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Hey guys, I'm Heidi Priebe. Welcome back to my channel or welcome if you're new here. Today on this channel, I want to talk about some reminders that you might need to hear if you have either complex PTSD or toxic shame.
Heidi Priebe shares reminders for people with C-PTSD or toxic shame: struggling is common, the window of tolerance matters, wanting connection is normal, and self-compassion aids healing.
Key Takeaways
- Struggling with common life problems is far more widespread than shame suggests, and sharing them helps reveal this.
- Coping difficulties are products of environment and nervous system interaction, not personal failure.
- Wanting connection and feeling attraction are normal and not something to be ashamed of.
- Self-compassion and internal companionship are powerful tools against shame and loneliness.
What the video covers
- Reminder 1: Many people get behind in life; shame makes people believe they are uniquely struggling with debt, toxic relationships, or addiction, but these struggles are widespread.
- Sharing struggles with trusted people reveals how common financial and relationship difficulties are, and systems like bankruptcy and divorce exist because so many people face them.
- Reminder 2: Everyone struggles to cope outside their window of tolerance; people with C-PTSD have spent more time outside it due to their environments, not because of a personal flaw.
- Reminder 3: Wanting closeness and connection is normal and healthy; shame often arose from rejected bids for connection in childhood.
- Reminder 4: Dignity comes from healing these wounds and taking responsibility for one's own needs and self-care.
- Reminders on regulation and comfort: people under chronic stress need comfort, and self-companionship reduces loneliness.
- Toxic shame can be a body's learned response to feared ostracism, and cultural and family beliefs shape what people internalize about feelings.
- Rest is needed without earning it through achievement; self-compassion, including compassion toward one's past self, is central to recovery.
- Inner critics are internalized from specific environments and are not universal truths about worth.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction
- 01:54Reminder 1: Many People Get Behind in Life
- 04:43Reminder 2: Everyone Struggles Outside Their Window of Tolerance
- 07:14Reminder 3: Wanting Connection Is Normal
- 09:16Reminder 4: Dignity Comes From Healing
- 11:46Self-Judgment, Comfort, and Companionship
- 20:00Cultural Beliefs and the Body's Shame Response
- 25:00Rest Without Earning It and Self-Compassion
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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And these reminders are not things that I imagine you would need to hear just once or a couple of times. These are things that I actually recommend you take and hand to the part of yourself that is that healthy inner adult because
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these are things that we can say to ourselves in moments of overwhelm or during toxic shame attacks that are really just lessons that a lot of people internalize at a very young age that we might have decided just didn't apply to
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us or that we might still secretly think don't apply to us. And it's okay if a part of us still struggles to accept any of these or believe them to be true. But without further ado, we're just going to get
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into what some of these reminders are that if we're so inclined to, we can return to during the moments when we need them the most.
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First reminder you probably need if you have CPTSD or toxic shame is that lots of people get behind in life.
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In fact, so many people get behind in life that we have entire systems in most countries specifically designed around helping and supporting people who get behind. Now, that doesn't mean those systems always work as many of you probably know, but the point that I'm
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making here is that when we have wounds that look like toxic shame, what it can often feel like despite how much we know the opposite to be true is that we are the only person who has ever struggled
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with something like debt or with having really unhealthy and toxic relationships or with patterns of addiction or other forms of dependency or at the least it can feel like, "Okay, well, everyone else who is struggling with those things
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has a good reason, right? I am the only person who has no good reason, but is still struggling with all of those things anyway. But this is just absolutely not true. Okay? So many more people struggle than you might ever
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realize. So I remember my 20s, there was a period where I was really in debt, and I was so ashamed about it. And then I challenged myself to start telling more people about it. Just people I really really trusted who were in my inner
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circle, starting with my therapist, and then kind of building slowly outwards from there. And here are some of the very real responses that I got back from some of the people who I had no idea in my life had ever struggled or were
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struggling. Oh yeah, me too. I hate when the bill collectors call. Sometimes I just don't pick up. Do you pick up? I've actually been borrowing money from my grandmother for months to make my rent, and I'm hoping to be able to pay her
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back someday, but I don't know when I'm going to be able to do that. I have filed for bankruptcy twice in my life.
