It is not yet six in the morning, and I am already awake. I slept early yesterday, woke up early today with a mind as clear as a bell. It was just 5 AM when I awoke, but, hell, nah, I am not going to try going back to sleep! I don’t want to be back in insomnia hell. Instead of fighting early morning awakening at perimenopause, I have decided to embrace it. Today, I will be productive.
Well, it is either this or waking up several times throughout the night and feeling woozy the entire day. Neither is ideal, but what can I do?
I do not want to surrender to this reality. Instead, I want to accept it.
For somebody with a traumatic past, the idea of surrender can be nauseating. Hard to swallow.
I wrote this essay to document the reconnaissance mission I undertook as both a psychotherapist and a Complex PTSD survivor (and thriver). Join me as I explore how we can reframe “surrender” through the ancient wisdom of the Tao Te Ching (道德经).
Together, we will examine:
- How to dismantle the trauma-driven need for hyper-control without falling into chaos.
- How to step out of generational cycles of emotional restriction and impulse.
- How strategic self-knowledge—bridging Sun Tzu’s The Art of War with Lao Tzu’s philosophy—helps us map our internal terrain.
- How the Japanese art of Kintsugi and the neuroscience of brain hemispheres reveal the true meaning of going with the flow as an active, courageous negotiation with reality.
Know yourself before you let go
I fell in love with the philosophy of the Tao Te Ching because of my Chinese-Filipino heritage and the text’s stance against extremes and black-and-white thinking.
However, many unanswered questions remain for me regarding the text, primarily around one of its central tenets: surrender. If you live with Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD), like me, surrender feels like exposing your soft underbelly. It feels like an invitation to end up brutalized and hurt all over again—particularly by the ones you care for the most.
For context, my own experience with CPTSD stems from a childhood dominated by my late father, who had narcissistic personality disorder and bipolar disorder. Though he is deceased now, the damage to my development was sustained from age zero to twenty, until I finally escaped his clutches. I mention this specific age range because, neurologically, these two decades represent the critical window when the brain establishes its baseline map of safety and learns how to trust.
As a psychotherapist and a grown woman in her mid-forties, I see clients who have survived or are still enduring similar, painful experiences. It is like living in a warzone: you are safe one moment and being bombed the next. As a result, individuals with CPTSD are perpetually twitchy—one eye always scanning for danger, trapped in a chronic, un-relaxed state of waiting for the next thing to collapse.
So, how does one survive that? Surely, the answer cannot simply be to “go with the flow” or “surrender.”
My problem with “go with the flow” and trauma
To a hypervigilant mind, a “go with the flow” or “surrender” mindset feels like a path straight to the grave. To stay alive, you learn that you need to plan, you need to control, and you must remain awake.
Growing up, I watched my emotionally immature father fail to manage his emotions, letting raw impulse drive him to destructive behavior. As a result, I became wary of my own impulses, which included in it my zaniness, uniqueness, and zest. I deny my own urges too damn much.
I see this phenomenon constantly in my psychotherapy practice; it operates like a never-ending, generational sick cycle: An inhibited, overly restricted parent raises a child who becomes disinhibited and impulsive. In turn, the child of that child swings back, overcompensates and becomes rigid and restricted just like their grandparent.
On and on it goes, it doesn’t end, till a generational cycle breaker like me comes to the fore.
Stepping into my Wise Woman years, I am gaining a clearer perspective.
I would like to think I am living the truth of being the grounded, mature parent for my own children that my father never could be for me. It is a well-documented phenomenon that each generation strives to give their children what they themselves were denied, what we call pamana (inheritance) in Filipino.
Total inhibition is not the answer.
To survive my childhood and adolescence, my unconscious chose inhibition as its default mode, not giving in to any impulses, feelings, and wants. That rigid stance became the seed of my restrictive anorexia—a condition I am actively living with, surviving, and now, striving to transcend as I outgrow the old programming.
This restrictive attitude was built in direct opposition to my father’s loud, narcissistic entitlement. Today, it still shows up in my daily life as a deep-seated restricted entitlement.
Imagine a grocery basket filled with good intentions: fresh vegetables, wholewheat bread, and a few treats destined for someone’s household. Yet, after the shopper has spent time lovingly filling it up, the basket is left abandoned near the checkout counter, forgotten. This is what my restricted entitlement feels like. How sad.
But if total inhibition and restricted entitlement are not the answers, neither is total disinhibition—blindly giving in to every fleeting emotion and impulse. That is the bipolar credo in a nutshell, isn’t it? I have to ask myself: Have I not learned any better? I should, and I could.
I watched my father live out his disinhibition through his rages and reckless impulses. That was his pathway to self-destruction and an early grave in his fifties. I refuse to follow him there.
