If you have traveled the yellow brick road of CPTSD–if you’re anything like me–you have no doubt encountered the companions of shame, intellectualization, and a fragmented sense of self. And sometimes this can really show up when we are least expecting it.
Things might feel like they are going pretty smoothly and then something small can trigger these familiar experiences.
Shame-spiraling.
Nothing makes me want to isolate more than shame. For me, the smallest thing can trigger these beliefs learned in childhood. It’s almost like this innate sense of a lack of self-worth. These patterns developed in my early attachment relationships with my caregivers, and they can easily be re-activated in the tiniest interactions with people, decades later. This can be felt somatically. A protector part of yourself thinks, “Hey, let’s not get close to anyone, okay? Let’s not get hurt. People hurt us, and they are not safe. We might inconvenience them, or we might not be good enough, or we might say the wrong thing, or they aren’t going to love us. Let’s stay safe over here by ourself where we can have a little bit more control.” And if you actually sit and let this feeling move through you, it feels like hot tears in your eyes, and it feels like a lump in your throat, and it feels like your arms just aching for someone to hug you for a little while. And you absolutely feel like that neglected seven-year-old girl again. And when you remember that you’re actually a responsible adult now, you feel a small sense of panic wondering if you will ever feel good enough or if you will ever feel safely connected to another. And you have developed one hell of a flight response to aid in your survival.
Intellectualizing.
In comes your Intellectualizer part–thank God for this responsible part of you–and she is going to smile and gently push that wounded inner child back down into that dark jack-in-the-box in the deep region of your brain and snap the lid shut. She will dust her hands off and put on her thinking cap. She is in charge… most of the time. She is going to help you figure this out and get things done. Each week, she is going to listen to one audiobook and seven podcasts, because if she can figure this out, then you actually don’t need anyone else. You won’t have to worry about inconveniencing anyone. You will have it all figured out. She will make lists, and charts, and timelines, and spreadsheets until she is completely numb inside. She will learn absolutely everything there is to learn about a related topic so she is in control of the situation. Hanging out in your frontal lobe, she welcomes an intellectual discussion with your therapist, and she has probably already thought through many of the questions, but she is satisfied making new cognitive connections as well.
Parts.
So you essentially spend your life vacillating through these fragmented parts of yourself in this repetitive cycle of familiar patterns that are so deeply entrenched that it’s hard to even imagine another way. There are other parts of you who emerge less frequently. There’s the grief that lives in your chest and sends lightning bolts up to your shoulders and down to your feet. There’s your dissociated part. There’s your firefighter part who might occasionally use humor or wine as a way to cope. And sometimes you are able to take a step back and realize how truly effed up it all feels some days.
Approaching this.
For the past couple of years, I have posted my favorite books and podcasts that have helped me cognitively understand myself more and untangle some of the knots inside. And many of them have (thankfully) allowed me to begin exploring my emotions as well.
There are three podcast episodes from two of my favorite podcasts that I think are super relevant for this particular topic, no matter if you are a client or a therapist:
Complex Trauma Recovery, 2024: Working with shame in trauma therapy (21 minutes)
Complex Trauma Recovery, 2024: Cognitive behavioral therapy – a critique (27 minutes)
Edge of the Couch, 2025: Working with intellectualizing (45 minutes)
Many more of the podcast episodes I have recommended in the past also discuss the topics of shame, parts, and intellectualizing.
These are just a few little thoughts that I’ve had today.
Bottom-up therapy modalities like IFS or EMDR are great approaches for complex trauma and shame for intellectualizers.
There was a therapist that I saw only a handful of times a few years back. I didn’t stay with her because I was so overwhelmed by the amount of clutter and stressful stimuli in her office space. There was one really cool thing she did that I plan to use with my future clients. This woman had scripts for literally every therapy modality on the planet, and she was a licensed supervisor among other credentials. She had a really robust and extensive toolkit. (She also had an extensively cluttered office and robustly smelling plug-ins that were way too overstimulating.) Anyway, in a 90-minute session, she did a great job walking me through something called Fraser’s Dissociative Table. This is an easy way to do parts work without doing actual IFS. If you haven’t heard about it, you might check it out. I don’t think it requires a specialized certification. There is a script you can use to walk through this with your clients, but you can can readily find the PDFs available online and walk through it yourself as a reflection exercise. It is a type of Ego State Therapy. It can really help when intellectualizing and/or dissociation get in the way of reprocessing our trauma.
While we may never find a magic pair of ruby slippers, taking one small step at a time within some of these modalities with a trustworthy therapist can help us continue healing along our journey.
Related Posts:
Childhood Emotional Neglect and CPTSD
Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Therapy for Trauma: Which is better?
Dissociation, Depression, Freeze, and Shutdown: Dorsal Vagal Responses to Trauma
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