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Now, none of these are necessarily outcomes that we want to have happen, but the point I'm making here is that so many more people are often struggling than we are aware of, particularly when we have those shame patterns that lead
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us to believe that it is deeply deeply not okay to talk about what we're struggling with. It can be this really tricky double whammy because we never end up realizing just how much our problems are not as unique as we think.
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Right? So we double down on believing that we're the only ones, ergo we can never share anything that we're struggling with, ergo we never learn that some of our problems are a lot more normal than we think they are. This one
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might sound kind of silly, but for a lot of years I also had this very very deep shameful belief that I was the only one who struggled as much as I did inside of romantic relationships. And then I
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started watching 90 day fiance, and I realized so many people struggle intensely with relationships. Right?
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This is not at all something that is unique to me. But, the more we kind of bottle things up, refuse to share them with anyone else, and tell ourselves stories like everyone has an excuse except me, the more we fail to expose
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ourselves to the reality of the fact that so many people struggle with finances, that we have whole systems in place like declaring bankruptcy or consumer debt proposals. All of these systems are in place because there is a humongous volume of people who struggle.
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We have the institution of divorce and endless couples therapists out there because intimate relationships are so hard for so many people. And again, the point here is not that any of this is hopeless. It's that it might be a lot
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more commonplace than you're realizing if one of your primary strategies is hiding from others what you're struggling with so that you never really learn just how alone you are not.
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Reminder number two, every single human being struggles to cope well when they are outside of their window of tolerance. Okay, so if you don't know what that term means, I did make a video about it a while back that is linked in
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the description of this one. But essentially, what it means is that there is a zone of emotional and physiological arousal within which we all function pretty well. We're able to make clear-headed decisions, access our values and what matters to us in life,
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and follow through on plans. When we are outside of that window of tolerance, it means we are either too activated or not activated enough emotionally. And in either case, it gets really challenging to make good decisions for ourselves and to follow
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through on our plans. And this is not something that is unique to those of us with CPTSD or toxic shame. What tends to be unique to those with CPTSD is that they have spent much of their life outside of their window of
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tolerance as opposed to people who grew up with more secure patterning or healthier environments, often have spent the majority of their lives inside of their window of tolerance.
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But even those people still get triggered, still act in ways they're not proud of, and if they had been forced outside of their window of tolerance for as long as those of us with CPTSD or toxic shame patterning had been in life,
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they would likely also have a really severe issues with coping. They might have addictions, compulsions, parts of their patterning that they're really ashamed of.
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Right? Toxic shame wants us to believe that our circumstances are things that we should have been able to deal with normally.
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Ergo, any weird patterns that we developed or any strange coping mechanisms that we developed are due to some fatal flaw we have.
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But this is not the case. We are all products of our environments and how they interact with our nervous systems.
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Third reminder you might need if you have complex PTSD or toxic shame, it is perfectly normal to like people, to feel drawn towards them, and to want connection. So this is kind of a very specific one, but it's one that I have
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seen popping up in a lot of the people I've met with toxic shame patterning. Is this idea that there is something deeply shameful about wanting to be close to other people.
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Largely because from a young age, maybe we've gotten rejected when we reached out and had those bids for connection with other people. And so it can lead to this pattern where the self learns to monitor, not just by telling us don't do
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that behavior, but by telling us don't feel that feeling. Don't feel attracted to someone. Don't feel as though you want to be close to someone else. Don't feel as though you are delighted by being in connection with someone.
