What Not to Say to Trauma Survivors: Lessons From a Week of Harmful Comments

Notes From Behind the Screen

I haven’t posted for a few days, and if you look at the website, you’ll see some changes. Two reasons for the break:

1. It was my husband’s birthday.

I love this man. He’s not just my husband — he’s my best friend, the best puppy/kitty daddy, my caretaker, my rock, my “I’m not gonna die today” security blanket. He carries more than any one human should ever have to carry, and he does it with love.

In past lives, I would’ve worked straight through his birthday.
This year, I stopped.
We celebrated him for days.
Because he deserves that.
And so do you.
You deserve love without earning it, joy without guilt, celebration without productivity.

2. I needed a minute to process the stupid shit people have said to me this week.

Let’s review:

Someone told me I “need to heal.”
As if I’ve been living in CPTSD/medical trauma land for recreational purposes.
Sure, Chad. Let me put my shoes on and get right on that.

Then I overheard a veteran explain why a friend “didn’t really have PTSD” because he wasn’t in combat.
Hate to burst your pearl-clutched bubble, but you don’t need a uniform to have PTSD.
Life is more than capable of traumatizing you without military assistance.

And then — the showstopper — a therapist told me that when she worked with vets, they were all “strong and funny,” as if that’s relevant to my life.
That’s not relating.
That’s making me invisible in my own damn story.

She also told me I should “feel grateful” my diagnosis only took two years.
I was TEN.
I thought I was going to die.
Tell me again how grateful I should feel about that.

Here’s the truth:
People say harmful things because they’re uncomfortable, uninformed, or trying too hard to relate.
But harm is harm.

And hey — you might not know you’re being a dick when you say this stuff. If that’s the case, follow along. I’m going to teach you what to say instead.

Because as I sit here looking civilized at my kitchen bar with my coffee and my laptop, I’m telling you right now:

**This shit has to stop.

Now.**

I’m done letting these comments slide.
I’m done letting people erase trauma survivors because they don’t know better.
I’m done pretending these tiny cuts don’t bleed.

From here forward, we’re burning the systems down — the ones that taught people these comments were acceptable.

We’re talking about:

• what not to say

• what to say instead

• how to show up for trauma survivors with compassion instead of cluelessness

• and how “I don’t know what to say” is sometimes the most trauma-informed thing you can say

If you’re nodding along, grab your torch.
We ride at dawn.

If this makes you uncomfortable, buckle up — education is coming. Please listen. I implore you for all the trauma thrivers in your life and statistically speaking, there’s at least one.

Let me say it louder for the people in the back:

This shit has to stop.
And I’m going to show you how.
Welcome to the Traumaverse.

It’s Not That I Think About Trauma Every Day…

It’s not that I think about trauma every day.
It’s that trauma rewired the way my mind moves.

It’s the shadow in the corner of the room,

the split-second hesitation before joy arrives,

the nervous system scanning the horizon for something it’s convinced is coming.

It’s the way I read a room before I walk into it.

The way I measure my words before I say them. Not because I am afraid — but because my body learned long ago that safety is something you earn.

I don’t wake up and say, “Let’s think about trauma before coffee.”

Instead, it shows up in subtler ways:

In how deeply I notice people.
In how I prepare for things I can’t control.
In the tenderness I feel toward anyone who has ever felt small, unseen, or uncertain.

It’s in the way I love — fiercely, but with caution, making sure the ground beneath me is solid.

Healing isn’t forgetting. It’s building a new way to exist inside what happened. A way to breathe in a body that remembers, but no longer rules you.

So no — I don’t think about trauma every day.

I live with its echoes.
Its lessons.
Its scars.
Its resilience.

And if I’m honest?
I have grown more in those echoes than I ever did in the silence before them.

Maybe you have too.

💛 What’s a way trauma changed how you move through the world — that you didn’t even realize was connected until later?

A Trauma Thriver’s Dating Profile (For Friends, Not Romance)

By Meg Shike

I sat down this morning intending to write something serious, something meaningful… and instead I wrote myself a dating profile for friendships.

