Rose White
VIP Member
I couldn’t think of a good title.
I’m struggling with a puzzle. I was abused by my caregiver, so my concept/sense of “familiar” and “home” are associated with negative feelings and experiences. So then it’s “easy” to find myself in relationships and situations where I don’t protect myself from or avoid negative feelings and experiences. Because I have internalized things like “it’s normal for people who care for each other to… yell, dismiss, mock, hit, etc.”
There’s an idea that “people hurt those closest to them because they feel comfortable enough to do so”. So my skewed abuse brain says something like, “They feel comfortable enough with me to say/do all these hurtful things. Lucky me! Good thing I’m strong enough not to take it personally.” And so on.
And so if people don’t hurt me, there is less of a connection, because it doesn’t feel familiar like home.
The puzzle is that I can’t go back in time and undo all the layering of developmental conditioning! I can’t help what tickles the familiar/home neurons.
So I feel sort of trapped to recreate these familiar/home relationships and scenarios. Because I’m an expert at navigating those! And I like feeling good at what I do!
Of course, it doesn’t mean I’m a martyr and always turn the other cheek when people abuse me. It means that if it goes on long enough I feel like I’m trapped and resentful but that I made that bed and can’t figure out a better way anyway, so—in a nutshell, screwed.
This is all jumbled because I can’t figure it out. I can’t figure out how to change what feels familiar and like home to me. I feel I can a little—but that when it comes to intense relationships (like a partnership) I can maybe shave a little off the edges but that my core is tightly bound to the dynamic of “use me, then I’ll know you care.” And I feel I can avoid this dynamic in professional and friend relationships, but not with a partner-type relationship. And it’s SO unconscious—I can think I’ve avoided it but nope, it will just pop up after some amount of time. And by then I just submit to the fate of it.
IS there a way to make the familiar and home-like associations with abusive behavior shift to where I feel uncomfortable and distressed by it? I’m tired of being told something like, “You seeing it is the first and hardest step, you’re already halfway there.” That feels untrue and just something that makes the listener feel better idk.
I’m struggling with a puzzle. I was abused by my caregiver, so my concept/sense of “familiar” and “home” are associated with negative feelings and experiences. So then it’s “easy” to find myself in relationships and situations where I don’t protect myself from or avoid negative feelings and experiences. Because I have internalized things like “it’s normal for people who care for each other to… yell, dismiss, mock, hit, etc.”
There’s an idea that “people hurt those closest to them because they feel comfortable enough to do so”. So my skewed abuse brain says something like, “They feel comfortable enough with me to say/do all these hurtful things. Lucky me! Good thing I’m strong enough not to take it personally.” And so on.
And so if people don’t hurt me, there is less of a connection, because it doesn’t feel familiar like home.
The puzzle is that I can’t go back in time and undo all the layering of developmental conditioning! I can’t help what tickles the familiar/home neurons.
So I feel sort of trapped to recreate these familiar/home relationships and scenarios. Because I’m an expert at navigating those! And I like feeling good at what I do!
Of course, it doesn’t mean I’m a martyr and always turn the other cheek when people abuse me. It means that if it goes on long enough I feel like I’m trapped and resentful but that I made that bed and can’t figure out a better way anyway, so—in a nutshell, screwed.
This is all jumbled because I can’t figure it out. I can’t figure out how to change what feels familiar and like home to me. I feel I can a little—but that when it comes to intense relationships (like a partnership) I can maybe shave a little off the edges but that my core is tightly bound to the dynamic of “use me, then I’ll know you care.” And I feel I can avoid this dynamic in professional and friend relationships, but not with a partner-type relationship. And it’s SO unconscious—I can think I’ve avoided it but nope, it will just pop up after some amount of time. And by then I just submit to the fate of it.
IS there a way to make the familiar and home-like associations with abusive behavior shift to where I feel uncomfortable and distressed by it? I’m tired of being told something like, “You seeing it is the first and hardest step, you’re already halfway there.” That feels untrue and just something that makes the listener feel better idk.
