Do you feel stuck doing trauma work without seeing tangible change in your life—change that actually matches the depth of your inner work?
What follows is a gentle suggestion for building a self-concept that can move without retraumatizing itself in the process.
When we’re caught in recurring triggers—shame around worthiness, competence, or lovability—one of the most effective ways I’ve found to build self-trust and escape learned helplessness is this:
Pair the processing of unresolved grief with corrective action in the world.
Take a familiar example. You’re triggered into a shame spiral: I’m rotten. I’m unworthy of connection.
You sit down in a curious, loving, meditative posture. For the first 1–20 minutes, you may wrestle with highly resistant protectors—parts that distract, numb, or pull you away from the task of staying with the shame. Eventually, through gentle compassion and curiosity, there’s enough settling to contact what’s underneath.
What you find there may feel unbearably real. Sticky. Convincing. The belief this is just the truth about me can be difficult to unblend from.
If there’s enough space, however, something else may briefly emerge behind the shame—a healthier way of being. A useful way to support this comes from coherence therapy, via an advanced technique called symptom deprivation. For a moment, you imagine the opposite: what a healthy expression of self might feel like.
Often, the shame rushes back immediately when we imagine inhabiting such a state —gripping from the inside as if to say, No. We really are rotten.
Rather than eradicating it, we welcome these layers of shame fully. We work with them using whatever tool is appropriate, without negating their needs or fighting their existence. When this happens, something important shifts.
We’re no longer in unconscious warfare with ourselves.
We’re no longer trying to overpower the shame.
Instead, we’re with it. Cradling it. Acknowledging its truth the way we would if a small child were sharing their experience with us—while no longer being fully identified with it.
From here, I find it most helpful to pray or meditate on an ideal parental energy—one that can guide this shame-bound part toward a single, justifiable step in the direction of the previously imagined, symptom-deprived state.
This is not easy, especially when the trigger is intense. So corrective action must be small. Negotiable. Realistic.
It might look like:
- Opening your contacts and simply considering who might be safe for a three-minute connection.
- Sending a trusted person a simple “how are you” text.
- Opening an app and talking with ChatGPT about what’s happening right now.
Each of these is corrective action.
Not because it’s dramatic—but because it gently challenges the belief structure of shame without overwhelming the nervous system. Not too hot, not too cold. Over time, this builds self-trust, which may be the most potent ingredient in recovery.
In summary, rather than processing grief and stopping there, this approach emphasizes taking corrective action after the grief work—with “good enough” consistency. Slowly, this forms a new internal working model: someone who is willing to step into new behavior, while still negotiating compassionately with their internal parts.
It is gentle.
It is compassionate.
And it is firm.
We are not collapsing into the trigger.