Not for romance. For the kind of people who understand trauma, chronic illness, CPTSD, and healing — not in theory, but in the lived-in, hard-earned way.

Honestly? It might be the most accurate bio I’ve ever written.

Hi, I’m Meg.

I’m 5'2", a lifelong Southerner, and a collector of cats, coffees, and episodes of Dateline that inexplicably calm my nervous system.

Likes:
• Cats
• Coffee
• Dateline (don’t judge — it soothes me)

Dislikes:
• People who treat me poorly
• Anything that overworks my nervous system
• Narcissists in any form

The Truth Is…

I’ve lived a lifetime of trauma. And being a trauma thriver means I require:

• Time in nature
• Massages when I can get them
• Hours — sometimes days — lost in books (both writing and reading)

I’m hesitant to let people fully see me (see: trauma, narcissists, survival mode, people-pleasing). Letting new people in? Terrifying.

Not because I don’t want connection — God, I do — but because old wounds don’t forget how they got there.

What I’m Searching For

I’m learning how to make friends as a grown woman who spent her whole life reading a room for danger instead of reading it for connection.

As I slowly rebuild my support system, I’m looking for people who:

• Understand chronic illness, rare disease, trauma, and the healing journey
• Don’t expect me to be “on” all the time
• Know that going to bed at 7:30 PM is sometimes a spiritual practice

Healing can be lonely. This is my way of finding community again.

My Ideal People

People who:

• Pay attention to their own energy instead of scanning the room for others’ moods
• Don’t require caretaking or emotional performance to stay connected
• Are equally comfortable sitting quietly together or talking about the hard stuff
• Want to feel seen, heard, and not alone — because that’s what I want, too

I want the kind of friendships that make healing feel less like a battle and more like a shared journey.

Cheers to Us

Healing is messy. It’s funny. It’s lonely and beautiful and terrifying and hopeful.

And writing this “friendship dating profile” reminded me that other trauma thrivers are out here, looking for one another — quietly, awkwardly, tenderly.

So if you read this and thought: “Okay but… that’s me.”

Then hello, friend. Welcome to the part of the internet where we heal out loud, together.

Sh*t My Trauma Brain Told Me: Holiday Edition

Let’s talk about Thanksgiving.
But more importantly… let’s talk about what my trauma brain does the second November rolls around.

You know that moment when you open your fridge and your nervous system goes,
“Ohhhh it’s time. Let’s panic about food.”

Because that was me this morning.

I stood there — half-awake, holding my coffee — and my trauma brain fired up like it was prepping for the Holiday Hunger Games.

🫠 Trauma Brain, Act I:

“Canned cranberry sauce?
Meg… can your stomach even HANDLE canned things?
Remember 2021? The incidentS?”

🍠 Trauma Brain, Act II:

“Sweet potatoes: maybe safe.
Maybe not.
Let’s spiral about it for the next four hours just in case.”

🦃 Trauma Brain, Act III:

“Is turkey gluten-free??
Is it secretly gluten-free?
Is this how we die???”

Meanwhile, my logical brain is like:
“Girl. It’s FRIDAY.”

And trauma brain responds:
“Time is an illusion. Prepare for war.”

Why Holidays Mess With Trauma Brains

For those who don’t live with trauma, chronic illness, or rare disease anxiety… Thanksgiving is “cute chaos.”
But if you DO?

It’s a bingo card of triggers:

• 🥴 Food you don’t normally eat

• 🧬 Family commentary you didn’t ask for

• 🦷 Old chairs that flare up your pain (hello, CIDP life)

• 😵 Increased germs

• 😬 Disrupted sleep

• 🧨 And the general stress of being alive in November

And for trauma survivors?

It’s like your nervous system whispers:
“In honor of the holidays, let’s revisit ALL the memories.”

Love that for us.

But Here’s the Real Point

If your brain is spiraling about:

• Food

• Travel

• Pain

• Triggers

• Sleep

• Family

• Germs

• Or literally anything involving gravy

You’re not dramatic.
You’re not “too sensitive.”
You’re not overreacting.

You’re a human with a history.
A nervous system with receipts.
A body with memories.

And trauma + rare disease + the holidays = A VERY SPECIFIC VIBE.