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All of those things are creepy and weird and wrong, and you need to keep them to yourself unless you are 100% sure that the other person wants connection with you even more than you want connection with them, then maybe it's okay to move
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towards them. Right? This is a really wise adaptation that the body may have once made to an environment where it was either not safe or just consistently rejecting to put out those bits for connection, but it is not a truth of the universe. Okay? It is
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not a truth of the universe that there is something wrong with you feeling all of those feelings that other people feel all the time of wanting to be close to people, of meeting someone new and going, "Wow, what a cool person. I
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wonder what it would be like to be their friend or to date them or whatever it is." And we'll get to this later in the video, but I think that a lot of us with toxic shame get this kind of feedback
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loop that develops where we feel so ashamed of any desire to be close to someone that then when we like someone, we show up with kind of weird energy.
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And then they might be kind of confused about how to respond to that, and so the interaction might not go well, which we then take as confirmation that there's something fundamentally wrong with us when in reality, everyone was just
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feeling a bit confused and weird about what was going on. So, working on congruence for those of us with CPTSD patterning can be a huge help in this process, but again, we're getting ahead of ourselves. The only point I'm trying
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to make here is that there is nothing wrong with liking people, wanting to be close to them, and even experiencing attraction to people. All of those are just normal parts of being a human being with a body and a mind that is literally
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built for connection. Fourth reminder you might need if you have complex PTSD or toxic shame, when you end up developing the sense of dignity that is going to come from healing these wounds, it is going to come from taking your
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entire self with you. Okay? So, especially when we're struggling with toxic shame, we can have this belief that the only way we will ever be able to feel proud or good about ourselves or to be in a healthy
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connection with ourselves is if we get rid of everything we do that is wrong or everything we don't like about ourselves. And then and only then when we are perfect, will we earn our own self-respect.
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This in reality is not what the healing process actually looks like. If and when we get to that place in the future where we have a deep sense of self-acceptance, it will necessarily have come from accepting the whole of ourselves.
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The parts of ourselves that have compulsive patterns, the parts of ourselves that show up imperfectly, the parts of ourselves that sometimes behave awkwardly or weirdly, the parts of ourselves that struggle over and over again with the same issues, the parts of
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ourselves that we believe are deeply shameful and we wish we could simply cut out of our own systems.
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All of those parts are the parts of ourselves that we need to learn to fold with compassion in order to develop dignity.
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This does not mean that we are happy about everything in relation to how we are behaving or showing up in the world.
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But what it means is that we will reach a place eventually where we're able to understand ourselves well enough to no longer have to default to shame as the main way we make sense of ourselves.
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So we can look at things like our compulsive patterns and go, "Wow, I am out of my window of tolerance a lot. I need to help myself get into a more stable environment that is more supportive of what I need so that I
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don't have to default to these coping mechanisms that are causing me so much suffering." So we'll have a much clearer view of how our inner world and our outer world are connected. And we'll be able to work with those things as a
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whole system. So we'll be able to look at things like what stresses am I under? What tradeoffs do I have to make as a result of that in my life? And how can I be encouraging with myself the whole way through?
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The quote-unquote healed version of ourselves, which of course we never get to 100% but we can get to a place just like with physical health where we are not stuck in immense suffering every day. That version of ourselves is not a
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version who's perfect and has everything figured out. It is a version that is realistic that understands life is hard.
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The nervous system that we're dealing with has a lot of challenging patterns baked into it that were once highly adaptive.
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So, a lot of the time we're not going to have the perfect outcome available to us, but we can at least understand and stay aware of why we are behaving imperfectly. Just like everybody else on the planet including the people who have
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a deep and strong sense of self-respect. Fifth reminder you might need to hear. We've already kind of gone over this but it probably bears repeating 1,000 to 10,000 times. So, sometimes what you are perceiving as rejection in other people
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is actually people not really knowing how to respond to you because there is a lot that you're either hiding, concealing, or being incongruent about and they can feel that. And I want to be clear, this is not another thing to
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shame yourself for. Okay? The only reason I bring this up is because I think that it can be a giant blind spot for a lot of us with CPTSD.
