Survival is not a character flaw

I was driving home from a failed mediation in September 2019 when I told God I was going to stay drunk until all of this went away. I meant every word. Months later, when I finally started sobering up and went right back to complaining about her, the Holy Spirit showed up and said something to me that was not gentle. At all.

This is the episode where we talk about the things you are most ashamed of. The drinking. The overeating. The people-pleasing. The shutting down. The staying too long. The leaving too soon. All the ways you have survived that you now hate yourself for.

I spent years despising myself for how I coped with pain I could not name. The food. The alcohol. The passivity. The emotional shutdown. I had a PhD in psychology and I could not stop choosing destruction because I did not understand that I was not choosing anything. My nervous system was grabbing whatever would keep me alive for one more day.

This episode is about the radical, uncomfortable, maybe even offensive idea that your worst coping mechanisms were not moral failures. They were creative solutions to impossible situations. And shame is not going to fix them. Shame is what keeps them running.

This episode is drawn from my book "You're Not Crazy, You're Traumatized." The podcast gives you the principle. The book gives you the whole story. Grab it here: https://www.smalleyinstitute.com/offers/dQkGnEiB/checkout