My Wish for You This Thanksgiving

May you:

✨ Eat what feels safe
✨ Ignore what doesn’t
✨ Leave early without guilt
✨ Protect your peace like it’s an heirloom
✨ And return home to stretchy pants, comfort shows, and zero judgment

And if your trauma brain starts screaming about canned cranberry sauce, just know:

I get it.
You’re not alone.
And you’re doing great.

Happy holidays from my nervous system to yours. 🫠🦃

What People Get Wrong About Sick Kids (and Why Caregiver Month Is Complicated)

When people hear I got CIDP at 10 years old, they almost always say the same thing:

“Your parents must have been so worried.”

And listen… I know they’re trying to be kind.
But every time I hear it, my trauma brain whispers:

Well, fuck off Karen — maybe I was worried.

Maybe I was terrified that I could die.
Maybe I spent every day wondering what my life would look like now.
Maybe my entire foundation cracked because nobody could tell me I’d be okay.

When you’re a sick kid, you aren’t a side character in your own medical trauma story.
You’re living it.
You feel every second of it in your tiny, terrified body.

Here’s what I wish more people understood:

Kids notice everything.

They know when adults are scared.
They know when doctors don’t have answers.
They know when the fear in the room is louder than the truth.

I lost almost all my friends because I was constantly in the hospital.
This was 1994 — no cell phones, no Facetime, no group chats.
Just isolation, fluorescent lighting, and the sound of everyone whispering about you like you weren’t right there.

And the worst part?
I had to hide all my feelings to keep everyone else calm.

Imagine you, as an adult, learning your body is attacking itself, your nerves are failing, and you might not make it.
Now imagine being ten.

Night after night, I told myself:
“You will not stop breathing tonight.”
That was my bedtime ritual.
Every. Single. Night.

So yes — caregivers matter.
Caregivers deserve love and respect.
My husband Dan is the world’s best caregiver and you’ll meet him on the podcast.
Caregivers ALSO experience trauma.

But please — for the love of god and cats and Dateline:
Do not minimize the child’s experience by immediately centering the parents’ fear.

Children living through medical trauma are surviving it just as deeply — and often silently.

To every trauma survivor and every caregiver reading this:
I see you.
I honor you.
You don’t have to be silent anymore.

Because here?
Here we talk about the truth — even when it’s messy.

Saturday Morning Conversations With My Trauma Brain

November 7, 2025

If you have a trauma brain, you already know mornings can get weird.
There you are, minding your own business, trying to sleep, and suddenly:

Trauma Brain: It’s early. Want to sleep in or want to think about your trauma?
Also Trauma Brain: Trauma! Trauma! Trauma! So much easier than sleeping!

Cool cool cool. Love that for us.

Once I’m awake:
Trauma Brain: Now that we’re up, go drink a whole pot of coffee by yourself. Feeling relaxed is suspicious. We need to be AMPED and prepared to fight off any attacker, tiger, memory, or mild inconvenience.

Then, once the caffeine hits:
Trauma Brain: Time to gooooo. Go go go. If we stay in motion and anticipate everyone’s needs, maybe no one will be mad at us, and maybe our body will stop attacking itself. Safety first. Hustle second. Sleep never.

If I try to sit down?
Trauma Brain: Cool. Here is every bad thing that has ever happened. Chronologically. With unnecessary detail. You’re welcome.

Want to leave the house and do something fun?
Trauma Brain: Let’s think about everything that could go wrong, will go wrong, and definitely has gone wrong. Especially if you have medical trauma or chronic illness. Nothing says “good times” like worst-case scenario planning!

And listen—I make jokes, but this is real.
Trauma brains are loud.
Trauma brains are exhausting.
Trauma brains are trying to keep us safe, but sometimes they just keep us stuck.

Here’s what helps me take back control:

1. Noticing the thoughts

A thought is just a thought.
Not a prediction.
Not a prophecy.
Not a command.

Trauma thoughts feel sharp and pointy, because traumatic memories are stored that way—loud and urgent. It doesn’t mean they’re true.