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For a lot of my life, I really hated when people would say things like, "No one is judging you as harshly as you're judging yourself." And I would be like, "Probably a lot of people actually are judging me. Like, I'm not going to lie
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to myself." But, what I realized as I grew up and started working through some of those toxic shame patterns is that yeah, people do judge us, right? We're not trying to pretend that's not true.
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There might be lots of people we've had interactions with who walked away from the interaction going like, "Oh, that was kind of awkward or weird." But, the difference is that toxic shame leads us to believe there's some sort of like
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mystical quality to the way in which we are different or wrong that people are picking up on. And what I'm challenging here is that that is the part that's not true. Right? There's not some sort of fundamental flaw that other people can
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pick up on. What they are picking up on is perfectly ordinary things like levels of incongruence or dissociation or whatever it is. Because we tend to be kind of dissociated from our own somatic experience a lot of the time,
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we might not be aware of how we're showing up in terms of body language cues or the kind of vibe that we're giving off. And then if we have kind of awkward or uncomfortable interactions with people, what we might think is, "Oh
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my god, they saw that there's just something fundamentally wrong with me. I knew it all along." Because that's that toxic shame story, right? And this is further confirmation that nobody would ever want to be close to me because
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there is just something fundamentally different about me than other people. When in reality, the kind of awkwardness that we might be picking up on is actually someone just not really knowing how to relate to us because they're getting kind of mixed messages from what
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we're saying and how we're acting. So even if people are judging us, that doesn't mean that they are picking up on some magical quality that exists inside of us that is fundamentally wrong.
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Reminder number six that you might need if you have CPTSD or toxic shame is that the coping mechanisms that you are the most ashamed of might in fact be holding very relevant information about what your needs are.
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So, when we have needs that do not get fulfilled, especially if they're needs that have been online for the majority of our lives like the need for close connection, those needs refuse to go away. That is actually part of what makes the human
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spirit so resilient. What they do is go undercover. So if we've never had close intimate connection, what those needs might start disguising themselves as in order to show up inside of your system without being pushed away by shame are things
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like limerence or romantic fantasies where we are imagining this perfect version of ourselves meeting another perfect person and falling deeply in love because we believe that that's the only situation in which it's going to be okay for us to feel connected to
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someone. Right? So that need for human connection exactly as we are exists the way it exists for everybody else in the world.
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But again, because we may develop a story that sounds something like there's something creepy bad and wrong about me.
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So before I can have close connection, I need to become perfect. That very normal need for connection goes great. I'll put on that disguise and I'll show up in your psyche in order to keep reminding you that I still exist as a fantasy of
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you being perfect and marrying another perfect person and finally being allowed to have the love and care and companionship that is so normal for every human being to need.
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Another example. Every human being needs comfort when they are under chronic stress. And so if you don't have the forms of comfort available to you that a lot of people who grew up in more secure contexts did. So things like emotional
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support, practical support, enough time to rest in your life. Your needs for all of those things are still going to exist.
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But they might show up through patterns of compulsive eating, substance use, numbing out behaviors. That is the system desperately trying to get the comfort that it needs through any means necessary.
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And the point here is that if what we are doing is ruthlessly shaming ourselves for having either patterns of compulsive comfort seeking or patterns of idealizing people or patterns of limerence, whatever it is.
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Well, there can absolutely be symptoms of all of those things that cause pain and suffering to us or in some cases to others. There is a reason why all of them are happening. And the way to change our relationship to any of those
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patterns is not to ignore them. It's to use that part of the self that can access our dignity and go, "There is something my body and my nervous system is trying to tell me through these patterns." And if I'm able to actually context for
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myself just how often I might be outside of my window of tolerance and needing care and environmental support, it might get a lot easier for me to accept just how much comfort I need.