In the blink of an eye, I will be marching into my own fifties, and I want to live for my kids. I want to still be kicking around until I am a Nǎinai (奶奶)—the gloriously white-haired Chinoy grandma who shows up with a sharp wit and a glint in her eye at every family Christmas reunion.
True survival, then, is not found in reacting to an extreme with an equal and opposite extreme. The answer lies in walking the middle way—the path of moderation. As Verse 29 of the Tao Te Ching states:
是以圣人去甚，去奢，去泰。 “Therefore the sage avoids excess, extremes, and complacency.”
Finding the middle way
So far, the answer seems to be moderation: neither excess nor lack. Not black, not white, but somewhere in between.
The next challenge, then, becomes one of discernment: How do we know where this in-between state is, and how do we recognize when we have reached it?
The key to this discernment lies in another foundational Chinese text, Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. In Chapter 3, he writes about the absolute necessity of being grounded in objective reality:
知彼知己，百战不殆。
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”
Brilliant! One ancient Chinese text seamlessly linking to another. To know how to deal with your trauma response, you must map the terrain of your own mind. This insight loops beautifully back to Verse 33 of the Tao Te Ching:
知人者智，自知者明。
“Those who know others are wise; those who know themselves are enlightened.”
Ultimately, this intersection points toward the absolute importance of awareness.
Living in the moment.
Being present with yourself, being present in your actual environment.
Be here now.
Kalakal X Kintsugi
Do you have a junk drawer? I do. I have a lifelong penchant for salvaging junk and making things useful again. I love the idea of patchwork quilts and collages. Minsan, nangongolekta ako ng kalakal sa S&R—keeping those sturdy cardboard boxes so I can repurpose them later as storage. I learned this tip from Marie Kondo, the legendary queen of modern minimalism. She has a point: just because society labels these things as scrap doesn’t mean they can’t have a chance at a second life.
My proclivity for kalakal (salvaged, recyclable, or upcyclable items) is why post-traumatic growth always makes me think of Kintsugi. This is the traditional Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer dusted with powdered gold. When a ceramic vessel shatters, somebody decides not to throw it away. Instead, an artisan pieces it back together, turning a shattered object once rendered useless into a valuable and functional piece of art. The broken vessel becomes able to hold water again. Hindi na siya basura; naayos na siya, may pakinabang na uli.
Just like me after my childhood and adolescent trauma.
I don’t deny my cracked parts and sharp edges; I am gilding them with gold. I acknowledge my fractures—they are a vital part of my story. I own my brokenness and restore these pieces so they can serve a purpose once more.
Being centered
Somewhere along the path of my healing, I recognized the immense value of other people. Without my chosen family, my restoration would not have happened.
Transformation cannot occur in total isolation. A Kintsugi piece is repaired not merely to sit on a shelf and exist, but to be used. A cracked bowl must become a bowl again if the world needs a bowl. The shape my healing ultimately took was determined by the meeting point between what the world requires and what I am capable of offering. The world needed a grounded mother and a compassionate therapist; in response, my shattered pieces re-formed into the vessel required to contain those roles.
This is not a passive surrender to the stark demands of reality. This is not a helpless and hapless “go with the flow.” It is acceptance. And for me, acceptance means actively negotiating with reality.
To bargain with reality is to play with Yin and Yang simultaneously. We have a saying for this in Tagalog: “Paa sa lupa, mata sa langit”—feet on the ground, eyes on the heavens. To have one foot securely placed in the reality of what we know, and one foot stepping into the possibilities above, gives us hope. But it also creates tension.
We can even look at this through the structural biology of the brain. Put simply, the right hemisphere is evolutionarily geared toward the unknown and what we cannot yet grasp, while the left hemisphere is adapted to what we already understand and control. The proper place for a human being—the state of the Tao—is to stand precisely halfway between the two: right at the center of the Taijitu.
You can feel when you are there because reality manifests itself as a state of active engagement. You are alert, on top of things, deeply involved, and entirely “with it.”
The gold between the cracks
If you survived your childhood and adolescence just like I did, the idea of surrender can be terrifying. But you can learn, as I have, that surrender is not dropping your shield to be brutalized all over again. Surrender is acceptance: the realization that the warzone is in the past and the terrain of the present moment can finally be safely navigated. You are safe within yourself, and you are free to explore that very self.
There is a profound irony here: Kintsugi pieces are often considered far more valuable than the original, unbroken pottery. Their history of fracture becomes a defining element of their beauty.
There is a profound irony here: Kintsugi pieces are often considered far more valuable than the original, unbroken pottery. Their history of fracture becomes a defining element of their beauty.
At the beginning of my healing journey, I shunned my imperfect bits and tried to hide my cracks. But in gluing them back together—a restoration forged through heat, effort, and a bit of magic—I realize now that my brokenness is nothing to be ashamed of. I can fully own it instead.
I return to my life, my family, and my clients not as damaged goods, but as a vessel of far greater worth.