2. Controlling what I can control

My chronic illness (CIDP) and medical trauma mean my body has limits. Some days I cancel plans. Some days I rally. Some days I rest.
I can’t control my whole nervous system, but I can control how I talk to myself about it, how I prepare, how I rest, and how I support my future self.

3. Humor

Sometimes all you can do is laugh.
We joke about #walkingprivilege in my house because I’ve spent a lifetime fighting a body that doesn’t always cooperate. Humor doesn’t erase trauma, but it makes living with it a tiny bit easier.

4. Setting myself up for sleep

Sleep is survival. And if it’s complicated? Fine. Let it be complicated. I try. I forgive myself when it’s hard.

5. Coming back to the present

Trauma brain wants to drag us backward.
“It is what it is” brings us back to now.
Now is where healing happens.

6. Talking about it

For most of my life, I didn’t speak about my trauma.
Not to friends, not to doctors, not to anyone.
Silence kept me alive once.
Silence kept me stuck later.

The minute I started talking—really talking—everything changed.

You don’t have to tell the whole internet your story.
You don’t have to be brave every day.
But you don’t have to be silent anymore.

Trauma can feel like a lot, but you’re not alone.
I’m here.
And my podcast is coming soon, full of real survivors and real stories, so you can hear proof that it isn’t just you.
Because it’s not.

You are not weak. You are not broken. And you are not alone.

If your trauma brain wakes up before you do, I see you.
You don’t have to heal alone anymore.
Join the email list for new posts, survivor stories, and updates on the podcast.

Sharing My Trauma Brain With the World. Weird. Terrifying. Necessary.

November 9, 2025

I’d like to go on record saying something important:

Sharing my life with anyone is weird.
Sharing it with the internet is weirder.
And I’m 43, so this is not my natural habitat.

When you get CIDP at 10, you learn some “superpowers” real early:
✔ reading the room
✔ reading people
✔ pretending you’re fine
✔ being positive so no one worries

Because if the adults fall apart, then the kid falls apart, and that wasn’t an option.

It took 18 months to diagnose me.
Eighteen months of tests, needles, electric shocks, spinal taps, and watching doctors try not to panic in front of my parents.

I learned to read a doctor’s face like a book.
If their eyebrows moved a millimeter, I knew how bad it was.

So I smiled.
I reassured the adults.
I was “strong.”
I was “brave.”
I was quietly terrified.

This is where it started.
The survival strategy:
Don’t show fear.
Don’t show pain.
Don’t show anything that might make other people uncomfortable.

And guess what?
When you learn that as a child, it follows you into adulthood.

I had friends.
But were they allowed to know me?
Absolutely not.

Want proof?

Years ago, two gym clients invited me hiking.
Repeatedly.
For weeks.

Finally they asked, “Are you ever going to come hiking with us?”

And I said, with full confidence:

“No. I’m never going hiking with you.”

Not because I didn’t like them.
But because that meant letting someone see me outside the gym.
In real life.
As an actual human.

Absolutely not.
No thank you.
Safety first.

Being known felt dangerous.

But here’s the plot twist:

Apparently (and I’m still adjusting to this), sharing your real self with real people doesn’t make you weak.

Apparently humans want to get to know you so they can support you.
Apparently they hug you on bad days.
Apparently they say “I see you” and mean it.

None of that happens if you say “I’m fine” forever.

Through therapy, healing, and connecting with people who also have CIDP and trauma, I learned something wild:

You cannot be loved if you stay hidden.

So now… here I am.
On the internet.
Saying words.

Why?

Because I spent decades feeling alone.
And now I know the truth:
You can’t heal in silence.

If your trauma brain tells you it’s not safe to open up — I get it.
If your people-pleasing makes you say “I’m fine” while you’re dying inside — I get that too.
If you’ve lost relationships, mobility, identity, or safety — I’ve been there.

You’re not weak.
You survived.
That’s different.

Now we speak.
Now we take up space.
Now we let people in — the safe ones, the real ones.

So hi, trauma brain survivors.
Hi, chronic illness warriors.
Hi, people who are exhausted from pretending they’re fine.

Nice to meet you.
I’m learning to share who I actually am.
It still feels weird.
I will probably cringe about this later.