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Or I need connection just like everybody else. And if I am mired in toxic shame and self-hatred, I might actually have a significantly above average need for connection that's going unfulfilled because I'm not connected to myself, which is a very painful experience to be
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in. Right? I think that a lot of us when we have those patterns of self-abandonment and self-hatred, part of why those limerant can feel so good is because we're imagining that somebody else is finally seeing us as worthwhile.
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And if we just naturally have that sense of companionship with ourselves, if we naturally see ourselves as good and okay and worthwhile even though we're not getting everything right, that actually goes a really long way in combating loneliness.
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Right? But when we have the double whammy of not being comfortable with ourselves and also not knowing how to connect well with others, it makes so much sense that we have these massive needs for connection that are going
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unfulfilled and are showing up in ways like developing limerence or having really vivid and intense fantasy worlds.
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Right? There is signal inside of our coping mechanisms, even the ones that we hate ourselves for. And the way out of them is not to double down on shaming ourselves.
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It's to learn to accept that there's a reason we feel the way we do, and there's a need underlying it that probably we're going to need to spend a lot of time learning to fulfill.
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Reminder number seven that you might need if you have CPTSD or toxic shame is that your feelings are actually not that personal.
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So, we are all just human beings with bodies that are designed to respond emotionally to our environments. This is actually a really key part of what helps us survive in the world. And so, if you have this idea that it is so shameful
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that you feel things, you might want to consider that you don't really have a choice. Our bodies were intelligently designed to produce feelings.
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And so, I started thinking about this from a kind of different perspective, where I was speaking to someone who came from a very different culture than me.
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And a perspective that she was holding was, "Yeah, in my culture, we don't really believe that feelings are these personal things that people arrived at through kind of carefully considering what they felt and then deciding on it.
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We assume that our feelings are emergent properties of our environments and our contexts. And the caveat I want to give here is that some of us might actually deeply believe this is true for other people, particularly if we've gone
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through patterns of abusive behavior, where someone tells us, "You are making me feel the way that I'm feeling." But, we don't believe that it's true for us.
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And, of course, there is a line to be walked here between self-responsibility and environmental emergence, right?
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So, I am feeling angry does not mean I get to be abusive towards other people.
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We are still responsible for our behavior. But, feelings themselves are things that naturally come up inside of our systems as a result of what we are experiencing in life, because our bodies are designed to react emotionally to things. And so, I sometimes just find
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this an easier way to be in relationship to my emotions, especially if I'm feeling shame about them. I can sit down with myself and go, "What is my body trying to do to keep me alive here?" Oh, am I attracted to someone? Cool. That's
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probably because I have a human body that is oriented towards reproduction. Am I feeling angry? That makes sense. I have a human body that keeps me safe by trying to push away things that don't feel good or healthy to me.
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Am I in the middle of a toxic shame spiral and I'm feeling shame about the amount of shame that I'm feeling and all of the things I'm doing to cope with it.
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Cool. I have a human body that has developed a shame response when it thinks that I'm going to get ostracized from a group of people unless I change my behavior.
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Right? Again, we get to choose how we respond to our feelings. But, shaming ourselves for feeling them is often a lifelong fool's errand because our feelings are not that personal. They're just responses that our bodies are having to being alive. We can work with
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them when they show up. We can orchestrate which environments we're putting ourselves in so that we have the best possible chance of being able to stay inside of our window of tolerance more often and we can choose how we
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express our feelings to others, but the feelings themselves, unfortunately, we're just always going to have as long as we are in human bodies.
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Eighth reminder you probably need if you have CPTSD or toxic shame is that you do not have to earn the right to care about yourself. In fact, it's often a lot better for everyone involved, especially you, if you care about yourself first
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before you have solved your whole life and become perfect. Okay? So, this really hit home for me recently when I was talking to a friend of mine who's had kind of very sustained career success over like a 20-year period in
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his life. And I asked him, "How do you stay balanced? Like you just seem like you don't burn out as much as the average person despite the fact that you have a very long track record of getting much
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more done than the average person." And his response was so cool to me. He said, "Most people don't stop until they burn out. I'm pretty good at noticing the burnout coming and resting then." And that was his secret to how he keeps
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himself from burning out is he gives himself rest at an earlier point than the average person.
