfere with your healing journey, it is shame. So, we need to talk about this.

[00:00:43]Trauma can shape us in some really significant ways. It can shape our attachment styles, our tolerance for chaos, our ability to regulate, our ability to recognize danger and threat.

[00:00:55]And sometimes it can normalize toxic cycles in a way that makes us more susceptible to those cycles. Healing doesn't mean we're never going to go through anything hard. Healing means that we grow in our awareness, that we grow day by day in our resilience. We build tools to help us cope with the hardships of life. We grow in self-compassion, we grow in the ability to regulate and recalibrate, and day by day we heal.

[00:01:23]Being susceptible to trauma does not make you responsible for the trauma. But what is in our power is the decision every single day to choose healing.

[00:01:34]So, when we encounter difficulties, and if we find ourselves repeating cycles we never wanted to repeat, rather than letting it send us into a shame spiral that further disrupts our healing, we can choose self-compassion, and we can choose to continue to heal and grow.

[00:01:52]Keep going. Don't give up. You're worth it.