But it’s not about me — it’s about you knowing you’re not alone anymore.

If anything in this post made you feel a little less alone, stay with me.

The podcast is coming.
More stories.
More honesty.
More “me too.”

You don’t have to heal in silence anymore.

I Almost Pooped Myself to Death

I Almost Pooped Myself to Death

(and other lessons in post-trauma humor)

November 12, 2025

Can we talk about the funny part of trauma?

Is there a funny part of trauma?

I lean yes. Humor is my favorite survival strategy.

After having C. diff — twice — aka almost pooping myself to death (twice), my sense of humor changed forever.

Because honestly, if you can’t laugh about almost pooping yourself to death, what can you laugh about?

The Birthday Call Chronicles

So here’s what happens:

Dan (my husband) and I will be on FaceTime with one set of parents or the other, usually to wish someone happy birthday.

You know the drill — they see us, we see their ceiling, everyone’s smiling.

Then we hit that part of the call where everyone updates each other on new medical conditions. You know, just normal birthday party small talk.

They’ll list their ailments. We’ll sympathize. There’s comforting, commiserating, a little bit of, “Oh no, not that again.”

And then… I drop it.

“Well, at least you haven’t almost pooped yourself to death lately.”

Silence.

Absolute silence.

I can see Dan’s parents’ faces freeze.
I can feel my trauma brain high-fiving me and screaming,

“Why did you say that out loud again?!”

And yet — I keep saying it.

It’s my dark humor’s favorite one-liner.
It sneaks out like a reflex.

Part of me is half proud of my honesty.
The other part of me is like, “Meg. For the love. Stop saying that.”

The Aftermath

Thankfully, my husband is a saint.
He says words — I don’t even know what words, but he fills the silence.
And the conversation moves on.
We resume admiring the ceiling.
Everything’s fine again.

The Moral of the Story

Trauma rewires your sense of “normal.”

For me, humor is the reboot button.
If I can laugh about it, I can survive it.
If I can say it out loud, I can take its power away.

So yes — I almost pooped myself to death. Twice.
And if that’s not worth a good dark-humor joke on a birthday call,
I don’t know what is. 😅

If your trauma brain blurts out uncomfortable truth bombs at family gatherings —
you are my people.

Drop a 💩 or a 😂 in the comments so I know I’m not the only one who trauma-jokes through awkward silence.

Don’t People-Please Your Way Into Ignoring Your Gut (or Fleeing Mexico Like I Did)

November 12, 2025

You can’t heal from your trauma unless you talk about it.
And, ideally, not while fleeing Mexico.

I wasn’t wanted by the law or anything. I just felt like I was.

Here’s what happened.

Imagine paradise: turquoise water, fruity drinks, resort butlers.
Now imagine me, sweating, anxious, and convinced a lizard might drop from the ceiling—or that the universe was trying to warn me.

Spoiler: both were true.

I’d gone to Mexico for my best friend’s birthday even though my gut screamed, Don’t go.
But my people-pleasing trauma brain said, We’re fine! She’ll be disappointed if you don’t go!
So I went.

No air-conditioning. Ninety-degree heat.
Dinner sweat. Lizard on the head.
PTSD flashbacks from “team reward” resort trips with an old boss who believed working from the beach was “good for morale.”
If you’ve ever cried in paradise, I see you.

Two nights in, I snapped.
I told my friends my husband was violently ill (he wasn’t), booked the first flight out—through New York, because trauma makes logistics optional—and fled the country.

Then I threw up in a hotel lobby, called 911, and spent three days paying $800 a night for a hotel room while waiting out a storm in New York.
All because I was too scared to tell my best friend:

“I have a bad feeling about this trip, and I’m not going.”

Ten out of ten do not recommend.

The Moral

Your gut doesn’t lie.
Your trauma brain just learned to ignore it to keep people happy.

Don’t people-please your way into ignoring yourself.
Listen. Leave. Or at least book refundable flights.

If your gut has ever screamed “NOPE” and you still went anyway—drop a ✈️ or 💀 in the comments.
We can laugh about it together, and maybe next time, we’ll listen to our guts before the lizard falls.