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Not at a later point. Right? But this is what it feels so natural for a lot of us to do, particularly if we grew up with some sort of belief that we only get to feel good once we have earned it through
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enough suffering or self-punishment or whatever it is. It has personally been quite frustrating for me in life, honestly, to learn over and over and over again through trial and error that the more rest, the more kindness, and the more compassion I give myself
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earlier on in the process, the better I perform the whole way through. So, I think a lot of us with toxic shame get kind of stuck in this double bind of once I fix my whole life, heal everything about myself, and become
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perfect, then I will get to relax, have close relationships, experience comfort and joy and ease. When in reality, all of those things are things that we need to be able to feel before we can heal because they are the things that create
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the healing. Okay? When we can laugh and relax our nervous systems, it makes us better at dealing with all stressors in our life.
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When we have healthy supportive relationships, it makes us better at dealing with all stressors in our lives.
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When we have enough rest, enough support, when we've been able to take care of our health, all of these things are what give us the strength and the nervous system capacity to be able to tackle the harder parts of
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our lives. So, if we are putting them off until we get everything else done, what we're essentially creating for ourselves is a no-win situation. So, a mantra I developed at one point in my life is the more stressed I am, the more time off I
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need. That's a non-negotiable because it's the very thing that's going to give me the capacity to do more. And this is one that I think a lot of us need to repeat to ourselves, like many of these, 100,000 million times.
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So, do it. Every time you find yourself hovering around that burnout point going, I just need to achieve 2,500 more things and then I will rest. Remind yourself, I need the rest now.
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I need the connection now. I need the support now. That is the way I'm going to get to the end of this, not the other way around.
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Ninth reminder, this one's a tough one for a lot of us. Perfectionism is not the root to connection.
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It is the root to isolation. Okay? And this one can be so deeply ingrained for a lot of us. Where we believe, I will get connection, I will get love and support in my life once I am perfect. It really feels like it's
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true because it's what we may have learned or been taught was true early on.
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When in reality, the way to connect with other people is most often to share our imperfections with them.
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To bond with people over what we're not getting perfect, what we're struggling with. These are the things that secure human connections are built around.
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People like to feel like they are interacting with other imperfect humans because every single person is imperfect and knows it.
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Right? So, for a lot of us, we may have learned, I am only acceptable, I'm only allowed to be in connection if I am doing everything right and everyone can see it. Whereas, in the world of secure people, someone who is claiming that
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they are perfect and doing nothing wrong actually just kind of seems like someone who's lying. And that might be a turn off for the average person rather than something that makes them want to move closer.
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And again, we're not here to shame ourselves for our perfectionism. What we're here to do is recognize that the parts of ourselves that we think we most need to hide to be in connection are so ironically often the exact same parts
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that we need to show to people in order to develop secure relationships. This brings us all the way back to those first few points, right? Where we were talking about how we might believe that we are the only person struggling with
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things like finances, relationships, body image issues, feeling behind in life, addictive tendencies, whatever it is. When we start talking about these things, especially if we're able to do it in a relatively self-contained way, which is a skill that can be learned,
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what we often realize is that most people struggle to some extent with all of those things. And the way into connection is in fact talk about them and coregulate through them as life goes on, rather than shoving them under the
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rug and believing that we will be acceptable to others only once those problems no longer exist for us. And 10th and final reminder that we're going to go over today that you might need if you have complex PTSD or toxic shame
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patterning is that healthy people are going to have way more compassion for you when it comes to the struggles that you're going through than they are judgment.
