This post is Part 1 of a series.

For years, clinicians and researchers have encouraged trauma survivors to cultivate self-compassion as part of healing. The evidence is compelling: People who can relate to themselves with kindness experience lower anxiety, less depression, and greater overall mental and physical health. Yet, for many survivors, the idea of self-compassion can feel not only elusive but also triggering.

Navigating life as both clinician and survivor, I have learned that semantics matter. Self-compassion is not attainable for many of us, especially in the messy injury of trauma. As a concept, it is beautiful. We truly want to attain it. Yet, in the early stages of post-trauma, and especially complex trauma, it is often not a possibility. We try to understand and grow it, but many of us cannot. This is not because we are damaged or less than. It is because our body feels unsafe. This is especially true for self-kindness, which is one of the domains of self-compassion. Offering ourselves kindness when our internal systems feel stretched out, out of control, and unworthy is simply not a possibility for most of us at this stage.

This is why I propose a reframe: shifting from self-compassion to intentional self-attunement.

This language better reflects what is both possible and effective for trauma survivors, especially in early stages of trauma intervention. It moves away from a vague emotional ideal and toward a grounded practice rooted in neuroscience, attachment theory, and trauma integration.

To understand why self-compassion often feels impossible for trauma survivors, we need to examine what happens in the brain after trauma. During a traumatic event, survival mechanisms take over. The fight, flight, or freeze response is activated automatically; this is the brain's way of preserving life.

When the traumatic event passes, the trigger often remains. Survivors can easily be re-triggered by things that look, sound, smell, or feel like elements of the original trauma. This chronic sense of danger activates what I call the withdrawal, a secondary defense mechanism that emerges after fight, flight, or freeze.

I describe the brain's response to trauma using the metaphor of 3-2-1 versus 1-2-3:

For trauma survivors living in chronic hypervigilance, the reactive 3-2-1 pattern becomes the default, sustained by........

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