This is part two of the series I’m referring to as, “Mind of C-PTSD.” It is a number of writings that explores the C-PTSD survivor’s journey from the dysfunctional life towards a more functional life. As usual, all writings are from my personal journey and perspective.
Take what resonates. Leave what doesn’t.
Reprogramming the Subconscious Mind & Support System
There eventually comes a moment in trauma recovery where you’re not just battling triggers anymore; you’re facing the void left behind after those triggers no longer run your life. You pause, breathe and then wonder, “Who am I without this trauma?” It can be disorienting. For those of us living with Complex PTSD (C‑PTSD), our entire sense of identity may have been constructed around anticipating danger, avoiding emotional landmines and trying to earn love in unsafe environments. Therefore, when things become still, unfamiliar and unchaotic, you don’t feel peace, you feel lost.
In my case, this wasn’t about becoming a shinier, more functional version of who I was. It was about dismantling survival scripts I had internalised for decades. Reprogramming the subconscious meant carefully deconstructing every belief that told me I needed to earn my worth, apologise for my needs or stay silent to remain safe. The tools were many: trauma-informed therapy, daily mindfulness, nervous system regulation through medical support, minimalism and a fierce commitment to reclaiming my identity. However, none of it would have worked without addressing the other side of the equation: the people around me. If I rewired myself but didn’t recondition my environment: my support system, friends and family, then I would remain stuck in the same feedback loop. Reprogramming, I learnt, doesn’t just involve you. It involves everyone with access to you.
Survival Mode Builds a False Self
The subconscious mind is a pattern recognition system. It doesn’t measure truth; it memorises repetition. If, throughout your formative years, your nervous system was continuously exposed to chaos, conditional affection or emotional volatility, then your subconscious came to view those states as “normal.” Hypervigilance, self-abandonment, fawning and emotional shutdown weren’t character flaws. They were survival techniques.
Van der Kolk (2015) explains that trauma rewires the brain’s core architecture—altering the function of the amygdala, hippocampus and prefrontal cortex. These changes directly affect how the body responds to perceived safety or threat, even in calm settings. Thus, despite moving on from the original source of harm, our subconscious minds loop the same trauma tapes. What makes it worse is that the people around us often keep speaking to those trauma-based versions of us; treating us as the over-explainer, the yes-sayer, the fixer, when we are no longer willing to play those roles. Internal work alone is not enough if your surroundings still reward your trauma programming.
C‑PTSD as Neurodivergence
There’s a misconception that trauma is just emotional pain but, in truth, C‑PTSD results in neurological changes. It affects working memory, attention span, sensory regulation, emotional interpretation and decision-making. These are not personality defects; they are traits of a traumatised, overactive nervous system.
Many trauma experts and neurodivergent advocates now align C‑PTSD with neurodivergence, suggesting that the chronic stress placed on the brain over time alters its fundamental processing especially in terms of executive function, cognitive fatigue and emotional regulation. When you understand your brain this way, you stop asking, “What’s wrong with me?” and start asking, “What does my system need to operate differently?” Yet again, your environment must learn this too. Friends and family can’t keep reacting to your boundaries like they’re mood swings or treating your sensory overload like dramatic flair. They need reprogramming just as much as you do or else they will unconsciously pull you back into the patterns you’ve worked so hard to escape.
Mindfulness & Pattern Rewriting
The brain doesn’t rewire through occasional insight; it changes through persistent repetition. Research from Lally et al. (2010) shows that habits take roughly 66 days to form but meaningful changes in neural pathways can begin within six weeks. That’s why healing doesn’t arrive like a single event. It’s the result of choosing something different every day despite resistance.
Mindfulness was one of the sharpest tools in my toolkit. It wasn’t a spiritual bypass or some serene detachment. It was the courageous act of observing my responses as they arose and resisting the pull of old programming. Garland et al. (2015) found that mindfulness significantly reduced activity in the brain’s Default Mode Network: responsible for rumination and autobiographical fear projection. This space between stimulus and reaction gave me a choice. I could notice the urge to people-please and pause. I could feel the flood of guilt and refuse to obey it. I could detach from my past long enough to speak for my present.
However, none of this would have been effective if the people around me were still speaking to my old identity. My mindfulness had to extend beyond the self. I had to be mindful of how others responded to me, how they kept me in roles I had outgrown and how they unconsciously sabotaged my evolution. Reprogramming required training others to relate to my new self or distancing myself when they couldn’t.
Minimalism as Nervous System Regulation
I didn’t become a minimalist because I liked aesthetic neutrals or counted my socks. I did it because my mind was exhausted. When you have C‑PTSD, everything is a trigger; every open tab, every pile of clothes, every sound. Your brain is constantly filtering sensory overwhelm while managing intrusive thoughts and you reach a point where physical clutter becomes synonymous with mental chaos.
Vohs et al. (2013) demonstrated that cluttered environments impair cognitive processing and increase fatigue. In contrast, orderly spaces support clarity and decision-making. Once I cleared my space, I felt my thoughts become quieter and my reactions softened. My anxiety lessened. Minimalism became another way of reminding my body that there was no longer any threat. It was, in essence, nervous system care.
I applied the same principle to people. I became emotionally minimalist while cutting out those who required me to explain, perform or shrink. My brain couldn’t afford that noise anymore. The more I removed, the more I uncovered a version of myself that wasn’t hiding under trauma.
Retraining Relationships is Necessary
We talk a lot about boundaries but not enough about retraining our environments. Internal transformation cannot thrive in spaces that demand your regression. People will keep referencing your old self because that’s who they’re comfortable with. If they can’t adapt to who you’re becoming, they’re not safe for the process.
Retraining others meant speaking differently. I stopped softening my tone to be palatable. I said no without an explanation. I named behaviour without cushioning. I prepared myself for backlash. Some relationships improved. Some died quietly. Others tried to guilt me back into my trauma personality. I let them go.
The hardest truth is that some people are only compatible with your unhealed self and that’s not your failure. That’s your freedom.
Subconscious Reprogramming in Action
What it looked like daily:
1. I’ve built repetitive routines: journaling, affirmations, meditations, etc.
2. I noticed the loop and interrupted it: replacing guilt with neutrality, fear with pause, silence with assertion.
3. I declined roles I no longer belonged to. No more therapist-friend, good girl or emotional pillow.
4. I stopped asking for permission to change. Reprogramming is enforcing your new identity, even when it makes others uncomfortable.
In conclusion, this isn’t healing; it’s conscious reconstruction. It’s a mental renovation. It’s the delicate, determined, repetitive process of becoming the version of you that trauma buried and the world rejected. Yet it’s not just about what you change in your own mind but what you refuse to allow in your environment going forward.
If they can’t speak to the version of you that you’re fighting to become, they are undeserving of access to it.
References:
Garland, E. L., Hanley, A. W., Farb, N. A., & Froeliger, B. E. (2015). State mindfulness during meditation predicts enhanced cognitive reappraisal. Mindfulness, 6(2), 234–242. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-013-0250-6
Accessed June 21, 2025, from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26085851/
Lally, P., van Jaarsveld, C. H. M., Potts, H. W. W., & Wardle, J. (2010). How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(6), 998–1009. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.674
Accessed June 21, 2025, from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ejsp.674
Van der Kolk, B. A. (2015). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Penguin Books.
Accessed June 21, 2025, from https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/227288
Vohs, K. D., Redden, J. P., & Rahinel, R. (2013). Physical order produces healthy choices, generosity, and conventionality, whereas disorder produces creativity. Psychological Science, 24(9), 1860–1867. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613480186
Accessed June 21, 2025, from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797613480186
Mystic Anomanly 