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Right? Often, I find that those of us who have really strong inner critics will self-select into environments where people are ruthlessly judgmental of us because it's what we know and see as normal. But the average environment that is comprised of healthy secure people
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are not out there denying their own weaknesses and needing to shame anybody who has their own.
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Those types of people are often highly compassionate towards themselves when they're struggling and other people when they're struggling.
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And this is exactly what I started learning the more I started putting myself in environments with people who had some of those healthier coping skills. I don't know why this in particular stood out to me in life, but
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it was really one of those moments that just shifted something for me. When I was younger, I used to have a lot of shame around not knowing how to tend well to my hygiene needs and to just generally groom myself well. And so one
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day I decided, I'm going to go to a nail salon and I'm going to get my nails done. And prior to that in life, my strategy for caring for my nails had been biting them a lot and then kind of
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painting over them with cheap polish and hoping that it looked okay. And I went to the nail salon and put my hands on the table. And the woman picked up one of my hands and she just giggled in this
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way that was so affectionate that it totally caught me off guard. And she went, "Oh, sweetie, you don't know how to paint your own nails." But she said it with such a kindness and almost with this air of being kind of delighted by
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me, the way that adults are sometimes delighted with children getting things wrong. And it felt so beautiful to me to realize that someone could look directly at this thing I was so ashamed of, which was that I did not know how to groom
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myself like other people, and just think that it was endearing and sweet, and then help me learn how to do it differently. But this is so often the genuine attitude that healthy people have towards others who are struggling.
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Right? The people who have that healthy sense of self-compassion don't need to project their own shame and judgments outwards in the same way.
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And so something that it's also been very helpful for me to keep in mind over the years is that the person I am today has an immense amount of compassion for the person I was at 13 who hated herself
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on so many different levels. And so when I'm still struggling now, or when I still get toxic shame coming online, I remind myself there is a version of you in 5 years from now, or 10 years from now, or whatever it is,
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who probably has that same level of self-compassion towards what you are experiencing right now as you do towards your younger self.
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And it's also okay if right now you don't have any compassion for any version of yourself, however old or young. But just knowing that there is the option out there someday to see even ourselves through the eyes of a more
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secure and compassionate person can sometimes be something that is really powerful in those moments where shame takes over.
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Right now, I think I have no excuse to be doing anything I'm doing or to have made any of the mistakes that I've made, but a future version of me might actually totally understand having stepped back from the situation and
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grown through it why I'm behaving all of the ways I'm behaving right now or why I'm struggling so much in the ways that I'm struggling right now, whatever it is. And so this is the ongoing process of retraining that inner critic to be a
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healthier one. So not someone who says yes, everything you do is great and fine and cool and you don't have to pay attention to any impact you're having, but one that is not ruthlessly criticizing us based on someone else's
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need to externalize their shame, which is usually the context we developed it in, right? We were either raised by or were in close contact with someone who had something they couldn't accept about themselves and so they had to project onto the people around them.
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And then we learned to internalize that person's set of morals and beliefs as what was good and right for us, but that inner critic is not inside of everybody else out there.
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Right? And so over time, as we learn to let in more spaciousness, more grace from other people and affection and companionship, slowly that inner critic learns maybe I don't have to be as harsh with myself as I've been for the
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majority of my life. Maybe there's a little bit more grace and context awareness that I could bring into my relationship with myself, too.
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All right. I am going to leave this video at that for today, but what I would love love love love love more than anything to see in the comments section are any reminders that you like to give yourself when you're struggling with
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things like CPTSD wounds or toxic shame patterns. I think that we are all of each other's most valuable resource.
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So, any thoughts, any questions, anything coming up for you as you've gone through this video, please leave in the comment section below. I love you guys. I hope you're taking care of yourselves and each other, and I will
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see you back here again really soon. [music]
Topics:C-PTSDtoxic shamewindow of toleranceself-compassioninner critichealingtrauma recoveryshameemotional regulationHeidi Priebe
